Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Author: Robert Marasco
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781948405898
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
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 season 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. As the suspense builds towards a revelation of what really lies behind that locked door, the Rolfes will discover that their cheap vacation rental comes at a terrible cost . . . The basis for a classic 1976 film adaptation and an acknowledged influence on Stephen King's The Shining, Burnt Offerings is one of the most original and scariest haunted house novels ever written. This edition, the first in decades, features a new introduction by award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones. "[N]ear brilliance . . . a disturbing tale . . . highly recommended." - Stephen King "Burnt Offerings has no peer. Better than Rosemary's Baby, The Other, and The Exorcist." - Hartford Courant "Insidiously frightening . . . It snares you early and draws you inexorably to one of the most nerve-shattering finales in years." - Publishers Weekly "Terrifies even by daylight." - New York Times

Parlor Games

Author: Robert Marasco
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Set in a world of glamorous, gifted, intelligent people, the novel is a psychosexual drama about the close and sinister relationship between Maggie Newman and Peter and Gail, brother and sister, whose love, when threatened, degenerates into possessiveness and then darkest evil.

American Nightmares

Author: Dale Bailey
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 029926873X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Book Description
When Edgar Allan Poe set down the tale of the accursed House of Usher in 1839, he also laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has assumed a lasting role in American culture. “The House of Usher” and its literary progeny have not lacked for tenants in the century and a half since: writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King have taken rooms in the haunted houses of American fiction. Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream.

The Sentinel

Author: Jeffrey Konvitz
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504027515
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Jeffrey Konvitz’s New York Times–bestselling horror novel about a young woman descending into demonic madness who discovers it’s not simply in her mind Aspiring model Allison Parker finally moves into her dream apartment: a brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. But her perfect home quickly turns hellish. The building is filled with a cast of sinister tenants, including a reclusive blind priest, who seems to watch her day and night through an upstairs window. Eventually, Allison starts hearing strange noises from the empty apartment above hers. Before long, she uncovers the building’s demonic secret and is plunged into a nightmare of sinful misdeeds and boundless evil. In the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby, this gripping novel was adapted into a feature film starring Ava Gardner, Cristina Raines, and Chris Sarandon. The Sentinel is classic horror at its best.

The House Next Door

Author: Anne Rivers Siddons
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416553444
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
The house next door to the Kennedys appears to be haunted by an all-pervasive evil, and the couple watches as a succession of owners becomes engulfed by the sinister force, until the Kennedys set out to destroy the house themselves.

The Entity

Author: Frank de Felitta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781954321762
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Carlotta Moran, a young single mother with three children, suddenly has her life turned upside down when she begins to be attacked in her bed each night by a spectral entity. This brutal unseen force makes attempts on her life and terrorizes her children, but the worst part is that no one believes her. Among the skeptics is psychiatrist Dr. Sneidermann, who believes Carlotta is psychotic, a danger to herself and her children who should be committed. But two graduate students in parapsychology have a different theory: that Carlotta is being tormented by a powerful force from beyond our reality, outside space and time. The tension builds to an electrifying conclusion, and the truth may be far more frightening than any of them ever imagined ... Based on documented real-life events that happened to a California woman in 1974, Frank De Felitta's provocative and disturbing novel The Entity (1978) is a classic of occult literature. Like De Felitta's Audrey Rose (1975), which sold more than 2.5 million copies, The Entity was a worldwide bestseller, and was also adapted for a 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey. This edition features a new introduction by Gemma Files. "You'll find this novel a compelling, frightening read ... a truly terrifying tale ... Careful plotting, well-wrought characters, and lots of scientific detail - along with the surefire appeal of sex, violence, and the paranormal - add up to a wonderfully scarifying experience." - Library Journal "A totally unique work of art ... one of the outstanding novels of the year." - Bestsellers "Readers will be white-knuckled ... a scary, intensely dramatic story of a woman rendered powerless by a potent and devastating adversary." - Publishers Weekly "A blockbuster of its genre ... a skillfully told tale of modern day horror that will have you sleeping with the bathroom light on." - Detroit Free Press "Harrowing ... a thriller which pits psychiatry against parapsychology ... tightly written and well-researched ... disturbing, even thought-provoking." - Cincinnati Enquirer "The Entity takes the reader beyond reality, the reality of psychiatry, even the reality of parapsychology. It probes beyond fiction into the nightmare realm of truth." - Chattanooga News & Free Press

Benighted

Author: J. B. Priestley
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504083725
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
In this classic novel of psychological terror, an unrelenting storm forces three travelers to take shelter in a sinister mansion. A powerful storm rages through the Welsh mountains, driving three travelers off the road. Philip Waverton, his wife, Margaret, and their friend Roger Penderel are desperate to get out of the torrential downpour. Their only option is a mysterious old mansion, home to the bizarre Femm family and their brutish butler, Morgan. Although the Femms have plenty rooms in their home, they are hesitant to allow guests to stay in them. Instead, Penderel and the Wavertons must settle in for the night by the ground-floor fireplace and hope the storm will pass by morning. But as the hours go by, their situation only gets worse. The storm intensifies, and the dark house begins revealing its secrets—like what lies behind the two locked doors on the top floor. Now the travelers can only pray they survive until morning . . . Published in 1927, Benighted served as the basis for the 1932 James Whale film The Old Dark House, starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, and Gloria Stuart. It was J. B. Priestly’s second novel. “Priestley’s book is a beautifully written affair, oftentimes thrilling and touching, that this reader found perfect company during a few recent stormy days in late October. . . . The novel will surely manage to chill the modern-day reader.” —Fantasy Literature

Night and the City

Author: Gerald Kersh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description

Once Upon Atari

Author: Howard Scott Warshaw
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780986218668
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
ONCE UPON ATARI is an intimate view into the dramatic rise and fall of the early video game industry, and how it shaped the life of one of its key players. This book offers eye-opening details and insights, delivered in a creative style that mirrors the industry it reveals. An innovative work from one of the industry's original innovators.This is a detailed look behind the scenes of the early days of video games, with particular attention to the causative factors leading up to the video game crash of the early 1980s. It is also the journey of one industry pioneer, and how his experience creating some of the world's most noted pieces of interactive entertainment reverberates throughout his life. It is a compelling and dramatic tale of innocence, greed, exuberance, hubris, joy, devastation and ultimately redemption, told in a fresh voice and an unorthodox style.

Kill Creek

Author: Scott Thomas
Publisher: Inkshares
ISBN: 1942645821
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
A psychological horror with a literary twist, Kill Creek delivers elevated prose, while evoking the unnerving, atmospheric terror essential to greats like Peter Straub and Stephen King—a haunting that lingers long after turning the last page.