Literary Horror

After the death of her hated grandmother, Valerie is, for the first time in her life, really free. The house belongs to her. She should be happy. But Valerie isn’t quite normal. She’s taking in roommates to make ends meet, but, one by one, they keep ending up dead. Her young niece is crying out for a special kind of discipline that only she can provide. And there are the voices she hears...voices that want her to do terrible things.

Toby Liberman is nearing the end of his rope. After a fateful confrontation with his wife's lover, he is chased into the woods only to be attacked and rendered unconscious. Waking at the scene of a gruesome triple homicide, Toby is arrested as the sole suspect and thrown in jail with a strange man who has too much information about Toby's predicament. He reveals to Toby that he possesses the curse of the werewolf.

Laura and Monique were cousins and, in childhood, had been as close as twins. So when Monique's husband, the Comte de Montigny, came to Laura and asked her to impersonate Monique in order to protect Monique's child, she agreed. His story of Monique's disappearance and suicide, however, did not sound like the actions of the cousin Laura had known, and the rest of Monique's family reacted with odd hostility to "Monique's" reappearance...She feared that Monique had been murdered - and that she would be next.

Secolo di orrori occidentali e di scienze in rapida espansione, il Novecento è ruotato attorno a un centro misterioso, da cui ha preso vita tutto: l'ideologia verde che sarebbe mutata geneticamente in certo nazismo, l'importazione delle religioni orientali, la Rivoluzione d'ottobre in Russia, il magnetismo e la psicologia del profondo, la premessa al movimento hippie.

Dopo avere affrontato i temibili chupacabra e avere scoperto che si tratta di animali mutanti creati nell'ambito dì un progetto segreto dal governo degli Stati Uniti, Jerry ritrova un po' di serenità nella famiglia ricostituita (dopo la sua ultima, terrificante avventura, i genitori si sono riappacificati), ma la tranquillità dura poco. E stavolta il ragazzino si ritrova a combattere contro un enorme bigfoot che minaccia l'ultima bestia, l'ultimo chupacabra rimasto in vita.

Alla lettura del testamento di sua zia Zelda, morta improvvisamente, Sibilla Oracoli in Predieri scopre di avere ereditato la sua vecchia casa, a Limoges, in Francia. Per questo, la famiglia Predieri al completo decide di cambiare meta per le vacanze e va a vedere la grande villa. Ma fin dall'arrivo tutto si dimostra misterioso e minaccioso. Strane presenze aleggiano in casa e fuori... Sembra esserci una maledizione. Quale segreto nasconde Sibilla? Ma, soprattutto, la maledizione ha colpito la casa o la famiglia? O forse entrambe?

Nelle vene di Marco Predieri scorre sangue di strega buona: questo è il segreto che sua madre gli ha tenuto nascosto. Essendo il figlio di Sibilla, Marco deve frequentare la scuola di Miss Orwell, dove imparerà a capire quali siano i suoi poteri. Già il ragazzo si è reso conto di poter viaggiare nel passato. Ma quali altre misteriose doti possiede? Nella nuova scuola conoscerà ragazzi e ragazze come lui, ma minacciose presenze diaboliche faranno di tutto per indurli a scegliere la via del Male, e della magia nera, anziché quella del Bene e della magia bianca.

Sembrava una chiesa come tante altre, quella di Ponte Romeo, solo molto antica e qua e là diroccata. L'unica cosa strana era che appariva regolarmente nei sogni di Marco. Sogni spaventosi, che lo facevano svegliare in un bagno di sudore, attanagliato dalla paura. Ma un giorno succede qualcosa che sembra un incubo, e invece è realtà. Durante una visita alla chiesa in compagnia di Rico, il becchino del paese, Marco scopre un dipinto che raffigura una donna che brucia su un rogo dalle fiamme altissime. E sotto, una misteriosa iscrizione in latino.

Nine years ago, young Tamara Wade was kidnapped by her psychotic cousin Valerie. She endured horrific abuse that mentally shattered her. Now, at 16 years old, Tamara has created another world inside her mind. A world where dolls have conversations and where the dead possess her body to speak to the living. A psychiatrist would diagnose Tamara with multiple personalities. A priest might believe she needs an exorcism.

