Wisteria Cottage (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
Wisteria Cottage (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: Robert M. Coates

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9781948405607

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To Florence Hackett and her daughters Elinor and Louisa, Richard Baurie, a handsome young bookstore clerk and aspiring poet, seems a little odd but harmless enough. With his amusing conversation and his eager-to-please attitude, Richard works his way into the Hacketts' confidence until he is almost one of the family. When he suggests they rent Wisteria Cottage, a charming seaside residence, it seems to promise a summer of pleasant companionship and fun. What the Hacketts don't know is that Richard is a deeply troubled individual, recently released from a mental institution, and that their relaxing summer holiday will soon turn into a terrifying nightmare.... A brilliant psychological examination of criminal insanity, Robert M. Coates's Wisteria Cottage (1948) earned rave reviews on its initial publication and was adapted for the 1958 film noir Edge of Fury. As Mathilde Roza writes in the introduction to this new edition, "the novel has lost nothing of its remarkable power of taking the reader into a disturbed man's world." "A brilliant tour de force."--The New York Times Book Review "Top peaks of terror . . . a grade-A psycho-thriller!"⁠--Saturday Review "As direct and frightening as the uncoiling of a serpent."⁠--Commonweal

The Six Queer Things (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
The Six Queer Things (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: Christopher St John Sprigg

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781948405003

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Desperate to escape living with her miserly uncle, Marjorie Easton eagerly accepts a job offer from the strange Michael Crispin despite knowing nothing of the employment except that it is well-paid and includes some kind of research. Much to her surprise, the "research" involves sEances and requires Marjorie to develop her own psychic gifts to assist in communing with the dead. Soon she begins to suffer from terrible nightmares and seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but the real terror begins when Crispin dies under mysterious circumstances during one of the sEances. Who is responsible? And what is the significance of the "six queer things" the police discover among his belongings after his death? A Golden Age mystery with echoes of the occult, The Six Queer Things (1937) was Christopher St. John Sprigg's seventh and final novel, published after his death in the Spanish Civil War. This first-ever reprint of his scarcest novel features a reproduction of the original jacket art. "A rip-roaring tale of mediums, psychic research and the powers of darkness." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "[A] hair-raising excursion into the occult, with trimmings of insanity, racketeering in souls, palpitating action, and efficient British-type sleuthing." - Saturday Review "Mystery and horror, laid on with a trowel." - New York Times

November Night Tales
November Night Tales

Author: Henry Chapman Mercer

Publisher:

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781943910045

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The six origninal stories from the first edition of 1928 plus Well of Monte Corbo, found after his death.

Thanatrauma
Thanatrauma

Author: Steve Rasnic Tem

Publisher:

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781954321052

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"All my life I've dreamed of the dead." Thanatrauma: the dread of it erodes you, the shadows waiting at the end, the impending conclusion, the troubling dream from which you will not wake. These 21 stories - four published here for the first time - explore some of our fundamental fears: death, loss, grief, and aging. In "Reflections in Black," a man takes a phantasmagoric Halloween journey in search of a former love. In "The Parts Man," a man enters a desperate contract with a sinister entity in a long, vintage automobile. The darkly beautiful "The Dead Outside My Door" is a haunting post-apocalyptic tale unlike any you've ever read. Other offerings include "Whatever You Want," in which a Christmas wish has terrible consequences; "Torn," a bizarre version of a highly personalized Hell; and "The Way Station," a tribute to the legendary Stefan Grabinski. Also included is "August Freeze," from the lost, undistributed Winter 1985 issue of Weird Tales. Winner of the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards, Steve Rasnic Tem has established himself as one of today's finest writers of horror and weird fiction. In this new collection, which is by turns chilling and thought-provoking, Tem is at his very best.

