This remarkable and wonderful work of imagination that combines historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy makes the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lasting ramifications palpable.
1954 in Chicago. Atticus Turner, a 22-year-old Army veteran, sets off on a road journey to New England to search for his missing father Montrose with the help of his uncle George, the editor of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, and his childhood friend Letitia. They come across both commonplace white American horrors and malicious ghosts that appear straight out of the strange tales George devours on their way to the mansion of Mr. Braithwhite, the heir to the land that belonged to Atticus’ great-grandmother.
A hidden group known as the Order of the Ancient Dawn, headed by Samuel Braithwaite and his son Caleb, has assembled to plan a ritual that is shockingly centered on Atticus. Atticus finds his father at the manor, imprisoned and in chains. And his one chance for rescue could be the beginning of the end for him and the entire Turner family.
Lovecraft Country is a terrible kaleidoscopic depiction of racism—the terrifying ghost that still stalks us today—touching multiple members of one black family in a chimerical fusion of magic, power, hope, and liberation that spans time.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn’t make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though. But you don’t get mad.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
“That’s the horror, the most awful thing: to have a child the world wants to destroy and know that you’re helpless to help him. Nothing worse than that. Nothing worse.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
“A wanderer in darkness, she followed an eccentric orbit, each new disturbance angling her closer to some long-awaited rendezvous. She could only hope that when the moment came, she’d be wise enough to know it, and brave enough to act.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
“White people in his experience were far more transparent. The most hateful rarely bothered to conceal their hostility, and when for some reason they did try to hide their feelings, they generally exhibited all the guile of five-year-olds, who cannot imagine that the world sees them other than as they wish to be seen.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
“What you going to do?” she cried. “You break my neck, and the what? You think I won’t come back and haunt you? Go ahead! Make me a ghost! See what that gets you.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
Something Wicked This Way Comes, one of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most widely read books, now has a new preface and information about its extensive cultural and genre impact.
Step inside for those who still have dreams and memories and for those who haven’t yet felt the captivating power of its dark poetry. The program is about to start. Every life touched by Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show will be destroyed when it arrives in Green Town, Illinois. A little after midnight, the carnival arrives, bringing a week early Halloween. All are drawn in by the enticing prospect of fantasies and youth reclaimed by the harsh siren voice of the calliope.
Two buddies who will soon be all too aware of the high price of wishes will learn the truth behind its smoke, mazes, and mirrors from two boys. that conjures up nightmares. The literary masterwork Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury has lasted in the mind and heart like few other books have. It is a timeless masterpiece in the American canon, one that is spooky and thrilling.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, and it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, darkness. Nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawns just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slowly. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had the strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot’s face. It’s a long way back to the sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time…”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Amelia Bedelia follows every instruction given to her by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, even dressing the chicken and dusting the furniture. However, nothing ever quite works out as planned.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Oh, Amelia Bedelia, your first day of work, and I can’t be here. But I made an alist for you. You do just what the list says,”
“She was very angry. She opened her mouth. Mrs. Rogers meant to tell Amelia Bedelia she was fired. But before she could get the words out, Mr. Rogers put something in her mouth. ”
“Such a grand house. These must be rich folks. But I must get to work. Here I stand just looking. And me with a whole list of things to do. I think I’ll make a surprise for them. I’ll make lemon meringue pie. I do make good pies.”
“Now i must dress the chicken. I wonder if she wants the chicken or the chicken?”
“Mrs. Rogers learned to say unjust the furniture, sunlight the lights, and close the drapes, and things like that. ”
A young woman has whisked away to a house on top of a mountain of blood-red clay when her heart is captivated by a beguiling stranger. This is a place full of mysteries that will torment her forever.
The truth about Crimson Peak lies between desire and evil, between mystery and madness. from the renowned filmmaker Guillermo del Toro.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“…perhaps we only notice things when the time comes for us to pay attention to them. When they need us to see them…”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“None so deaf as those that will not hear; none so blind as those that will not see.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“Well, I like him. There’s a darkness to him. But does he make it all the way through?”
She shrugged. “It’s entirely up to him.”
“What do you mean?” He smiled quizzically at her.
“Characters talk to you. Transform. Make choices,” she replied.
“Choices,” he echoed.
“Of who they become.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“The fly that should be dead and the dog that should be dead in the house that should be dead, and the bride, who would be dead soon.
