Grimscribe: His Lives and Works is the second volume in a series of revised, definitive editions of the horror story collections of Thomas Ligotti. First published in 1991 by Carroll & Graf in the United States and Robinson Publishing in England, Grimscribe garnered significantly more recognition than Ligotti’s first collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, which was issued two years earlier by the same publishers.In the view of many commentators, it was with Grimscribe that Ligotti consolidated his reputation as a horror writer of high stature. As Steven J. Mariconda remarked in a 1992 essay surveying the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe: “Of the two collections, Grimscribe achieves near-classic status and is recommended to all.” Included in this volume is “The Last Feast of Harlequin,” a novella that, in the observation of H. P. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi, “may perhaps be the very best homage to Lovecraft ever written.”Like the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer, the first title of Ligotti’s to be published in a revised, definitive edition by Subterranean Press, those presented here in Grimscribe: His Lives and Works have been amended to realize the full artistic aims of the originals rather than to compose new versions of these works. This volume may thus be considered, in the manner of its predecessor in this series, as both as a reissue and the culminating specimen of its master effort of twenty years ago.From Publishers WeeklyThe eponymous first-person narrator of this chilling collection assumes many different guises in spinning his eerie tales, but the voice in each of the 12 stories remains the same, a voice "always speaking of terrible secrets." Witness, participant, victim, Grimscribe is, above all, our guide through a landscape at once relentlessly dark and luminously revealing, where a "brood of dark forms" push "through the fog" and "dark bricks that bulge like tumors" appear "on the facades of houses." Prisoners of this bleak but fascinating world include a mild-mannered village schoolteacher sent in "Flowers of the Abyss" to discover the awful truth behind a house in which an entire family perished horribly; in "The Cocoons" we encounter a man trapped in a unique doctor/patient relationship who finds the treatment infinitely more agonizing than the disease; instead of the three Rs, the young boy in "Miss Plarr" receives from his tutor a few lessons in "the sound of something that stings the air." Stylishly wrought in the best tradition of the American gothic and wonderfully reminiscent of Poe and Hawthorne, these scary stories transcend their genre. and command respect. Ligotti wrote Songs of a Dead Dreamer. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsHigh-style horror stories in a classic literary mode, in expressiveness not far from the American masters, Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Ligotti (Songs of a Dead Dreamer, 1990) writes out of what seems an all-embracing depression, making him willing to go into wipeout areas time and again and ask a lot both of himself and his readers. His narrators seldom effect any change; they simply observe a superbly described inner state, then leave, hungover. In "The Last Feast of Harlequin," a professor obsessed with clowns locates a clown festival in the midwestern town of Mirocaw. He goes to observe and join the townsfolk in their festival, perhaps wearing his clown suit. But the festival is not meant for him. In fact, it is two festivals, one within the other, the inner one being a cruel festival of freaks who are detested and beaten by members of the larger clown festival. He joins the freaks and follows them out of town and down a hole in the earth wherein they have borne their frigid Winter Queen. In a cavernous earthen hall, the freaks begin turning into huge worms, and he flees up the black wormhole by which he entered. In "The Glamour," the narrator enters a weird boarded-up movie house to find himself in a sparse audience surrounded by purple lights and seated amid hairy threads that bind all to their seats as they watch a cobweb screen on which is shown grisly purple organs being operated on. He leaves before he can be imprisoned by the floating and crawling hairs. In "The Night School," he enters a dark, weird schoolground where strange figures stand around misshapen metal drums in firelight; then he goes into the hideously rotting school for a bizarre class inmeasurement of cloacal forces. Time as a flow of sewage. The excrement of space, scatology of creation...'' He leaves, finding the moon "coated with a luminous mold, floating...in the great sewers of the night.'' Thirteen tales out of a maggoty delirium. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Views: 146
