*WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.

They did it. The West Memphis 3 are guilty. They are guilty despite what the documentaries, books and news stories have said over and over. Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. killed three 8-year-olds, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, on May 5, 1993, in a wooded area in West Memphis, Ark. The murders were thrill kills, according to Echols himself. But they were much more than that. Police were struck by the ritualistic aspects. Local dabblers in the occult immediately came under suspicion. Under questioning, Echols, already acknowledged as a witch, flaunted his knowledge of the occult, his theories of how the killings could have "magickal" implications and his insights into how the killer would think and feel. He demonstrated special knowledge about the case beyond the little publicly known. He gave out signals that he was a prime suspect; a series of witnesses further implicated him. A confession broke open the case. The widely accepted WM3 storyline is that inept police and prosecutors, with a howling mob of religious fanatics to placate, somewhat arbitrarily picked out three innocent boys to blame for horrific murders because Damien and his best pal Jason wore black T-shirts, listened to heavy metal music and had funny haircuts and because the third boy, Little Jessie, was practically retarded and thus easily manipulated. Almost every element in that storyline has little relation to reality. The weirdness that drew the attention of authorities stemmed from bad choices by the suspects rather than clothing, haircuts or rocking out to Megadeth. The West Memphis police did their duty in a diligent if imperfect manner. The investigation was professional and painstaking. Detectives took many statements, followed strange and unpromising leads and administered the polygraph dozens of times. All three of the teens from the trailer parks were convicted. The convictions held up on appeal. Eventually, thanks to Hollywood celebrities and misleading documentaries that left out crucial evidence, the killers who became the West Memphis 3 walked free. No exonerating evidence, despite many years of investigation and a defense fund in the millions of dollars, has been produced. None of the three has a credible alibi. The mainstream media bought into the premise that "those boys were innocent." By putting the focus on mullet-headed rednecks, drawling overweight cops and righteously angry Christians, the media played upon the most egregious stereotypes of Southern whites, while positioning a murdering sociopath as a hip kid who was just too cool for the uptight hometown idiots. The West Memphis 3 myth was made to order for the familiar narrative of the perceptive young outsider that every hipster and aspiring artist imagines himself to have been. Among the sensitive souls who found a doppelganger of their teen selves in Echols were professional outsiders - such as Johnny Depp and Henry Rollins. In Aleister Crowley's "magickal" system, which Echols embraced in his preteen years, orgasm and ecstasy are equated with death and sacrifice and the sexual fluids are often represented as blood or water. Echols felt he was in transition to a state of being a god, something other than human; he believed that drinking blood invested him with spiritual energy. Echols and "blood brother" Jason formed a pathological dyad, cultivating elaborate violent fantasies. Via the ritual torture, killing and eating of dogs, cats and other animals, they educated themselves in the curriculum of occult murder. The lurking allure of a "thrill kill" finally became irresistible when the killing time coincided with sunset, the rise of a full moon and the pagan holiday of Beltane.

