Horror Literature History

New research has uncovered deeply buried military secrets—both the Allied and Axis special operations during WWII included monsters. Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk? Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the US drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju? This collection takes real events from World War II and injects them with fantastical creatures that mirror the “unreality” of war itself. Each story—and two poems—feature mythical, mystical, and otherwise unexplainable beings that change the course of history.

Shoggoths attack in this adrenaline-pumping novel set in the world of H. P. Lovecraft, where the horrors of the cosmos know no limits… It was in a way humanoid, as it stood on two legs and possessed two arms that ended in delicate digits that I would dare to call hands. Its skin was a pale blue, like the eggs of a robin, and curiously dry looking. The head was massive with a huge bulbous cranium, a large lipless mouth, and three blood red eyes that stared out at the world with nothing but hate.

At the height of the Vietnam War, a search and rescue team known as Vulture Squad is sent to an isolated jungle valley to uncover the fate of a missing Green Beret platoon. As Vulture Squad hunts through the primordial depths of the valley, they discover ancient horrors that not only threaten to unravel their minds, but to end their lives, as well.

William Hope Hodgson was born in Essex, England on November 15th, 1877. Over his short career he produced a large body of work which explored and covered many genres. From horror, to science fiction, to stories on the sea, where he had spent much of his early life.

From the author of the best-selling Contagion comes a new novel in the Living Dead series. When deadly earthquakes devastate the Caribbean, an ancient disease of almost unimaginable destructive force engulfs the globe. As the earth continues to convulse and the seas encroach, the dead rise with an appetite for human flesh. Survivors must learn to navigate a world in which they are now the hunted.

A wickedly satirical and outrageous thriller about globalization and marketing hype, Jennifer Government is the best novel in the world ever. "Funny and clever.... A kind of ad-world version of Dr. Strangelove.... [Barry] unleashes enough wit and surprise to make his story a total blast."...

In the thrilling conclusion to Generation Z, Peter Meredith has created a work of unsurpassed vision, power, and imagination. The Queen Unchained transports us to a world filled with zombies that are unlike any we have ever experienced before. But there are worse things than the undead. The Black Captain emerges victorious at every turn.

Between 1925-27, H.P. Lovecraft wrote Supernatural Horror in Literature, an extended essay about about the history of the weird tale. In it he describes supernatural horror from its earliest manifestations up to the 1920s. Lovecraft offers his own candid opinions on the merits (and deficiencies) of the world's canon of strange literature. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society recorded the essay as an audiobook. Read by society founders Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the recording is approximately three hours long.

Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.

After vowing never to return, Kara Wade is back in New York City. She’s come to claim the body of her twin sister, Kelly, and to find out how she died. No secret as to the cause of death - a nearly nude, 12-story plunge from a room in the Plaza Hotel - but Kara is determined to learn what led to that plunge. Enlisting the help of an old lover, now an NYPD detective, Kara delves into her sister’s life. Startling and bizarre facts begin to surface. Instead of answers, Kara finds more questions. Who was the stranger Kelly became during the months prior to her death?

From the bestselling, award-winning master of uncanny fiction comes a defining work, twenty years in the making—a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic of personal grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy. Maur’s life has been shaped by loss: an apparently ordinary tragedy. But...

It’s 1914. The Great War grips the world - and from the Western Front a strange story emerges...a story of St. George and a brigade of angels descending from heaven to fight beside the beleaguered British troops. But can there be any truth to it?

On the night of July 15, 1903, Nikola Tesla powered up his 190-foot tower in Wardenclyffe on Long Island's North shore. The bolts of energy radiating from the apical dome were visible as far away as New Haven, Connecticut. This was the first and last time anyone would witness such a display. Three years later, broke and unable to secure further funding, Tesla abandoned the Wardenclyffe tower and his dream of worldwide wireless power. He returned to Manhattan where he promptly suffered a nervous breakdown. So say the history books.

A week after her mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset. Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians.

Bram Stoker kept secret a tale even more terrifying than Dracula. It begins among the Carpathian peaks, when an intrepid explorer discovers a mysterious golden box. She brings it back with her to the foggy streets of Victorian London, unaware of its dangerous power…or that an evil beyond imagining has already taken root in the city. Stoker, a successful theater manager but frustrated writer, is drawn into a deadly web spun by the wealthy founders of a mission house for the poor. Far from a safe haven, the mission harbors a dark and terrifying secret.

One of Esquire's Best Horror Books of 2024 One of Crime Reads' Best Gothic Novels of 2024 In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse...

The German stranglehold on the town of Bastogne has been released, only for the living dead to rise up and take their place. A ragtag group of men fight their way out of the chaos and make a frantic escape from the rubble and ruin. One of them, British soldier Lieutenant Robert Wilkins, uncovers crucial information about the source of the zombie scourge.

HISTORY TELLS US:

In 1888, the elusive serial killer, Jack the Ripper, terrorized the Whitechapel District of London. Scotland Yard was baffled. But, that same year, Jack met his match when he crossed paths with the dreadfully evil ...really awful...Count Dracula. On July 22, 1934, notorious bank robber John Dillinger was shot "dead" by the FBI in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater.

As the Blue Jays edge closer to their first World Series win since 1993, the pressure on Toronto feels like it's about to explode. Between the separatist bombings and violent protests at castration clinics, you'd think Toronto had enough to deal with. But when a doomsday cult promising freedom for everyone sweeps the city, high strangeness reigns, and it gets even weirder. Grassfinch is a psychedelic fever dream filled with alien abduction, psychics, organ theft, and, of course, raccoons.

Conventional wisdom has it that the origins of the horror genre are found in the nineteenth century, in works like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this paradigm-shaking new book, Bible scholar and cultural historian Brandon Grafius argues that the Bible is, among other things, the world's first work of horror literature. The tropes and themes that we find in slasher movies, body horror, folk horror, and zombie apocalypses were kickstarted by the Bible. Before Godzilla, there were the monsters arising from the sea in the book of Daniel.