and covered in blood!Demonic possession! Haunted condominiums! Murderous babies! Man-eating moths! No plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable for the Paperbacks From Hell.Where did they come from? Where did they go? Horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and sanity (not to mention yours) to relate the true, untold story of the Paperbacks From Hell.Shocking story summaries! Incredible cover art! And true tales of writers, artists, and publishers who violated every literary law but one: never be boring. All this awaits, if you dare experience the Paperbacks From Hell.

    This lucid, easy-to-follow guide: * Explains the transformations of the genre through history * Outlines all the major figures which define the genre, such as ghosts, monsters and vampires * Charts key texts over two centuries * Traces origins of the form * Looks at the cultural and historical location of gothic images and texts * Provides a succinct introduction to the field which is also an excellent foundation for further study.

    Lansdale (Hap & Leonard series), Clive Barker (Books of Blood), John Connolly (Charlie Parker series), Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King (IT), Christopher Golden (Ararat), Charlaine Harris (Midnight, Texas), Jonathan Maberry (Joe Ledger series), Kevin J. Anderson (Tales of Dune), Craig Engler (Z Nation), and many more.The full non-fiction anthology lineup includes:• Introduction by William F. Nolan• IT’S THE STORY TELLER by Joe R. Lansdale• A-Z OF HORROR of Clive Barker• WHY HORROR? by Mark Alan Miller• PIXELATED SHADOWS by Michael Paul Gonzalez• LIKE CURSES by Ray Garton• HOW TO GET YOUR SCARE ON by S.G. Browne• STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES by Richard Thomas• HORROR IS A STATE OF MIND by Tim Waggoner• BRINGING AN IDEA TO LIFE by Mercedes M. Yardley• THE PROCESS OF A TALE by Ramsey Campbell• GREAT HORROR IS SOMETHING ALIEN by Michael Bailey• A HORRIFICALLY HAPPY MEDIUM by Taylor Grant• INTERVIEW WITH JOHN CONNOLLY by Marie O’Regan• THE STORY OF A STORY by Mort Castle• WRITING ROUNDTABLE INTERVIEW with Christopher Golden, Kevin J. Anderson, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia• HOW I SPENT MY CHILDHOOD LOOKING FOR MONSTERS AND FOUND POETRY INSTEAD by Stephanie M. Wytovich• BITS AND PIECES INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN MABERRY by Eugene Johnson• THE REEL CREEPS by Lisa Morton• THE MONSTER SQUAD by Jess Landry• WHAT SCARES YOU by Marv Wolfman• PLAYING IN SOMEONE ELSE’S HAUNTED HOUSE by Elizabeth Massie• CREATING MAGIC FROM A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER: Del Howison interviews Tom Holland, Amber Benson, Fred Dekker, and Kevin Tenney• Z NATION: HOW SYFY’S HIT SHOW CAME TO LIFE by Craig Engler• LIFE IMITATING ART IMITATING LIFE: FILM AND ITS INFLUENCE ON REALITY by Jason V Brock• WHERE NIGHTMARES COME FROM by Paul Moore• STEPHEN KING AND RICHARD CHIZMAR DISCUSS COLLABORATING by Bev Vincent• CHARLAINE HARRIS DISCUSSES STORYTELLING by Eugene Johnson• WHAT NOW? by John PalisanoThis collection is perfect for…• writers of all genres• authors looking for motivation and/or inspiration• authors seeking guidance• struggling authors searching for career advice• authors interested in improving their craft• writers interested in comics• authors looking into screenwriting and films• horror fans in general• those looking to better understand the different story formats• authors planning on infiltrating a different field in horror writing• artists trying to establish a name brand• authors looking to get publishedCome listen to the legends…Cover design by Luke Spooner. Edited by Joe Mynhardt & Eugene Johnson.Brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

    It can give us an understanding of lives very different from our own, and a sense of the shared joys and losses of human experience." Readers will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation. There are essential works in American history (The Federalist Papers, The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.); books that address timely cultural dynamics (Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale); classics of children's literature (the Harry Potter novels, Where the Wild Things Are); and novels by acclaimed contemporary writers like Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ian McEwan.With richly detailed illustrations by lettering artist Dana Tanamachi that evoke vintage bookplates, Ex Libris is an impassioned reminder of why reading matters more than ever.

