Horror/Occult

//Horror/Occult
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  • A dwarf movie director with a passion for prehistoric monsters; a female giant who consults a psychiatrist about her pygmy husband's love of tattooing her; an old lady bargains with Death; a ventriloquist's doll begans to speak in its own voice...all this and more in this Bradbury collection of chillers.  The Machineries Of Joy; The One Who Waits; Tyrannosaurus Rex; The Vacation;  The Drummer Boy Of Shiloh; Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! Almost The End of the World;  Perhaps We Are Going Away ; And The Sailor, Home From The Sea; El Dia de Muerte; The Illustrated Woman; Some Live Like Lazarus; A Miracle of Rare Device; And So Died Riabouchinska; The Beggar On O'Connell Bridge; Death And The Maiden; A Flight Of Ravens; The Best Of All Possible Worlds; The Lifework Of Juan Diaz; To The Chicago Abyss; The Anthem Sprinters.  Cover art by Steve Crisp.
  • We thought we’d found our haven, a cottage deep in the heart of the forest. Charming, maybe a little run down, but so peaceful. That was the first part of the Magic. Midge’s painting and my music soared to new heights of creativity. That was another part of the Magic. Our love for each other - well, that became the supreme Magic. But the cottage had an alternative side. The Bad Magic. What happened to us there was horrendous beyond belief. The miracles,  healings, the crazy sect who wanted our home for themselves, the hideous creatures that crawled from the nether regions, and the bats – oh God, the bats! Even now those terrible things seem impossible to me. Yet they happened...  
  • Nicholas Urfe - young, English, conventionally brought up and educated - leaves London for a job as a schoolmaster on a lonely Greek island. He thinks this will be an escape from the confines of society and from Alison, his latest victim in a long line of callous and casual seductions. Despite an obscure warning, Nicholas is totally unprepared for the ordeal that awaits him. At one end of the island is a colonnaded villa, where he meets the urbane Maurice Conchis, a remote yet compelling figure; rich, cosmopolitan and a self-styled psychic. Between Maurice and Nicholas begins a cat-and-mouse game that Nicholas finds puzzling, then patronising -then a direct challenge. He is led through a series of elaborately staged tableaux  and although he senses an imposture, he is unwilling to withdraw from the promise of a momentous revelation. He is drawn on and on and into the Saturnalian labyrinth, where truth and illusion rest o the barest shift of perception...until Nicholas  perceives the maelstrom centre of Conchis's plot...
  • Halloween Street, Steve Rasnic Tem: Laura is a strange little girl who prefers to watch the street from her window. When she wants to go trick-or treating, her parents  are hopeful at this 'normal' behaviour...if only...Others, James Herbert: A P.I. searching for a missing baby follows the clues to a mysterious nursing home, where he discovers the dark secret of the Others... Growing Things, T. E. D. Klein: Herb is fascinated by the letters pages in a pile of of old home handyman magazines - especially 'Mr Fixit's' solution for a correspondent who has a strange lump growing under his bathroom floor. Unhasped, David J. Schow: Now married, Ethan looks for a hiding place for his safe key - he doesn't want his wife finding his box of bachelor-days memorabilia. He finds the ideal place -  and there's already a key hanging there, a key to another box of memories...The Emperor’s Old Bones, Gemma Files: An abandoned boy and a streetwise young woman form an unlikely alliance in wartime Shanghai - which will be tested over a challenge to prepare the carp dish The Emperor's Old Bones. The Entertainment, Ramsey Campbell: A teacher  searching for accommodation on a rainy night thinks he's found a suitable place to stay - even if the old lady there thinks he is the 'entertainment'... Harlequin Valentine, Neil Gaiman: It's Valentine's Day, and naughty, impish Harlequin pins his heart to the door of the girl he loves...but has he offered his heart too readily? The Stunted House, Terry Lamsley: A holidaying couple find the porch of an abandoned seafront house the ideal place to stop for lunch - at first...Just Like Eddy, Kim Newman: Edgar Allan Poe hates his middle name - he associates it with his successful father. Then as his work begins to be known, the regular misspelling of it gives him the belief that Edgar Allen Poe is a doppelganger out to destroy him...The Long Hall On The Top Floor, Caitlin R. Kiernan: Silvey is disturbed in his park bench reading and gin-nipping by a lad who wants to know if it's true that Silvey is psychic - because if he is, he's got something for Silvey to see...Lulu, Thomas Tessier: A man discovers his grandfather was friendly with writer Joseph Roth - a friendship which grew to include the mysterious Sonja.  The Ballyhooly Boy, Graham Masterton: Jerry inherits a run-down, grubby house from a lady he certainly never knew - a house which, though empty, rings with screams...Welcome, Michael Marshall Smith:  Paul finds a file on his PC - which was created in 1957. To add to the mystery, he finds an odd newspaper on his train trip home from work. Burden, Michael Marano: A gay man impulsively engages in unprotected sex - and finds that he can see the ghosts of friends who succumbed to the AIDS virus. Naming the Dead, Paul J. McAuley: Psychic detective Carlyle can see all the imps and beasties of doubt and anxieties that cling to us - but when he is hired to track down a killer recently released from prison, it seems something doesn't want the man to be found. Aftershock, F. Paul Wilson: A doctor is fascinated by the extraordinary claims of a patient who has been hit by lightning - and who wants to be hit again. A Fish Story, Gene Wolfe: Three friends on a fishing trip exchange ghost stories around the fire - and one has a very impressive story. Jimmy, David Case: A small sleepy town is terrorised by a violent attacker with long nails, a mask-like face with sulphuric eyes - and a rapacious passion for teenage girls. White, Tim Lebbon: A raging virus has destroyed most of the world's population and a fierce winter smothers most of the land under deep snow. If that weren't bad enough, a small group of survivors bunking in an abandoned mansion have to deal with a more immediate threat emerges from out of the wilds, an otherworldly threat that is as bloodthirsty and vicious as it is cunning and cruel. Pork Pie Hat, Peter Straub: A student secures a private interview with  ailing jazz musician, Hat, hoping to sell the interview to a magazine with the hope of bringing Hat to the attention of a wider audience.  But Hat passes away. The interview is published...leaving out a very interesting part of Hat's childhood. Tricks And Treats One Night on Halloween Street,  Steve Rasnic Tem: A collection of Hallowe'en scenes including Ronald, a young lad who answers the door to a trick or treater who seems to be wearing a mask of Ronald's face...Cover art by Julek Heller.
