"But here, it's only the ninth turning, and the leaves are spread all over the earth, everything dull and lifeless. Seven months of winter, is that too large a guess? Seven months of cold, lifeless barrenness? What if there is nothing beautiful in this oncoming death of winter. Seven months of it. Barren. Empty. Lifeless. There is no one around to lighten it, no village to celebrate with, no family to cheer. Just us, three of us alone in the vastness of the empty forest, and we know each other too well to cheer. There is only emptiness, and footsteps in the leaves."

S. T. Joshi is one of the leading authorities on weird fiction, and in this World Fantasy Award-winning study he provides a comprehensive history and analysis of the entire range of weird fiction from antiquity to the present day. For the first time, the full contents of both print volumes are available together in a single electronic book file. As Joshi’s landmark survey of supernatural literature begins, the focus is on weird fiction from the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1700 B.C.E.) to the end of the nineteenth century. Joshi focuses on key works of Greek and Latin literature that introduced many long-enduring motifs in weird literature. Moving on down through Dante, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton, Joshi provides a compact overview of the several different strands of Gothic fiction, beginning with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and culminating with Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), with detailed discussions of Ann Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis, Mary Shelley, and others. Edgar Allan Poe was a watershed in the history of weird fiction, and his fusion of psychological and supernatural horror was pioneering. He was followed by the prolific Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu, numerous practitioners of the English ghost story (including Henry James and Edith Wharton), and the cynical Ambrose Bierce. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and others made weird fiction a genre that fused popular appeal with aesthetic richness. As S. T. Joshi’s landmark history of supernatural fiction continues, the focus is placed on an incredible efflorescence of weird writing at the turn of the twentieth century—a period that many scholars have referred to as the Golden Age of weird fiction. Such figures as Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft elevated weird fiction to a level of high artistry never seen before, and their work continues to inspire writers up to the present day. Other authors such as Walter de la Mare, L. P. Hartley, and William Hope Hodgson also contributed important novels and tales. Lovecraft’s influence extended to such of his contemporaries and successors as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, and Fritz Leiber. In the years following Lovecraft’s death, a new crop of writers—led by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson, and Charles Beaumont—brought horror down to earth and into the realm of ordinary life. Their work laid the groundwork for the extraordinary emergence of weird fiction as a best-selling phenomenon in the work of Ira Levin, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, and many others. At the same time, more literate figures such as Ramsey Campbell, T. E. D. Klein, and Thomas Ligotti continued to expand the boundaries of the weird in work of the highest literary polish. Today, such writers as Caitlín R. Kiernan, Dennis Etchison, and many others continue to probe new directions in weird fiction.

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

Horror is unlike any other literary genre. It seeks to provoke uniquely strong reactions, such as fear, shock, dread, or disgust, and yet remains very popular. Horror is most readily associated with the film industry, but horrific short stories and novels have been wildly loved by readers for well over two centuries. Despite its persistent popularity, until now there has been no up-to-date history of horror fiction for the general reader. This book offers a chronological overview of the genre in fiction and explores its development and mutations over the past 250 years. It also challenges the common misjudgement that horror fiction is necessarily frivolous or dispensable. Leading experts on Gothic and horror literature introduce readers to classics of the genre as well as exciting texts they may not have encountered before. The topics examined include: horror's roots in the Gothic romance and antebellum American fiction; the penny dreadful and sensation novels of Victorian England; fin-de-siècle ghost stories; decadent fiction and the weird; the familial horrors of the Cold War era; the publishing boom of the 1980s; the establishment of contemporary horror auteurs; and the post-millennial zombie trend.

The first multi-disciplinary scholarly consideration of the Victorian Gothic These 14 chapters, each written by an acknowledged expert in the field, provide an invaluable insight into the complex and various Gothic forms of the nineteenth century. Covering a range of diverse contexts, the chapters focus on science, medicine, Queer theory, imperialism, nationalism, and gender. Together with further chapters on the ghost story, realism, the fin de siècle, pulp fictions, sensation fiction, and the Victorian way of death, the Companion provides the most complete overview of the Victorian Gothic to date.The book is an essential resource for students and scholars working on the Gothic, Victorian literature and culture, and critical theory.Key Features*First multi-authored thorough exploration of the Victorian Gothic*Original research in all chapters*Sets the agenda for future scholarship in the field*Pedagogically awareKey WordsVictorian, Gothic, Science, Gender, Nationalism, Death, Supernatural, Ghost, Death

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his large converted abbey home. He and many other wealthy nobles, hold a masquerade ball using seven rooms in the abbey, each decorated with a different color. The last one is velvet black. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. The story follows many traditions of Gothic fiction and is often analyzed as an allegory about the inevitability of death, though some critics advise against an allegorical reading. Many different interpretations have been presented, as well as attempts to identify the true nature of the titular disease. Librarian's note: this entry relates to the story "The Masque of the Red Death." Collections of short stories by the author can be found elsewhere on Goodreads.

Celaena has survived deadly contests and shattering heartbreak-but at an unspeakable cost. Now, she must travel to a new land to confront her darkest truth . . . a truth about her heritage that could change her life-and her future-forever. Meanwhile, brutal and monstrous forces are gathering on the horizon, intent on enslaving her world. Will Celaena find the strength to not only fight her inner demons, but to take on the evil that is about to be unleashed?

A beautiful reclamation of a pioneering South Asian actress captures her glittering, complicated life and lasting impact on Hollywood. Merle Oberon attained Hollywood immortality with a nomination for a Best Leading Actress Oscar for her role in the 1936 film The Dark Angel. It was the first time a performer of color had received an acting nomination at the Academy Awards, but because Oberon concealed her South Asian identity throughout her lifetime and “passed” for white, very few people knew it. In Love, Queenie, the first biography in more than forty years of the India-born actress, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and previously untapped archival research to animate the Wuthering Heights star’s hard-won journey to fame. From an upbringing in poverty, she rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite during Hollywood’s racially exclusionary Golden Age. A major biography of an often-overlooked talent, Love, Queenie empathetically captures one woman’s story while illuminating truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.

Alone with her new husband on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman, combing the beach, finds an odd aluminum container washed up out of the lagoon, and beside it on the sand something glitters—a gold tooth in a scorched human skull. The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the bestseller Helter Skelter, was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what really happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise. And the Sea Will Tell reconstructs the events and subsequent trial of a riveting true murder mystery, and probes into the dark heart of a serpentine scenario of death.