"The finest writer of paperback originals in America." - Stephen King"Surely one of the most terrifying novels ever written." - Poppy Z. Brite"Beyond any trace of doubt, one of the best writers of horror in this or any other country." - Peter Straub"Readers of weak constitution should beware!" - Publishers Weekly"McDowell has a flair for the gruesome." - Washington PostAfter a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage,...

Blackwater is the saga of a small town, Perdido, Alabama, and Elinor Dammert, the stranger who arrives there under mysterious circumstances on Easter Sunday, 1919. On the surface, Elinor is gracious, charming, anxious to belong in Perdido, and eager to marry Oscar Caskey, the eldest son of Perdido’s first family. But her beautiful exterior hides a shocking secret. Beneath the waters of the Perdido River, she turns into something terrifying, a creature whispered about in stories that have c...

"The finest writer of paperback originals in America." - Stephen King"Readers of weak constitution should beware." - Publishers Weekly"McDowell has a flair for the gruesome." - Washington PostWelcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy Alabama small town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: fourteen-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach o...

Welcome to the Black Triangle, New York's decadent district of opium dens, gambling casinos, drunken sailors, gaudy hookers, and back room abortions. The queen of this unsavory neighborhood is Black Lena Shanks, whose family leads a ring of female criminals -- women skilled in the art of cruelty.Only a few blocks away, amidst the elegant mansions and lily-white reputations of Gramercy Park and Washington Square, lives Judge James Stallworth. On a crusade to crush Lena's evil empire...

“A mix of magic realism and Southern gothic, this stunning collaboration between King and McDowell…moves at a hypnotic pace, like an Alabama water moccasin slipping through black water.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)Calliope “Calley” Dakin is no normal little girl. She hears things that maybe a little girl shouldn’t hear—and knows things a little girl should never know.Just seven when her beloved father is tortured, murdered, and dismembered b...

When Philo Drax receives a letter from her wealthy grandfather saying he fears for his life at the hands of the vicious Slape family, she rushes to the rescue. But too late! Katie Slape, a monstrous girl with psychic powers and a penchant for smashing skulls with her hammer, has already finished him off and gotten hold of his cash.Determined to track down the murderers, Philo hunts Katie and her family through the streets of 1860s New York, where the Slapes' coffers are filling up ...

"[O]ne of the best writers of horror in this or any other country." - Peter Straub"One of the genre's most underrated writers . . . enjoyably nasty." - Poppy Z. Brite"A must-read for horror fiction fans. . . . Obtain The Amulet by any means necessary." - Too Much Horror Fiction"McDowell has a flair for the gruesome." - Washington PostWhen a rifle range accident leaves Dean Howell disfigured and in a vegetative state, his wife Sarah finds her dreary life in P...

DEATH IN THE FAMILYBUT 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...

In this unique romance series debut, two timeless young lovers find each other amid the madcap antics of the silent film industry.Regardless of what the calendar says, Jack and Susan are always, eternally, twenty-seven years old. They are destined for each other like Hepburn and Tracy, Dagwood and Blondie, Nick and Nora. And somehow, they always acquire a shaggy white dog on the way to falling in love.In 1913, the world is thrilling to that fabulous inventi...

Seducing a proper Bostonian was easy. Making him die of a heart attack a week after the wedding was hardly any trouble at all. Now she has money, social status, everything she has cunningly schemed to get since she was a poor little girl. Everything except the Brookline mansion and the multi-million dollar trust fund left to the three children.But what wicked stepmother couldn't get rid of three children?Jonathan, too smart for his own good and suspicious about his father's...

It would bring bad luck, they said. But she split her pair of ruby earrings and gave one to each of her beautiful twin babies. Within hours she was burned to death in a fire. The twins lived.KATHERINERaised by a poor, childless couple, Katherine was shy and withdrawn, except in her love for the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. In her heart, Katherine had found God. In her father's heart, they found a butcher knife.ANDREAShe grew up with all that money cou...

Spanning two hundred years of horror, this new collection features seventeen macabre gems, including two original tales and many others that have never or seldom been reprinted, by:Charles Birkin - John Blackburn - Michael Blumlein - Mary Cholmondeley - Hugh Fleetwood - Stephen Gregory - Gerald Kersh - Francis King - M. G. Lewis - Florence Marryat - Richard Marsh - Michael McDowell - Christopher Priest - Forrest Reid - Bernard Taylor - Hugh Walpole'The things were there and...