Takes a snapshot view of history from 2700 B.C. to 2000 A.D. and offers a collection of eyewitness accounts of the most memorable historical and social events taken from memoirs, diaries, letters and journals. Original.
Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America – Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors to the Victorian penny dreadfuls of writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens. These stories exemplify the best of crime and mystery pulp fiction – its zest, speed, rhythm, verve and commitment to straightforward storytelling – spanning seven decades of popular writing.
Updated and expanded edition of the fullest ever collective investigation into Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders. This volume collects not just all the key factual evidence but also 20 different arguments as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, such as that advanced by Patricia Cornwell. Contributions are from the world's leading Ripperologists, including William Beadle, Melvyn Fairclough, Martin Fido, Shirley Harrison, James Tully and Colin Wilson. The identity of Jack the Ripper has plagued professional historians, criminologists, writers and amateur enthusiasts. The many suspects include Montague John Druitt, Walter Sickert, Aaron Kosminski, Michael Ostrog, William Henry Bury, Dr Tumblety and James Maybrick. The only certainty is that Ripperologist have not found an invididual on whom they can all agree. The essays are supported by a detailed chronology, extensive bibliography and filmography.
Every short story in this wonderfully varied collection has one thing in common: each features some alteration in history, some divergence from historical reality, which results in a world very different from the one we know today. As well as original stories specially commissioned from bestselling writers such as James Morrow, Stephen Baxter and Ken MacLeod, there are genre classics such as Kim Stanley Robinson's story of how World War II atomic bomber the Enola Gay, having crashed on a training flight, is replaced by the Lucky Strike with profoundly different consequences. Praise for the editors: 'Mr Watson wreaks havoc with what is accepted - and acceptable.' The Times 'One of Britain's consistently finest science fiction writers.' New Scientist
After Arthur Conan Doyle created the detective, Sherlock Holmes, many writers borrowed him to be the hero of their stories. The anthology offers a selection, old and new.
We now live in enlightened times that reassure us that, far from being a lower form of literature, pulp fiction is the term for what the best storytelling provides - pyrotechnic thrills, shocks galore and excitement by the bucketload! From cops, both straight and crooked, to ruthless bigshots, shady operators, femmes fatales and damsels in distress. Including gangsters, drifters, common crooks, shady attomeys to molls with a heart of gold, enjoy a rollercoaster ride through popular literature's best pulp writers. The MBO of Pulp Action includes the talents of Charles Willeford, Ed McBain, Bill Pronzini, Ed Gorman, Lawrence Block, John D. Macdonald, William Campbell Gault, Bruno Fischer, Mark Timlin, Joe R. Lansdale and many of the classic Black Mask magazine...
Expanded and with great new stories, this is the biggest and best anthology of ghostly hauntings ever. Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead - from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favourite haunted house tales chosen by famous screen stars Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Plus a top ranking list of contributors that includes Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Ruth Rendell, and James Herbert - all brought together by an anthologist who himself lives in a haunted house. Stories include: Something unspeakable lurks in a Connecticut apartment closet, in Stephen King's 'The Boogeyman'; An Irish castle holds something truly horrifying in wait, in 'The Whistling Room' by William Hope Hodgson; The lecherous old ghost of a Georgian country house eyes up his latest tenant, in Norah Lofts' 'Mr Edward'; An ancient mansion on a shelf of rock previously occupied by a doomed castle, in 'In Letters of Fire' by Gaston Le Roux; The hunter is hunted in James Herbert's tale of nineteenth-century country mansion, 'The Ghost Hunter'; Psychic phenomena and poltergeists, avenging spirits and phantom lovers - curl up and read on, but never imagine you are safe from a visit...
Over 60 gripping accounts tracking the dark side of rock 'n' roll from the early days of the drugs-and-drink culture, and the birth of rock 'n' roll, through The Beatles, Stones, Sex Pistols, Madonna, Kurt Cobain and Oasis, to Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty and other stars of the current rock-music scene. From trashed hotel rooms to cars in swimming pools, all rock 'n' roll's excesses are here, including murder and sexual deviancy, surprising brushes with the law that the stars thought they'd kept quiet, early and tragic deaths, drug overdoses, robbery, mis-marriages and groupies by the truckload