The Feasting Dead (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
The Feasting Dead (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: John Metcalfe

Publisher:

Published: 2014-10-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781941147412

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'A writer of subtle, finely crafted supernatural tales.' - T.E.D. Klein '[H]is stories . . . build up a unique sense of unease.' - Brian Stableford '[T]ense, cryptic . . . brooding supernaturalism . . . unjustly forgotten.' - E. F. Bleiler Something is wrong with Colonel Habgood's young son Denis. Some mysterious force seems to be sapping his physical health, and his behaviour has become oddly evasive and deceptive. Habgood suspects the pernicious influence of Raoul, a sinister handyman with whom Denis has become infatuated, believing that the man may be corrupting and defiling his son. But even after Raoul's departure, the troubles continue, and Denis's strength continues to wane. In an old book of medieval legends, his father finds a possible, if implausible, answer in stories of a nameless horror from beyond the grave that feasts on the young in order to return to life. Or could what's happening to Denis have any connection to an unexplained death in the attic turret nearly eighty years ago? And isn't there something strange about the scarecrow out in the fields, which seems, barely perceptibly, to have moved . . . ? Originally published in a limited hardcover edition by the legendary Arkham House, John Metcalfe's The Feasting Dead (1954) is worthy of being ranked alongside The Turn of the Screw and the tales of M.R. James, L.P. Hartley, and Robert Aickman. This new edition of this classic novella, previously available only in expensive secondhand copies, will allow modern readers to rediscover the unjustly neglected Metcalfe (1891-1965).

Toplin (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
Toplin (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: Michael McDowell

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Published: 2015-12-11

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9781943910182

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DEATH IN THE FAMILY BUT COME BACK SOON, the sign said. Obviously it was a lie. The people in the grocery store just wanted to make sure he couldn't buy the spice he needed to make the recipe he'd selected for that night (recipes must be followed exactly). Obviously they wanted him to eat out ... to meet the waitress, Marta, ... to see her horrible, unspeakable, unbearable ugliness. It was obvious to him: her maimed, twisted face was the living desire to be dead. He had to help Marta be dead. His teeth are perfectly white. He can't see colors. He keeps a combination lock on his door and has twelve shelves of cookbooks. His walls bleed blood. His suits each have a number, S-1 through S-6. And life goes on. Life goes on, if you can stand it. Life goes on, for the brave and the damned. Life goes on, but come back soon ... "An ambitious novel of psychological horror." - "Publishers Weekly" "Compelling-a tour-de-force of storytelling and style ... considerable artistry, marvelous pacing, and a welcome dose of macabre humor." - "Fantasy Review" "One of the best writers of horror in this country." - "Peter Straub"

The Cook (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
The Cook (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: Harry Kressing

Publisher:

Published: 2015-04-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781941147665

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The Cook opens with Conrad, nearly seven feet tall, gaunt, and dressed all in black, arriving on his bicycle in the town of Cobb. He quickly secures a job as cook for the wealthy Hill family, winning their hearts and stomachs with his delectable dishes, and before long he has everyone around him eating out of his hand. But Conrad has a sinister, inscrutable plan in view, and after becoming master of their palates, next may be their souls . . . A mouth-watering blend of delicious black humor and Kafkaesque horror story, The Cook (1965) is a dark fable "beginning in a vein of innocent fairy tale and ending with satanic revels" (The Observer). Long out of print, this cult classic returns in a new edition featuring Milton Glaser's iconic dust jacket art from the first edition. "I have much enjoyed The Cook, for I am very fond of Satan. My congratulations to Mr. Kressing on his achievement." - John Fowles "A finely wrought, captivating tale of suspense-a superior entertainment." - Detroit News "I haven't been so gripped by any first novel since Lord of the Flies." - Irving Wardle, The Observer "A fable, part diabolique, part diversion ... high originality, some style, and a come-on which assures that it will be read at one sitting." - Kirkus Reviews

The Devil in a Domino (Valancourt Classics)
The Devil in a Domino (Valancourt Classics)

Author: Chas L'Epine

Publisher:

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9781943910823

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The offspring of a profligate scoundrel and a drunken circus performer, Aleck Severn was born inside a prison's walls after his mother stabbed his father to death. Severn shows no outward signs of inheriting his parents' faults: a handsome, affable man about town, he is popular with his friends and beloved by his wife Marianne. But she begins to suspect her husband has a dark secret. What is he doing during those long nights alone at a remote house? And what connection could it have to the bodies of murdered women being found around London? One of the earliest novels inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders, The Devil in a Domino (1897) received mixed reviews when originally published, with critics praising the author's literary talent while decrying the book's horrific contents. A work of exceeding rarity, it survives in only a handful of known copies and has not been reprinted in over a century. This new edition features an introduction by Simon Stern. "[A] frankly horrible performance ... a gruesome compound of madness and butchery, with nameless horrors in the background. No sane person could find pleasure in reading such a story ... it would have been better had it not been written." - The Literary World "[A] peculiarly repulsive piece of writing, indicative of the low and morbid type of so-called literature which is purveyed to a half-educated constituency." - Edinburgh Evening News "In its diabolical horrors it recalls the ghastly series of crimes supposed to have been the work of 'Jack the Ripper.' Those who like to sup on sensation will find all they want in The Devil in a Domino." - Dundee Evening Telegraph

Feasting with Panthers
Feasting with Panthers

Author: Bernard Taylor

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2004-02

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0595312942

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Bernard J. Taylor grew up in Cape Town, South Africa and found himself arrested for murder on his seventeenth birthday.

Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora
Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora

Author: Christopher Nelson

Publisher: Green Linden Press

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 099922638X

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The Essential Voices series intends to bridge English-language readers to cultures misunderstood and under- or misrepresented. It has at its heart the ancient idea that poetry can reveal our shared humanity. The anthology features 130 poets and translators from ten countries, including Garous Abdolmalekian, Kaveh Akbar, Kazim Ali, Reza Baraheni, Kaveh Bassiri, Simin Behbahani, Mark S. Burrows, Athena Farrokhzad, Forugh Farrokhzad, Persis Karim, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Sara Khalili, Mimi Khalvati, Esmail Khoi, Abbas Kiarostami, Fayre Makeig, Anis Mojgani, Yadollah Royai, Amir Safi, SAID, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlu, Solmaz Sharif, Niloufar Talebi, Jean Valentine, Stephen Watts, Sholeh Wolpé, Nima Yushij, and many others. Praise Between arm-flexing states, the U.S. and Iran, the past burns and the future is held hostage. In a twilight present tense, the poets emerge, sure-footed and graceful, imagining another way, another vision of being. The range of these Iranian poets is prodigious and dizzying. Sometimes they "consider the saga of a bee / humming over minefields / in pursuit of a flower," sometimes they "bring your lips near / and pour your voice / into my mouth." Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora is a place where heartbreak and hope gather. At the shores of language, drink this bracing, slaking music. —Philip Metres, author of Shrapnel Maps Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora takes the extraordinary position that poetic arts from the homeland and diaspora should be read alongside each other. This vital book invites English-language readers to step into a lineage and tradition where poems—from playful to elegiac, prosaic to ornate—are fundamental to everyday living. It is the kind of book that requires two copies: one to give to a beloved, and one to keep for oneself. —Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora offers a profoundly satisfying journey into the poetic canon of my homeland—an anthology with an ambition, expanse, depth, and diversity that truly earns its essential tag. So many poets I was hoping would be in here are here, from contemporary icons to new luminaries, plus I got to explore several poets I had never before read. Everyone from students of poetry to masters of the form should take this ride through the soul and psyche of Iran, which endures no matter where the border, beyond whatever the boundary! —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity Iranians rely on poetry to give comfort, elevate the ordinary, and illuminate the darkness. Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora layers the work of the masters with fresh voices, using sensual imagery to piece together a society fractured by revolution, war, and exile. Let the poets lead you into an Iran beyond the news reports—a place where tenderness and humor and bitterness and melancholia balance together like birds on a wire, intricately connected and poised to take flight.  —Tara Bahrampour, author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America

Supernatural Horror in Literature
Supernatural Horror in Literature

Author: H. P. Lovecraft

Publisher: The Palingenesis Project (Wermod and Wermod Publishing Group)

Published: 2013-06-10

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1909606006

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Originally published in 1927 in a small-circulation amateur magazine, spanning the period from antiquity until the 1930s, and covering both the Anglo-American world and Continental Europe, Lovecraft’s essay remains unparallelled as a survey of horror literature in our hemisphere. Said literature’s emergence as a genre coincided with the institutional establishment of liberalism, which represents a diametrically opposed worldview. This would suggest that horror literature, even if inadvertently or subconsciously, represents an attempt at escaping the limitations of the secular, materialist, rationalist Weltanschauung of liberal modernity, as well as a desire for meaning in a world rendered meaningless through ‘liberation’ from hierarchies, folk traditions, the occult, and the supernatural. Also of interest is the fact that the aesthetics of Gothic horror are invariably and luxuriantly beautiful (if in a dark way), whereas the logical extreme of rationality (utilitarianism, standardisation) is inherently anti-aesthetic. Would this not indicate, then, that the Age of Reason marked the beginning of a process that concluded in late modernity with the wholesale destruction of beauty, except where it, or the counterfeiting of it, was dictated by economic necessity? If so, we may view Lovecraft’s essay not merely as a resource for those seeking entertainment within a genre of literature, but also a map for those seeking to escape, and begin to transcend, the despair engendered by a worldview that pronounced itself dead when someone spoke of ‘the end of history’.

A Short History of English Literature
A Short History of English Literature

Author: Harry Blamires

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-02-28

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 1134942109

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First published in 2012. This work of introduction is designed to escort the reader through some six centuries of English literature. It begins in the fourteenth century at the point at which the language written in our country is recognizably our own, and ends in the 1950s. It is a compact survey, summing up the substance and quality of the individual achievements that make up our literature. The aim is to leave the reader informed about each writer’s main output, sensitive to the special character of his gifts, and aware of his place in the story of our literature as a whole.