    That the books are entertainment seems a given, and for that I'm grateful. That they can be seen as a religious journey is also clear. I am immersed in the questions, and praying for the answers. Lestat, c'est moi. I want you to love all of my characters. I am, in the writing of these and other novels, as ambitious as Dickens. I want everybody to cry when Claudia dies, just like they did for Little Nell."-- Anne RiceFebruary 8, 1995Interview with the Vampire. The Vampire Lestat. The Queen of the Damned. The Talc of the Body Thief Memnoch the Devil. With her bestselling, epic saga, Anne Rice has reinvented the legend and literature of one of fiction's most popular and captivating archetypes. Now, Katherine Ramsland, Anne Rice's biographer, has completely revised and updated the ultimate reference guide to the world, history, and adventures of these haunting characters, from the unforgettable Lestat to Rice's newest chilling creation, Memnoch the Devil.Written with the full cooperation of Anne Rice -- and now with more than 1,200 entries -- The Vampire Companion offers an insightful exploration, appreciation, and interpretation of all the characters and events, names and places, symbols and themes in the five volumes of The Vampire Chronicles, including more than one hundred pages of new entries on Rice's latest vampire novel, Memnoch the Devil. Everything that readers might want to explore further is annotated and analyzed in this entertaining and enlightening work: the unforgettable characters of Louis, Lestat, Claudia, Akasha, Armand, and Memnoch; the important points of interest on Lestat's fascinating tour through Heaven and Hell; ancient lore; Rice's unique contributions to the mythos of vampires; the literary inspirations that echo through the novels; Rice's own reflections and revelations about her work and about the movie Interview with the Vampire; and much more.Richly illustrated with new photos, drawings, maps, and a complete time line of events in The Chronicles, The Vampire Companion is as captivating as the phenomenal saga it explores. It is a guidebook that no visitor to the world of Anne Rice should be without.

    First described in the fictional biographies Tarzan Alive: The Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer expanded his Wold Newton mythos in novels such as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Time s Last Gift, Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, The Dark Heart of Time: A Tarzan Novel, and Escape from Loki: Doc Savage's First Adventure.The Evil in Pemberley House, an addition to the Wold Newton cycle, plays with the Gothic horror tradition. Patricia Wildman, the daughter of the world-renowned adventurer and crimefighter of the 1930s and '40s, Dr. James Clarke "Doc" Wildman, is all alone in the world when she inherits the family estate in Derbyshire, England old, dark, and supposedly haunted.But Farmer, characteristically, turns convention on its ear. Is the ghost real, or a clever sham? In Patricia Wildman, Farmer creates an introspective character who struggles to reconcile the supernatural with her rational scientific upbringing, while also attempting to work through unresolved feelings about her late parents. He sets the action at Pemberley from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and ingrains the various mysteries in the Canon of the Sherlock Holmes stories.The Evil in Pemberley House is a darkly erotic novel with broad appeal to readers of pulp and popular literature, particularly followers of Doc Savage, Sherlockians, and fans of Farmer's own celebrated Wold Newton Family.

