Unimaginably near to wiping humanity was the Zombie War. Max Brooks traveled across the United States of America and around the world, from completely destroyed cities that once mingled with upwards of thirty million souls to the most distant and uninhabitable parts of the planet, pushed by the urgency of conserving the acid-etched first-hand life experience of the survivors from those apocalyptic years. He preserved the testimonies of men, women, and occasionally children who had direct encounters with the living hell of that terrible era, or at the very least, the undead. World War Z is what happens. We have never before had access to a text that so effectively captures the magnitude of terror and fear, as well as the unbreakable spirit of resistance, that engulfed human society during the plague years.
Most importantly, the book vividly conveys the human aspect of this historic event. The reader must have some bravery to confront the frequently shocking and vibrant nature of these personal accounts, but the effort is priceless because, as Mr. Brooks states in his introduction, “We run the risk of developing a personal separation from history that, God forbid, could cause us to repeat it in the future if we ignore the human element. And ultimately, isn’t the only real distinction between ourselves and the foe we now refer to as “the living dead” the human element?”
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.”
“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used.”
“The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts”
“There’s a word for that kind of lie. Hope.”
“I don’t know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”
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.
Your invincible foes can only be stopped by a loyal best buddy. A human-vampire with a unique talent for using the magic of the earth, Lissa Dragomir is a princess of the Moroi tribe. The most dangerous vampires—those who never die—the Strigoi—must be kept away from her at all times. Rose Hathaway, Lissa’s best friend, is a dhampir due to the potent mix of human and vampire blood flows through her. Rose has made it her mission to risk her life in order to keep Lissa safe from the Strigoi, who are determined to turn Lissa into one of them.
Rose and Lissa are captured after two years of freedom and taken back to St. Vladimir’s Academy, a school for vampire monarchs and their future guardians that is tucked away in the thick forests of Montana. However, life is considerably riskier behind the iron gates, and the Strigoi are never far away. In order to avoid the evil undead turning Lissa into one of them permanently, Rose and Lissa must traverse their hazardous world, face the lures of forbidden romance, and never let their guard down.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Only a true best friend can protect you from your immortal enemies.”
“The only thing better than imagining Dimitri carrying me in his arms was imagining him shirtless while carrying me in his arms.”
“The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that.”
“If I let myself love you, I won’t throw myself in front of her. I’ll throw myself in front of you.”
“And than suddenly he was there, charging down the hallway like death in a cowboy duster.”
The men and women who’d shape America were on board the Mayflower when it sailed in 1620: Miles Standish, John Alden, and Constance Hopkins. However, not all of the Pilgrims were sincere; they were not fleeing religious persecution. They weren’t even human, in fact. They had vampire blood. The vampires integrated into the New World very fast. They were the renowned ‘blue bloods’ of American society, rising to positions of tremendous power, riches, and influence. The Blue Bloods resolved to keep their immortality a closely-kept secret. For centuries, they kept that a secret. But the secret is now starting to get out in New York City. A sophomore at a famous private school is named Schuyler Van Alen.
She loves vintage, baggy clothing to her peers’ Prada and pearls, and she shares a run-down mansion with her reclusive grandma. Schuyler enjoys being by himself. When she reaches fifteen, her arm suddenly develops a noticeable mosaic of blue veins. She starts to yearn for raw food and experiences flashbacks to the past. Then a prominent student from her school is discovered dead… completely bloodless. Although Schuyler is unsure of her feelings, she is curious about the mysteries the Blue Bloods are holding. But is she in danger for herself?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Black is the color of night. White is the true color of death”
“I don’t need anything to get high. I’m high on life.”
“But there’s always a first time for everything”
“He kissed her, and their souls melted into each other in a melody older than time.”
“It was maddening how your best friend could twist the knobs inside of you so much that it hurt.”
I Am Legend, a 1954 post-apocalyptic horror book by American author Richard Matheson, had a significant impact on the modernization of vampire and zombie literature as well as the idea of a global apocalypse brought on by the disease.
