Amazon.com Review

Horror fiction need not necessarily have original ideas--most of its ideas are as old as the hills--but it's a treat when a writer like Douglas Clegg comes along, with the ability to look at the old ideas in new ways. In The Children's Hour Clegg reinvented the vampire legend. In The Halloween Man Clegg reinvents devil worship.

The plot of this novel is so complex and multifaceted, it's not easy to summarize, but it boils down to two narratives about two points in time. The protagonist, Stony Crawford, is a 15-year-old man (not a boy) in love with a dark-haired beauty named Lourdes Maria. Their surprisingly deep romance unfolds against the backdrop of a peculiar small town on the rugged coast of Connecticut. After a 12-year absence, Stony returns to this town bringing with him a young boy whom he kidnapped from a religious compound in Texas. Thanks to Clegg's skillful interlacing of the two narratives, when the life of 15-year-old Stony climaxes, so does that of 27-year-old Stony. The crux of both stories is a powerful being of "divine evil" and "Azriel Light"--perhaps a demon, perhaps simply a creature like any other.

Clegg's characters are well realized and fascinating, and the story is richly steeped in history. The Halloween Man is a stunning horror novel, written with a degree of conviction that is rare these days. --Fiona Webster

Review

"Clegg gets high marks on the terror scale..."(The Daily News (New York)) -- This is a required answer. Please enter something.

"Douglas Clegg is one of horror's most captivating voices..." -- BookLovers

"Every bit as good as the best works of Stephen King, Peter Straub, or Dan Simmons..." -- Hellnotes: The Newsletter for the Horror Professional

"Packed with vivid imagery; a broadly-scoped but fast-paced plot; powerful, evocative writing; superb characterizations; and facile intelligence, The Halloween Man is more than its blurbage can ever convey..." -- DarkEcho

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### Product Description

For centuries, deep inside the bowels of the church, hidden from all except a few, a hauntingly evil cancer has spread like a murderous plague, destroying everything and everyone in its path. No one is exempt from its lure, and it will go to the depths of hell to accomplish one single goal at all costs. Global domination through a new world order. This cancer has a name: The Order of Asmodeus.


Under a binding cloak of secrecy, a brother and sisterhood of handpicked servants have been chasing down The Order of Asmodeus for as long as the demonic sect has existed. Their mandate, root out the cancer and destroy it at every turn. Their name? Il Martello di Dio. The Hammer of God.


When Robert Veil’s godson, Samuel, is kidnapped, he and his bounty hunting partner, the indomitable Nikki Thorne, delve deep into a cesspool of wickedness so diabolical, neither may make it out alive. All to save a boy from a fate worse than death, and to save the world from itself.

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Product Description

For the first time in one volume, the three novels that introduced Michael Connelly's great LAPD homicide detective, maverick Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch. The Black Echo (Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel) For Harry Bosch-hero, loner, nighthawk-the body stuffed in a drainpipe off Mulholland Drive isn't just another statistic. This one is personal. Billy Meadows was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat," fighting the VC and the fear they used to call the Black Echo. Harry let Meadows down once. He won't do it again. The Black Ice The corpse in the hotel room seems to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer. Rumors abound that the cop had crossed over-selling a new drug called Black Ice. Now Harry's making some dangerous connections, leading from the cop to a string of bloody murders, and from Hollywood Boulevard's drug bazaar to Mexico's dusty back alleys. In this lethal game, Harry is likely to be the next victim. The Concrete Blonde When Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church, the police were convinced it marked the end of the hunt for the Dollmaker-L.A.'s most bizarre serial killer. But now Church's widow is accusing Harry of killing the wrong man-a charge that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker's macabre signature. For the second time, Harry must hunt the murderer down, before he strikes again. Together, these three novels are the perfect way to discover, or rediscover, the sleuth the New York Times Book Review called a "wonderful, old-fashioned hero who isn't afraid to walk through the flames."

About the Author

Michael Connelly is the author of ten novels, including the bestselling series of Harry Bosch novels and the bestsellers Void Moon, Angels Flight, Blood Work, and The Poet. He lives in Los Angeles.

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The Last Coyote: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is suspended from the force for attacking his commanding officer. Unable to remain idle, he investigates the long-unsolved murder of a Hollywood prostitute. Trunk Music: Harry returns to the force to investigate the murder of a movie producer with Mafia ties. Up against both the LAPD's organized crime unit and the mob, Harry follows the money trail to Las Vegas, where the case becomes personal. Angels Flight: The murder of a prominent African-American attorney who made his career suing the police for racism and brutality means that Harry's friends and associates have become suspects; and he must work closely with longtime enemies suspicious of his maverick ways to investigate them. Together for the first time, these three chilling, pulse-pounding novels chart the volatile, breakneck career of the sleuth the New York Post calls "the quintessential mystery book hero" and prove that "Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels a...

