Publisher: Charles River Editors
Ann Radcliffe was an English author, considered to be a pioneer of the gothic novel. The Mysteries of Udolpho is Ann Radcliffe's most famous work, and also one of the classic Gothic romances.
Rob Chandler, regaining consciousness, realizes he’s somehow been involved in a horrendous car accident. In pain and unable to move, he has no memory of his identity, or how the hell he’d gotten on that deserted desert road in the middle of nowhere. He has little time to contemplate his situation when he sees an 18-wheeler barreling down on him. The truck swerves, crashes, and plows into Chandler’s already decimated car. Then, as if his luck couldn’t get any worse, he watches a 30,000 volt high-power line drop from a telephone pole into his mangled car, hanging suspended mere inches from his head. Still alive, something at a molecular level changes Chandler. Past enemies converge in a small desert town in Arizona, with one singular objective in mind … to kill Rob Chandler. What they didn’t expect was coming up against Rob’s new, strange, mad powers. From small town America to high-society of Baden-Baden, Germany, join Rob Chandler in this high-tension, paranormal thriller that doesn’t let up until the very last page.Show book
Arthur Llewelyn Jones was born in Caerleon, Monmouthshire on the 3rd March 1863. Machen came from a long line of clergymen, and when he was two, his father became vicar of a small parish about five miles north of Caerleon, and Machen was brought up at the rectory there. In his early years he received an excellent classical education, but family poverty ruled out university, and he was sent to London to sit exams to attend medical school but failed the exams. He did show literary promise with the publication of the poem ‘Eleusinia’ in 1821. But life in London was difficult and it was only in 1884 that he published again and was taken on to translate several French works which thereafter became the standard editions for many years. In 1887, his father died. That same year he married Amelia Hogg, a maverick music teacher with a passion for the theatre. He also began to receive legacies from Scottish relatives which allowed him to devote more time to writing. After publishing in literary magazines in 1894 he published his first book ‘The Great God Pan’. Its sexual and horrific content very much helped sales. Over the next decade or so he wrote some of his best work but was unable to find a publisher mainly due to the collapse of the decadent market over Oscar Wilde’s scandalous trial. In 1899, his wife died and during his long recovery he took up acting and travelled around the country as part of a travelling company. Three years later he was publishing again and had remarried. Re-publishing of earlier works helped anchor both his reputation and his income. By the time the Great War opened Europe’s wounds he returned to the public eye with ‘The Bowmen’ helped by the publicity around the ‘Angel of Mons’ episode. However, by the late 20’s new works had dried up and his back catalogue was no longer a source of regular income. In 1932 he received a Civil List pension of ₤100 per annum but other work was not forthcoming. His finances finally stabilised with a literary appeal in 1943 for his eightieth birthday and allowed him to live his remaining years in relative comfort. Arthur Machen died on 15th December 1947 in Beaconsfield. He was 84. A man is prescribed a medicine that turns him from a hard studying student of the law to something so compellingly awful that only Machen himself could have willed it into reality.<Show book
Some secrets are worth dying to protect.Twenty years ago, a woman with a secret vanished only to turn up murdered a year later on the same shoreline where she'd disappeared. And now it's happening again.Psychic Ryley St. James has found a killer's dumping ground. Six dead bodies took their secrets to a watery grave. And now Ryley's name has been added to the killer's hit list.She refuses to be number seven.Her entire life is shrouded in mysteries and unspoken secrets. Ryley is the perfect victim for this predator, and time is of the essence to get her affairs in order.And that includes side lining the sexy new stranger that has just walked into her life that she's unsure is friend or foe. She'll have to unmask and outsmart a killer in hopes of sending him to his grave before he kills her first.With her life hanging in the balance, she's playing a game she's unsure she can win.Show book
Enjoy this short story by Mace Styxx. Perhaps some heavy sheet of twisted metal, the engine or outer frame of his vehicle. He scoured his memory, trying to recall what he had been doing immediately before he had awoken, the account came back blank. Like the times he had drunken himself into a blackout, he had clearly lost time, where the memory should be there was nothing, just a blank void, a gap in the recording. Maybe, he considered, he had decided, against his better judgment, to drive home after a heavy drinking bout. That would account for the lost time and he admitted begrudgingly, for the accident he supposed himself to have caused. Okay, he thought, the past could wait. The first thing was to work out what was going on right now and to do something about it. The thing was not to kick and flail but to assess the situation, to work out what he could and could not move and get some idea of what his situation actually was. “Okay” he spoke to himself aloud. “Calm down and try to move your feet.” Firing instructions at himself in this fashion did seem to settle him slightly and he was able to steady himself enough to actually carry it out. To his surprise and relief, his feet moved easily from side to side. There was no question that he was able to move them but also that they were unable to help because everything from the lower shin up was fastened in place. That meant he wasn’t paralyzed, but rather, pinned. “Okay, now try to raise your head,” he again announced out loud and again was able, in response to his own command, to complete the action, though almost instantly he wished he hadn’t. For within seconds of his head elevating itself from the ground, he was able to take in everything, his situation, his surroundings and the true horror of his predicament. He was not pinned, but tied.Show book
“A lost classic . . . the history of a horror-film star and a treatise on human frailty . . . is back to be savored and marveled at anew” (James Ellroy, New York Times–bestselling author of the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy). Simon Moro, a sixty-eight-year-old star, is making his last picture, a low-budget remake of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Moro, infuriated by the bland horror movies of his day, sees his own career—even as it ends—as an ongoing effort to wallop the public with an overwhelming moral shock. And he succeeds when an elaborate publicity stunt turns into a gruesome and grand personal statement. As Moro’s life reels toward its macabre end, it also reels backward through lies and evasions to show its surprising beginning. Underneath his Frankensteinian exaggeration, Moro has a vivid and humane story to tell, even as the coffins break open and dark, erotic secrets are revealed. Brock Brower has taken the horror film in all its gory glory to create a book that recycles pop material into literature, creating a Dickensian tale of America. “A wonderful book . . . Like a circus with several brilliant performances going on at the same time . . . A real breaking through. I don’t think anybody ever again will be able to dabble politely in mixing ‘real life’ and fiction.” —Joan Didion, New York Times–bestselling author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem “The way the book skewers society’s obsession with celebrity culture is even more valid today than when it was written, proving that great art stands the test of time.” —Forbes “A cult novel that amounts to a loving satiric tribute to cinema schlockmeister Roger Corman.” —New York PostShow book
Jonathan Harker, a young and naive lawyer, sets off on a journey to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula, who is planning to travel to England. Upon arrival, it becomes apparent that the eccentric aristocrat is not who he seems, and his plans have a bloody, criminal dimension. Harker's life hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, in England, his fiancée Mina anxiously awaits his return. Published in 1897, Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" shook readers and immediately became a sensation. Today, it is considered a classic of the horror genre and rightfully belongs among the top one hundred greatest novels of all time. Written in the form of letters, newspaper clippings, and diary entries, the book captivates with its authenticity and complexity of emotions. Despite the passing years, Count Dracula still terrifies...Show book