In a world where the dead walk, however poorly, for a corpse to sit up at his funeral and curse his ex-partner is shocking but not unheard of.ÿMurder, mayhem, and mirth follow, involving partner Bernie McKay, "Hat" Stetson and his redneck friends, Justin Waley the sword-swinging accountant, and Rod Parker the troll-like deputy sheriff in a search for stolen gold, for revenge, for the truth. ~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~ "Hyaw Raw Yaw!" Bernie McKay jumped and looked around in the dim room.ÿSomeone was coming at him from the kitchen!ÿHe had stumbled away from the stair, so he ran and ducked behind the couches around the coffee table, heart beating quickly.ÿIt came into the light from the window. "No!ÿYou're dead!" Uncle Albert's face gleamed waxily, pulled back and fixed into a scowl, teeth gleaming.ÿHis eyes were swelling, popping out, despite the embalming.ÿHe cawed and croaked, no longer able to speak intelligibly ? but hatred still animated him enough to send him shambling around the coffee table and its couches.ÿHis best suit was incongruously festive, the diamond winking from his tie, shirt sleeves open where he'd lost his studs, black shoes scuffed. "Harr Yaw!" "Back ? get back?"ÿBernie danced sideways, spun a chair into the thing's way. It patiently fumbled the fallen chair aside, never taking its gaze off him.ÿ"Raw Raw Rawrr."ÿIt came on, not fast, not slow, more than ever like some wind-up machine, clumsy, powerful, unsophisticated. Bernie was frightened, but despite that he had a sudden flood of unreality.ÿIt was too absurd a picture, himself confronting this tenacious dead thing from which all rationality had departed.ÿWhat would the neighbors think?ÿA flash of anger shook him. "You stupid asshole!" he barked.ÿ"You can't come in here like this?" Ignoring him, it got close enough to lunge.ÿSweating, Bernie danced around again, brief anger gone and choky fear back.ÿIt wouldn't ever stop coming?ÿHe gripped the smaller of the couches.ÿWhen it turned and started for him again, he aimed the couch like a pool cue and thrust with panicky strength. It was too slow to dodge and was bowled over backward.ÿShrieking You old bastard, Bernie was running for it even as it fell.ÿHe grabbed a chair and made a full overhand sweep with it, staggering as its legs bounced off the ceiling.ÿIt came down with diminished force on Uncle Albert's unprotected head. Wood or bone crunched, and Bernie raised the chair again, panting, glaring.ÿThis time he swept it around in a lower arc, but the corpse let itself fall backward to raise its arms.ÿThe chair crashed into them and did little harm.ÿBefore he could pull it back, Uncle Albert, cawing, had seized it.ÿFor a moment there was a nightmarish tug of war over the chair, then Bernie released it, falling back to the fireplace. The corpse struggled slowly to its feet; Bernie wasted time fumbling for the poker because he couldn't bear to look away from it.ÿWhen he finally had it, the corpse was upright and swinging the chair back over its head, stumbling toward him. Quickly Bernie ran at it, taking advantage of its slow clumsiness, to shove it.ÿBut that brought him face to face with it, and into its evil putrid chemical odor.ÿHe almost panicked, eyeball to eyeball with Death. Hysterically he shoved it away, screaming, "Die!ÿDie!ÿDie!" and swinging the poker again and again, smashing the face, the head, the chair it finally brought forward, following it up as it staggered backward, as it fell, striking and striking and striking, screaming and screaming.ÿ"Dirty rotting scoundrel!"

Originally published: New York: Random House, 1972.

Alisa and Ray think they're the only vampires left until they witness a series of brutal murders. The plot contains profanity, sexual situations and violence. Book #2 Last Vampire series; Book #2 of Thirst No. 1 bind-up.

The dark and alluring first novel in New York Times bestselling author Anne Bishop’s beloved Black Jewels series introduces Jaenelle Angelline, a witch with astonishing power and a dangerous destiny, and Daemon Sadi, the lethal Warlord Prince born to be her lover. Seven hundred years ago, a Black Widow witch saw an ancient prophecy come to life in her web of dreams and visions. Now the Dark Kingdom readies itself for the arrival of its Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But she is still young, still open to influence—and corruption. Whoever controls the Queen controls the darkness. Three men—sworn enemies—know this. And they know the power that hides behind the blue eyes of an innocent young girl. And so begins a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, where the weapons are hate and love—and the prize could be terrible beyond imagining...

RECORD STORE DAY EDITION: Signed book + exclusive red-colored 7-inch containing unreleased music from the 1980 cult slasher Prom Night._____Are you obsessed with John Carpenter's iconic music for the Halloween series? Do you thrill to the unforgettable stabs of the Psycho score, or the pounding synth of Goblin's soundtrack to Suspiria? Do you find yourself being pulled into the hair-raising modern scores for the likes of Get Out, Hereditary, and The Witch? You're not alone. Blood on Black Wax is a defining horror soundtrack volume that spotlights iconic franchises such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Jaws, The Exorcist, and George A. Romero's Dead films, highlighting both the music and the amazing - often rare - artwork that graces the record sleeves. It also tells the stories behind the soundtrack, from the mouths of the musicians who made them, including John Carpenter, Fabio Frizzi, Christopher Young, Harry Manfredini, Charles Bernstein, Pino Donaggio, John Harrison, and more. Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas, both of Rue Morgue magazine, have curated Blood on Black Wax to reflect their own passion for the darkest slabs of soundtrack music. Their journey into the fascinating history of horror movie scores contains reviews, release details, and wild stories about both renown and unusual releases - everything from the orchestral sounds of Hammer and Universal horror, to the truly experimental albums for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eraserhead, to the outlandish punk and metal songs of '80s soundtrack albums like The Return of the Living Dead and Shocker. Go back to your favorite horror films one more time, through the jaw-dropping, spine-tingling music that helped solidify their place in cinematic history!