  • A collection from the masters of the macabre that's good enough to sink your teeth into...In this volume: Human Remains, Clive Barker; Necros, Brian Lumley; The Man Who Loved The Vampire Lady, Brian Stableford; For The Blood Is The Life, F. Marion Crawford; The Brood, Ramsey Campbell; Hungarian Rhapsody, Robert Bloch; Ligeia, Edgar Allan Poe; Vampire, Richard Christian Matheson; Stragella, Hugh B. Cave; A Week In The Unlife, David J. Schow; The House At Evening, Frances Garfield; The Labyrinth, R. Chetwynd-Haynes; Beyond Any Measure, Karl Edward Wagner; Doctor Porthos, Basil Copper; Dracula's Guest, Bram Stoker; It Only Comes Out At Night, Dennis Etchison; Dracula's Chair, Peter Tremayne; The Better Half, Melanie Tem; An Episode Of Cathedral History, M.R. James; Chastel, Manly Wade Wellman; Der Untergang Des Abendlandesmenschen, Howard Waldrop; The Room In The Tower, E.F. Benson; Laird of Dunain, Graham Masterton; Midnight Mass, F. Paul Wilson; Blood Gothic, Nancy Holder; Yellow Fog, Les Daniels; Vintage Domestic, Steve Rasnic Tem; Red Reign, Kim Newman; Vampire Sestina, Neil Gaiman. Cover art by Luis Rey.
  • The ordered world of Tayo, famous pop star, is suddenly and alarmingly thrown into chaos as he finds himself inescapably bound up in the world of the occult; a world in which Tayo and his family are forced to live a nightmare. He is warned from Beyond by his unborn child who has fought her way past the Powers of Darkness to beware of his own son.  But Tayo does not believe he has any children - and then he learns that his wife Ginnie is expecting a baby...Is this the child, the son who has evil in his heart, or the daughter that watches over him? The Darkness rules Tayo's life, engineers his every move and each step brings him close and closer to his fate...Wilding's first novel. Cover art by Marinella Bonini.
  • One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone. Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane’s life, but he finds himself warned off at every turn. Before long he realises he is being followed. A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear? His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined. From the author of  The Woman in Black and Mrs. De Winter (sequel to Rebecca)
  • Omnibus edition; Tithe: Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death.Valiant: When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming...Ironside: In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie. Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen? This volume includes the short story The Lament of Lutie-Loo.
  • Every hero has a story. Every story has a hero. We are all the hero of our own tale -as are the legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein’s monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From the point of view of an outsider, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won’t see themselves in the same light. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing…In this volume: The Awkward Age, David Liss; a young  ghoul seduces her playmate's father...Saint John, Jonathan Maberry: A serial killer becomes an angel of mercy for orphaned children during the Apocalypse. Rue, Lauren Groff: an old witch tricks a young woman into surrogate motherhood. Succumb, John McIlveen: A seductress - and a sinful preacher? Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass: A return to Frankenstein's ostracised creation. Rattler And The Mothman, Sharyn McCrumb: A hermit encounters an ancient, intelligent flying creature. Big Man, David Moody: How deeply we can misunderstand the monstrous...Rakshasi, Kelley Armstrong: A demon who has done penance for her crimes for 200 hundred years as a human is not given her freedom..so she takes matters into her own hands. Breeding The Demons, Nate Kenyon: The darkness in the heart of an artist causes him to be caught between two worlds. Siren Song, Dana Stabenow: The Akulurak sisters are accused of luring and murdering a pimp - but who is the real mosnter? Less Of A Girl: There are definitely scary things under the bed...The Cruel Thief Of Rosy Infants, Tom Piccirilli:  A fae is charged with his family's ancient duty of stealing human babies and substituting them with one of his own race. The Screaming Room, Sarah Pinborough: A rejected gorgon enjoys the sound of her victim being turned to stone...Wicked Be, Heather Graham: A witch just wants to be - normal. Specimen 313: Giant, mutated gene-spliced carnivorous plants begin to feel human emotions. The Lake,  Tananarive Due: A woman moves to Florida for a new start - a new home - a new everything...and gets it. The Other One, Michael Marshall Smith: A woman in her late 30s is bored with her life - but is there another one of her living the life she wants? And Still You Wonder Why Our First Impulse Is To Kill You, Gary A. Braunbeck: a highly original and humorous examination of the monstrous - and why monsters don't like Ken dolls...Jesus And Satan Go Jogging In The Desert, Simon R. Green: The tale of Satan's offer of temptations to Jesus - told from Satan's point of view. Cover art by Per Haagensen.