Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula's Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity's oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising, often legendary cast, from Charles Dickens and Margaret Oliphant to Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W.F. Harvey. Amelia Edwards' chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce (“The Moonlit Road”), Elizabeth Gaskell, (“The Old Nurse's Story”) and W. W. Jacobs (“The Monkey's Paw”) will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Michael Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

    With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child seeks vengeance within a bed's hollow box spring. A lucid dreamer is haunted by an impossible house. A dummy reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps. A stuttering librarian holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets. A commuter's worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign. An aspiring ventriloquist spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And a presence speaks through them all. Contents: Introduction by Matt Cardin The Mindfulness of Horror Practice Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown The Indoor Swamp Origami Dreams 20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism Infusorium Organ Void The Secret of VentriloquismEscape to Thin Mountain

    She's the headliner at the bare-all bar, the Tiffany Club. Besides her bodacious business, Sierra's life is fairly simple. And that's the way she likes it. But when a good friend, Denise, seeks her help, Sierra's life takes a murderous turn. Seems Denise's furry friend Arlo has just been "dognapped." From the pricey ransom note, Sierra figures there's much more to this case than meets the eye. And her hunch proves correct when a quick trip to Denise's apartment reveals a fresh corpse. Sierra can't shake the feeling that her friend isn't telling her the whole story--especially after Denise turns up missing and the body count continues to rise. Determined to reveal the naked truth, Sierra tackles this steamy caper head on, digging in her stiletto heels until the dangerous job is done.

    In film, television, novels, and short stories, he keeps coming back to life, fed by the vital imaginative energies of a world-wide audience that cannot seem to resist his abominable charms. Aristocratic and urbane, deeply erotic and profoundly evil, Dracula's bloodsucking savagery has cast a mesmerizing fascination not only over his victims but over his readers as well. And, as Leonard Wolf suggests, "Vampire fiction...exerts an amazing pull on readers for a reason that we may find disturbing. The blood exchange—the taking of blood by the vampire from his or her victim is, all by itself, felt to be a singularly symbolic event. Symbolic and attractive!" Now, in Blood Thirst; One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf brings together thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt;male and female, human and non-human, humorous and heroic;all of them kin to the dreadful bat. From Lafcadio Hearn, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Edith Wharton, August Derleth, and Ray Bradbury to such contemporary masters as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Woody Allen, and in settings as diverse as rural New England and outer space, this collection offers readers a dazzling compendium of vampire stories. Wolf organizes the collection into six categories;The Classic Adventure Tale, The Psychic Vampire, The Science Fiction Vampire, The Non-Human Vampire, The Comic Vampire, and The Heroic Vampire;which allows readers to see the many guises Dracula's descendants have assumed and the many ways they can be interpreted. In his penetrating introduction, Wolf argues that such an arrangement enables us to see the evolution of the vampire from an unmitigated evil to a creature we are more likely to identify with. "In a century in which God and Satan have become increasingly irrelevant in the popular arts, there has been an accompanying secularization of the vampire idea. And, as the stories in Blood Thirst will show, sympathy for the vampire has grown as we have become increasingly interested in the workings of the mind." Indeed, the vampire's ability to change over time, to draw into itself such a richness of symbolic meanings, to conjure itself into so many diabolical shapes, may account for the enduring appeal of the literature written about it. Here, then, is a definitive collection for aficionados and novices alike, and whether readers find the vampires who inhabit these pages sympathetic or horrific, psychologically intriguing or spiritually repellent, morbidly seductive or comically absurd,Blood Thirst gives us all something to sink our teeth into.

    Winner of the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.

    It tells the stories of terror and sorrow, lust at the end of the world and death as an unwanted second chance. It dives into the darkest corners of the minds of men, women, and children. It wanders into the forest and touches every corner of the capital. Everyone has something to fear — but after all, it’s those little paranoias that drive our day-to-day.

    Hungry sea monsters and alien slime molds. Blood drinkers and game show hosts. Set in Portland, Oregon, these thirty stories blend imagination, literary writing, and pop culture into a cohesive weirdness that honors the city’s personality, its bookstores and bridges and solo volcano, as well as the tradition of sci-fi pulp magazines. Including such authors as Rene Denfeld, Justin Hocking, Leni Zumas, and Kevin Sampsell, editor Gigi Little has curated a collection that is quirky, chilling, often profound—and always perfectly weird.

    It's even more savage inside the twisted minds of murderers who conceal their malevolence behind smiling masks and strike out without pity. This spine-tingling collection contains 23 new stories of suspense from some of the bestselling authors in the genre. Authors include Clive Barker, Lawrence Block, David Morrell, Ray Bradbury, and many more.CONTENTSThe dripping / David Morrell --The wringer / F. Paul Wilson --A season of change / Richard T. Chizmar --Good vibrations / Richard Laymon --The Tulsa experience / Lawrence Block --Trolls / Christopher Fahy --Small deaths / Charles de Lint --White lightning / Al Sarrantonio --Hitman / Rick Hautala --Vympyre / William F. Nolan --And eight rabid pigs / David Gerrold.Bringing it along / A.R. Morlan --Redemption / Jack Ketchum --The graveyard ghoul / Edward D. Hoch --The rings of Cocytus / Katherine Ramsland --Late last night / John Maclay --Beasts in buildings, turning 'round / J.N. Williamson --Dark side of the moon / Babara Collins --Honor bound / J.M. Morgan --The instrumentalist / William Relling Jr. --Corpse carnival / Ray Bradbury --The book of blood / Clive Barker.

    Lovecraft was virtually unknown. The power of his stories was too great to contain, however. As the decades slipped by, his dark visions laid down roots in the collective imagination of mankind, and they grew strong. Now Cthulhu is a name known to many and, deep under the seas, Lovecraft's greatest creation becomes restless...This volume brings together seventeen masterful tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft's work. In his fiction, humanity is a tiny, accidental drop of light and life in the endless darkness of an uncaring universe -– a darkness populated by vast, utterly alien horrors. Our continued survival relies upon our utter obscurity, something that every fresh scientific wonder threatens to shatter.The dazzling stories in Cthulhu Lives! show the disastrous folly of our arrogance. We think ourselves the first masters of Earth, and the greatest, and we are very badly mistaken on both counts. Inside these covers, you'll find a lovingly-curated collection of terrors and nightmares, of catastrophic encounters to wither the body and blight the soul. We humans are inquisitive beings, and there are far worse rewards for curiosity than mere death.The truth is indeed out there -– and it hungers.

    Pandora and sail into a cruise of metaphysical terror, madness, and death.

    Two travellers caught in a storm one night take shelter in a deserted plantation house and discover a room filled with the dead. An old man suspected of murder gets a grisly comeuppance...These are just some of the countless victims for whom all hope is lost in Ambrose Bierce's chilling stories of death, delusion and the supernatural."A combination of careful detail with grotesque and extraordinary incidents" Independent

    Spells and conjuration; legerdemain and prestidigitation – these are the mistresses and masters of the esoteric arts. Magic comes alive in their hands. British Fantasy Award nominee, Jonathan Oliver, gathers together sixteen stories of magic, featuring some of today’s finest practitioners, including Audrey Niffenegger, Christopher Fowler, Gemma Files, Thana Niveau, Robert Shearman, Will Hill, Sarah Lotz, Storm Constantine, Dan Abnett, Sophia McDougall, Alison Littlewood, Lou Morgan, Gail Z. Martin and others.

    But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. . . .A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

    George MacDonald Fraser is the author of the "Flashman" novels.

    This set is no longer available.