Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• ix - A Note on the Selections (Dark Banquet: A Feast of 12 Great Ghost Stories) - (1985) - essay by Lincoln Child
• xi - Introduction to the Banquet (Dark Banquet: A Feast of 12 Great Ghost Stories) - (1985) - essay by Lincoln Child
• 1 - The Signalman - (1866) - short story by Charles Dickens
• 15 - Thrawn Janet - (1881) - short story by Robert Louis Stevenson
• 26 - The Upper Berth - (1885) - novelette by F. Marion Crawford
• 48 - The Horror of the Heights - (1913) - short story by Arthur Conan Doyle
• 65 - How Love Came to Professor Guildea - (1897) - novella by Robert Hichens [as by Robert S. Hichens]
• 111 - The Yellow Sign - [King in Yellow (Chambers)] - (1895) - novelette by Robert W. Chambers
• 131 - "They" - (1904) - novelette by Rudyard Kipling
• 154 - The House of Sounds - (1911) - novelette by M. P. Shiel
• 184 - The Inexperienced Ghost - (1902) - short story by H. G. Wells
• 198 - The Man Who Went Too Far - (1904) - novelette by E. F. Benson
• 220 - Seaton's Aunt - (1922) - novelette by Walter de la Mare
• 251 - Blind Man's Buff - (1929) - short story by H. Russell Wakefield

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction (Dark Company: The Ten Greatest Ghost Stories) - (1984) - essay by Lincoln Child
• 1 - The Fall of the House of Usher - (1839) - novelette by Edgar Allan Poe
• 19 - Green Tea - [Martin Hesselius] - (1869) - novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• 49 - The Jolly Corner - (1908) - novelette by Henry James
• 81 - The Mezzotint - (1904) - short story by M. R. James
• 92 - The Monkey's Paw - (1902) - short story by W. W. Jacobs
• 103 - The Great God Pan - (1894) - novella by Arthur Machen
• 152 - The Willows - (1907) - novella by Algernon Blackwood
• 198 - The Beckoning Fair One - (1911) - novella by Oliver Onions
• 260 - The Voice in the Night - (1907) - short story by William Hope Hodgson
• 273 - The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella by H. P. Lovecraft

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...

But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.

Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who-or what-is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?

Twelve-thousand feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean... scientists are excavating the most extraordinary undersea discovery ever made. But is it the greatest archaeological find in history--or the most terrifying?

Former naval doctor Peter Crane is urgently summoned to a remote oil platform in the North Atlantic to help diagnose a bizarre medical condition spreading through the rig. But when he arrives, Crane learns that the real trouble lies far below--on "Deep Storm," a stunningly advanced science research facility built two miles beneath the surface on the ocean floor. The top secret structure has been designed for one purpose: to excavate a recently discovered undersea site that may hold the answers to a mystery steeped in centuries of myth and speculation.

Sworn to secrecy, Dr. Crane descends to Deep Storm. A year earlier, he is told, routine drilling uncovered the remains of mankind's most sophisticated ancient civilization: the legendary Atlantis. But now that the site is being excavated, a series of disturbing illnesses has begun to affect the operation. Scientists and technicians are experiencing a bizarre array of symptoms--from simple fatigue to violent psychotic episodes. As Crane is indoctrinated into the strange world of Deep Storm and commences his investigation, he begins to suspect that the covert facility conceals something more complicated than a medical mystery.The discovery of Atlantis might, in fact, be a cover for something far more sinister... and deadly.

Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle lies Alaska's Federal Wildlife Zone, one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. But for paleoecologist Evan Marshall and a small group of fellow scientists, an expedition to the Zone represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the effects of global warming.

Everything about the expedition changes, however, with an astonishing find. On a routine exploration of a glacial ice cave, the group discovers an enormous ancient animal, encased in solid ice. The media conglomerate sponsoring their research immediately intervenes and arranges the ultimate spectacle; the creature will be cut from the ice, thawed, and revealed live on television. Despite dire warnings from the local Native American village, and the scientific concerns of Marshall and his team, the docudrama plows ahead... until the scientists make one more horrifying discovery. The beast is no regular specimen; it may be an ancient killing machine. And they may be premature in believing it dead.

Under the direction of famed explorer Porter Stone, an archaeological team is secretly attempting to locate the tomb of an ancient pharaoh who was unlike any other in history. Stone believes he has found the burial chamber of King Narmer, the near mythical god- king who united upper and lower Egypt in 3200 B.C., and the archaeologist has reason to believe that the greatest prize of all--Narmer's crown--might be buried with him. No crown of an Egyptian king has ever been discovered, and Narmer's is the elusive "double" crown of the two Egypts, supposedly possessed of awesome powers.

The dig itself is located in one of the most forbidding places on earth--the Sudd, a nearly impassable swamp in northern Sudan. Amid the nightmarish, disorienting tangle of mud and dead vegetation, a series of harrowing and inexplicable occurrences are causing people on the expedition to fear a centuries- old curse. With a monumental discovery in reach, Professor Jeremy Logan is brought onto the project to investigate. What he finds will raise new questions... and alarm.

Professor Jeremy Logan (the quirky and charismatic "enigmologist" who specializes in solving problems of the strange or seemingly supernatural variety) receives an urgent summons from the director of Lux, one of the oldest and most respected think tanks in America. An unexplainable tragedy has taken place in the sprawling compound located on the coastline of Newport, Rhode Island. One of Lux's most distinguished doctors, overcome by erratic behavior, violently attacked his assistant before meeting with a gruesome self-inflicted end. Deeply shaken by the incident and the bizarre evidence left behind from the doctor's final project--as well as recent troubling behavior among several of the think tank's other scientists--Lux fears there is something more sinister occurring within its walls and looks to Jeremy Logan to investigate.

Logan quickly makes a surprising discovery. In a long-dormant wing of the estate, he uncovers an ingeniously hidden secret room, unknown and untouched for decades. The room is essentially a time capsule, filled with eerie machinery and obscure references to a top-secret experiment known as "Project S." As Logan attempts to unravel its meaning, he begins to discern what transpired in that room--and why the frightening project was suddenly abandoned and sealed off many years before. As his work draws him ever deeper into harm's way, Logan soon unleashes a series of catastrophic events upon the rest of Lux... and himself.

Legends, no matter how outlandish, are often grounded in reality. This has been the guiding principle behind the exhilarating career of Jeremy Logan, the "enigmologist" -- an investigator who specializes in analyzing phenomena that have no obvious explanation. Logan has often found himself in situations where keeping an open mind could mean the difference between life and death, and that has never been more true than now.

Logan travels to an isolated writers' retreat deep in the Adirondacks to finally work on his book when the remote community is rocked by the grisly discovery of a dead hiker on Desolation Mountain. The body has been severely mauled, but the unusual savagery of the bite and claw marks call into question the initial suspicions of a wild bear attack. When Logan is asked to help investigate, he discovers no shortage of suspects capable of such an attack -- and no shortage of locals willing to point the finger and spread incredible rumors. One rumor, too impossible to believe, has even the forest ranger believing in werewolves.