The only guy still alive, Robert Neville, is not alone himself. The blood of Neville is sought by every other adult, adolescent, and human on the earth who has turned into a vampire. He stalks the undead through the remnants of civilization during the day as the hunter. He locks himself inside his house at night and waits for dawn. How much longer can one man endure in this condition?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”
“In a world of monotonous horror
there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.”
“How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough.”
“The keynote of minority prejudice is this: They are loathed because they are feared.”
“What would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?”
American novelist Stephen King wrote a dark fantasy book titled The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower series’ first installment is this book. A fix-up novel called The Gunslinger was first released in 1982, combining five short stories that had been released between 1978 and 1981.
Stephen King introduces readers to Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger, one of his most mysterious figures, in the first novel of this outstanding series. He is a menacing figure, a lone traveler on an enthralling quest through good and evil. Roland chases The Man in Black in his lonely world, which unnervingly resembles our own. Along the way, he meets Alice, a seductive woman, and develops a connection with Jake, a young boy from Earth. The Gunslinger leaves readers anticipating the next chapter while being both engrossingly realistic and unsettlingly surreal.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
“Time’s the thief of memory”
“I don’t like people. They fuck me up.”
“Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?”
A parasitic fungus outbreak destroyed most of the world’s inhabitants 19 years ago. Thirteen-year-old Ellie starts her new life as a student of a military boarding school in one of the few still-existing quarantine zones, where a connection with classmate Riley leads to her first trip outside the compound. Ellie and Riley are soon faced by the violent lifestyle of the rebel organization the Fireflies outside the bounds of the controlled civil order they are familiar with—as well as the horrifying victims of infection!
Three sections with a wide range of background information and sources are offered: Dracula may have drawn inspiration from earlier writings by James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard, among other contexts. Discussions on Stoker’s draughts of the book, as well as “Dracula’s Guest,” the original first chapter, are also featured. Five early reviews of the book are reproduced in Reviews and Reactions. The book “Dramatic and Film Variations” focuses on theatrical and cinematic Dracula adaptations, two signs of the book’s enduring popularity. Gregory A. Waller, Nina Auerbach, and David J. Skal each offer a unique viewpoint. There are listings of both dramatic and cinematic adaptations.
Seven theoretical analyses of Dracula by authors like Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer are collected in Criticism. Included are a Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”
“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”
“Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker”
Laura, Shadow’s wife, perishes in a tragic vehicle accident just days preceding his release from prison. He walks back to his house in a daze. He meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday on the plane, who introduces himself as the ruler of America, a former god, and a refugee from a far-off conflict.
Together, they set off on a deeply odd adventure across the center of the USA while a storm of supernatural and epic proportions rages all around them. American Gods is a chilling, engrossing, and profoundly unnerving film that probes deeply into the American psyche. You’ll be shocked by who and what it discovers there.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”
“Every hour wounds. The last one kills.”
“Even nothing cannot last forever.”
“There’s none so blind as those who will not listen.”
There are fourteen doors and twenty-one windows in Coraline’s family’s new apartment. Thirteen of the doors themselves open and shut. Until the moment Coraline opens the door and discovers a corridor to another flat in a different house that is identical to her own, the fourteenth is sealed and there is nothing except a brick wall on the other side. But it’s distinct.
First off, the second apartment seems to be in great shape. The cuisine has improved. Wind-up angels who fly around the bedroom, books with illustrations that slither, crawl, and shimmer, and tiny dinosaur skulls with chattering teeth may all be found in the toy box. However, there is a different mother and father who want Coraline to remain with them and be their child. They want to alter her and keep her forever.
Behind the mirrors are other youngsters who are also locked there, lost souls. Their only chance for rescue is Coraline. If she wants to save the missing children, her everyday life, and herself, she will need to battle with all of her wits and every instrument she can discover.
