Search Worlds Without End

What if there were a whole world of great horror fiction out there you didn't know anything about, written by authors in distant lands and in foreign languages, outstanding horror stories you had no access to, written in languages you couldn't read? For an avid horror fan, what could be more horrifying than that?

For this groundbreaking volume, the first of its kind, the editors of Valancourt Books have scoured the world, reading horror stories from dozens of countries in nearly twenty languages, to find some of the best contemporary international horror stories. All the foreign-language stories in this book appear here in English for the first time, while the English-language entries from countries like the Philippines are appearing in print in the U.S. for the first time.

The book includes stories by some of the world's preeminent horror authors, many of them not yet known in the English-speaking world:

• Pilar Pedraza, 'Mater Tenebrarum' (Spain)
• Flavius Ardelean, 'Down, in Their World' (Romania)
• Anders Fager, 'The Servants' Staircase' (Sweden)
• Tanya Tynjälä, 'The Collector' (Peru)
• Frithjof Spalder, 'The White Cormorant' (Norway)
• Jose María Latorre, 'Snapshots' (Spain)
• Luigi Musolino, 'Uironda' (Italy)
• Martin Steyn, 'Kira' (South Africa)
• Attila Veres, 'The Time Remaining' (Hungary)
• Lars Ahn, 'Donation' (Denmark)
• Bernardo Esquinca, 'Señor Ligotti' (Mexico)
• Cristina Fernández Cubas, 'The Angle of Horror' (Spain)
• Christien Boomsma, 'The Bones in Her Eyes' (Netherlands)
• Elisenda Solsona, 'Mechanisms' (Catalonia)
• Michael Roch, 'The Illogical Investigations of Inspector André Despérine' (Martinique)
• Solange Rodríguez Pappe, 'Tiny Women' (Ecuador)
• Bathie Ngoye Thiam, 'The House of Leuk Dawour' (Senegal)
• Marko Hautala, 'Pale Toes' (Finland)
• Yvette Tan, 'All the Birds' (Philippines)
• Ariane Gélinas, 'Twin Shadows' (Québec)
• Flore Hazoumé, 'Menopause' (Ivory Coast)

Plus More....

Featuring a wide variety of tales from Brazil to Malta to Nigeria to Japan, and all points in between, this new anthology is a must-have for any horror fan or anyone interested in contemporary world literature.

Included in this volume are some of the world's best horror writers, many of them unknown in the English-speaking world:

• Luciano Lamberti (Argentina)
• Roberto Causo (Brazil)
• Braulio Tavares (Brazil)
• Yavor Tsanev (Bulgaria)
• Zhang Yueran (China)
• Teddy Vork (Denmark)
• Indrek Hargla (Estonia)
• Mélanie Fazi (France)
• Konstantinos Kellis (Greece)
• Gary Victor (Haiti)
• Steinar Bragi (Iceland)
• Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (India)
• Stephan Friedman (Israel)
• Yasumi Tsuhara (Japan)
• Anton Grasso (Malta)
• Dare Segun Falowo (Nigeria)
• Wojciech Gunia (Poland)
• Ana María Fuster Lavín (Puerto Rico)
• Val Votrin (Russia)
• Bora Chung (South Korea)

Spanning two hundred years of horror, this new collection features seventeen macabre gems, including two original tales and many others that have never or seldom been reprinted.

Contents:

• Editors' Foreword (The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories) - essay by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle
• Aunty Green - (1977) - short story by John Blackburn
• Miss Mack - (1986) - short story by Michael McDowell
• School Crossing - (1979) - short story by Francis King
• A Psychological Experiment - (1900) - short story by Richard Marsh
• The Progress of John Arthur Crabbe - (1982) - short story by Stephen Gregory
• The Frozen Man - (1910) - short story by John Trevena
• California Burning - (2009) - novelette by Michael Blumlein
• Let Loose - (1890) - short story by Mary Cholmondeley
• Out of Sorts - (1983) - short story by Bernard Taylor
• The Head and the Hand - (1972) - short story by Christopher Priest
• The Ghost of Charlotte Cray - (1883) - short story by Florence Marryat
• The Grim White Woman - (1801) - poem by Matthew Gregory Lewis [as by M. G. Lewis]
• The Terror on Tobit - (1933) - short story by Charles Birkin
• Furnished Apartments - novelette by Forrest Reid
• Something Happened - shortfiction by Hugh Fleetwood
• The Tarn - (1923) - short story by Hugh Walpole
• The Gentleman All in Black - (1942) - short story by Gerald Kersh

Valancourt Books has earned a reputation as one of the foremost publishers of lost and rediscovered classics, reissuing more than 400 unjustly neglected works from the late 18th century all the way to the early 21st. In this second volume of rare horror stories, the editors of Valancourt Books have selected fourteen tales--all by Valancourt authors--for this new collection spanning two centuries of horror. This volume features a previously unpublished ghost story by Nevil Shute, a brand-new tale by award-winning author Stephen Gregory, and twelve other tales that have never or seldom been reprinted.

