Andrew Pinkney is a young English lawyer with boyish good looks and a gentle manner, but a dark side emerges when his girlfriend Jennifer laughs at his impotence. He lashes out in a violent rage, knocking her unconscious. At the suggestion of his employer, Andrew heads to an isolated cottage in the dark Welsh countryside to take a break and get a grip on himself. In the woods, he discovers the grotesque stinkhorn mushroom, whose phallic shape seems to rise in obscene mockery of his own shortcomings. But the stinkhorn gives him an idea, a way to win Jennifer back. As the seeds of obsession take root in Andrew's mind, he embarks on a nightmarish quest, with unexpected and horrifying results.

A young family receives a welcome surprise when old Uncle Ian dies and leaves them a cottage in north Wales. For Ian's nephew and his wife Ann, it seems a stroke of incredible good fortune, enabling them to leave their unfulfilling lives in the city for a newfound freedom in the remote seaside cottage. There's just one catch. Uncle Ian's will has a strange condition: the couple must care for his pet cormorant or forfeit the bequest. They think nothing of it at first: Uncle Ian was eccentric, and the bird is amusing in a way. But when the cormorant begins to show a violent and malevolent side, they soon find that Uncle Ian's gift may not be a blessing, but a curse.

Over the past four decades, few writers have created a body of work as distinctive - or disturbing - as Stephen Gregory's. In his tales of death and madness the menace usually comes not from the supernatural, but from the natural, and particularly birds, which in Gregory's fiction often bring terror on their dark wings. Included in this volume are the ghost stories 'The Late Mr Lewis' and 'The Boys Who Wouldn't Wake Up' as well as the macabre 'The Cormorant', which provided the inspiration for Gregory's classic novel of the same name. But not all of the tales in this book are horror stories. The avian-themed entries also include tales like 'To Catch a Thief', in which a series of inexplicable thefts is revealed to have an unexpected culprit and 'The Blackbird's Song', in which a celebrated flute player whose career was cut short by an accident rediscovers music after a visit from a blackbird. This first-ever collection of the author's short fiction brings together a rich and varied assortment of fourteen tales, including several never before reprinted, four previously unpublished early tales, and two new stories written specially for this volume. Critical Acclaim for Stephen Gregory 'Gregory writes with the hypnotic power of Poe.' - Publishers Weekly (on The Cormorant) 'Gregory's voice and vision are wholly original.' - Ramsey Campbell (on The Woodwitch) 'Feverish tales of madness and nightmare with lush, precise prose . . . A one-of-a-kind horror writer to read and re-read.' - Paul Tremblay (on The Blood of Angels)

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires comes a nostalgic and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s. Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of two iconic decades . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil worship, satanic children, and haunted real estate! Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers killer commentary and witty insight on these trashy thrillers that tried so hard to be the next Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby. Complete with story summaries and artist and author profiles, this unforgettable volume dishes on familiar authors like V. C. Andrews and R. L. Stine, plus many more who’ve faded into obscurity. Also included are recommendations for which of these forgotten treasures are well worth your reading time and which should stay buried.

It's David Kewish's eighteenth birthday. But the day doesn't turn out quite as he expected. After suffering a gruesome injury, he receives a strange present in the form of a baby black-backed gull. But David's accident isn't the only misfortune to coincide with the bird's arrival. Soon a whole series of violent incidents, and even deaths, begins to unfold in the seaside town where he lives. And when people notice how close David is to the gull, they begin to suspect he is to blame for the tragedies ... With echoes of Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, Plague of Gulls is the latest novel by Stephen Gregory, author of the modern classic The Cormorant and one of the finest contemporary writers of psychological horror. 'A one-of-a-kind horror writer to read and re-read.' - Paul Tremblay 'Gregory's voice and vision are wholly original.' - Ramsey Campbell 'A first class terror story with a relentless focus that would have made Edgar Allan Poe proud.' - The New York Times (on The Cormorant)

Welcome 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 of the law. But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain of a kitchen sink, graves erupt from the local cemetery in an implacable march of terror ... And beneath the murky surface of the river, a shifting, almost human shape slowly takes form. Night after night it will pursue the murderer. And when the full moon rises over Babylon, it will seek a terrible vengeance ...

"All my life I've dreamed of the dead." Thanatrauma: the dread of it erodes you, the shadows waiting at the end, the impending conclusion, the troubling dream from which you will not wake. These 21 stories - four published here for the first time - explore some of our fundamental fears: death, loss, grief, and aging. In "Reflections in Black," a man takes a phantasmagoric Halloween journey in search of a former love. In "The Parts Man," a man enters a desperate contract with a sinister entity in a long, vintage automobile. The darkly beautiful "The Dead Outside My Door" is a haunting post-apocalyptic tale unlike any you've ever read. Other offerings include "Whatever You Want," in which a Christmas wish has terrible consequences; "Torn," a bizarre version of a highly personalized Hell; and "The Way Station," a tribute to the legendary Stefan Grabinski. Also included is "August Freeze," from the lost, undistributed Winter 1985 issue of Weird Tales. Winner of the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards, Steve Rasnic Tem has established himself as one of today's finest writers of horror and weird fiction. In this new collection, which is by turns chilling and thought-provoking, Tem is at his very best.