Classic Literature Dark

When Quentin Collins invited Lara Balfour to Collinwood, they knew each other only from the correspondence that had grown out of Quentin’s admiration for the haunting waltz her father had composed. Soon Quentin professes to love Lara - but is his love really a threat? His first wife’s throat was torn out by a wolflike creature who escaped capture. Since then, other young women have died in the same grisly fashion…in the full of the moon, when Quentin’s mysterious “attacks” occur. Lara faces the terrifying possibility that her brooding, sensitive host is a werewolf.

These three novella-length tales explore psychological themes latent in the classic Grimm versions. Rather than presenting two-dimensional "good" heroines pitted against "evil" step-mothers, Grim portrays fully realized characters grappling with shame and self-doubt, suffering at the hands of mothers best thought of as narcissistic in modern terminology. Due to their dark themes and some graphic sexual material, these tales are not for the faint of heart and are unsuitable for children.

The mission is simple. The Trinity - a mysterious device found in the tomb of a forgotten Atlantean king - has been stolen. It's up to Captain Eric Collier and his elite team of Navy SEALs to recover the artifact or destroy it. But the first rule of battle is that nothing ever goes as planned. Restored to life by the Trinity itself, Collier is given a new mission: unite the world's faithful to hear the revealed will of the Wise Father, the timeless entity who brought humanity out of the Stone Age with the power of the Trinity.

Five friends. West L.A. The power goes out, and everything with it. Civilization as they know it has ended. And they are in the worst place they could be - surrounded by looter gangs and millions who will soon be desperate and dying. Young, fit, but ill prepared, their choices are few and stark. Jeremy's Run: L.A. Dark is the first installment of a serial story that chronicles an epic struggle of the human spirit to survive, to prevail over the odds, to retain one's humanity, and to keep alive the hope for a new and better future.

A traditional psychological ghost story, ‘A Phantom Lover’ tells the story of an artist who is commissioned to paint eccentric couple Mr and Mrs Oke of Okehurst. But the Okes have a dark family history, and the fateful events of two centuries previous come back to haunt them.

Five fantastical tales from the mind of H. P. Lovecraft that center around a theme of illicit substances: some used to transcend the veil of reality, some used to keep one's sanity in check. All of the stories are quite psychedelic and unreal, quite mystical, and quite frightening.

All Danika Frost wanted was to lead a normal life and go to college. It’s too bad destiny had other plans. After her mother is brutally attacked, Dani inherits the family business: protecting the world from things that go bump in the night. With the help of the Ink, ancient spirits who live in her skin as tattoos, Dani must hunt down demons and the necromancers who raise them. Alone in the dark city streets of Blackthorn, Dani meets a young girl named Cassie. Her sister is missing, and Dani recognizes the tell-tale signs of demonic possession.

High Plains Moon has something for everyone: The old West, American Indian mythology, werewolves, vampires, land wars, and even a little romance. Funny, fast-moving, and building to a climactic finish, High Plains Moon is a worthy and satisfying second novel in the acclaimed Night Marshal series.

As the son of a wealthy man, Enitan Javed has spent his life frivolously - drinking, fighting, and making love. But after his father dies, Enitan is unjustly accused of murdering him and is given the harshest sentence possible. Judged irredeemable, he is banished to the Downs. As even young children know, nothing lives in the Downs except demons who delight in torturing the condemned. Brutalized by the men who transport him to his fate, Enitan has nothing left but his thirst for vengeance.

The 2012 Apocalypse happened ... just not in the way anyone expected. How have we not noticed? Simple: civilized man has lost touch with himself. How then can he expect to be in touch with the world he smothers in a crypt of concrete and steel? Only Wolf Howl, a Native American whose spiritual center is still intact, notices the change. But that same spirituality and the power derived from it has made the last Lakota shaman a hunted man.

Barry Pain was noted for his humorous tales of “Eliza” and her husband, but his tales of the weird and supernatural are equally noteworthy. This volume, More Tales in the Dark, contains eight of them.

Written in diary entries from a Polish scholar, this short story features a mysterious femme fatale, Medea, who is responsible for the deaths of five men, including her husbands. The scholar is soon cast under her spell from behind the grave.

Inspired by a sketch of a poor woman driven to madness by artist Cecchino, wealthy Madame Krasinska attends a ball in fancy dress mocking the old woman. But after the ball, she is overcome by severe depression. Could the old woman be haunting her as punishment?

Written in 1881, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’ is Vernon Lee’s first ghost story. Set in Florence, the story regales the story of young painter Julian Winthrop who becomes transfixed by a piece of music. He traces this haunting back to one of his previous paintings.

‘A Wicked Voice’ reuses the theme of music from beyond the grave from Vernon Lee’s first ghost story, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’. Here, young composer Magnus is writing an opera, determined to go against the conventions of his predecessors, but he soon finds himself haunted by a voice beyond the grave which overpowers him and stops him writing.

The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person’s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.

Ever since they were orphaned, Tyler has kept close tabs on his sister, Shannon. He has to, considering her weird and risky obsessions. Now she has a new one: an inexplicable crush on an odd-looking stranger. And what Shannon wants from her unwitting “honey boy,” Tyler can’t begin to fathom. Not until he follows his sister into the darkest corners of her desires.

Today the world is nose-deep in trouble of every kind, moral, ethical, social, political, and legal. How did we get here? That is the right question to ask! What I Have Learned About the Demise of Mankind is a stunning and not-so-fictional revelation of the key answers to the question of how did we get here? In this paradigm-shifting debut novel, Truman Alexander reveals the evil works of the Dark One on earth by exposing the Underworld's training manual for new devils, tempters, and dark angels.

When 10-year-old Merry Maddock makes a holiday wish on a shooting star, she has no idea how her life will change. Suddenly, she's become the parent to a strange baby owl, and the caretaker of what appears to be an enchanted tree. But will her wish for a family Christmas be granted? Or will her mother's desire for a year without a holiday win out?

Robert Blake—a young man with an interest in the occult—becomes fascinated by a large disused church set on a hill which he can see from his lodgings. His researches reveal that the church has a sinister history and is dreaded by the local inhabitants as being haunted by a primeval evil.