Showing results by publisher "Valancourt Books" in All Categories

"But come back soon", the sign said. Obviously it was a lie. The people in the grocery store just wanted to make sure he couldn't buy the spice he needed to make the recipe he'd selected for that night (recipes must be followed exactly). Obviously they wanted him to eat out...to meet the waitress, Marta, to see her horrible, unspeakable, unbearable ugliness. It was obvious to him: her maimed, twisted face was the living desire to be dead. He had to help Marta be dead.

When photographer Jonathan Brewster’s four-year-old daughter, Joanne, tells him about her new invisible friends, he doesn’t think too much about it. But then he sees them for himself: weird and uncanny images of the dead appearing in his photographs. The apparitions seem to have some connection to Childgrave, a remote village in upstate New York with a deadly secret dating back three centuries. Jonathan and Joanne feel themselves oddly drawn to Childgrave, but will they survive the horrors that await them there?

In this dark, haunting tale, Richard Merton recounts the story of his close friend, Tony, a young lawyer recently returned from the war and the subtle, sinister destruction of his personality by his servant, Barrett. Seeking ease and comfort, Tony hires Barrett to cater to his needs, not realizing that his new servant has a hidden agenda.

A female killer stalks the streets of London, sleeping with young men before slashing their throats and mutilating their bodies. The crimes have baffled the police and enraged Londoners, who demand the murderer's arrest. Mary, Duchess of Dove, a gentle young widow who is beloved by all who know her, seems an unlikely suspect, but the clues all point to her. The police have a variety of theories - perhaps the Duchess has been hypnotized or drugged, maybe she has an evil double, or could it be a Communist plot to discredit the peerage?

After Edward, a rising young author, pens a savage review of the new novel by the world-famous O.M. Tyrell, he is surprised to receive an invitation to visit the old man at his villa in the south of France. The night of their meeting, Tyrell dies, and soon after, Edward's career mysteriously starts to soar as he earns fame, fortune and critical acclaim. But despite his achievements, Edward seems haunted, even tormented.

Gerard Sorme has been hired by a New York publisher to edit a book on Esmond Donelly, notorious 18th-century Irish rake, friend of Rousseau, Boswell, and Horace Walpole, and author of a bawdy work on the deflowering of virgins. Sorme's quest for information on Donelly takes him to the home of a pyromaniac and flagellant in Baton Rouge, the labyrinthine corridors of the British Museum, and a remote castle in Ireland. As he digs deeper into the mystery of Donelly, Sorme uncovers a tale of intrigue, conspiracy, and murder involving a secret society, the Sect of the Phoenix.

Charles Ripley has a good job as an engineer, a pretty wife, and an expensive house in a fashionable San Diego suburb. But it isn't until Ruskin Marsh moves in next door that Ripley realizes how passionless his life really is. Marsh, a connoisseur of the arts, high-powered lawyer, model husband and father, and effortless seducer of women, is so supremely alive that Ripley finds himself irresistibly drawn to him. But after Marsh's arrival, local girls begin to vanish, marriages end violently, and horribly mutilated corpses are found.

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.

Richard Fountain, a promising young Cambridge scholar, went to the island of Crete to study ancient rites and pagan rituals before, suddenly and inexplicably, breaking off all contact with the outside world. Disturbing rumors have filtered their way back to England, whispering of blasphemous rituals and obscene orgies, hints of terrible crimes and wanton murder.

Out of the darkness of the fetid Hudson River, the undead rose to eat their victims alive.... Horror-movie monsters burst from late-night TV screens - to turn their viewers into victims. Biker gangs of decomposing corpses rode the highways of America, on the hunt for unsuspecting motorists.... Take a front seat in the baddest nightmare in town. Superstar Izzy Stark has the power to make your dreams - and nightmares - come true. He's the master of disaster, the guru of gore, the doctor of doom, the duke of death and destruction - and you can't escape this command performance.

Deep in the darkest part of the Norwegian woods stands Dead Man's Cabin, where 110 years ago a madman slew his sister and her lover, throwing their decapitated corpses in a nearby lake before drowning himself to join them in death. Ever since, the cabin has been cursed, and anyone who spends the night there is possessed by the killer's spirit and infected with his madness.

Released from a prison sentence for manslaughter, Sidney De Lakes returns home to West Virginia, where, in order to exorcise the memory of the lover he killed, he must keep his appointment with destiny in the shape of the man known as “the Renderer”. In this story of the powerful, violent passions of four young men in the remote Appalachians, James Purdy has crafted one of his most haunting and memorable works.

After the death of their infant son, Hal and Rowan Graham decide to leave the mad bustle of London and move to a quiet country refuge. And the rustic village of Moorstone seems perfect. Too perfect? Lying beneath a hill capped by an enormous stone, Moorstone hides mysterious secrets. Why does such a small town need such a large insane asylum? Why do the village's elderly residents leave everything they own to young newcomers they barely know? And why is everyone so friendly, so handsome, and so preoccupied with Hal and Rowan's health?

What Wendy Ross wants is simple - to live and love openly as a modern, independent woman. The problem is that according to her birth certificate her name is Roy Clark and she is a boy. Mistreated by her father, who is appalled at having such a child, misunderstood by her sister, whose clothes she has stolen, and committed to a mental hospital where she is mistaken for a homosexual, Wendy finally gets her chance to escape when she turns 21 and inherits a small legacy.

Dan Morley is an aspiring novelist who is well liked by everybody, but most of all by women. But nobody knows that he struggles with a dark and forbidden urge, an irresistible impulse to kill. And when the lust for murder comes over him and he twists his scarf around his victim's neck, there is no escape....

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.

Charles Lumley feels that he has been born in captivity - the captivity of his smugly conventional bourgeois upbringing. Now he has just graduated from university, only to make the discouraging discovery that his education has rendered him unfit for any kind of useful employment. Wondering what to do with the rest of his life and longing to escape, a chance remark overheard in a pub sets him off on a picaresque and hilarious tour of 1950s Britain. He undergoes a string of comic misadventures as he works as a window cleaner, a drug trafficker, a hospital orderly, and a chauffeur.

Once a celebrated singer, Rosemary Paul is now an embittered woman in her 60s, forgotten by nearly everyone but her assistant, Carrie Markham, who idolizes her and panders to her every need. When Rosemary receives the unexpected news that her record company is dusting off one of her albums for a reissue, the old hunger for fame and success is reignited, and with Carrie's help she begins to plan her big comeback. But as preparations commence, long buried secrets begin to resurface, and Rosemary's quest for fame at any price will lead to murder.

"We daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men"—words from an old children's song, but to the residents of one Welsh village, it's more than just a nursery rhyme. A legend has been handed down through the ages, telling of an ancient mountain people, dedicated to evil, who were massacred by the villagers' ancestors 3,000 years ago. What does this folktale have to do with a man's recurring nightmares, the murder of a High Court judge, an outbreak of food poisoning, a strange road accident, and the death of a rock climber? Sir Marcus Levin is determined to find out.

Young Chris Callaway finds escape from the diagnosis of his terminal illness in the company of vampires, but he soon discovers that "life" among the undead holds its own set of terrors.