Search Worlds Without End

The walking dead from 15 centuries haunt this compendium of ghostly visitations through the ages, exploring the history of our fascination with zombies and other restless souls.

Since ancient times, accounts of supernatural activity have mystified us. Ghost stories as we know them did not develop until the late nineteenth century, but the restless dead haunted the premodern imagination in many forms, as recorded in historical narratives, theological texts, and personal letters. The Penguin Book of the Undead teems with roving hordes of dead warriors, corpses trailed by packs of barking dogs, moaning phantoms haunting deserted ruins, evil spirits emerging from burning carcasses in the form of crows, and zombies with pestilential breath. Spanning from the Hebrew scriptures to the Roman Empire, the Scandinavian sagas to medieval Europe, the Protestant Reformation to the Renaissance, this beguiling array of accounts charts our relationship with spirits and apparitions, wraiths and demons over fifteen hundred years, showing the evolution in our thinking about the ability of dead souls to return to the realm of the living--and to warn us about what awaits us in the afterlife.

Within the fantasy-fan and pulp-magazine collecting communities, this group of memoirs by a prolific pulp writer has reached almost legendary stature, although the finished, long-delayed book, proves less impressive than the reputation it rides in on. Price began writing these memoirs in the 1940s, concentrating on such fellow Weird Tales contributors as H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. An early long-distance motorist, Price met many figures associated with the magazine, and so can describe firsthand editor Farnsworth Wright's love of raunchy humor and a drunken sword fight with Otis Adelbert Kline.

About half this book is the finest account of that era ever done. The other half suffers because Price completed the book in the 1970s and fell into repeated polemics, berating fans of that period for adulating Lovecraft and Howard. Arguing that his friend HPL was merely an amateur who couldn't break out of Weird Tales and that Howard wasted his time creating Conan the Barbarian, Price appears obtuse and possibly jealous. (Oddly, Arkham editor Ruber seems to agree with Price, whom he describes as "a prodigious worker, not an idler like Lovecraft, whose narrow focus on weird fiction caused him to burn out after several dozen stories" a statement sure to inflame HPL fans.) In addition, Price, a practicing astrologer, blasts Lovecraft for attacking astrology as nonsense. Questionable judgments aside, Price comes across as a far better writer of nonfiction than of fiction. With an introduction by Jack Williamson, a checklist of Price's fiction, and a section of photos, these memoirs will sell out fast to the ardent pulp readership that's been eagerly awaiting them.

-- Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

E. Hoffmann Price: Introduction - essay by Jack Williamson Some Notes on EHP and the Book of the Dead - essay by Peter Ruber

• Prologue (Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others) - essay
• Farnsworth Wright: 1888 - 1940 - (1944) - essay (variant of Book of the Dead: Farnsworth Wright)
• Otis Adelbert Kline: July 1, 1891 - October 24, 1946 - essay
• Howard Phillips Lovecraft: August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937 - essay
• Robert Ervin Howard: January 22, 1906 - June 11, 1936 - essay
• Clark Ashton Smith: January 13, 1893 - August 14, 1961 - essay
• W. K. Mashburn, Jr.: August 7, 1900 - February 13, 1968 - essay
• Ralph Milne Farley (Pseud. of Roger Sherman Hoar): April 8, 1887 - October 10, 1963 - essay
• Seabury Grandin Quinn: January 1, 1889 - December 24, 1969 - essay
• Hugh Doak Rankin: July 2, 1878 - January 3, 1956 - essay
• The Varnished Vultures & Spider Bite - essay
• Barsoom Badigian: [1873] - Dec. 18, 1960 - essay
• Harry Olmsted: August 10, 1889 - April 2, 1970 - essay
• Albert Richard Wetjen: August 20, 1900 - March 8, 1948 - essay
• Norbert W. Davis: April 18, 1909 - July 28, 1949 - essay
• Milo Ray Phelps: [-d. 1937] - essay
• William S. Bruner - essay
• Henry Kuttner: April 7, 1915 - February 3, 1958 - essay
• August W. Derleth: February 24, 1908 - July 4, 1971 - essay
• Edmond Hamilton: October 21, 1904 - February 1, 1977 - essay
• Epilogue (Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others) - essay
• The Lovecraft Controversy - Why? - (1976) - essay
• Five Million Words! In his life as in his writing word for Price is 'colorful' - (1947) - essay by Monte Linsley
• Seabury Quinn: An Appreciation - (1977) - essay
• Mortonius (James Ferdinand Morton) - essay
• A Conversation with E. Hoffmann Price - (1986) - interview of E. Hoffmann Price - interview by Gregorio Montejo
• One Man's View of the Death of the Pulp Era - (1975) - essay
• EHP: A Bibliography - essay by Virgil Utter

The Book of the Dead addresses the most fascinating of all the undead: the mummy. The mummy can be a figure of imperial dignity or one of shambling terror, at home in pulp adventure, contemporary drama, or apocalyptic horror. The anthology will be published in collaboration with the Egypt Exploration Society, the UK's oldest independent funder of archaeological fieldwork and research in Egypt, dedicated to the promotion and understanding of ancient Egyptian history and culture. This anthology includes nineteen original stories of revenge, romance, monsters and mayhem, ranging freely across time periods, genres and styles. The stories are illustrated by Garen Ewing, creator of The Adventures of Julius Chancer and introduced by John J. Johnston, Vice Chair of the Egypt Exploration Society.