The fifth book in the thrilling Donovan sci-fi series returns to a treacherous alien planet where corporate threats and dangerous creatures imperil the lives of the colonists.The Maritime Unit had landed in paradise. After a terrifying ten-year transit from Solar System aboard the Ashanti, the small band of oceanographers and marine scientists were finally settled. Perched on a reef five hundred kilometers out from shore, they were about to embark on the first exploration of Donovan's seas. For the twenty-two adults and nine children, everything is new, exciting, and filled with wonder as they discover dazzling sea creatures, stunning plant life, and fascinating organisms.But Donovan is never what it seems; the changes in the children were innocuous—oddities of behavior normal to kids who'd found themselves in a new world. Even then it was too late. An alien intelligence, with its own agenda, now possesses the children, and it will use them in a most... Views: 146
Over 2 million copies of his books in print. The first and only author to win back-to-back Edgars for Best Novel. Every book a New York Times bestseller. After five years, John Hart is back. Since his debut bestseller, The King of Lies, reviewers across the country have heaped praise on John Hart, comparing his writing to that of Pat Conroy, Cormac McCarthy and Scott Turow. Each novel has taken Hart higher on the New York Times Bestseller list as his masterful writing and assured evocation of place have won readers around the world and earned history's only consecutive Edgar Awards for Best Novel with Down River and The Last Child. Now, Hart delivers his most powerful story yet.Imagine: A boy with a gun waits for the man who killed his mother. A troubled detective confronts her past in the aftermath of a brutal shooting. After thirteen years in prison, a good cop walks free as deep in the forest, on the altar... Views: 145
Garfield watched the unconscious pretty woman thrashing on the bed. He had already determined that the woman, Sable, wasn't his mate, but he couldn't take his eyes off her. When he grabbed her hand to keep her from hurting herself, his entire body seemed to be touched by an electrical wire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't let go.Just before Garfield passed out, he realized that not only was Sable his mate, but she was transferring an enormous amount of power to him.... Views: 145
A ribald tale from Britain's best-love Science Fiction writer.Available for the first time in eBook. The Cretan Teat is a bawdy novel, telling the extraordinary tale a Byzantine painting of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the infant Jesus.This false icon gets adopted by the people – and so becomes instrumental in the downfall of mankind.This is a story where the narrator – the author – is regularly caught with his trousers down.It is at once funny and important, a post-modern text reminiscent of Pirandello, where sexcapades brush shoulders with the end of the world. Views: 145
Brenda Jackson welcomes you back to Catalina Cove, where love is waiting to be reclaimed...Ashley Ryan never doubted that her husband, Devon, was the love of her life. Even now, three years after Devon died in a car wreck while on a business trip, Ashley can't bring herself to move on. But when her girlfriends surprise her with a getaway to beautiful Catalina Cove, Louisiana, she gets the shock of her life when she encounters a man—bearded, more rugged than before, but unmistakably her Devon."Ray Sullivan" moved to this quiet coastal town after waking up in a hospital with amnesia. Haunted by a life he can't remember, he's built walls around his heart and a quiet life running boat tours—a life that includes no recollection of Ashley, a woman he suddenly finds himself irresistibly drawn to.Doctors warn Ashley of the danger in forcing her husband to remember the past. Though she longs to tell him the truth, she finds herself falling all over... Views: 145
Fast-paced, wickedly funny and full of zest, this is popular columnist Sarah-Kate Lynch's debut novel, the first of a string of works that will make you cry and laugh out loud.Molly Brown is having what you might call a shit day. Her wedding dress has just revealed it can't contain more than one bosom and the gorgeous man she was about to marry has just revealed that more than one is his favourite number too. If you're talking about women, that is. In a desperate bid to escape her life as it horribly unravels before her eyes, Molly escapes to the other side of the world with her $4000 wedding dress and her terrifying aunt Vivian. She embarks on a rollercoaster ride through the Irish countryside in search of her long-lost uncle. When she arrives in the seemingly sleepy seaside town of Ballymahoe, she has greasy hair, a fractured arm, a broken heart, three extra kilos and no time at all for the charm of the locals . . . Views: 145
A haunting short story about friendship and loss in small-town Montana Jake, Steve, and Thel are inseparable. The trio scampers through the narrow streets of Shelby without giving thought to the rest of the world. Then Jake's life changes the first time he goes up in a plane: That ride in a battered old Mustang P-51 teaches him that no one but pilots can know true freedom. He joins the Air Force and comes back to Shelby when he's on leave. Steve and Thel stay behind, making lives in the town that gave them so little. Though farther apart, they remain a group—and will stay that way, whether they live or die. Views: 145
