Occult Fiction

"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany - a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics.

On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front—the Allies’ top-secret magickal warfare program—and become a sorcerer himself. Unsure who will kill him first—his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick—Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines.

Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, 17 years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth. Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real.

Taking a night off from running her successful San Francisco clothing store, Lily attends a local art deco ball where vintage fashions steal the show. But when a young woman at the event falls under a mysterious sleeping sickness, Lily senses that a curse was placed on the woman's corsage. Before Lily can solve the woman's magical ailment, she's asked to assist in investigating a string of poisonings in the Bay Area witchcraft community.

The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

Once a legendary police inspector, Nicolas Lenoir is now a disillusioned and broken man who spends his days going through the motions and his evenings drinking away the nightmares of his past. Ten years ago, Lenoir barely escaped the grasp of the Darkwalker, a vengeful spirit who demands a terrible toll on those who have offended the dead. But the Darkwalker does not give up on his prey so easily, and Lenoir has always known his debt would come due one day. When Lenoir is assigned to a disturbing new case, he treats the job with his usual apathy- until his best informant, a street savvy orphan, is kidnapped.

It's been seven months since Chris Gordon met Tanya Demidova, and a lot has changed. He's stronger and faster and has the senses of a vampire and the appetite of a werewolf. But even as he settles into his new position with the Special Situations Squad and his relationship with Tanya, new threats appear. From south of the border, north of the city, inside the NYPD, and the federal government. But the hardest fight Chris will face is with himself.

Mortimer Moorecook, retired Wall Street raider, avid collector, is losing his fight against cancer. With weeks to live, a package arrives at the door of his hillside mansion—an artifact he paid millions for…a hominoid skull with elongated teeth, discovered in a farmer's field in the Romanian countryside. With Shanna, his beautiful research assistant looking on, he sinks the skull's razor sharp fangs into his neck, and immediately goes into convulsions.

When a redundant church is bought by a young pagan couple, the local fundamentalist minister reacts with fury. In an isolated community on the Welsh border, a modern witch hunt begins. Diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins is expected to keep the lid on the cauldron...but what she finds out will seriously test her beliefs.

Nettie Lonesome made a leap—not knowing what she'd become. But now her destiny as the Shadow is calling. A powerful alchemist is leaving a trail of dead across the prairie. And Nettie must face the ultimate challenge: Side with her friends and the badge on her chest or take off alone on a dangerous mission that is pulling her inexorably toward the fight of her life. When it comes to monsters and men, the world isn't black and white. What good are two wings and a gun when your enemy can command a conspiracy of ravens?

Weird Tales magazine is known for launching a number of sub-genres of fiction—cosmic horror, swords & sorcery, dark fantasy, and others. It has also greatly added to existing genres like science fiction, horror, and—a personal favorite of editor Jonathan Maberry—weird mystery stories. Or, as they became known—occult detective tales.

Crossover sensation Melissa de la Cruz created an instant New York Times best seller with the inventive Witches of East End. In this follow-up, everything is going smoothly in North Hampton now that Joanna and her daughters, Ingrid and Freya, are allowed to perform magic again. But chaos erupts with the arrival of Freya’s twin brother, Freddie, who’s finally escaped from Limbo. And Freddie’s convinced that Freya’s fiancé, Killian Gardiner, is the one who landed him there in the first place.

Students are spooked at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts, and Lily is called in to search for possible paranormal activity. In return she's been promised a trunkful of Victorian-era clothes recently discovered in a school storage closet. But Lily finds something else: the body of a wealthy patron of the school. In between running the store and seeing her new boyfriend, Max - a "mythbuster" who is uncomfortable with her witchcraft - she uses her sleuthing skills to try to solve the murder. Soon Lily senses something from the school's vintage clothes, but it's not the smell of mothballs - it's the unmistakable aura of evil intent.

When Lord Henry Baltimore awakens the wrath of a vampire on the hellish battlefields of World War I, the world is forever changed. For a virulent plague has been unleashed—a plague that even death cannot end.

Tabby has a peculiar gift: She can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous. As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances. Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery.

For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history’s darkest waters - and now it is heading in our direction.It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts - or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore.

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now, he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him - and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store, as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave.

A sudden burst of radiation is detected beneath the desert in Iran. Alex Hunter – code name Arcadian – and his highly trained incursion team are dropped into the ruins of Persepolis. All they find is an empty underground facility – nothing to explain the gamma spike. It is as if a black hole has swept everything away.... Israel is threatening nuclear war. And someone, or something, is draining the fluids from the bodies of Iranian soldiers in the desert.

With the death of Ruprekt Matkosen, his daughter, Ashielle, is now the Lord Governor of Ceocan. Her father’s murderers still lurk in the shadows, threatening not only her rule but every mortal soul under her protection. Even her own people cannot be trusted - any one of them may be part of the poisonous plot to destroy her bloodline. Deep beneath the palace, locked away from all human contact, Ashielle finds a weapon unlike any other: a monster, more adept at hunting in the darkness than any assassin.

A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?