Occult Horror

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

My name is Medley Bell, and if you had told me this time last week that I was demon, then I’d have said you were nuttier than a squirrel turd. Of course, that was before I started seeing the strangest things. I’ve always been a little off, but it took stumbling into a backwater bar to understand how different I really am. So when two drool-worthy guys stop by to tell me that I’m Hell spawn just like them, I’m more relieved than shocked. I mean, it sure does explain a lot.

The dark and twisted community of Woodsend harbors a terrible secret - one tracing back to the age of the Elizabethan witch hunts, when many innocent women were persecuted and hanged. But there is a far deeper vein of horror running through this village; an evil that, once invoked, has no intention of relinquishing its grip on the modern world. Rather, it watches and waits with a focused intelligence, leaving ward sister Becky and police officer Toby constantly checking over their shoulders and jumping at shadows.

Detlef Sierck, the self-proclaimed greatest playwright in the world, has declared that his next production will be a recreation of the end of the Great Enchanter Drachenfels - to be staged at the very site of his death, the Fortress of Drachenfels itself. But the castle's dark walls still hide a terrible secret which may make the opening night an evening to remember!

Following the hypnosis of a violently disturbed psychiatric patient, Ruby Dean, an unholy dark force was unleashed on the medical staff who tried to help her. Now only one of the original team remains - Ward Sister, Becky. Despite her fiancé, D.I. Ross, being unconscious and many of her colleagues either dead or critically ill, Becky is determined to rescue Ruby's 12-year-old daughter from a similar fate to that of her mother.

When Lucas Smoke learns the Ojibway art of carving from his grandfather, he proves to be a natural. He can literally make people come to life in wood. Then Lucas’s growing reputation attracts a mysterious stranger, who offers him a large advance to carve a spirit mask. This mask is to represent the master, but Lucas must find its face in his dreams. As his dreams become more and more disturbing, he feels himself changing. And the mask takes control of his life. Then an encounter with an old woman introduces him to the identity of the master: an ancient sorcerer named Him Standing.

Meet the ultra-rational Dr Newton Barlow. Cool, cynical, scientific, he’s the last man you’d want to be a bridge between the living and the dead. But with his academic reputation in tatters, and nothing to lose but his few remaining marbles, the great skeptic is about to discover that the past that haunts him will be nothing compared to his ghost-ridden future.

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....

When Diane Cockerton disappeared in the summer of '05, she escaped the grips of a terror which had haunted her from childhood. She also left behind everything and everyone she's ever loved. Now, six years later, she finds herself drawn into a game with no rules and no guarantees—and no one left to trust.

Hours after throwing a third birthday party for their twins Kathy and Kelly in their Connecticut home, Margaret and Steve Frawley return home from a dinner in New York to discover the police in the house, their daughters missing, and an eight million dollar ransom note. The Frawleys meet the kidnapper's demands, but the abandoned car they're led to contains only Kelly, the body of the driver, and a suicide note, saying he had inadvertently killed Kathy and dumped her body in the ocean.

One phone call, five words, and I’m back in the town I swore I’d never return to. Going home was never part of the plan, but when my dad calls because he needs help to solve a murder, I can’t say no. Running into the three men I thought I would spend my entire life with has me questioning why I ever picked up the phone.

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

After finding himself caught up in one of Louisiana’s oldest and bloodiest family rivalries, Detective Dave Robicheaux must battle the most terrifying adversary he has ever encountered: a time-traveling superhuman assassin.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are. With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes.

Poppy Wilkinson is thrilled to be chosen as a contestant on The Great British Baking Contest. As an American with English roots, winning the crown as Britain’s Best Baker would open doors she’s dreamed of. In more ways than one. Appearing on the reality show is her chance to get into Broomewode Hall and uncover the secrets of her past. But strange things are happening on the show’s set: Accusations of sabotage, a black cat that shadows Poppy, suspiciously unsociable residents at Broomewode Hall - and the judges can be real witches.

Connie Goodwin is an expert on America’s fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she’s earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America - especially women’s home recipes and medicines - and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows.

The game of death has only just begun.... Professor Able Worthe’s experiment in terror continues. But as Marcus Holt battles against these supernatural killers, a new terror rises up from the village’s haunted grounds - terror that even the Professor can’t control.

Ghost stories became hugely popular during the 19th century, and the Victorians became the masters of the genre. This deliciously chilling collection of Classic Hallowe'en Stories includes authors such as Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Edgar Allen Poe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, M. R. James and Vernon Lee.

Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story.

The police are convinced that Julia Ransom was guilty of the brutal murder of her husband, renowned psychic August Ransom. But after six months of investigation and media frenzy, she is free of their scrutiny, because of the lack of evidence. One afternoon she walks from her Pacific Heights home to Fisherman's Wharf, alone, unwatched - and, she realizes, happy. But not for long.