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From Publishers Weekly

Alongside the dominant stream of horror fiction that, at whatever level of artistic achievement, relies on shock and gore, runs a quieter stream that relies on atmosphere and inference for its unsettling effects (think Machen, Blackwood, sometimes Ramsey Campbell). Clegg (The Infinite; Naomi) has added a superior new title to this latter tradition, with a psychologically astute and genuinely shivery story of a young man who returns to his ancestral home on a remote island off Massachusetts. Nemo Raglan, a failed novelist, is back at Hawthorn, on Burnley Island, because his father, Gordie, has been found slaughtered in the family's smokehouse. Also at Hawthorn are Nemo's errant younger brother, Bruno, and their sister, Brooke, a high-strung artist who'd been living with Dad; the siblings' mother had disappeared from the family when they were children. The killer has, weirdly, left no traces and thus no clues; but then much about Hawthorn and the siblings is weird, particularly the game they played as children, a risky form of mind-projection taught them by their father, who used it as a POW, whereby they were able to explore worlds known and unknown. As brothers and sister get reacquainted and ponder the murder, the air grows tense but also dark. Nemo senses an unseen presence; is the house haunted? Clegg delves deep and precisely into the familial ties that bind but also sunder even as he celebrates the magical isolation of a New England island so adrift from the mainland as to be its own planet. Suspenseful and relentlessly spooky, told in economical prose yet peopled by characters as fully realized as one's own blood kin, this is at once the most artful and most mainstream tale yet from one of horror's brightest lights.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The brutal murder of his father brings Nemo Raglan back to the New England home of his childhood, where he joins his brother and sister in unraveling the mystery of their father's death and solving the frightening puzzle somehow connected to an old childhood game. The author of The Nightmare Chronicles constructs an eerie psychological tale of supernatural horror that builds suspense gradually as the characters slowly peel back the layers of their past and face the terrors of their shared childhood. Clegg approaches horror with a stark and vital simplicity that is utterly convincing. Fans of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will appreciate this atmospheric gem. For most horror collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Lina Sommerson moves into a new apartment, happy to be in a better neighborhood. Three days after she moved in, she receives an invitation to a Key Club Party at the complex. Not knowing what a Key Party was all about, Lina decided to go, perhaps make a few friends and meet someone tall and sexy.

At the party, she sees women pulling sets of keys from a silver bowl, then leaves with the man who claimed the keys. Assuming it's a dating party, she is called forth to pull keys. She draws the keys of Ryan Silver, a man who looked at her with mesmerizing eyes and an intense look that has her aching.

Being a virgin, she almost panics at the monstrous size of him, and when he rips her open, he makes sure she gets medical attention immediately. Even though he'd hurt her, she knew he had not meant to, and Lina was all too eager to heal and try again.Find out what happens when Ryan disappears, and Lina finds out she's very pregnant!

Warning: Explicit Sex!

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Fantasy Masterworks Volume 9

Review

Thomas Abbey is a man stuck in a rut. An English teacher in a small Connecticut prep school, Abbey is in a crisis. His career is unfulfilling, he has no social or love life to speak of, and he cannot break out of the shadow of his famous father, the actor Stephen Abbey. To kick-start his life, he takes a sabbatical to work on a biography of his favorite writer, Marshall France. France's books were the only thing that kept Abbey sane during his childhood, and though he was renowned for his lyrical and imaginative children's books, nearly nothing was known about the writer's life.

Although Abbey has been warned that France's daughter Anna has blocked all previous attempts at her father's biography, he and Saxony Garder--an intense woman also obsessed with France's life--head to Galen, Missouri, with high hopes of breaking down Anna's resistance. They are surprised to find Anna the soul of small-town hospitality and quite excited about Abbey's proposal--even eager to get the project finished as soon as possible. Even stranger than Anna's behavior is the town of Galen itself. On the surface, all is as a small midwestern town should be. But the people of the town seem to know what their future holds--freak accidents and all--down to the hour and are as eager for Abbey to finish the biography as Anna is.

As far as plot goes, The Land of Laughs doesn't break any new ground--it is a riff on a very old literary theme--and the more interesting issues the story raises--fate, free will, and the creative power of the written word--receive only a glancing blow as the story careens to its somewhat unsatisfying Gothic ending. That said, Carroll does show a good ear for dialogue and a deft hand at creating complex characters and quietly ominous moods. And the story--hoary plot line and all--immediately grabs you and doesn't let go. If you already know Jonathan Carroll from his other novels, you will want to add this reissue of his first novel to your library. And if you haven't yet been introduced to this inventive author, The Land of Laughs is the perfect place to begin. --Perry M. Atterberry

Review

"Jonathan Carroll is a cult waiting to happen." --Pat Conroy

"The Land of Laughs is a book for anyone who has ever believed that a favorite book could be a safe place to go when things get hard." --Neil Gaiman

"I envy anyone who has yet to enjoy the sexy, eerie, and addictive novels of Jonathan Carroll. They are delicious treats--with devilish tricks inside them." --The Washington Post

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Review

Versatile and original, and certainly deserving to be wider read, highly recommended and a great example of the quality of the material chosen by Chomu. --Paul Charles Smith, Empty Your Heart of Its Mortal Dream.