The night has teeth.... A boy on his way home from a little league game, viciously attacked, some of his flesh devoured.... A band of street people found dead in a subway tunnel, their skin riddle with sharp, bloody gashes.... A young woman attacked and killed inside an apartment elevator.... Something is loose on the streets of Manhattan, nesting in the subways, living in the building walls. Creatures with a vicious and insatiable taste for human flesh. And as darkness falls again, who can stop the carnage?

When an ancient fissure is jolted in the hills above Los Angeles, a band of long extinct predators, perfectly preserved in suspended animation, awaken. And then the deaths begin, attributed at first to the modern hazards of a rich and teeming metropolis so close to the natural mountain habitat of cougars and wolves.

Fourteen years ago, deep in the steamy backwoods of Georgia, a 12-year-old girl is bound and ritually tortured. The details of the crime are bizarre, and the few citizens of Lucerne who know the shocking truth of the crime keep it secret. Now, a young orphan boy arrives in the sleepy town and in the dark woods something inhuman stirs in the "snake well". An ancient hunger has awakened. Soft voices call out from the dark forest, drifting over the bayou, echoing in the crawl spaces. The townsfolks' darkest nightmares stalk the moonlit streets.

In a small New York State college, beautiful 18-year-old Laura Clark is blossoming, reaching out for love and trying to escape her controlling mother. But for Laura, there is no escape. Not from her mother, not from the unnameable horror that haunts her dreams, and not from the coven's spell of darkness.

In Sharon Vallery, at teen slumber parties and around campfires, the story is told. Seventy years ago, on Halloween night, Nathaniel and Myrantha Ober made a pact sealed by bloody human sacrifice...a pact with the devil himself. Nancy Snell is the most popular girl in high school. She is beautiful and wealthy, and she has discovered the key to unlimited power: The occult force that was summoned to this sleepy town decades ago. She has already chosen the perfect victim needed to perform the ritual: the new girl in town, Lana Bremmers.

Benjamin Latham is young and handsome, his 18th-century mind wakened to a bizarre 20th-century world. And there is the need deep within...an animal need, frightening, murderous, unholy...a vital need that must be fed. And with his need comes a power over men and women to do his bidding, to quiet his dark craving...Until the murders begin...Now Benjamin must find a sanctuary: a lover, a partner, a friend. Someone who can share his darkness. Someone he can lead to...the awakening.

After the sudden death of her husband, Ann Southold and her two teenagers travel to the island of Maui to shed their old life. There Ann meets a man who sparks a desire she had never experienced: dark, mysterious Kam Smith, a diving instructor who knows the sea. And who awakens a hunger inside Ann that terrifies her.

This work contains the same stories as Don't Go to Sleep: Tales to Keep You Up, but with four more stories of absolute horror. Don't go to sleep. These 12 tales of terror will surely haunt your dreams. No one awakens from their dark embrace. If your nightmares are not filled with a child murderer and a reanimated, murderous corpse, you will never find rest from the deadly secrets of the past, dismemberment, cannibalism, life after death, body-snatching spirits, or being buried alive. Sleep, if you dare. Run, if you can. You will never be safe again.

1976. Loo and her sister Bee live in a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, with their artistic parents and wild siblings. Their mother, Cathy, had hoped to escape to a simpler life; instead the family find themselves isolated and shunned by their neighbours. At the height of the stifling summer, unexplained noises and occurrences in the house begin to disturb the family, until they intrude on every waking moment....

Sally, a cynical 15-year-old schoolgirl, is much too clever for her own good. When partnered with her best friend, Pamela—a mouthy girl who no one else much likes—Sally finds herself unable to resist the temptation of rebellion. The pair play truant, explore forbidden areas of the old school and—their favourite—torment posh Sylvia Rose, with her pristine uniform and her beautiful voice that wins every singing prize. One day, Sally ventures up to the greenhouse on the roof alone. Or at least she thinks she's alone, until she sees Sylvia on the roof, too.

In this tantalizing tale of Victorian ghost stories and family secrets, timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal Alice and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. As he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery - or will they bring about his untimely death, as they seem to foretell?