Historical Horror Fiction

It is December 1888. Jack the Ripper has not killed for over a month and London is beginning to relax as Christmas approaches. When Katherine Kramer cuts herself on a strange book at a dinner party, she quickly falls ill. Her husband Richard is a professor of medicine, but even his efforts are futile as the mysterious illness blazes through her. As Katherine dies, she gives birth to something nightmarish. Something which should not exist. Something which spurs Richard to embark on a terrifying journey of discovery as he chases the answer to one question: who or what killed his wife?

In 1917, East Side Grade School in Eureka, Kansas, burned to the ground. In 1918, a carpenter died in a fall during construction of Mulberry School. It was said he haunted the school ever since. Teachers, students, and staff encountered apparitions after the school's dedication. One teacher knew the victim and welcomed any sign of his existence. Others, however, did not. She coped with the loss of her friend and managed to go on with unusual help from the universe.

The year is 1922. The carnival is Pontilliar's Spectactular Star Light Miraculum, set up on the Texas-Louisiana border. One blazing summer night, a mysterious stranger steps out onto the midway, lights a cigarette, and forever changes the world around him. Tattooed snake charmer Ruby has traveled with her father's carnival for most of her life and, jaded though she is, can't help but be drawn to the tall man in the immaculate black suit who has joined the carnival as a geek, a man who bites the heads off live chickens.

When Becky steps into Jonathon Nelson’s photography studio, she is simply a journalist looking for a story. But when she puts on the beautiful Victorian dress and poses, she encounters flashbacks from a life that isn’t her own. As she and Jon begin to unravel the mystery, the attraction they have for each other continues to grow and leads them to question: Have they met not just in this life but in another?

The seventh of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, So Moses Was Born, is set in Egypt, in the time just before the birth of Moses. The story is a familiar one: Found in the bulrushes, Moses's upbringing in the court of Egypt gave him the influence and power to set the Israelites free. Joan Grant enlarges the picture by depicting the events that led up to the discovery of the baby Moses, convincingly portraying the man she believed was his father, Ramoses II, through the words of his reclusive half-brother Nebunefer.

November 1963. Cade and Anja have lived in hiding for a decade, training new mages. Then the assassination of President John F. Kennedy triggers a series of murders whose victims are all magicians - with Cade, Anja, and their allies as its prime targets. Their only hope of survival: learning how to fight back against the sinister cabal known as the Shadow Commission.

Famed British lawyer Gerard Woodward is summoned to an ancient Welsh castle to assist a dying lord in his final affairs. But as his host slips closer to death, Gerard begins to feel less like a guest and more like a prisoner. When he finds himself locked inside his room, he realizes he must escape. After finding his way out of his room, Gerard begins to wonder if he was safer locked inside. The labyrinthine halls echo secrets. Something sinister is happening within the walls of Mathers Castle, and when he descends into the dungeons, he discovers a horrible secret….

Im Dreißigjährigen Krieg ziehen Mordbanden plündernd und brandschatzend durch das Land. Die Bauern, die unter diesen Verhältnissen schwer zu leiden haben, gründen im Geheimen den Bund der Wehrwölfe, um ihre Höfe und ihre Familien zu beschützen und sich an ihren Peinigern zu rächen. Der Autor Hermann Löns (1866-1914) zeichnet ein eindringliches Bild eines der dunkelsten Kapitel der deutschen Geschichte. Mit seiner Erzählung von der Selbsthilfe der Bauern macht er aber auch Mut und zeigt, dass man sich erfolgreich gegen Willkür und Unterdrückung wehren kann.

London, 1850. A city of contrasts. Of scientific marvels, poverty, disease and death. When Detective Sergeant Harry Pilgrim (one of London's first police detectives) discovers the corpse of a woman in a Hackney cab, the case seems straightforward - until the only suspect is found murdered in his cell. Pilgrim is hindered in his investigation by his own dark past - a dead son and a missing wife - and also by the well-meaning interference of Charles Dickens, who is serialising Pilgrim's adventures.

Just after the Civil War, a preacher named Gideon Swayne journeyed south from Random, Illinois to minister to the newly freed slaves. In the bitter prejudice of North Carolina, and the magic of the Great Dismal Swamp, he made a home...that home was taken from him in hatred, and in violence.