Table of Contents:

• Akhenaten Goes to Paris - (2013) - shortstory by Louis Greenberg
• All is Dust - (2013) - shortstory by Den Patrick
• Bit-U-Men - (2013) - shortstory by Maria Dahvana Headley
• Cerulean Memories - (2013) - shortstory by Maurice Broaddus
• Egyptian death and the afterlife: mummies (Rooms 62-3) - (2013) - shortstory by Jonathan Green
• Escape from the Mummy's Tomb - (2013) - shortstory by Jesse Bullington
• Henry - (2013) - shortstory by Glen Mehn
• Her Heartbeat, An Echo - (2013) - shortstory by Lou Morgan
• Inner Goddess - (2013) - shortstory by Michael West
• Introduction: "Some Words from an Egyptologist" - (2013) - essay by John J. Johnston
• Mysterium Tremendum - (2013) - shortstory by Molly Tanzer
• Old Souls - (2013) - shortstory by David Thomas Moore
• Ramesses on the Frontier - (2013) - shortstory by Paul Cornell
• The Book of the Dead - (2013) - interior artwork by Garen Ewing
• The Cats of Beni Hasan - (2013) - shortstory by Jenni Hill
• The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn't, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar - (2013) - shortstory by Gail Carriger
• The Dedication of Sweetheart Abbey - (2013) - shortstory by David Bryher
• The Roof of the World - (2013) - shortstory by Sarah Newton
• The Thing of Wrath - (2013) - shortstory by Roger Luckhurst
• Three Memories of Death - (2013) - shortstory by Will Hill
• Tollund - (2013) - shortstory by Adam Roberts

Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.

Ellie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie's cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.

Bound in ancient leather, the solid gold pages inscribed with indecipherable markings, the book lay hidden for eons--patiently waiting to entrap any man who would succumb to its beauty. For anyone who possesses it will have wealth beyond measure--at a price. And soon whomever the book serves will find his name written on its golden pages... in blood.

Book of the Dead is an anthology of horror stories first published in 1989, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector. All the stories in the anthology are united by the same premise seen in the apocalyptic films of George A. Romero, depicting a worldwide outbreak of zombies and various reactions to it. The first book was followed three years later by a follow-up, Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, with a new group of writers tackling the same premise, though the second book put the stories in order according to their imagined chronology of the zombie takeover.

An anthology of horror stories based on the universe of George A. Romero features stories by Nancy Collins, Douglas Winter, and Bram Stoker Award-winner Elizabeth Massie, and includes the lost original script for Romero's Day of the Dead.

When a massive sinkhole opens up and swallows a retired couple from Iowa, it seems like a freak occurrence. But it's not the only one. Similar sinkholes are opening all over the world, even on the sea floor. And they're getting bigger.

People living near the pits begin reporting strange phenomena: vibrations, sulfurous odors, and odd sounds in the stygian depths. Then the pets begin to go missing.

When people start disappearing as well, the government is forced to act. Professor Matt Kearns and a team of experts are sent in by the military to explore one of the sinkholes - and they discover far more than they bargained for.

From the war zones of the Syrian Desert to the fabled Library of Alexandria, and then to Hades itself, join Professor Matt Kearns as he attempts to unravel an age-old prophecy. The answers Matt seeks are hidden in the fabled Al Azif - known as the Book of the Dead - and he must find it, even if it kills him. Because time is running out - not just for Matt Kearns, but for all life on Earth.

The final battle between good and evil. Only one will survive...

The New York Museum of Natural History receives their stolen gem collection back... ground down to dust. Diogenes, the psychotic killer who stole them in DANCE OF DEATH, is throwing down the gauntlet to both the city and to his brother, FBI Agent Pendergast, who is currently incarcerated in a maximum security prison.

To quell the PR nightmare of the gem fiasco, the museum decides to reopen the Tomb of Senef. An astounding Egyptian temple, it was a popular museum exhibit until the 1930s, when it was quietly closed. But when the tomb is unsealed in preparation for its gala reopening, the killings - and whispers of an ancient curse - begin again. And the catastrophic opening itself sets the stage for the final battle between the two brothers: an epic clash from which only one will emerge alive.

In the tradition of The Night Circus and A Discovery of Witches, The Hawley Book of the Dead is the kind of novel that makes you believe that magic really exists.

An old house surrounded by acres of forest.

A place of secrets, mysteries and magic.

This is where Reve Dyer hopes to keep herself and her children safe.

But a mysterious figure has haunted Reve for over a decade. And now Reve knows that this person is on her trail again.

In Hawley, where the magic of her ancestors reigns, Reve must unlock the secrets of the Hawley Book of the Dead before it's too late...

The ambience of fin de siecle France imbues these eight gothic tales in the third volume in Lee's Secret Books of Paradys tetralogy, tracing the tortured lives once led by those buried in the crypts and cemeteries of the mythical (or forgotten) city of Paradys. "The Weasel Bride" twists a folktale about a man who marries an enchanted weasel and dies of her bite into an account of a young husband who kills his beloved bride on their wedding night and takes her dreadful secret to the gallows. The artist in "The Glass Dagger," who normally saves her emotion for her art, is consumed by jealous rage and turns to supernatural revenge when a jaded aristocrat tries an old stratagem to win her love. In "The Moon Is a Mask" a drudge who creates a world of beauty in her garret room steals to buy a mask that turns her into a vampire owl. The miasma of corruption and death, combined with vivid and at times elegiac writing will engross readers who fancy this dark shade of fantasy writing.

Table of Contents:

• The Weasel Bride - (1991) - shortstory
• The Nightmare's Tale - (1990) - novelette
• Beautiful Lady - (1991) - novelette
• Morcara's Room - (1991) - novelette
• The Marble Web - (1991) - novelette
• Lost in the World - (1991) - novelette
• The Glass Dagger - (1991) - novelette
• The Moon Is a Mask - (1991) - shortstory