Welcome to the Black Triangle, New York's decadent district of opium dens, gambling casinos, and back-room abortions. The queen of this unsavory neighborhood is Black Lena Shanks, whose family leads a ring of female criminals - women skilled in the art of cruelty. Only a few blocks away, amidst the elegant mansions and lily-white reputations of Gramercy Park and Washington Square, lives Judge James Stallworth. On a crusade to crush Lena's evil empire, the judge has sentenced three of her family members to death. And now she wants revenge.

Geoff Ashden is a regular guy trying to make an honest living as an antique dealer, but who has an uncanny knack for finding cursed objects and haunted places: a sinister Georgian clock carved with obscene and satanic designs, a hideous doll with deadly powers, a pair of old spectacles that let their wearer see a little too clearly, an ugly house with a terrifying secret, a church full of graffiti scrawled in decomposing human flesh.

"What are the possibilities of my strength? That is a thought I have never had before. What if some morning as the old woman stood at the head of the staircase she were suddenly to feel a weight thrusting against the back of her legs? What if she were to lunge forward, grasping at the air, striking her thin skull against the edge of a stair? What would become of me if she were found unmoving at the bottom of the stairway?" Such are the thoughts of Baxter, a sociopathic bull terrier on the hunt for the perfect master.

When a rifle range accident leaves Dean Howell disfigured and in a vegetative state, his wife Sarah finds her dreary life in Pine Cone, Alabama made even worse. After long and tedious days on the assembly line, she returns home to care for her corpse-like husband while enduring her loathsome and hateful mother-in-law, Jo. Jo blames the entire town for her son's mishap, and when she gives a strange piece of jewelry to the man she believes most responsible, a series of gruesome deaths is set in motion.

David Warwick, an Englishman living in New York, has a sudden premonition that his twin brother, Colin, is in danger. He returns to England and learns the shocking truth: both Colin and his young bride Helen have died ghastly deaths - deaths that no one in the village wants to talk about.

Though best known for his classic novel of Edwardian childhood The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley was also a master of supernatural and macabre fiction, the best of which is collected in The Travelling Grave and Other Stories. This volume demonstrates Hartley's versatility, ranging from traditional ghost stories like "Feet Foremost" and "The Cotillon" to the wonderfully black humor of the horror masterpieces "The Travelling Grave" and "The Killing Bottle". Originally published in 1948 and long out of print, this collection features 12 of Hartley's best tales.

Ben and Marian Rolfe are desperate to escape a stifling summer in their tiny Brooklyn apartment, so when they get the chance to rent a mansion in upstate New York for the entire summer for only $900, it's an offer that's too good to refuse. There's only one catch: behind a strange and intricately carved door in a distant wing of the house lives elderly Mrs. Allardyce, and the Rolfes will be responsible for preparing her meals. But Mrs. Allardyce never seems to emerge from her room, and it soon becomes clear that something weird and terrifying is happening in the house.

J. B. Priestley (1894-1984) was a versatile and prolific novelist and playwright, but in The Other Place (1953), he shows an unexpected talent, proving himself a master of the weird tale. In "The Grey Ones", Mr. Patson visits a psychiatrist after he becomes convinced that a race of demons masquerading as men are plotting the overthrow of the human race...but what if he's not insane? In "Guest of Honour", a banquet speech becomes a horrifying affair when the keynote speaker realizes his audience is made up of monstrous and menacing creatures. 

Years earlier, John Tracker fled the insanity of his family and their house, a centuries-old monstrosity that his grandfather Theophilus rigged full of hallucinatory tricks and vicious death traps designed to capture the Devil. Now middle-aged, John receives word that the place is to be demolished to make way for a freeway, and he decides to revisit it with his girlfriend Amy Griffith before its destruction. But when a blizzard traps them inside the house, they will be forced to contend with the dangers hidden within: strange time-shifts, murderous traps, and more.

"If you were to go into your bedroom tonight - perhaps by candlelight - and sit quietly before the large mirror, you might see what I have seen." The image in the mirror of 14-year-old Elizabeth Cuttner is that of the fey and long-dead Frances, who introduces Elizabeth to her chilling world of the supernatural. Through Frances, Elizabeth learns what it is to wield power - power of a kind that is malevolent and seemingly invincible. Power that begins with the killing of her parents...

One of the great pulp writers, Fredric Brown (1906-1972) combined a flair for the horrific, a quirky sense of humor, and a wild imagination, and published many classic novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. But he was also a master of the "short-short story", tales only a page or two in length, but hard-hitting and with a wicked twist at the end.

One of the preeminent writers of weird fiction, Robert Aickman is celebrated for his unsettling and often ambiguous "strange stories", but he once wrote that "those, if any, who wish to know more about me, should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters," his only novel, originally published in 1964.

The Norfolk coast made for a perfect holiday - as long as the sun still shone. But when the rain came, the creatures left the shadows. Spectres from the past tortured James Hildebrand's mind. His blackest nightmares were crowded with malevolent, coiling images of decay. Then, suddenly, he knew the threat was real. The dead alone could not quench their hunger. And, for the living, the horrors that fed and multiplied in the darkness of the night became more terrible with the dawn.

The 13 stories collected here represent the complete short fiction of Bernard Taylor, one of the best-selling horror authors of the 1970s and 80s, author of The Godsend and Mother’s Boys, both adapted for film, and Sweetheart, Sweetheart, hailed by Charles L. Grant as the finest ghost story of all time. In these tales, which often feature an unexpectedly cruel or bizarre twist, Taylor offers a clever mixture of horror and black humor that will delight fans of the genre.

When a yacht being used to smuggle drugs sinks, the six smugglers must seek refuge the only place they can - an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the sea. But there's something strange about this oil rig. For one thing, it looks more like a scientific research facility. And for another, there are no people - only piles of clothes with no bodies in them. It soon becomes clear that something is loose on the rig. Something deadly. It's stalking them, one by one, but it's not just a horrible death they have to fear - it's what comes after.