Amazon.com ReviewThe hero of Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red is the most endearingly out-of-control loser you're likely to meet. Sammy Barlach looks like a person "who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect"; clerks follow him through the supermarket when he shops, and the police pull him over simply from habit. But in spite of his looks, Sammy only wants to be loved, even if it's just by "the bunch that would have me"--and in the hardscrabble world of West Table, Missouri, that's a bunch you wouldn't necessarily want to meet. The novel begins with a heady Methedrine rush, as Sammy celebrates payday by letting himself be talked into robbing a nearby mansion. Even when his newfound friends disappear as he's breaking in, he persists: "You might think I should've quit on the burglary right there, but I just love people, I guess, and didn't." The break-in leads Sammy into an unlikely alliance with the Merridew family: Jamalee and Jason and their mother Bev, a prostitute in the town's ironically named Venus Holler. Flame-haired Jamalee dreams constantly of a different kind of life, and she plans on using Jason's extraordinary beauty as her ticket out of West Table. Jason, however, seems to be shaping up as what Sammy calls "country queer"--which, as Sammy observes, "ain't the easiest walk to take amongst your throng of fellow humankind."Unfortunately for Jamalee, Woodrell's Ozarks is a place that rewards ambition with disaster. Here as in his five previous "country noir" novels, Woodrell writes with a keen understanding of class and a barely contained sense of rage. The residents of West Table's trailer parks and shotgun shacks share Sammy's sense of limited possibilities. "I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain," Sammy thinks while wandering around the mansion, "and this place proves the point." Even when Jason sticks up for his own family, the way he does so is heartbreaking: "This expression of utter frankness takes over Jason's beautiful face, and he says, 'I don't think we're the lowest scum in town.' He didn't argue that we weren't scum, just disputed our position on the depth chart." With her mildewing etiquette guides and grandiose plans, Jamalee is the only character who doesn't share their sense of defeat, and she's the only one who, in the end, gets away--though she leaves behind her a trail of betrayal and heartache. By the time the novel's final tragedy rolls around, it seems both senseless and inevitable, as tragedies do in real life. Told in a voice that crackles with energy and wit, Tomato Red is sharp, funny, and more importantly, true. --Mary ParkFrom Publishers Weekly"You're no angel, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it's been a gray day sogged by slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom...." So begins the bravura first paragraph of Woodrell's sixth novel (after Give Us a Kiss). As readers of Woodrell's previous fiction will expect, we are in the Ozarks?in West Table, Mo., to be specific. Sammy Barlach, our narrator, is a case?at the moment, he's employed in the dog food industry, but he's just met a girl "with teeth the size of shoe-peg corn" who's well supplied with crank and, toward the end of their weekend spree, suggests that they rob a mansion whose owners are (notoriously) on vacation. In the course of executing this plan, Sammy meets fellow burglars Jamalee and Jason Meridew?a sister and brother pair from Venus Hollow who break into wealthy houses in order to try on clothes and make believe they are rich. Jamalee, however, plans to make it big by using her brother's remarkable looks to seduce, then blackmail, the wives of the rich. (The hitch: Jason's tenuous, possibly nonexistent, interest in hetero sex.) Meanwhile, Bev Meridew, their mother, supports herself as a freelance goodtime girl and occasional snitch. Sammy moves in with this incestuous group as Jamalee's idea of muscle until even he can't protect them or their dreams from the nastier elements of Venus Hollow. The dialogue and characters are what keeps this awkwardly plotted little number plugging along. Woodrell isn't interested in Li'l Abner cutouts. These figures are all bluff and sorrow, and Woodrell succeeds in giving their misfit poetry a genuine C&W resonance that lingers beyond the last page. (Aug.) FYI: Ang Lee is currently directing a movie from Woe to Live On, Woodrell's second novel.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 145
From New York Times bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton comes a riveting novel based on one of the most volatile and intoxicating real-life love affairs of the twentieth century. Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War. Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other. With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love. Views: 145
