Search Worlds Without End

Theodora (Theo) Leslie is a biologist for a large expedition from the Aurora Corporation surveying and exploring the planet Eridan. Something is happening at all three human bases so that almost all personnel there are becoming fearful to the point of being nonfunctional. Theo is out in the field alone for a month when she witnesses a murder. She and the lone survivor of the killing (Karen Orlov) set out to learn what has happened at the human bases and how much it has to do with a remarkable series of changes at the coming of the rainy season for Eridan. What they learn could doom (or save) the entire expedition.

Five stories, which belong to the gothic horror and mystery genres, are presented as selections from the posthumous papers of the occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius.

1. "Green Tea" An English clergyman named Jennings confides to Hesselius that he is being followed by a demon in the form of an ethereal monkey, invisible to everyone else, which is trying to invade his mind and destroy his life.
2. "The Familiar"A revised version of The Watcher (1851). A sea captain, living in Dublin, is stalked by "The Watcher,", a strange dwarf who resembles a person from his past.
3. "Mr. Justice Harbottle" A revised version of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street (1853). A cruel judge in the Court of Common Pleas, Elijah Harbottle, finds himself under attack by vengeful spirits, and in a disturbing dream he is condemned to death by a monstrous doppelgänger.
4. "The Room in the Dragon Volant" Not a ghost story but a notable mystery story in which a naïve young Englishman in France attempts to save a mysterious countess from her intolerable situation.
5. "Carmilla" A tale of a lesbian vampire, set in Styria, Austria. This story was to greatly influence Bram Stoker in the writing of Dracula.

In 1888 Henry James wrote 'There was the customary novel by Mr Le Fanu for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight'. Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories are tales selected from Le Fanu's stories which mostly appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and other periodicals, and their haunting, sinister qualities still have an enormous appeal for the modern reader. The great M.R. James, who collected and introduces the stories in this book, considered that Le Fanu 'stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.'

• Epilogue, Biographical and Critical (Madam Crowl's Ghost ) essay by M. R. James
• Madam Crowl's Ghost short story
• Squire Toby's Will novelette
• Dickon the Devil short story
• The Child That Went with the Fairies short story
• The White Cat of Drumgunniol short story
• An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street short story
• Introduction (Ghost Stories of Chapelizod) essay
• The Village Bully short story
• The Sexton's Adventure short story
• The Spectre Lovers short story
• Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling short story
• Sir Dominick's Bargain short story
• Ultor de Lacy novelette (variant of Ultor de Lacy: A Legend of Cappercullen 1861)
• The Vision of Tom Chuff short story
• Stories of Lough Guir short story

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is best known today as one of the Victorian period's leading exponents of supernatural fiction, and was described by M.R. James as standing absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.

The House by the Churchyard is perhaps his best novel in this genre. Set in the village of Chapelizod, near Dublin, in the 1760s the story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs and change the lives of many of its notable characters forever. Charm and chilling darkness abound in equal measure in one of the greatest novels of a Victorian master of mystery.

CAN DEATH AND MURDER BE FUNNY?

"Hinchley & Trumbull Funeral Parlor"

Read the sign. And what can the owner of such an establishment do to increase business? Why, furnish his own corpses of course, even if it meant his own...

The Masque of The Red Death is set in 12th century Italy, where Prince Prospero, a devout worshiper of Satan, rules tyrannically in a land stricken by a mysterious plague. Prospero's cruel whims include toying with the fear-stricken peasants under his domain, in order to satisfy his own diabolical pleasures. Deliverance... or Doom?

"The day of deliverance is at hand." That was the prophecy of the mysterious man cloaked in red. But the villagers had little time for rejoicing. For a few scant hours later, the people were dying of that grimmest of all plagues-the Red Death! And within the castle that ruled this desolated land, even eerier events were happening... as the purity of the lovely Francesca battled the evil of Prospero... and unearthly forces gathered for a mad, grim masquerade!

As the November winds wail in ivied chimneys we are drawn into a Victorian Gothic atmosphere of menacing, sombre gloom and ebony shadows. Sheridan Le Fanu leaves us in no doubt that we are in for a feast of exciting drama, luring us into the intensely claustrophobic world of the nineteenth century sensational novel. Le Fanu is amongst the top-notch exponents of the creepy, the criminal and the oppressive. In this tale of the orphaned teenage heiress Maud Ruthyn, fearing for her life at the hands of her sinister uncle, he has created a rattling good plot with the depth of a social novel and the power of high romance.

Supposing your world was an advanced Utopia that had eliminated war so long ago that nobody knew how to conduct a adequate defence. Then suppose your solar system was invaded by a fleet of alien militarists...

This is what happened to a certain planet in the Constellation Eridanus - and what its leaders did was to seek a primitive race that still engaged in warfare.

So they kidnapped a band of experienced soldiers - Napoleonic veterans fleeing Moscow through the snows of that terrible winter of 1812.

Captain Bernard of the Imperial Dragoons took on the task. But being a loyal Bonapartist campaigner, he had ambitions that Utopian aliens could not suspect.

The Napoleons of Eridanus is a surprise-filled romp in transposed history...

The natives of Eridanus had spaced in veterans of Napoleon's Dragoons to save them from warlike invaders, and the Bonapartists had stayed. In fact, they had followed the tenets of the Little Corporal and had raised their own imperial standards over the conquered stars.

Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1871 as a serial narrative in The Dark Blue, it tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla. Carmilla predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by 26 years, and has been adapted many times for cinema.