It watched approvingly, appreciating the complexities—and fragilities—of life.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“She needed sunshine and clean air, not rot and decay and breezes that smelled of clay.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
Noem Taboada travels to High Place, a remote house in the Mexican countryside, after receiving a desperate letter from her recently married cousin pleading for help to save her from an unknown fate. She is unsure of what she will discover because Noem knows little about the area and her cousin’s husband, a charming Englishman, is a stranger.
The gorgeous debutante Noem is another unlikely hero; her elegant clothes and flawless red lipstick are more appropriate for cocktail parties than for an amateur detective. She is fearless, yet she is also strong, intelligent, and willpower: Not even in the house, which starts to haunt Noem’s dreams with sights of blood and doom. Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both scary and intriguing; not of his father, the old patriarch who seems to be charmed by Noem; and not even of her cousin.
The family’s youngest kid is her lone ally in this hostile home. He is quiet and kind, and he appears to want to help Noem, but he could possibly be concealing sinister information about his family’s past. Because the High Place’s walls conceal a wealth of information. The family was shielded from prying eyes by their opulent wealth and defunct mining company, but when Noem looks further, she discovers tales of brutality and madness. And because Noem is so enthralled by the horrifying yet alluring environment of High Place, it might eventually be difficult for her to ever leave this mysterious home.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Books, moonlight, melodrama.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“The world might indeed be a cursed circle; the snake swallowed its tail and there could be no end, only an eternal ruination, and endless devouring.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“…she was trapped between competing desires, a desire for a more meaningful connection, and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
It can be difficult to work at a retail job in a remote, dead-end location. The lengthy hours, the defenseless clients. The monstrous eldritch horror lurking beneath the structure… Jack works as the sole full-time employee at the 24-hour gas station on the outskirts of town, and he has essentially seen it all. But when he makes the decision to start an online blog to record the strange things that happen on a daily basis, he unintentionally draws the attention of a lot more conspiracy theorists than just a handful. Jack will exert every effort to remain out of the way and mind his own business despite the fact that the death toll is constantly rising and that everyone around him is experiencing the effects of a dark, ancient force in their dreams.
He is only a gas station employee, after all. It’s not like he’s getting paid enough to fight the nightmare aberrations that plague his neighborhood. Additionally, he is already working hard to control the mystifying lawn gnomes, mutant raccoons, and the endearing phantom cowboy who resides in the restroom. Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One is a love letter to the forefathers of classic horror written for a generation that grew up in the era of cell phones and WiFi. It is based on the award-winning creepypasta by GasStationJack.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“the smoke detector may or may not be an old frisbee.”
“Hey, I have a question for you.” “Yes, there’s a weed in the tea.” “No, I already knew that. I had a question about the internet.”
“If the gas station were a planet, it would be Pluto. If the gas station were a vowel, it would be Y. If the gas station were an X-Man, it would be Wolverine.”
“gas station had already cut so many corners on safety that it was practically a circle,”
“All the roads are covered in trees. But they aren’t, you know, fallen. The trees are growing in the middle of the street. Cracking right up through the pavement.”
In this chilling tale of love and betrayal, naivety and treachery, and the smothering force of parental love, Dollanganger series author V.C. Andrews has developed an intriguing new group of characters. To be just as good as her sister, Audrina Adare aspired. She was aware that her father also couldn’t love her as much as he did her sister. Her sibling was very unique and perfect, yet she passed away. She will now have to confront the perilous, scary secret that everyone is aware of. everybody but…
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What is normal? Normal is only ordinary; mediocre. Life belongs to the rare, exceptional individual who dares to be different.”
“All pain seemed to come with lots of blood, and lots of mental anguish, too. I already knew about that. Maybe that was the worst kind of pain because nobody knew about it but you.”
“There were shadows in the corners and whispers on the stairs and time was irrelevant as honesty.”
“Blood ties are not supposed to be chains.”
“Shadows in the house put shadows in the mind.”
In opulent Edwardian London, Ramses the Great has awoken once more. He became Ramses the Damned after consuming the elixir of life, destined to wander the earth forever while frantically trying to sate his unquenchable hunger. He becomes good friends with Julie Stratford, a wealthy heiress, but his cursed past drives him once more down the wrong path. Searing memories of his previous reawakening, which was ordered by his favorite Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, to torture him. And his unwavering love for her over the ages will drive him to do something that will put everyone around him in great peril.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Be Warned: I sleep as the earth sleeps beneath the night sky or the winter’s snow; and once awakened, I am servant to no man.”
