Ghost Fiction

Assembled and edited by Julian Hawthorne and first published in 1907, the Old Time English volume of The Lock and Key Library features ten classic mysteries and ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Robert Maturin, Laurence Sterne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. This volume of The Lock and Key Library is sure to haunt and charm fans of ghost and detective mysteries alike.

Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It's been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia-bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel. He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local 11-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective.

When a bizarre string of locked-room murders terrorize New York, the police have no leads, no suspects, and only one place to turn. Now private detective Alex Lockerby will need every magical trick in his book to catch a killer who can walk through walls and leaves no trace. Unfortunately Alex's magic hasn't been working very well. He can't even manage to track down several truckloads of stolen goods, including one belonging to New York's preeminent sorcerer, Andrew Barton.

For freewheeling ghost hunter Chess Putnam, finding herself near-fatally poisoned by a con psychic and then stopping a murderous ghost is just another day on the job. An agent for the Church of Real Truth, she investigates claims of harassment by the undead. But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a new “celebrity” assignment while trying on her own time to help some desperate prostitutes.

Dawn has always thought there was a secret passage hidden in her house. But that doesn't explain why creepy things happen when Dawn's at home, or the spooky noises coming from behind her bedroom wall. Dawn is sure there's a ghost in her house! And so are the other Baby-Sitters Club members. But they're so busy with their jobs that they don't have time for a ghost hunt. Will Dawn and her friends solve the mystery...or will Dawn have to share her house with a ghost?

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

Life is complicated for Lydia Smith. She's working at that tacky, third-rate museum, Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, trying to salvage her career in para-archaeology - and dating the most dangerous man in town. Just when she thinks she might be getting things under control, she stumbles over a dead body and discovers that her lover has a secret past that could get him killed. her lover has a secret past that could get him killed. Just to top it off, there's trouble brewing underground in Dead City.

Life is tough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work in Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. She has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn't going well. Stuff keeps happening.

Vick "The Reaper" Harwood is an esteemed sniper with a record kill count - 33 kills in 90 days - when he is knocked out under mortar attack in Afghanistan. He wakes up back in the United States with little memory of what happened, his spotter and gun both unrecovered from the battlefield. Harwood has resigned himself to slowly picking up the pieces of his life. But when a series of assassinations start occurring in the area, Harwood can't explain why he just happens to be nearby for each killing - or how a sniper rifle that matches the description of the one he lost seems to be involved.

Welcome to Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types. The five scouts of Roanoke cabin - Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley - love their summers at camp. They get to hang out with their best friends, earn Lumberjane scout badges, annoy their no-nonsense counselor Jen...and go on supernatural adventures. That last one? A pretty normal occurrence at Miss Qiunzella’s, where the woods contain endless mysteries.

An alien spacecraft four times the size of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier enters the solar system. Tensions run hot within the UN, but the alien vessel doesn't approach Earth. Instead, it sits off at L4, over a hundred million miles from Earth, baffling scientists around the world. Chris "Crash" Williams leads an international crew to investigate the appearance of this ghost ship, but he quickly learns that the spacecraft isn't as dead as it seems.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles continue with the return of Marius - true child of the millennia, once mentor to the vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious foe of the evil doer - who reveals the secrets of his 2,000-year existence.

The mediums of Beach Drive don't take rumors of a witches' coven seriously - not until it threatens one of their own. Meanwhile, Officer Brian Henderson can no longer ignore the secrets of Marlow House. Can he handle the truth?

Sometimes a graveside goodbye isn't the end. That's usually when I get a middle of the night phone call. In this case, the person seeking help from their friendly neighborhood reaper is none other than the director of Beechwood's funeral home. Who may be more of a frenemy than a friend. Oops. Here's to hoping I can help rid the funeral home of its latest unwanted guest without burning the last bits of kindling on the bridge back to Karla's good graces. After all, if there's one person you want on your side, it's a summoner of the dead.

School is out and summer has begun. For 11 year old Timmy Quinn and his best friend Pete Marshall, the dreary town of Delaware, Ohio becomes a place of magic, hidden treasure and discovery. But on the day they encounter a strange young boy sitting on the bank of Myers Pond, a pond playground, rumor saying it may hide turtles the size of Buicks changes everything.

The Sabbat War is a savage Imperial crusade, cutting a bloody, burning path across a vast swathe of the Imperium's lost territory. On the front line, the stalwart regiments of the Astra Militarum, including the valiant Tanith First-and-Only—better known as Gaunt’s Ghosts—confront the relentless menace of Chaos, the Archenemy of Mankind. There is, and ever will be, only war.

Bob Pope, the director of an American secret intelligence antiterrorist program, loses contact with his most trusted operative, navy master chief Gil Shannon, fearing him dead when a mission to take out a Swiss banker who is channeling funds to Muslim extremists goes awry. But when an American politician and her convoy are assassinated in Mexico City by the Ghost Sniper - an American ex-military gunman for hire employed by Mexico's most ruthless drug cartel - Pope must turn to retired Navy SEAL Daniel Crosswhite and the newest Sniper Elite hero.

Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin. Called instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker.

Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’ bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.