For cinema projectionist Sid Elbridge, it seems that things can't get much worse. First, circumstantial evidence has made him the prime suspect in the police investigation of a robbery at the cinema where he works. Secondly, his fiancée Vera has been horribly killed in the same theatre, victim of a falling light fixture. Then he discovers strange, intricate patterns traced in the dust on the wooden frame of a still-case. There's something very wrong about this «accident,» he now...
When Brian Cartwright receives a written death threat, he takes it seriously–in his not unblemished past he has made some bitter enemies. So he calls in the famous criminologist Dr. Morelle to protect him. The threatening note has predicted the exact time he's to die–nine p.m. later that same day. As the hour approaches, Cartwright locks himself alone in his study, all doors and windows sealed, with Dr. Morelle and his previously invited house guests in an adjoining room–also locked. Yet...
When a new strip mall and housing development are built near a small New England town, tearing through untouched forest, a 300-year-old grave is uncovered, thereby setting loose an ancient evil from its eternal prison. Science fiction writer Erik Hunter soon finds himself the target of a near-immortal horror that feeds on human suffering. In order to save his family and his town, he must make the harrowing trip into the underworld of another reality, one filled with pain and terror–and there...
If Mr. Sherlock Holmes had been in the country when the Baker Street Irregulars stumbled across the mystery of the Captive Clairvoyant, then no doubt he would have given immediate assistance. But Mr. Holmes was in Switzerland engaged in a deadly duel of wits with his most feared opponent, the evil Professor Moriarty; and so the Baker Street Irregulars, the gang of ragamuffins who sometimes assisted Mr. Holmes in his investigations, had to rely on their own wits. It all began—and ended—in Trump’s...
Shot while trying to prevent the kidnapping, murder, and brutal despoilment of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Southern California book editor Catherine Desmond has a “tunnel-of-light” experience. “There is something only you can do,” the spirits tell her, and she is returned intact to her former life—or is she? When she recovers, Catherine finds herself gifted—or cursed—with astral projection, and to her dismay finds herself linked psychically with her daughter's murderer. But he too...
In the dark days of the 1930s Depression, veteran detective Jack Dunning loses both his wife and his position with the Boston Police Department because he can't keep the cork in the bottle. He hops a bus to California and signs on with the Santa Paulina Police Department as a consultant. On a dark, stormy night he finds salvation and a fresh beginning in the arms of a beautiful, young, dime-a-dance girl, Angel Doll. When she vanishes after shooting a local gangster, Axel Teague, Jack is...
Something goes drastically wrong at a séance, and suddenly Alan's wife Janice experiences a major personality change. These are signs that her husband just can't ignore: the strange new mark on her hand, the naked wanderings in moonlight, the blood stains on her clothes, not to mention the strange company she now keeps. Alan turns to an ex-Roman Catholic priest, Ruane, a man drained of self-respect, a drunkard, a reject–but the only one who seems to understand what's going on–and...
After eighteen long and friendless years in an orphanage, Julia has finally traced her father, the handsome Dr. Lucius Cagliostro, to a small New England village. But her happiness soon turns into nightmarish terror. The town of Belham is home to unspeakable evil, and the dark and sinister forces that have tormented her all her life are also present too. She quickly finds herself the prey of a demon-worshipping society that wants to make her a slave–or a sacrifice–to the great Lucifer himself. A...
"[This] novel has immense power in its climax," said The Encyclopedia of Fantasy about Darrell Schweitzer's 1982 novel, THE SHATTERED GODDESS. Now, at last, here's the companion volume to that work, a cycle of eleven stories set «in the time of the death of the Goddess.» This is an Earth of the far future, when the planet has declined into chaos, and darkness looms at the end of human history. Here you'll meet…a dadar, a wizard's shadow attempting to become a man; two...
In the longest of the four Cthulhu Mythos stories in this collection, «The Legacy of Erich Zann,» the violin and the music that the ill-fated musician left behind become the target, some fifteen years later, for a mysterious searcher who will stop at nothing–including murder–to obtain them. Edgar Allan Poe's great detective, Auguste Dupin, who's endangered because of his connection to Zann, must not only figure out who–but why. <P>In the original novella, «The Seeds from the...
Ripped from the pages of the September, 1935 issue of Secret Agent "X" magazines comes this sensational novel, Legion of the Living Dead! From nowhere hurtled that black death car. And from nowhere came its grisly occupants. They were not of the earth, for their human flesh was immune to bullets. They were not of the grave, for they manned the wheel and a blasting machine gun . . . Secret Agent “X” made a desperate maneuver to block their invasion of the land of the living. And in that weird...