If, as Carl Jung said, Liverpool is "the pool of life" then here are things from the darkest depths of that pool, brought to the surface to terrify and startle you...Liverpool has long been known as a city of dreamers. But not all those dreams are as beautiful as a Beatles melody or as funny as a Paul O'Grady punchline. Here are the darker dreams of the Merseyside imagination, the macabre imaginings of Liverpool's Princes of Nightmare. Along with an introduction by native son Doug ...

Paul O'Grady is one of Britain's very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, or the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul O'Grady Show on Channel 4.Now, in his own unique voice, Paul O'Grady tells story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that started him on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a brill...

Here are the stories written on the Book of Blood. They are a map of that dark highway that leads out of life towards unknown destinations. Few will have to take it. Most will go peacefully along lamplit streets, ushered out of living with prayers and caresses. But for a few, the horrors will come, skipping, to fetch them off to the highway of the damned ...Gathered together for the first time in one volume, here are fifteen mind-shattering stories from the awesome imagination of W...

Volume One of Clive Barker's seminal Books of Blood contains the stories: 'The Book of Blood', 'The Midnight Meat Train', 'The Yattering and Jack', 'Pig Blood Blues', 'Sex, Death and Starshine', 'In the Hills, the Cities'.With the 1984 publication of Books of Blood, Clive Barker became an overnight literary sensation. He was hailed by Stephen King as "the future of horror", and won both the British and World Fantasy Awards. Now, with his numerous bestsellers, grap...

New York Times BestsellerNamed one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and Library JournalWinner of the Audie AwardThe New York Times bestseller from the author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta finally appears in a one-volume paperback.Begging comparisons to Tolstoy and Joyce, this “magnificent, sprawling cosmic epic” (Guard...

A charming, honest, funny, sad, tender and beautiful literary memoir, from Tim Rogers of You Am I. Think Patti Smith meet Dylan Thomas, by way of Banjo Paterson.'Rogers is a beautiful writer, both literate and lyrical ... Detours makes most rock memoirs look like How to Hypnotise Chooks. A heartbreaking work of staggering honesty.' West Australian'Of all the utterances delivered to me by strangers, my least favourite after "We can no l...

18 ghost stories will chill you to the bone in this horror anthology featuring original short stories by Joe Hill, Paul Tremblay, and more!“I’m incredibly impressed. It’s beautifully crafted, elegant work.” —Clive Barker, author of The Hellbound Heart and Books of BloodThe brightest names in horror fiction showcase a ghastly collection of 18 ghost stories that will have you watching over your shoulder, heart racing at ever...

Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox's loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties the ancient kind and the everyday variety as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects. Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever.Tom's writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk; it's bewitched ...

Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill and writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a cult following. Two decades later, some teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In ...

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) remains England's best-loved poet - a writer matchlessly capable of evoking his native land and of touching all readers from the most sophisticated intellectual to the proverbial common reader. The late John Betjeman observed that 'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and thoughtfully about what all of us can understand'. Behind this modest description lies a poet who made greatness look, in Milton's prescription, 'simple, sensuous and passio...

An "illuminating and thought-provoking" novel revolving around an academic gathering at a hotel on a Scottish island (Irvine Welsh, The Guardian).At Willowdale, a Victorian mansion hotel on a Scottish island, a group of English Literature lecturers and students have arrived from Glasgow. They are preparing for a weekend of lectures and intellectual discussions, though some look forward to less studious interactions as well. But as they gather, they don't y...

'An astute and accomplished work' Daily MailJoyce Stevenson is thirteen when her widowed mother takes them to live with Aunt Vera, a formidable teacher neglected by her unfaithful husband. Joyce watches the two sisters - her aunt's unbending dedication to the life of the mind, her mother worn down by housework - and thinks that each of them is powerless in her own way.For Joyce, art school provides an escape route, and there she falls in love with ...