Other books that might interest you

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  The Weiser Book of the Fantastic...

  Edgar Allan Poe, Charles...

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  Classic stories of occult fiction by Dion Fortune, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Marie Corelli, R. W. Chambers, and more.   These are the authors and tales that inspired modern masters like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Nic Pizzolatto—edited and introduced by leading occult author and scholar Judika Illes. These powerfully evocative stories—some of which have been forgotten over the years, like buried treasure—will thrill and chill readers to the bone.   During the dark, eerie hours, when the wind is blowing and the ghosts are roaming outside, these tales can fill a night with pleasant terror—as well as encouraging our minds to venture beyond the mundane into the realm of the fantastic.

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  Lucky Girls - Stories

  Nell Freudenberger

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  First highlighted in The New Yorker fiction issue, here is award-winning writer Nell Freudenberger’s debut story collection 
   
  Lucky Girls is a collection of five novella-like stories, which take place mostly in Asia. The characters—expatriates, often by accident—are attracted to the places they find themselves in a romantic way, or repelled by a landscape where every object seems strange. For them, falling in love can be inseparable from the place where it happens.  Living according to unfamiliar rules, these characters are also vulnerable in unique ways. In the title story, a young woman who has been involved in a five-year affair with a married Indian man feels bound to both her memories and her adopted country after his death. The protagonist of “Outside the Eastern Gate” returns to her childhood home in Delhi, to find a house still inhabited by the impulsive, desperate spirit of her mother, who left her family for a wild journey over the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. In “Letter from the Last Bastion,” a teenage girl begins a correspondence with a novelist who’s built his reputation writing about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and who, in his letters, confides in her a secret about his past.  Highly anticipated in the literary community and beyond, Lucky Girls marks the debut of a very special talent that places her among today’s most gifted young writers.

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  Smuggler's Blues

  Robert Tinsley

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  "Another floater surfaced in the Rio Grande last night. It was the headline story on the all-news radio station I listen to on the way to work. Authorities on either side pull twenty to thirty bodies out of the Rio each year, some accidental drownings, some deliberate. What made this one unusual was the fact that he had identification -- and money." 
  Human smuggling constitutes one of the less savory aspects of Brady Investigation's case load. Jack Brady, former SEAL and current PI in El Paso, Texas, would rather not get involved, but he's always been a sucker for a sob-story.

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  Tales of the Macabre

  Saki Saki

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  A quartet of short stories by the British master of the macabre, Hector Hugh Munro, better known under his pseudonym “Saki”. This collection brings together four of his most macabre tales, all of which will surprise the listener with an uncanny twist at the end. 
  
  
  "The Background": When Henri Deplis comes into a small inheritance and celebrates his new found wealth by getting an elaborate tattoo, he little realizes what a series of catastrophic events will ensue. The tattoo is recognized as a masterpiece of modern art and given to the city of Bergamo. This is the start of a series of restrictions on Henri Deplis’ lifestyle that gradually but inevitably lead to his downfall. 
  
  
  "The Chaplet": When master chef Monsieur Aristide Saucourt presents his signature dish to diners at the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he anticipates they will acknowledge this as the pinnacle of his career. But the moment does not go as planned and ends in a fatal tragedy involving hot soup. 
  
  
  "The Jesting of Arlington Stringer": When Arlington Stringer makes a joke in the House of Commons, his wife is most disapproving. As his penchant for jesting continues, the noose of fate quickly and inevitably tightens around her throat. 
  
  
  "Sredni Vashtar": Conradin is a sickly and introverted child who hates his guardian, Mrs. De Ropp. When she takes away his pet hen and threatens to do the same with his pole-cat, whom he worships like a God, Conradin makes a special prayer, and his sinister wish is answered.

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  Problems with People - Stories

  David Guterson

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  The best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars returns to his Pacific Northwest settings-and moves beyond them-in ten sharply observed, funny, and wise new stories that explore the mysteries of love, and unravel our complex desires to connect with others. Ranging from teenage to middle-age, the voices that inhabit Problems with People offer humorous or searing but always tightly focused accounts of the universal quest to understand one another-individually, and as part of our political and historical moment. Their stories are sometimes shot through with tragedy-the long-ago loss of a young boyfriend, a son's death at sea-while in others, the mere circumstances of our cultures and selves-whether it is being Jewish; overweight and single; a tourist in a history-haunted land; or on the brink of a diminished old age-prompt questions about our sense of reality and belonging. Spanning diverse geographies-across America and in distant countries including Nepal, South Africa, and Germany-these stories showcase Guterson's signature gifts for characterization, psychological nuance, emotional suspense, and evocation of the natural world. They celebrate the small, unexpectedly brightening surprises that lurk within the dramas of our daily lives.

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  The Hand

  Guy de Maupassant

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  A withered, shriveled, severed human hand is kept chained in a corner. The "owner" of this morbid trophy always keeps three loaded revolvers in the same room. Nothing seems too suspicious until the hand is mysteriously reclaimed.

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