Historical Horror Fiction

The patriarch of the Licht family, Abraham has raised a brood of talented con artists, children molded in his image, and experts in The Game, his calling and philosophy of life. Traveling from one small town to the next across the continent, from the Northeast to the frontier West, they skillfully swindle unsuspecting victims, playing on their greed, lust, pride, and small-mindedness. Despite their success, Abraham cannot banish a past that haunts him: the ghost of his ancestor Sarah Licht, a former con woman who met with a gruesome fate.

I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light.... Now I see that the decision I made at Polneath was the only decision of my life. Everything marred in that one dark minute.

London, 2017. A long-dead ghost - nameless, all but formless, trapped beyond both the living and the afterlife - drifts through time in search of himself. What happened to him? To the love of his life? His memories slip away like the tide, tantalizingly close but always receding. His lost world of steam, family, and horrific tragedy comes to him in flickers and gasps. But decades - the steam age, the war years, the age of counterculture - soon melt and disappear, consumed by a strange, hungry world of electricity and isolation.

Amid crusades and inquisitions, a medieval Spanish priest makes a devil's bargain to save his niece's life and unleashes a horror into the world. This short story is just one of 10 tales of extreme horror contained within the forthcoming Shadows And Teeth, Volume Three, a unique collection featuring a range of international talent.

Notre-Dame de París cuenta la historia de la gitana Esmeralda, quien en compañía de su cabra Djali toca la pandereta y baila en las calles de París para subsistir, hasta que se la acusa de haber asesinado al capitán Phoebus, su amado, y se la condena a la horca. Sin embargo, el jorobado Quasimodo, campanero de Notre-Dame, quien tras su deformidad esconde un corazón sensible y sediento de amor, luchará para salvar a la gitana. Recreación del mito de la bella y la bestia y uno de los monumentos de la literatura francesa, Notre-Dame de París es una historia verdaderamente inmortal.

On a cold January morning in 1856, Evelyn Atherton's husband is found murdered after attending an exclusive seance. Having "married up" into New York society, Evie herself is the immediate suspect. Ostracized and vulnerable, she knows that to clear her name she must retrace her husband's last steps. And so, joining forces with her husband's best friend—and the only Manhattan lawyer who will accept her case—Evie dives into the mysterious underworld of the occult. Before long, the trail brings them to a charismatic medium, Michel Jourdain.

London, 1873. Madeleine Brewster's marriage to Dr. Lucius Everley was meant to be the solution to her family's sullied reputation. After all, Lucius is a well-respected collector of natural curiosities. His 'Small Museum' of bones and specimens in jars is his pride and joy, although firmly kept under lock and key. His sister Grace's philanthropic work with fallen women is also highly laudable. However, Maddie soon finds herself unwelcome in what is meant to be her new home.

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

Forced to flee his home and his mother’s murderous rage when he removes his mask, his greatest desire is to be loved for himself. At the tender age of seven, he must fight for survival in a hostile world where the threat of starvation is the least of the abuses he suffers. Yet, time and again, in his naivety, he extends trust to someone he believes can fill his need for affection and acceptance. Betrayed in every instance, his anger grows.

As America enters the Gilded Age, an insidious darkness lurks behind the veneer of golden prosperity. Guided by the cryptic directive of an ancient intelligence, Samuel Sheldon and the Trust insert themselves in the highest levels of the United States government, corrupting even the Executive Office. From their newly established base of power, they engineer a secret war across the expanding western territories, bent on claiming vast undiscovered gold deposits.

Every year on the day of the Ghost Festival, creatures from the underworld roam city streets freely when the gate of hell is opened. The owner of the House of Life set out a lavish banquet to entertain and appease these hungry ghosts. This year, however, foul creatures led by a long-dead Manchurian nobleman came down from the Devil's Peak on horseback and stormed the banquet hall. They harassed the guests and wrecked havoc to the festivity, demanding the House of Life to hand over something it has been safe-keeping for centuries.

December 1874. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are looking forward to a traditional Christmas with plenty of food, alcohol, and the odd duel. But then Death meets Elizabeth, a young girl with unusual gifts, who needs their protection. When other children start going missing throughout London and the Prime Minister himself asks for their help, they have to put down the brandy and mince pies to solve the mystery while—as usual—saving the world from an unspeakable horror.

After the death of her husband, Simon, in an accident which rendered her unconscious for a time, Katherine Greene inherits Moorwood Manor. She also becomes a prisoner there. Katherine is accused of murdering her husband during the accident. His cousin, Richard Greene, demands that in exchange for his silence about the murder, Katherine marry him and turn over the estate. If she refuses, he will turn her over to the police. Katherine is completely under Richard's power.

Jane Shackle is a young maid haunted by visions who is tapped to protect Queen Victoria by Fayte Guardians, a shadowy group of castle servants that claim a powerful ally from the fae realm. But is she really hunting a killer, as she’s been told? Or is she merely a pawn in their plot? Jane must use her wits and master her abilities—with help from a peculiar dragonfly—to uncover the truth, save the crown, and ultimately confront an otherworldly enemy driven to destroy them all.

Available for the first time in 125 years, the Lost Novels of Nellie Bly! Pioneering undercover journalist Nellie Bly is rightly famous for exposing society's ills. From brutal insane asylums to corrupt politicians, she exposed all manner of frauds and charlatans. She was also a skilled interviewer and reporter. What no one has known was that she was also a novelist. This is because, of the twelve novels Bly wrote between 1889 and 1895, eleven have been lost. Until now.

Although the Council has been unmasked, and the Faceless Man identified, the danger that they pose is far from over. A great wedding is being planned between the innocent Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia and Ernst Augustus, heir to the Kingdom of Hanover. Its guests will include royalty from all over Europe, and it is is the perfect opportunity for peace. But this gathering is also threatened with the possibility of chaos and death. It will be up to Sir Thomas Blackthorn, Adelaide DeMarcy, her students, and their friends, to stave off disaster and foil the Council's evil designs.

Cut-Throat Gulliver was a real pirate plundering ships and settlements in and along Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy in the late 1600 and early 1700s.

Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to.

You can’t kill someone who’s already dead. That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark? Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, by chance on a plantation in post–Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north.

Through heavens intervention everyone is brought forward to face evil of the past. George and Chris have no choice but to discuss conspiracies that occurred in the twentieth century. One of the saddest times in our world’s history was the twentieth century. George compares patriotism with political deviancy from what he knows had happened and why. George will talk about specific times of history that he was involved with.