With his debut book for readers of all ages, widely praised and award-winning novelist Neil Gaiman will enthrall readers.
Two fearful people, a child, and a man, still discuss the mysteries of the clapboard homes and tree-lined lanes of the small township of “Salem’s Lot” thousands of miles distant. To face the horrible evil that still exists in the community, they must go back to Salem’s Lot.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
“God grant me to SERENITY to accept what I cannot change the TENACITY to change what I may and the GOOD LUCK not to f*** up too often”
“The basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar.”
“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”
“Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.”
Neuromancer is a cyberpunk, science fiction masterwork, a classic that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the twentieth century’s most powerful views of the future. The Matrix is a world within a world, a global consensus-hallucination that represents every byte of data in cyberspace…
Henry Dorsett Case was the best data thief in the business until his nervous system was devastated by disgruntled former workers. However, a new and extremely mysterious employer has recruited him for a last-ditch run. The target: an unfathomably powerful artificially intelligent orbiting the Earth for the nefarious Tessier-Ashpool corporate clan. The case starts on a journey that ups the ante on an entire category of fiction, riding shotgun with a dead guy and Molly, a mirror-eyed street samurai, to guard his back.
Neuromancer, the winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, was the first fully realized glimpse of humanity’s digital future—a startling vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, recreating the way we communicate and think and changed forever the landscape of our imaginations.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“Things aren’t different. Things are things.”
“When the past is always with you, it may as well be present; and if it is present, it will be future as well.”
“His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.”
A remarkable method has been developed for retrieving and cloning dinosaur DNA. The most exhilarating fantasies of mankind have now materialized. Extinct creatures that have been extinct for ages wander Jurassic Park, and anyone in the world can go there for a fee. Before things go wrong. Michael Crichton uses all of his captivating talent and scientific acumen in Jurassic Park to produce his most thrilling technothriller.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, the man brings back dinosaurs.”
“The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.”
“Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet – or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”
“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished the thought.”
“All major changes are like death. You can’t see to the other side until you are there.”
The controversial masterwork Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. has sparked more discussion than most books. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh.
Last Exit to Brooklyn portrays the experiences of New Yorkers. They constantly deal with the darkest excesses of human nature and have been characterized by various reviewers as hellish and obscene. But even in these tumultuous lives, there are exquisitely lovely moments. These fascinating characters include Harry, the strike leader who hides his actual wants behind a sexist macho, Tralala, the cunning prostitute who explores the depths of sexual depravity, and Georgette, the transsexual who falls in love with a heartless hoodlum.
British courts outlawed Last Exit to Brooklyn in 1967, but that ruling was overturned the following year with the assistance of several authors and critics, including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode. It was the focus of an obscenity trial in the UK in 1966. The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree, and Waiting Period are some of his other books. Requiem for a Dream was turned into a movie in 2000 by Darren Aronofsky, starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“In the winter everyones hate was bare if you looked. She saw hate in the icicles that hung from her window; she saw it in the dirty slush on the streets; she heard it in the hail that scratched her window and bit her face; she could see it in the lowered heads hurrying to warm homes …”
“The bodies went back in the doors and bars and the heads in the windows. The cops drove away and Freddy and the guys went back into the Greeks and the street was quiet, just the sound of a tug and an occasional car; and even the blood couldn’t be seen from a few feet away.”
“high spirits and overflowing joy making the absence of love known.”
“But it was a bike and it moved. I think that sonofabitch woulda used it even if he had ta push it or pedal it like a kiddy car. So he kicks it over after 5 minutes and we listen to it cough and miss and Spook went puttin off with a shiteatin grin on his face and we went back up stairs and a few minutes later he comes back. Smilin all over the goddamn place and the strap of his hat under his chin. I tellya man, it was a pissa.”
“I read so many different writers at the same time I did not have to work off any influences. Also, never having gone to school I didnt have to unlearn all the lies a person can learn in school about how you should write. I was unaware of the ‘rules of writing’ as proclaimed by individuals who had never written an original line in their lives. Fortunately, I had no recourse but to find my own way.”
