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Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) was one of the most popular and prolific English authors of his time, best known for his historical fiction and novels for boys. But it was in the field of the macabre and supernatural that Walpole was at his best, and this collection of 16 tales contains many of his finest.

Dr. John Gladstone, a scientist in Victorian London, is thrust into the world of the vampire after his carriage runs over a young man of angelic beauty named Niccolo. When Niccolo kidnaps Gladstone's child and vanishes, the doctor must go in pursuit, with the help of his daughter, Ursula, who is enticed by the lure of eternal life, and Lady Hespeth, whose demure exterior hides a dangerous obsession. Why are the vampires taking children, and what is the connection to Gladstone's experiments with a deadly virus?

Sally Ann and Martha. Two women, searching for love. Finding terror. During a terrifying storm, a gentle childhood is destroyed by a twisted man who promises love but delivers nightmare. In the lightless depths of an underground labyrinth, unseen creatures lie in wait for an innocent traveler, cold skeletal hands stretched out in welcome. There is horror in darkness - horror made greater when darkness loves us.

Robert Bloch gave us fiction's most famous knife-wielding maniac in Psycho's Norman Bates, and in The Night of the Ripper (1984), this master of horror fiction offers his own unique take on history's most infamous unsolved murder case.

Hovern Bog. People live in terror of it - especially the residents of Fenchurch St. Jude, the little village located at its edge. They think of it as a living being. When 2,000-year-old bodies are recovered from the bog, perfectly preserved, it is the discovery of a lifetime for archaeologist David Macauley. But close examination of the corpses reveals a curious fact: all were cruelly, mysteriously murdered, gnawed to death by some unimaginable creature.

Hailed by critic E. F. Bleiler as a "landmark book in the history of fantasy," Mervyn Wall's classic The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) is set in 10th century Ireland, where the forces of evil have launched an assault on the monastery of Clonmacnoise. Their task is made easier by the fact that one hapless monk, the simple-minded Brother Fursey, cannot manage to pronounce the necessary words of exorcism.

It was just an ordinary garbage dump on peaceful Cape Cod. No one ever imagined that conditions were perfect for breeding, that it was a warm womb, fetid, moist, and with food so plentiful that everything creeping, crawling, and slithering could gorge to satiation. Then a change in poison control was made, resulting in an unforeseen mutation. Now the giant mutant cockroaches are ready to leave their nest - in search of 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.

Pleasant Dreams (1960), published just a year after his more famous Psycho, finds Robert Bloch leaving behind his earlier Lovecraftian influences to find his own style and voice in this collection of masterful tales, in which the horror is often laced with an undercurrent of pitch-black humor.

Gerard Sorme thinks the key to a more meaningful life lies in an expansion of human consciousness, and he believes that one way to expand it is through sexual experiences. He sets out to record in diary form his sexual encounters with various women: the middle-aged Gertrude, her teenage niece Caroline, and Diana, the wife of a mad composer determined to adapt Varney the Vampire into an opera. But Sorme finds his beliefs and ideas challenged when he meets the fascinating and dangerous Caradoc Cunningham.

An expedition in South America uncovers a terrifying race of men without bones who literally suck the life out of their prey. A man in 20th-century London makes a horrifying discovery about a monster found off the coast of Brighton in 1745. A sea captain goes ashore on a deserted island and finds what seem to be the bones of a previously unknown species of monster, only to learn that the bones tell a much more tragic tale than he could ever have imagined.

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.

A young family receives a welcome surprise when old Uncle Ian dies and leaves them a cottage in north Wales. For Ian's nephew and his wife, Ann, it seems a stroke of incredible good fortune, enabling them to leave their unfulfilling lives in the city for a newfound freedom in the remote seaside cottage. There's just one catch. Uncle Ian's will has a strange condition: The couple must care for his pet cormorant or forfeit the bequest.

Angelina is a killer. You'd never know it to look at her — until you look into her eyes. Angelina doesn't kill out of hatred or fear — she kills out of love, bringing solace to her victims, guided by the seductive Voice that speaks only to her. Angelina offers you eternal peace — at the cost of your soul!

On the day Concord Webster turned eighteen, the Devil died. The Devil's real name was Judge Martin, but Concord's mother called him the Devil. She said he boiled babies for dinner and made lampshades out of human skin. So why did she, who hated him so venomously, have a key to his house? The key will unlock more than just Judge's front door. It will also unlock a multitude of stories - where magic children talk to crows, men disappear in piles of leaves, and James Dean lookalikes kiss in dark alleys - and reveal a secret history that will change Concord's life forever.

In a dateless future, a seemingly benevolent totalitarian state has eliminated poverty, crime, war, and religious intolerance and brought the happiness of conformity to its people. Professor Burden thinks he too is a loyal citizen, but the Department of Internal Examination discovers that he secretly values his individuality. Believing Burden to be a threat to the continued existence of the State, an examiner named Lark decides to cure him of his heresy and return him to being a normal, productive member of society.

Built by a madwoman during the Victorian era, Lake House is a 160-room mansion in the Adirondacks with stairways that lead nowhere, bizarre rooms designed to distort the senses, endless series of mazelike halls - and a century-long history of violent deaths. Lauren Montgomery, her son Garrett, and her new rock star husband Stephen Ransom have just arrived at Lake House, anticipating a long and relaxing summer. But what they don't know is that their rental home is actually a labyrinthine puzzle at whose center lurks something unspeakably evil....

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.

Having escaped being burnt at the stake, the reluctant sorcerer Fursey is back in this sequel, trying to make a quiet life for himself as a grocer in the realm of King Ethelwulf. But when his old enemies seize his wife, Fursey resolves to embrace evil and return to Ireland to reclaim her. Along the way, he'll have to contend with bloodthirsty Vikings, a melancholy vampire, an alcoholic wizard, a lovesick cow, and Satan himself, who is more determined than ever to get his hands on Fursey's soul.

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.