The Western, though a singularly American art form, is one of the great genres of world literature with a truly global readership. It is also durable despite being often unfairly maligned. Ever since James Fenimore Cooper transformed frontier yarns into a distinct literary form, the Western has followed two paths: one populist - what Time magazine famously billed 'the American Morality Play' - capable of taking many points of view, from red to redneck, but always populist, with a sentimental attachment to the misfit; the other literary - eschewing heroism, debunking with unsettling candour many of the myths of the West. It can sometimes be difficult to draw a sure line between the two forms, but both are represented in this outstanding collection which includes stories by Rick Bass, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Larry McMurtry, Mari Sandoz, Christopher Tilghman, and Mark Twain, among many others.
Thirty-five uncanny and erotic tales of vampires written by supernatural fiction’s greatest mistresses of the macabre. "Fashions change, and the urbane vampire created by Byron and cemented in place by Stoker has had to move on . . . Are you, like me, ready for the new dusk?" —Ingrid Pitt, from her Introduction Prepare to arm yourself with garlic, silver bullets, and a stake. Featuring the only vampire short story written by Anne Rice, the undisputed queen of vampire literature, and boasting an autobiographical introduction and original tale by Ingrid Pitt, the star of Hammer Films' The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula, this is one anthology that every vampire fan—vampiric feminist or not—will want to drink deep from. From the classic stories of Edith Wharton, Edith Nesbit, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon to modern incarnations by such acclaimed writers as Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy Kilpatrick, Tanith Lee, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Angela Slatter, these blood-drinkers and soul-stealers range from the sexual to the sanguinary, from the tormented Good to the unspeakably Evil. Among those memorable Children of the Night you will encounter are Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Byronic vampire Saint-Germain, Nancy A. Collins' undead heroine Sonja Blue, Tanya Huff's vampiric detective Vicki Nelson, and Freda Warrington’s age-old lovers Karl and Charlotte. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and now revised and updated, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women fulfils the bloodlust of the somnambulist horror fan, delivering the ultimate bite.
A collection from some of the greatest classic writers of the compelling body of literature that immortalized ranchers and cowpunchers, trappers and prospectors, gamblers and lawmen.
Love will find a way - 19 fantastic future-set romances. The good news is, in the future there will be no shortage of romance. On space ships, on newly-colonized planets or on a barely recognizable Earth, life forms, whether human, alien or something in between, will find their way to love. As giant corporations grasp new opportunities for profit and future armies clash, both in deep space and 'dirtside', former romantic partners try to put the past behind them and time-travelling rebels set out to romance the past. These science fiction stories of future love and lust - by Marcella Burnard, Bianca d'Arc, Jess Granger, Linnea Sinclair, C. L. Wilson and many more - are brimming with passion and humour. So, even though in space no one can hear you scream, they might just be able to hear you laugh.
Author Barry Stone has served his apprenticeship as a western movie geek and aficionado. The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, Red River – for 50 years the western has been the only genre in a life that 'just ain't big enough for two'. He has written on the history of cinema for the illustrated reference book Historica, is a regular attendee to western premieres for FOX Studios Australia, and was recently a guest of the Museum of Western Film History in Independence, California. Intrigued by the idea of frontier wilderness, of law and order vs lawlessness, and a firm belief that 'the better the bad guy, the better the film', he goes beyond the American south-west to pay homage to the Italian and even Australian western – and, after much deliberation, he ranks them in order...
Revised and expanded edition of Jon E. Lewis's ever-popular account of the American West. The book is at once a history and a compendium of western lore. It tells what life on the frontier was really like and gives a human portrait of the tough and sometimes violent way of life experienced by the early pioneers. The gunfighters and the cowboys, women, Indians and others, all have their part to play - and as well as the historical accounts there are intriguing anecdotes of everyday life on the plains, from how Montana cowboys warmed up their horses' bits, to the words of the Navajo medicine chants.