In Brooklyn, New York, Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928–2004) was born. He left school at the age of fifteen and joined the merchant marines. His lung condition was discovered while he was at sea. Since he had no other means of support, he decided to try his hand at writing: “I knew the alphabet. I might be able to write. His debut work, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which was published in 1964, has since gained cult status.
Morgan Freeman in Se7en as Detective Somerset Contains passages from the film’s original reviews and gives some background information. includes character and crew bios, as well as information about the film’s cultural setting. examines the movie’s production, important moments, concepts, and methods. Get the whole picture by going behind the scenes with the best movie guides. Find out how David Fincher draws viewers into his gory thriller and what sort of conclusion studio execs actually desired. Recognize the impact that lighting, camera angles, and visuals have on the overall effect, and take into account how Fincher created each scene.
Discover how David Fincher’s highly stylized movie influenced his career as a filmmaker, how his direction was essential to making a movie that is both provocative and well-liked, and how his movies exhibit superb workmanship and complexity. Read brief biographies of the actor Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, and filmmaker David Fincher. Get a list of related articles and publications, a glossary of cinema words, and an analysis of numerous pertinent film genres, such as horror, film noir, and serial killer movies. “Se&en” is wonderful reading for both movie fans and film students because it is written in an approachable tone.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you think that you can hide what your interests are, what your prurient interests are, what your noble interests are, what your fascinations are, if you think you can hide that in your work as a film director, you’re nuts.”
“People are perverts…that’s pretty much been the basis of my career anyway.”
“Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.”
It tells the tale of four searchers who find themselves in Hill House, a famously hostile place: Eleanor, a lonely, frail young woman highly versed in poltergeists; Dr. Montague, an esoteric scholar seeking strong proof of a “haunting”; Theodora, the vivacious assistant; and Luke, the upcoming heir to Hill House At first, it appears that their visit will only be a terrifying run-in with strange events. However, Hill House is amassing its might and will soon pick one of them to call its own.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?”
“Fear,” the doctor said, “is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.”
“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.”
American novelist Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic dark fantasy book The Stand was initially released by Doubleday in 1978.
A mutant strain of the virus that would kill 99 percent of humanity within a matter of weeks spreads as a man flees from a biological testing lab, starting a fatal domino effect. The remaining survivors are terrified, confused, and in search of a leader. Mother Abagail, a kind 108-year-old woman who implores them to create a tranquil society in Boulder, Colorado, and Randall Flagg, the pernicious “Dark Man,” who takes pleasure in disorder and bloodshed, emerge. The survivors will have to decide between them as the evil man and the compassionate woman gain control, ultimately determining the fate of all humanity.
It tells the tale of four searchers who find themselves in Hill House, a famously hostile place: Eleanor, a lonely, frail young woman highly versed in poltergeists; Dr. Montague, an esoteric scholar seeking strong proof of a “haunting”; Theodora, the vivacious assistant; and Luke, the upcoming heir to Hill House At first, it appears that their visit will only be a terrifying run-in with strange events. However, Hill House is gathering its might and will soon pick one of them to call its own.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?”
“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.”
“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.”
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was first released in 1967 and then reprinted in 1983. It features seven pieces with copyrights from 1958 to 1967. The original introduction and foreword by Harlan Ellison are included in this edition, along with a brief update remark by Ellison that was added to the 1983 edition. The title story and the volume’s final story, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, are two of Ellison’s more well-known works that are frequently cited as among his best ever.
We won’t label them science fiction, SF, speculative fiction, horror, or anything else other than captivating reading experiences that are unique because Ellison himself firmly opposes the categorization of his work. They are utterly unique and could only have been created by Harlan Ellison.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out.”
“the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.”
“I have no mouth. And I must scream…”
“If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.”
“Style, like taste, is resistant to lucid definition; however, both, as living things should be, are subject to constant change.”