'Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.' Stevenson's short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor's mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally revealed in ...

'it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam' Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and h...

Zombies: A Cultural History, now available in paperback, sifts materials from anthropology, folklore, travel writing, colonial histories, long-forgotten pulp literature, B-movies, medical history and cultural theory to give a definitive short introduction to the zombie, exploring the manifold meanings of this compelling, slow-moving yet relentless monster.

In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutenkhamen. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular press went wild with rumours of a curse on those who disturbed the Pharaoh's rest and for years followed every twist and turn of the fate of the men who had been involved in the historic discovery. Long dismissed by Egyptologists, the mummy's c...

New Authors and collections. Following the great success of our Gothic Fantasy, deluxe edition short story compilations, Ghosts, Horror, Science Fiction, Murder Mayhem and Crime & Mystery this latest title crawls with the dark fingers of terror, the chilling sensation of another presence sitting alongside you while you read the tales of horror laid out before you. Contains a fabulous mix of classic and brand new writing, with authors from the US, Canada, and the UK.New, contemporar...

'He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head...' The Victorian fin de siècle: the era of Decadence, The Yellow Book, the New Woman, the scandalous Oscar Wilde, the Empire on which the sun never set. This heady brew was caught nowhere better t...

'So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers...' At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankind's future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. The first book H. G. Wells published, Th...

From the author of Gothic, a marvelously illustrated cultural history of graves and graveyards, from the earliest known burial sites to today’s green burialsWhy, how, and where do we inter our dead? How have people throughout history responded to the problem of laying their dead to rest? Roger Luckhurst sets out in search of answers in this arresting book. Taking readers on an unforgettable tour of the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave, he visit...

'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.' Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florenc...

'Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think!' H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a reclusive scribbler of horror stories for the American pulp magazines that specialized in Gothic and science fiction in the interwar years. He often published in Weird Tales and has since become the key figure in the slippery genre of 'weird fiction'. Lovecraft developed an extraordinary visi...

Stanley Kubrick hailed The Shining as 'the scariest horror film of all time' before its release in 1980. Though the film opened to poor reviews, it has since become one of the most admired horror films in cinema history. Exerting an enormous influence on popular culture, The Shining has spawned a vast array of interpretations and conspiracy theories.Roger Luckhurst's illuminating study explores the film's themes, tropes and resonances through a detailed analysis o...

'Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged...I was suddenly struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.' Stevenson's short novel, published in 1886, became an instant classic. It was a Gothic horror that originated in a feverish nightmare, whose hallucinatory setting in the murky back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. The respectable doctor's mysterious relationship with his disreputable associate is finally revealed in ...