    P. Lovecraft, published his first story, the monstrosities that crawled out of his brain have become legend: the massive, tentacled Cthulhu, who lurks beneath the sea waiting for his moment to rise; the demon Sultan Azathoth, who lies babbling at the center of the universe, mad beyond imagining; the Deep Ones, who come to shore to breed with mortal men; and the unspeakably-evil Hastur, whose very name brings death. These creatures have been the nightmarish fuel for generations of horror writers, and the inspiration for some of their greatest works.This impressive anthology celebrates Lovecraft's most famous beasts in all their grotesque glory, with each story a gripping new take on a classic mythos creature and affectionately accompanied by an illuminating illustration. Within these accursed pages something unnatural slouches from the sea into an all-night diner to meet the foolish young woman waiting for him, while the Hounds of Tindalos struggle to survive trapped in human bodies, haunting pool halls for men they can lure into the dark. Strange, haunting, and undeniably monstrous, this is Lovecraft as you have never seen him before.Contents"Only the End of the World Again" by Neil Gaiman"The Bleeding Shadow" by Joe R. Lansdale"Love is Forbidden, We Croak & Howl" by Caitlín R. Kiernan"Bulldozer" by Laird Barron"A Quarter to Three" by Kim Newman"Inelastic Collisions" by Elizabeth Bear"That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" by Nick Mamatas"Red Goat Black Goat" by Nadia Bulkin"Jar of Salts" and "Haruspicy" by Gemma Files"Black is the Pit From Pole to Pole" by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley"I've Come to Speak with You Again" by Karl Edward Wagner"The Sect of the Idiot" by Thomas Ligotti"The Dappled Things" by William Browning Spencer"The Same Deep Waters as You" by Brian Hodge"Remnants" by Fred Chappell"Waiting at the Cross Roads" by Steve Rasnic Tem"Children of the Fang" by John Langan

    In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways.Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture’s Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a “Greek DNA” in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the “aesthetics of victimhood” in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence—a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer.This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist’s personal essays, including his “critic’s manifesto” and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics.

    Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order - pretending an objectivity where there is nothing objective about the experience of confronting and engaging with and swooning over literature." - from HeroinesOn the last day of December, 2009 Kate Zambreno began a blog called Frances Farmer Is My Sister, arising from her obsession with the female modernists and her recent transplantation to Akron, Ohio, where her husband held a university job. Widely reposted, Zambreno's blog became an outlet for her highly informed and passionate rants about the fates of the modernist "wives and mistresses." In her blog entries, Zambreno reclaimed the traditionally pathologized biographies of Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, and Zelda Fitzgerald: writers and artists themselves who served as male writers' muses only to end their lives silenced, erased, and institutionalized. Over the course of two years, Frances Farmer Is My Sister helped create a community where today's "toxic girls" could devise a new feminist discourse, writing in the margins and developing an alternative canon.In Heroines, Zambreno extends the polemic begun on her blog into a dazzling, original work of literary scholarship. Combing theories that have dictated what literature should be and who is allowed to write it - from T. S. Eliot's New Criticism to the writings of such mid-century intellectuals as Elizabeth Hardwick and Mary McCarthy to the occasional "girl-on-girl crime" of the Second Wave of feminism - she traces the genesis of a cultural template that consistently exiles female experience to the realm of the "minor" and diagnoses women for transgressing social bounds. "ANXIETY: When she experiences it, it's pathological," writes Zambreno. "When he does, it's existential." By advancing the Girl-As-Philosopher, Zambreno reinvents feminism for her generation while providing a model for a newly subjectivized criticism.

    On the deadly island of Patji, where predators can sense the thoughts of their prey, a lone trapper discovers that the island is not the only thing out to kill him.Mary Robinette Kowal’s “A Fire in the Heavens” is a powerful tale of a refugee seeking to the near-mythical homeland her oppressed people left centuries ago. When Katin discovers the role the “eternal moon” occupies in the Center Kingdom, and the nature of the society under its constant light, she may find enemies and friends in unexpected places.Dan Wells’s “I.E.Demon” features an Afghanistan field test of a piece of technology that is supposed to handle improvised explosive devices. Or so the engineers have told the EOD team that will be testing it; exactly what it does and how it does it are need-to-know, and the grunts don’t need to know. Until suddenly the need arises.Howard Tayler’s “An Honest Death” stars the security team for the CEO of a biotech firm about to release the cure for old age. When an intruder appears and then vanishes from the CEO’s office, the bodyguards must discover why he is lying to them about his reason for pressing the panic button.For years the hosts of Writing Excuses have been offering tips on brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, and revision, and now they offer an exhaustive look at the entire process. Not only does Shadows Beneath have four beautifully illustrated fantastic works of fiction, but it also includes transcripts of brainstorming and workshopping sessions, early drafts of the stories, essays about the stories’ creation, and details of all the edits made between the first and final drafts.Come for the stories by award-winning authors; stay for the peek behind the creative curtain.