“Grief, she thought. It’s a strange and a misunderstood emotion.”
“I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine”
“This was that lucid and dangerous state with drinking, when everything began to shimmer; when there was meaning in the grain of the marble; when one could make the most offensive speeches.”
“When we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true desires—what we would have when that which we do have so sorely disappoints us”
A man-eating terror classic that inspired a Steven Spielberg film and terrified millions of beachgoers into staying out of the water. Relive the thrill of utter helplessness—or experience it for the first time!
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.”
“There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.”
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”
“He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore.”
“The great fish moved silently through the night water.”
What lengths would you take to protect your family? Milton Freeman saw his parents die tragically in a bizarre accident. Anything for their return was what he would have offered. Josh, his younger brother, is currently in danger of dying. He is the last of his family. To spare his brother’s life, he strikes a deal, but Milton is about to discover that some deals are better left unfinished. Something unimaginable is headed at him. An evil that, if he allows it, will take his soul.
A shadowy laboratory, a malicious scientist, and a hidden past. In this gripping prequel to the popular television series Stranger Things, if you believe you know the real story behind Eleven’s mother, get ready to have your world turned inside out. The horror of war is still fresh in the minds of American youth both at home and abroad in the summer of 1969. Terry Ives is a student at a peaceful college in the middle of Indiana, far from the front lines of the Vietnam War and the explosive demonstrations in Washington.
But Terry isn’t willing to stand by and observe as the world changes. She agrees to be a test subject for the MKUltra project after hearing about an important government experiment in the little town of Hawkins. Unmarked vans, a secret laboratory tucked away in the woods, drugs that affect perception given by covert researchers, and a mystery Terry, a young and restless Terry, is anxious to solve.
But a conspiracy bigger than she could have ever imagined lies behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory—and the penetrating gaze of its director, Dr. Martin Brenner. She’ll need the assistance of her fellow test subjects, including one so strange that no one is aware of her existence: a young woman with enigmatic superhuman abilities and a number instead of a name: 008. Terry Ives and Martin Brenner have started a fresh sort of war—one in which the human mind serves as the front line—amid the escalating tensions of the new decade.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Monsters,’ she said., ‘of course my brain has them.’ As long as they stayed in there, everything would be all right. Wouldn’t it?”
“When it’s our government involved, I think you’ll find our rights are often to be determined.”
“Knees were an unpleasant place to have the nervous sweats.”
“We can put a man on the moon, but they still haven’t figured out how to get out of ’Nam.”
“What people believed didn’t matter. The truth did.”
STOP. You shouldn’t have used your bare hands to touch this flier. Don’t put it down, please. Too late now. They keep an eye on you. David Wong is my name. John is my best friend. Those are made-up names. You should consider changing yours. The information on these pages, including that on the sauce, Korrok, the invasion, and the future, may not be information you want to be aware of. It’s too late, though. You gave the book a touch. In the game you are. You have under-eye bags. Knowledge is the only defense. You must finish reading this book. everything, even the bratwurst portion. Why? Just have faith in me. The crucial fact is that the substance, called Soy Sauce, allows users to peer through a window into a different reality. I never got the chance to refuse on behalf of John. You continue to. I truly apologize for including you in this. But it is important that you remember one thing when you read about these dreadful things and the extremely dark era the world is about to enter: None of this was my fault.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.”
“And watch out for Molly. See if she does anything unusual. There’s something I don’t trust about the way she exploded and then came back from the dead like that.”
“Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.”
“When a man plans, a woman laughs.”
“You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don’t haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.”
For many years, Area X was cut off from the outside world. The final remains of human civilization have been reclaimed by nature. The first expedition reported a pure, Edenic landscape; the second resulted in mass suicide, and the third ended in a hail of gunfire as its participants turned on one another. The eleventh expedition’s participants responded as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, every single one of them had passed away from cancer. We join the twelfth expedition in Annihilation, the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy.
Four women make up the group: our narrator, a biologist; an anthropologist; a surveyor; and the psychologist who serves as de facto leader. Their goals are to map the area, keep a journal of all they see about one another and their surroundings, and, most importantly, stay out of Area X itself. They expect the unexpected when they arrive, and Area X does not disappoint. However, the shocks they brought with them and the mysteries the voyage members are holding from one another are what ultimately changes everything.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
“That’s how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
“Silence creates its own violence.”
“some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”
“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”