Arthur Bliss Lane was a hugely experienced American Diplomat, having worked all over the world before his posting to the Polish Government in 1944. The Polish Government was then in exile in London and he gained a great deal of respect for the Polish leadership. He followed them back to their homeland in 1945 as the Poles sought to set-up a democratic state from the smashed debris of years of Nazi domination. What transpired was a new form of despotism...

The Lair of the White Worm (1911) is a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Published only a year before Stoker's death, The Lair of the White Worm helped to establish the Irish master of Gothic horror's reputation as a leading writer of the early-twentieth century. The novel is partly based on the legend of the Lambton Worm, a story from popular English folklore dating back to at least the 14th century. In 1860, an Australian named Adam Salton is...

In her first published mystery, Agatha Christie introduced readers to the famously eccentric Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot is, settling in near Styles Court, when its wealthy mistress, Emily Inglethorp, is found, murdered. Mrs. Inglethorp has been, poisoned, and the authorities are, unable to find the culprit, luckily, Poirot is nearby to put is, excellent sleuthing skills to work. Poirot manages to wade through the confusing...

The Wendigo is a novella by Algernon Blackwood, first published in The Lost Valley and Other Stories (Eveleigh Nash, 1910). In the wilderness north of Rat Portage in Northwestern Ontario, two Scotsmen - divinity student Simpson and his uncle, Dr. Cathcart, an author of a book on collective hallucination - are on a moose-hunting trip with guides Hank Davis and the wilderness-loving French "Canuck", Joseph Défago. While their Indian cook, Punk, stays...

The Willows is a novella by English author Algernon Blackwood, originally published as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird...

"For God's sake, come!" Unfortunately, by the time Hercule Poirot received Monsieur Renauld's urgent plea, the millionaire was already dead - stabbed in the back, lying in a freshly dug grave on the golf course of his adjoining Merlinville estate. There's no lack of suspects: his wife, whose dagger served as the weapon; his embittered son, who would have killed for independence; and his mistress, who refused to be ignored - and each felt deserving...

Although he is semiretired, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solves a baffling murder on a night train to the Mediteranean.

The story is narrated by an unnamed seeker of "strange horrors" who is investigating the massacre of a community of some six dozen backwoods degenerates in an obscure region of the Catskills, a massacre which occurred during a particularly violent electrical storm and seems to have been perpetrated by an unidentified clawed beast. The narrator soon discovers that the most sinister legends of the region centre around the abandoned Martense mansion,...

A novel of duty and destiny from the pioneering fantasy author, the "inventor of a new mythology and weaver of surprising folklore" (H. P. Lovecraft). In Spain, Gonsalvo, the Lord of the Tower, is in a bind. His daughter is nearing her fifteenth year and should marry soon, yet she has no dowry. To cure the ills of his impoverished family, Gonsalvo turns to his son, Ramon Alonzo. He tells Ramon Alonzo the story of his grandfather, who is owed a favor...