Showing titles in Occult

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods.

Palermo 1632: Giulia is thirteen years old when she learns her mother Teofania's greatest secret. Her mother knows how to brew an undetectable lethal poison, which she uses to free the broken and abused women of Palermo. Now Teofania wants to pass her recipe on to her daughter, and Giulia soon learns that, in a time when women have no voice, justice is sometimes best served in a cup of wine. Rome, 1659: Years later, Giulia ends up alone and poor in Rome. Within the alleys and shadows of the Eternal City, she forms her own circle of female poisoners.

We each inhabit many worlds, often at the same time. From worlds on the inside to the world on a cosmic scale. Worlds imposed on us, and worlds of our own making. In time, though, all worlds will end. With Skidding Into Oblivion, his fifth collection, award-winning author Brian Hodge brings together his most concentrated assortment yet. It includes all of the best picks and awards finalists. All stories have one thing in common: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we don’t feel fine at all.

An ancient legend comes to life when a savage creature stalks a terrified girl through the jungle. A mission to Mars takes a grisly turn as the last surviving astronaut encounters horror beyond comprehension. And the shadows that lurk in a young boy’s bedroom become sinister protectors, lashing out at the child’s cruel and dysfunctional family.

LONDON, 1891. Elizabeth Whittle and William Grant enjoy scalping London’s bourgeoisie, taking on the personas of grand spiritist Cerulia Trent and her agent to connect the living and the dead. When a detective arrives, sniffing out fraud with a scientifically minded spiritualist society, the duo decides to take one last job before escaping to the continent. However, their final séance ends horrifically … and soon Lizzie isn’t Lizzie anymore.

After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world. But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels, NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help.

Private First Class Aiden Kaas has enlisted in the Marines for all the wrong reasons. Now deployed to Iraq at the age of 19, he just wants to put in his time and serve out his enlistment. However, after being bitten by a seemingly rabid mujahideen, he finds himself suffering from a strange illness, one with consequences beyond his wildest imaginings. As the disease ravages his body and exposes him to dangers far darker than active combat, Aiden discovers what it means to come of age.

Lilly is running from what is done: her demons. Alone, she finds herself in the capable hands of David, proprietor of a reclusive shelter. Tormented by visions of the damned, Lilly struggles to fit in, shadows cast from the past, fear of where the future lies ... but something isn’t right. There is something odd about David. The police are omnipresent. The soil bleeds.

Golgotha Falls lies in a desolate and blighted valley in Northern Massachusetts where, in 1919, Father Bernard K. Lovell, priest of the Church of the Eternal Sorrows, fell prey to isolation and despair and entered a dark night of madness, necrophilia, and suicide. Then, in 1978, a Jesuit priest was sent to reconsecrate the church but found himself seized in the foul grip of bestiality. Now, Father Malcolm, a saintly priest, has arrived to do battle with the forces of Satan that have possessed the church.

A young woman’s night-time escapade goes eerily wrong. A man is forced to relive the horrible accident that tore his family apart over and over again. An underground thrill through ancient catacombs proves disastrously horrific. A young boy is haunted by the scarecrow in the fields behind his home. And a woman is revisited by the ghost of a psychotic killer in the most dreadful of ways. Scare Street brings you some of the best short horror stories by authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Eric Whittle, Sara Clancy, and A. I. Nasser, all in one book.

Valroy will let nothing block his path to the Unseelie Crown. He is willing to stop at nothing to see both Tir n’Aill and Earth as his dominion, and he'll crush the self-righteous Seelie beneath his bootheels. He had wished for Abigail to stand beside him as his queen, but that went terribly wrong when she chose death over becoming his bride. It was a setback, certainly, but not one he could not overcome. Yet despite being wrenched from the song of life, Abigail returns to Tir n’Aill, only to be hunted by both Seelie and Unseelie alike.

In 1218 an extraordinary princess is born. Her mystical powers and unquenchable spirit will alter the course of history. Raised by her fiercely Welsh nurse to support the Celtic cause against the predatory English king, Princess Eleyne is taught to worship the old gods and to look into the future and the past. However, unable to identify time and place in her terrifying visions, she is powerless to avert forthcoming tragedy.

Deep below the hills of the Buckinghamshire countryside, the infamous Hellfire Caves house a pleasure palace for the idle rich – a secret society steeped in satanism, opium and debauchery of the highest order. When the club’s warden, Antony Pennington, is brutally murdered, his bastard sister, Dora, must follow the clues to decode who the killer is, aided by an unexpected ally – ex-Army officer, former opium addict and son of a Viscount, Dr Jacob Sandys.

How do you keep the people you care about safe from enemies you can’t remember? Ten years ago, Nate Garrett awoke on a cold warehouse floor with no memory of his past and the only clues to his identity were a piece of paper with his name on it and a propensity toward magic. Now he’s a powerful sorcerer and a successful thief for hire, but it turns out that those who stole his memories aren’t done with him yet. When they cause a job to go bad, threatening a sixteen-year-old girl, Nate swears to protect her.

Ever since their on-again, off-again college romance, Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with charismatic but reckless Silas, who has been chasing the next big high since graduation. When he texts her to spring him out of rehab, she knows enough is enough. She is ready to start a career, make new friends, and meet a great guy—even if that means cutting Silas off. But when Silas turns up dead from an overdose, Erin’s world falls apart.

Christmas Eve,1999: A brutal tragedy occurs during Midnight Mass at the newly built church on Sunny Branch Way. Nora Hill, a woman still haunted by her past, suspects this isn't just a random act of violence, but the omen she's been dreading. As shocking visions continue to plague her, Nora is determined to protect her daughter, Maren, and bring some semblance of peace to their fractured lives, hoping to find her own happiness again.

Kat Dubois is immortal, and she's retired. She's long since hung up her sword and left assassinating immortals to someone else...anyone else. She's now a hard drinking, sass-flinging Seattle tattoo artist with the innate ability to read people's fortunes using her charmed deck of tarot cards. Her days of bloodshed are over, and she has nothing but time - an eternity, in fact - to hide from her past. Until someone from her past shows up on her doorstep with news that her beloved older brother and mentor, Dominic, has gone missing.

A serial killer stalks the ice-glazed streets. Half-frozen deadheads choke the avenues. Infected vermin rise from the labyrinth of sewer systems, hungry for warm flesh. And a handful of survivors struggle to escape and find safety in a world overrun with zombies. In his hunt for the monster known as Tenner, Scott must contend with all of this and more—before things get even worse. Welcome to Hellifax.

The god killer has escaped from her chains on Prometheus' Rock. Aura from Dimension Beta killed Athena and unleashed eldritch horrors on Gaia Beta with the Apocalypse weapons stolen from Hephaestus' lost armory on Oblivion. She executed a plan that Cain never saw coming and even fooled the gods. The gods are too busy fighting minions of the Elder Things in the divine realm to care about an escaped elf, no matter how dangerous she is. Since no one else will track down Aura Beta, Cain decides to take on the task himself.

Rape. Murder. Brain-eating. Never before has a work of fiction dared to delve so deeply into the realms of perversion, sexual dementia, and bad taste. Who is he? What is he? An inbred homicidal pervert? A supernatural psychopath? Who or whatever he is, he's on a roll now, raging out of the Virginia backwoods and leaving in his wake a trail of blood, guts, and disgust far beyond the limits of your reckoning.