La leggenda del golem, ben nota a tutti coloro che sono passati per Praga, ispira questo suggestivo romanzo di Meyrink, romanziere ed esoterista. Questo libro, suo primo romanzo, fu pubblicato nel 1915, ed ebbe un successo straordinario. La magia e la suggestione della città e del ghetto si mischiano alle tematiche occultiste che vennero poi riprese dall’autore nei suoi romanzi successivi, e che furono oggetto dei suoi studi per gran parte della sua vita.

The Evil ... It was an obscene evil that could not be quenched with blood or sated with the flesh of its defiled victims. The Terror ... It wormed its way into the human brain, devouring the mind, controlling the body and turning its prey into savage creatures lusting for destruction. The Metamorphosis ... Its only outward sign was the grotesque metamorphosis of its victim's hand into a gnarled four-fingered claw -- a claw whose razor-sharp nails dealt death with the precision of a stiletto.

What happens when every parent's worst nightmare comes true - and when the past is unwilling to be the past? Some memories are too powerful to live only in the past. During a ferocious storm, a red-haired stranger appears in the garden of a small farming cottage. Eliza and her parents take him in. But very soon, it's clear he has no intention of leaving. A century later, Mary and Graham have experienced every parent's worst nightmare.

When well-to-do Hester learns of her sister Mercy's death at a Nottinghamshire workhouse, she travels to Southwell to find out how her sister ended up at such a place. Haunted by her sister's ghost, Hester sets out to uncover the truth, when the official story reported by the workhouse master proves to be untrue. Mercy was pregnant—both she and the baby are said to be dead of cholera, but the workhouse hasn't had an outbreak for years. Hester discovers a strange trend in the workhouse of children going missing.

In the dying days of 1850, the young detective Charles Maddox takes on a new case. His client? The only surviving son of the long-dead poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein. Charles soon finds himself being drawn into the bitter battle being waged over the poet's literary legacy. When a chance discovery raises doubts about the death of Shelley's first wife, Harriet, he starts to question whether she did kill herself—or whether what really happened was far more sinister…

After her mother's death in 1857, Leyla's only links with her heritage and family are a letter and her last name—Pemberton. Resolved to seek out her past, she travels from London to the brooding countryside mansion of Pemberton Hurst. Leyla longs to find a loving family, but more important, she needs to uncover the truth of her past. But the Pembertons seem strangely reluctant to discuss family history, and the house feels smothered by the weight of untold secrets.

Times are hard. Anne Chatham is a clever, modest young woman with little money, no prospects for marriage, and a never-shared secret—she can see spirits. Anne finds employment as a typist at Northfield House, the grand country manor of the Wellington family. Her employer, the wheelchair-bound Mr. Wellington, is kindly. His haughty wife is not. He has two handsome sons, the wry and dashing Thomas and the dark and somber Owen. Anne feels sure her prayers have been heard. Until the terrifying night she stumbles upon a tortured spirit roaming the dark halls of Northfield.

Calcutta, 1919. Sam Wyndham, giovane veterano britannico della Grande Guerra, arrivato a Calcutta per unirsi alla polizia e iniziare una nuova vita, trova il corpo di un alto funzionario britannico con la gola tagliata e in bocca un biglietto che intima agli inglesi di lasciare l’India. I suoi superiori credono che si tratti di un omicidio politico commesso dagli attivisti che si battono per l’indipendenza dell’India.

London, 1888. After Satanist Edward Sinistrari is condemned to hang for ritual murder of four girls, he escapes from the gallows at Newgate Prison, leaving a bloody trail in his wake.

In 1929, archeologists began draining Lake Nemi in search of the mysterious ships that have been glimpsed beneath its waters since the reign of Claudius. What they awakened had been drowned for 2,000 years. For a very good reason. Veteran aviator Lewis Segura has been drifting since the Great War ended, fetched up at last at the small company run by fellow veterans and pilots Alma Gilchrist and Mitchell Sorley, assisted by their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard, an archeologist who lost his career when he lost part of his leg.