Seabury Quinn

Tales of Horror, Mysteries of the Sea, Science Fiction & Magic

The ghoulish, disturbing and macabre tales contained in this anthology of fear draw the reader into a world inhabited by the dark and threatening monsters of nightmare. Legendary creators of horror and suspense such as the father of vampire literature Bram Stoker and Ambrose 'Bitter' Bierce combine within these pages with modern mastercraftsmen like Psycho author Robert Bloch and phenomenal bestseller writer Stephen King. Their stories range from grisly supernatural revenge ("The Squaw") to black humour of a fantastic nature ("Edifice Complex") and the mystery and menace of fiendish possession ("The Night of the Tiger"). The collection encompasses recognised masterpieces of the genre such as H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" - a sustained evocation of monstrous violence in a sleepy mid-Western town - as well as stories by famous authors not usually associated with this type of fiction - H. G. Wells and Robert Silverberg for example. Within this Chamber of Horrors also lurk haunted houses such as H. Russell Wakefield's "The Red Lodge", psychological tortures of a peculiarly unpleasant kind, as in "The Cloth of Madness" by Seabury Quinn, and the masterful use of understatement and surprise endings in stories by M. R. James, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Aickman. From underwater monsters to bloodthirsty ghouls, from the evil that lies just beneath the surface of domestic comfort and security to cannibalism twenty-first- century style, this chilling compendium of terror is calculated to send a shiver down the spine of the most hardened devotee of horror fiction.

I could see reflections of the curtains sway lightly as a whiff of breeze came wafting up the outside corridor, and as I watched the softly undulating movement of the draperies I became aware of something else shown by the looking glass. Stretched on a pallet laid upon the floor, and looking straight at me, was the most lovely girl I'd ever seen. But I could not see my own reflection. I rose, walked slowly toward the mirror, and the girl walked toward me with a cadenced, sensuous swaying of slim hips and pointed breasts. Arm's length from the looking glass I halted and put out my hand. The mirror girl's slim hand came up to meet mine, but instead of warm flesh I encountered cool, hard glass. I turned to look behind me. Besides me there was no one in the room! And so begins the odyssey of a man trapped in woman's flesh by Oriental necromancy. But what was Hugh Arundel to believe when the woman he loved told him her strange story? Had his lifelong friend, the brilliant young archeologist Lynne Foster, really been transformed into Ismet Foulik, the beautiful daughter of a Circassian slave girl? Or was his beloved Ismet hopelessly mad . . . and obsessed by memories she had no right to have?

Dead men working in the cane fields / W. B. Seabrook After nightfall / David A. Riley Mission to Margal / Hugh B. Cave The Cairnwell horror / Chet Williamson Crawling madness / Arthur Leo Zagat Treading the maze / Lisa Tuttle Red angels / Karen Haber Later / Michael Marshall Smith White Zombie / Vivian Meik Was it a dream? / Guy de Maupassant Bodies and heads / Steve Rasnic Tem Death and suffrage / Dale Bailey The Graveyard rats / Henry Kuttner The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar / Edgar Allen Poe Feeding the dead inside / Yvonne Navarro Ballet Negre / Charles Birkin Dead right / Geoffrey A. Landis The Taking of Mr. Bill / Graham Masterton The Grave gives up / Jack D'Arcy Herbert West-Reanimator / H.P. Lovecraft Pickman's model / H.P. Lovecraft Maternal instinct / Robert Bloch Bringing the family / Kevin J. Anderson Mess hall / Richard Laymon Schalken the painter / Sheridan Le Fanu While zombies walked / Thorp McClusky April flowers, November harvest / Mary A. Turzillo The Old man and the dead / Mort Castle Jumbee / Henry S. Whitehead Marbh bheo / Peter Tremayne The Hollow man / Thomas Burke They bite / Anthony Boucher Come one, come all / Gahan Wilson It helps if you sing / Ramsey Campbell The Ghouls / R. Chetwynd-Hayes The Corpse-Master / Seabury Quinn The Upper berth / F. Marion Crawford Vengeance of the living dead / Ralston Shields The Song the zombie sang / Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg Men without blood / John H. Knox The Broken fang / Uel Key It / Theodore Sturgeon League of the Grateful Dead / Day Keene Love child / Garry Kilworth Corpses on parade / Edith and Ejler Jacobson Where there's a will / Richard and Christian Matheson The Dead / Michael Swanwick The Song of the slaves / Manly Wade Wellman The Outsider / H.P. Lovecraft Eat me / Robert McCammon Deadman's road / Joe R. Lansdale Pigeons from hell / Robert E. Howard Live people don't understand / Scott Edelman The House in the Magnolias / August Derleth and Mark Schorer [Home delivery]( / Stephen King Dance of the damned / Arthur J. Burks Z is for zombie / Theodore Roscoe

"Today the names of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin's knack for solving mysteries-and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)-captivated readers for nearly three decades. Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero. The first volume, The Horror on the Links, includes all of the Jules de Grandin stories from "The Horror on the Links" (1925) to "The Chapel of Mystic Horror" (1928), as well as an introduction by Robert Weinberg"-- "Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin's knack for solving mysteries--and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)--captivated readers for nearly three decades"--