For more than 80 years H. P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of horror and supernatural fiction with his dark vision of humankind's insignificant place in a vast, uncaring cosmos. At the time of his death in 1937, Lovecraft was virtually unknown, but from early cult status his readership expanded exponentially; his nightmarish visions laying down roots in the collective imagination of his readers. Now this master of the macabre is accepted as part of the literary mainstream, as an American author of note, and the impact of his work on modern popular culture - in literature, film, television, music, the graphic arts, gaming and theatre - has been profound. As Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, the shadow of H. P. Lovecraft 'underlies almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.' Today, Lovecraft's themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history remain not only viable motifs for modern speculative fiction, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal. This outstanding anthology of original stories - from both established award-winning authors and exciting new voices - collects tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft from authors who do not merely imitate, but reimagine, re-energize, and renew the best of his concepts in ways relevant to today's readers, to create fresh new fiction that explores our modern fears and nightmares. From the depths of R'lyeh to the heights of the Mountains of Madness, some of today's best weird fiction writers traverse terrain created by Lovecraft and create new eldritch geographies to explore . . . With stories by: Laird Barron, Nadia Bulkin, Amanda Downum, Ruthanna Emrys, Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Lisa L. Hannett, Brian Hodge, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, Yoon Ha Lee, Usman T. Malik, Helen Marshall, Silvia Moreno, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Veronica Schanoes, Michael Shea, John Shirley, Simon Strantzas, Sandra McDonald, Damien Angelica Walters, Don Webb, Michael Wehunt and A.C. Wise Praise for the editor: 'For fans of Lovecraftian fiction and well-wrought horror' - Library Journal 'Guran smartly selects stories that evoke the spirit of Lovecraft's work without mimicking its style.' - Publishers Weekly 'It's a pretty impressive line-up, with nary a clunker to be found. . . . You don't have to be a Lovecraft fan to enjoy this anthology... You'll find alienation, inhumanity, desperation, cruelty, insanity, hopelessness and despair, all set against the backdrop of a vast, unknowable universe filled with vile, indifferent monstrosities. You'll also find beauty, hope, redemption, and the struggle for survival. What more can you ask for?' - Tor.com 'I highly recommend this collection... If you have even the slightest interest in contemporary horror fiction, you'll want to try this one on for size!' - BookGuide
Giant monsters whose every roar and footstep shakes the earth, whose simple stroll through a city wreaks havoc: KAIJU! And even though humankind has never really seen such monsters - we tremble at the thought of them and love to shiver as their screen versions make mayhem: the beast from twenty-thousand fathoms, Godzilla demolishing Tokyo, the massive creature in Cloverfield destroying New York, all of Earth warring with the colossal monsters in Pacific Rim. Now, for the first time, a definitive anthology that gathers a wide range of larger-than-life short fiction with creatures that run a gargantuan gamut: the stealthy gabbleduck of Neal Asher's Polity universe; Gary McMahon's huge sea-born terror; An Owomoyela 's incredibly tall alien invaders; Frank Wu's city-razing, eighty-foot-high, fire-breathing lizard; Lavie Tidhar's titanic ship-devouring monstrosity; a really big Midwest US smackdown related by Jeremiah Tolbert . . . and many more mega-monster stories to feed your need for killer kaiju! With an introduction by Robert Hood, co-editor of the groundbreaking, Ditmar Award-winning Daikaiju: Giant Monster Tales and host of Undead Backbrain, the premier website for matters relating to giant monsters.
Rather than providing a dictionary of superstitions, of which there are already numerous excellent, exhaustive and, in many cases, academic works which list superstitions from A to Z, Bainton gives us an entertaining flight over the terrain, landing from time to time in more thought-provoking areas. He offers an overview of humanity's often illogical and irrational persistence in seeking good luck and avoiding misfortune. While Steve Roud's two excellent books - The Penguin Dictionary of Superstitions and his Pocket Guide - and Philippa Waring's 1970 Dictionary concentrate on the British Isles, Bainton casts his net much wider. There are many origins which warrant the full back story, such as Friday the thirteenth and the Knights Templar, or the demonisation of the domestic cat resulting in 'cat holocausts' throughout Europe led by the Popes and the Inquisition. The whole is presented as a comprehensive, entertaining narrative flow, though it is, of course, a book that could be dipped into, and includes a thorough bibliography. Schoenberg, who developed the twelve-tone technique in music, was a notorious triskaidekaphobe. When the title of his opera Moses und Aaron resulted in a title with thirteen letters, he renamed it Moses und Aron. He believed he would die in his seventy-sixth year (7 + 6 = 13) and he was correct; he also died on Friday the thirteenth at thirteen minutes before midnight. As Sigmund Freud wrote, 'Superstition is in large part the expectation of trouble; and a person who has harboured frequent evil wishes against others, but has been brought up to be good and has therefore repressed such wishes into the unconscious, will be especially ready to expect punishment for his unconscious wickedness in the form of trouble threatening him from without.'
True stories of prison breaks including those of Frank Abagnale, whose story is told in Catch Me If You Can; Henri Charrière who claimed to have escaped from the supposedly inescapable Devil's Island - the true story as opposed to his questionable memoir, Papillon; Bud Day, said to be the only US serviceman ever to have escaped to South Vietnam; the six prisoners who escaped from Death Row in Mecklenburg Correctional Center; and Pascal Payeret, the French armed robber who escaped not once, but twice from French prisons with the help of a helicopter.