The Outlaw Years
The Outlaw Years

Author: Robert M. Coates

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 9780803263185

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The Natchez Trace is remarkable in American history for the legends and tales surrounding it. During the first half of the nineteenth century, travelers--traders, settlers, andøthe occasional war party or fugitive from justice--followed its course from the Appalachians to the lower Mississippi, from Knoxville to Natchez. In this vibrant and energetic account, the author has mined both history and legend for startling tales of the near-mythical thieves, cutthroats, and confidence men once reported to have stalked their unsuspecting victims along this frontier trail--the terrible Harpe brothers, who came to a satisfactorily bad end; Samuel Mason, a thief done in by other thieves; and John Murrell, whose reputed schemes threw the South into a paroxysm of fear. Robert M. Coates retells the stories of these and other "land pirates" in chilling and ominous detail, preserving for us the tales once whispered on the edges of the dark southern woods nearly two centuries ago.

The Eater of Darkness
The Eater of Darkness

Author: Robert M. Coates

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 194795122X

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Considered by many to be one of the most unique, avant-garde works published by the Lost Generation, The Eater of Darkness is hailed as the first Dada novel published by an American. Previously out of print for more than fifty years, this new edition has been updated with a new introduction and contemporary material that pays homage to the groundbreaking life and career of author Robert M. Coates. “One of the cleverest tours de force ever contrived by the pen of a wit.” Young, charming, and fresh from a passionate jaunt in France, Charles Dograr leaves behind his French lover and returns to America to spend a year in New York City. Eager to make his year in New York one to remember, Charles leaves his boarding house room one night in search of an adventure. As he wanders, Charles stumbles into the living quarters of Picrolas, an eccentric, crazed scientist who refers to himself as “the Eater of Darkness.” Picrolas reveals his prized invention: a remote-control x-ray machine, designed to electrocute and kill at random by shooting “x-ray bullets” into the brains of Picrolas’ intended targets. Tricked by Picrolas into releasing the trigger, Charles is instantly taken by the machine and the power it holds. After a string of murders ensue, Charles agrees to help Picrolas plot an elaborate bank heist, using the x-ray bullets to kill the bank’s guards and any unlucky witnesses that happen to be on the street during the heist. As the city is terrorized by these mysterious murders, Charles becomes entangled in the fallout. Characters disappear and reappear; events spiral in a disorienting, antirealistic fashion; and genres collide in an unpredictable, dreamlike conclusion. Often compared to Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, The Eater of Darkness is many things: both an acclaimed crime novel and a study in surrealist fiction; an experimentation of style, structure, and syntax; and an innovative, avant-garde concoction from an author who wrote years ahead of his time.

Yesterday's Burdens
Yesterday's Burdens

Author: Robert Myron Coates

Publisher:

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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A memorable period piece, remarkable for its vivid language and thematic structure, "Yesterday" "s Burdens "is an obsessive Story of New York life in the 1930s. Malcolm Cowley, a close personal friend of Robert Coates, has pointed out in his Afterword to this new edition the aptness of this novel to its time. "Yesterday s Burdens "is an informal story of an unconventional young man of the 1930s. The central character, Henderson, typifies the successful young New Yorker, whose life style reflects the restless, seeking, discontented mood of his time. With him, the reader crisscrosses Manhattan, visits speakeasies, crashes parties, and participates in Henderson s sexual activities and his possible suicide (the novel has three endings). Frankly experimental in technique, the novel attempts the universal in its appeal. Readers today no doubt will appreciate the unexpected tenderness and passion with which the author endows his very ordinary characters."

Something Rich and Strange
Something Rich and Strange

Author: Ron Rash

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0062349368

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From the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling award-winning author of Serena and The Cove, thirty of his finest short stories, collected in one volume. No one captures the complexities of Appalachia—a rugged, brutal landscape of exquisite beauty—as evocatively and indelibly as author and poet Ron Rash. Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, two O Henry prizes, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Rash brilliantly illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and new south, tenderness and violence, man and nature. Though the focus is regional, the themes of Rash’s work are universal, striking an emotional chord that resonates deep within each of our lives. Something Rich and Strange showcases this revered master’s artistry and craftsmanship in thirty stories culled from his previously published collections Nothing Gold Can Stay, Burning Bright, Chemistry, and The Night New Jesus Fell to Earth. Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash’s dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people—men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them. Filled with suspense and myth, hope and heartbreak, told in language that flows like “shimmering, liquid poetry” (Atlanta Journal Constitution), Something Rich and Strange is an iconic work from an American literary virtuoso.