Connell never ceases to surprise and astonish. --Mario Guslandi, Bookgeeks

...like the biographical equivalent of Joyce's Ulysses in miniature. --Peter Tennant, Black Static

...reminiscent of Jorges Luis Borges... ---J.L. Williams, Pank

Bizarre plots, legendary characters, and experimental narrative structures compose a towering wedding cake that joins the unconventional in unholy matrimony. --Grim Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Every generation throws up a few genuine Masters of the Weird. There simply is no hyperbole in the statement that Brendan Connell is a member of this elite group right now, perhaps the most accomplished of them all."
Rhys Hughes, author of A New Universal History of Infamy

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From Library Journal

Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled PI stories, he's one of the 20th century's top scribes, period. His full canon of novels and short stories is reprinted in trade paper featuring uniform covers in Black Lizard's signature style. A handsome set for a reasonable price.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Raymond Chandler is a master." --The New York Times

“[Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.” --*The New Yorker

“Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious.” --Robert B. Parker, The New York Times Book Review

“Philip Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.” --Los Angeles Times

“Nobody can write like Chandler on his home turf, not even Faulkner. . . . An original. . . . A great artist.” —
The Boston Book Review

“Raymond Chandler was one of the finest prose writers of the twentieth century. . . . Age does not wither Chandler’s prose. . . . He wrote like an angel.” --
Literary Review

“[T]he prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision.” --Joyce Carol Oates,
The New York Review of Books

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.” —Ross Macdonald

“Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude.” --Erle Stanley Gardner

*“Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.” --Paul Auster

“[Chandler]’s the perfect novelist for our times. He takes us into a different world, a world that’s like ours, but isn’t. ” --Carolyn See

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Amazon.com Review

Finity's End falls after Merchanter's Luck but before Tripoint in the lineup of C.J. Cherryh's Merchanter novels (part of the author's award-winning Alliance/Union universe). It resumes the story of Fletcher Neihart, an orphan and unwanted foster child who, against his will, joins the crew of the legendary merchanter ship Finity's End. As Neihart struggles to find his place both on the ship and in the world, the ship undertakes a mission critical to the continuing peace between the Earth, Alliance, and Union factions.

Review

Finity's End is complex, insightful writing. Cherryh understands human nature under stress, and has a gift for conveying the immediacy of interactions, concerns, betrayals, and forgiveness. -- Science Fiction Age

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From Publishers Weekly

Setting and character more than compensate for a routine plot in Cotterill's sixth procedural to feature Laos's irreverent 73-year-old national coroner, Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2008's Curse of the Pogo Stick). In March 1978, Siri gets into trouble after the authorities discover he's been living above his wife's noodle shop rather than in the housing assigned him by the inept and corrupt socialist government. Luckily, he's soon called to examine the body of an attractive young woman, who was found strangled, sexually abused and tied to a tree outside the capital of Vientiane. The country's backward communication methods, which even affect law enforcement, make identifying other similar crimes difficult, but Siri's doggedness eventually uncovers other such cases. While some may find the light tone the author takes in presenting the brutal crimes off-putting, the glimpses of everyday life in Laos will appeal to those readers curious about a culture unfamiliar to most Americans. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—In this sixth volume in the series, the protagonist is as delightfully eccentric and unpredictably clever as ever. The national coroner of Laos, 73-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun, may dream of a carefree retirement, but he knows he will enjoy neither peace nor quiet anytime soon. While hounded and threatened by overly zealous bureaucratic bean counters, Dr. Siri is presented with the corpse of a beautiful young woman from the remote hill country. The examination of the body reveals several unaccountable details and one clear conclusion: she was brutally murdered. Further investigation points to a serial killer targeting women in remote villages. Readers learn in detail the means by which the murderer sets up his prey, but not the identity of the killer until Dr. Siri assembles all the pieces of the puzzle. Cotterill provides a detailed look at the life, customs, and political realities of a place and time unfamiliar to most Americans: Laos in the 1970s. And again he does this with his trademark combination of crisp plotting, witty dialogue, political satire, and otherworldly phenomena (although not as much in evidence here as in previous books). The Merry Misogynist is a suspenseful, informative read.—Robert Saunderson, formerly at Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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The mysterious and gruesome death of Sir Robert McKenzie, owner of the Magellan Corporation, leads Greg MacDonald to the discovery of a satanic cult trying to engineer the arrival of the apocalypse and threatening McKenzie's innocent heir, Angelique Monta<

From the Inside Flap

THE EVOLUTION OF TERROR

A hard-living reporter long past his Pulitzer Prize-winning prime, Chuck Vallone is about to meet a renowned geneticist who needs to clear his conscience. But when Vallone arrives at their rendezvous, he finds the D.C. hotel swarming with government agents. The scientist's room is now a grisly slaughterhouse splattered with blood--but no sign of a body.