In this volume, you will encounter tales of ghosts, haunted houses, witchcraft, possession, demonic pacts, and ancient, nameless horrors. Stories of the weird and macabre, of a man tormented by an age-old evil, a corpse returned from the dead, a brutal killer with a shocking secret, a contraption with the power to trap its victims eternally inside a nightmare. With stories ranging from frightening to horrific to weird to darkly humorous, by a lineup of authors that includes both masters of horror fiction and award-winning literary greats, this is a horror anthology like no other.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle
• Samhain by Bernard Taylor
• The Bell by Beverley Nichols
• The Elemental by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
• Herself by M. E. Braddon
• The Creatures in the House by Robert Westall
• November the Thirteenth by Russell Thorndike
• Halley's Passing by Michael McDowell
• The Nice Boys by Isabel Colegate
• The Watcher by the Threshold by John Buchan
• Tudor Windows by Nevil Shute
• No Sin by John Metcalfe
• The Dice by Thomas De Quincey
• Camera Obscura by Basil Copper
• The Boys Who Wouldn't Wake Up by Stephen Gregory

Since 2005, Valancourt Books has earned a reputation as one of the foremost publishers of lost and rediscovered classics, reissuing more than 400 unjustly neglected works from the past 250 years. In this third volume of horror stories, the editors of Valancourt Books have selected fifteen tales (and one macabre poem) - all by Valancourt authors - for this new collection featuring horror from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This volume features previously unpublished contributions by Steve Rasnic Tem, Eric C. Higgs, and Hugh Fleetwood, as well as thirteen other tales that have never or seldom been reprinted.

In this volume, you will encounter tales of ghosts, haunted houses, black magic, monsters, demonic babies, and vengeful spirits. Stories of the strange and sinister, of a boy who unwisely disobeys his grandfather's warning never to go up the stairs, a man whose apparently irrational terror of fire proves all too justified, an unpopular man who discovers a shocking new way of making friends, an ancestor who exerts a chilling influence from beyond the grave. With stories ranging from frightening to horrific to weird to darkly humorous, by a lineup of authors that includes both well-known masters of horror fiction and acclaimed authors of literary fiction, this is a horror anthology like no other.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle
• Don't Go Up Them Stairs (1971) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
• Courage (1918/1941) by Forrest Reid
• Pete Barker's Shanty (1898) by Ernest G. Henham
• The Parts Man (2018) by Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Face in the Mirror (1903) by Helen Mathers
• The Life of the Party (2013) by Charles Beaumont
• The Poet Gives His Friend Wildflowers (2018) by Hugh Fleetwood
• Monkshood Manor (1954) by L. P. Hartley
• Blood of the Kapu Tiki (2018) by Eric C. Higgs
• On No Account, My Love (1955) by Elizabeth Jenkins
• Underground (1974) by J. B. Priestley
• Mr Evening (1968) by James Purdy
• Mothering Sunday (1960) by John Keir Cross
• The Bottle of 1912 (1961) by Simon Raven
• "With What Measure Ye Mete..." (1906) by Ethel Lina White
• Beelzebub (1992) by Robert Westall

This volume features five brand new stories that have never appeared elsewhere, two rare foreign stories translated to English for the first time, and eight more scarce and seldom-seen tales.

The stories in this volume will take you inside the vivid dreams of a woman who can kill in her sleep; to the set of a reality show where contestants may be transformed into specimens of beauty--or into freak show monsters; to a hotel where guests are besieged by a powerful hurricane--and by something even more terrible and deadly. You will read of the bizarre and macabre adventures of a man seeking a skeleton in 1960s London as a gift for his medical student cousin--and his quest's shocking outcome. You will learn how a simple grammar mistake can lead to a terrible and untimely end for a traveler in Venice.

These are strange, sinister, and scary stories, by turns suspenseful, horrific, and darkly humorous.

Table of Contents:

• The Family at Fenhouse (1860) by Eliza Lynn Linton
• The Gentleman from America (1924) by Michael Arlen
• The Coffin Procession (1925; trans. 2020) by Felix Timmermans
• Time-Fuse (1931) by John Metcalfe
• The Fury (1936) by Robert M. Coates
• Rain and Gaslight (1945; trans. 2020) by Hubert Lampo
• Remember Your Grammar (1974) by Simon Raven
• A Scent of Mimosa (1975) by Francis King
• The Other Room (1982) by Lisa Tuttle
• 'Happy Birthday, Dear Alex' (1965) by John Keir Cross
• Vivid Dreams (2020) by Elizabeth Engstrom
• Let's Make a Face (2020) by John Peyton Cooke
• Conversations with the Departed (2020) by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Rain (2020) by Garrett Boatman
• The Poet Lewis Bowden Has Died (2020) by Stephen Gregory