Vallone knows he has the story of the century, especially when he receives a mysterious package filled with a computer disk and strange samples of DNA. Now he's determined to uncover the truth. But it's no brave new world Vallone will be exploring; rather, a deadly depraved one ruled by preeminent scientists. And this powerful cadre intends to make Vallone both eyewitness and executor of their final ferocious plan . . .

About the Author

Jack L. Chalker was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 17, 1944. While still in high school, he began writing for the amateur science-fiction press, and in 1960 he launched the Hugo-nominated amateur magazine Mirage. A year later he founded Mirage Press, which grew into a major specialty publisher of nonfiction and reference books on science fiction and fantasy.

His first novel, A Jungle of Stars, was published in 1976, and he became a full-time novelist two years later with the major popular success of Midnight at the Well of Souls. Chalker is an active conservationist and enjoys traveling, consumer electronics, and computers. He is also a noted speaker on science fiction and fantasy at numerous colleges and universities. He is a passionate lover of steamboats, in particular ferryboats, and has ridden more than three hundred ferries in the United States and elsewhere.

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From Publishers Weekly

Clegg's (The Halloween Man, etc.) collection of 13 tales takes risks and is full of passions that sometimes burst forth violently. But his skill at elucidating the psychological lives of his characters in precise, revealing prose makes these emotions more disturbing than the violence itself. In the best selection, "The Rendering Man," a girl's lifelong obsession with the creepy local who turns dead animals into consumer goods discloses her own festering psychopathology. Subtle seeding of the tale with images of death and transfiguration gives its climax a haunting and visceral inevitability. The narrative device into which the stories are pluggedAeach is presented as a nightmare inflicted by a monstrous boy upon his kidnappersAis flimsy but succeeds in calling attention to several recurring themes: the predatory nature of human sexuality ("Chosen"; "The Night Before Alec Got Married") and "the secret rituals that all families have that would seem insane to outsiders" ("Damned If You Do"; "The Hurting Season"). Clegg's use of innovative metaphors catapults each story beyond a landscape crowded with the horror genre's usual monsters and madmen into a territory he alone can claim. (Sept.) FYI: Clegg is the author of Naomi, the much-touted e-novel in progress.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...Without doubt, [The Nightmare Chronicles is] one of the best collections of the year." -- HorrorOnline

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Contents
THE RED JOURNEY BACK
AN INTRODUCTION by the Editor, With a Footnote by Michael Malone
CHAPTER I. THE AIRSTRIP: a Personal Contribution by John Keir Cross
CHAPTER II. MacFARLANE’S NARRATIVE: The Broken Radio Messages Received On Twenty-Seven Consecutive Nights as Built To a Continuous Chronicle by Catherine W. Hogarth
CHAPTER III. MacFARLANE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED
CHAPTER IV. IN THE MEANTIME . . . A Contribution by Various Hands
1. Michael Malone
2. Jacqueline Adam
3. Paul Adam
4. Michael Malone
5. The Editor
CHAPTER V. THE CANALS: Macfarlane’s Narrative Concluded
CHAPTER VI. THE COMET: A Contribution by Paul Adam
CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD MARTIAN EXPEDITION
1. A Personal Impression by Catherine W. Hogarth
2. A Technical Note by Dr. Marius B. Kalkenbrenner
3. A Final Editorial Interlude
CHAPTER VIII. LOOMINGS, by A. Keith Borrowdale*
CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN JOURNEY, by A. Keith Borrowdale
CHAPTER X. “DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME by A. Keith Borrowdale
CHAPTER XI. SIR GALAHAD, by A. Keith Borrowdale
CHAPTER XII. DISCOPHORA, by A. Keith Borrowdale being a transcription of a new theory, by Dr. Andrew McGillivray
CHAPTER XIII. FLASHBACK, by A. Keith Borrowdale, with an inserted contribution by Margaret K. Sherwood
CHAPTER XIV. THE LAST JOURNEY, by A. Keith Borrowdale
AN EPILOGUE by The Editor; With Some Concluding Remarks and a Final Salutation by Stephen Macfarlane



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