An analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican people through studies of figural works and inscriptions.All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.'I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with horror which at all times assails me yet'.With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madne...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was one of the great masters of Victorian of mystery and horror fiction, and can be regarded as the father of the modern ghost story. In a Glass Darkly (1872), one of his most celebrated volumes, purports to be the casebook of Dr Hesselius, a pioneer psychologist.These five tales represent some of Le Fanu's most accomplished work, which rises above the staid conventions...

"A deeply moving account of amnesia that . . . reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with." — Los Angeles TimesOn October 17, 2002, David MacLean "woke up" on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. No money. No passport. No identity.Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. He could remember song l...

Selected and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Blair, University of Kent at Canterbury.Late in the eighteenth century authors began to write ‘Gothic’ stories as a way of putting literature back in touch with the irrational, the supernatural and the bizarre, which had been neglected in the ‘Age of Reason’.This superb new collection brings together stories from the earliest decades of Gothic writing with later 19th and early 20th century tales fr...

Three British Mystery Novels: detective, thriller, and (mild) horror set in Britain by British authors. Three great reads, for those who like to wrap their minds round unusual plots, presented as an e-book bundle.An ideal gift for mystery lovers.A Taste for Blood, set in and around London, by the late Sherlock Holmes expert David Stuart Davies.Ellipsis, set in London, a psychological thriller by Nikki Dudley....

M.R. James is probably the finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced. These tales are not only classics of their genre, but are also superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror.As well as the preface, there is a fascinating tail-piece by M.R. James, ‘Stories I Have Tried To Write’, which accompanies these thirty tales. Among them are ‘Casting the Runes’, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to you, My Lad’, ‘The Tractate Middoth’, ...

Introduced by Mark Valentine.The greatest French detective in his most fiendish case. Even if Hercule Poirot had been born a Frenchman, not a Belgian, he would have to take second place in detection to Joseph Rouletabille, the brilliant young sleuth created by Gaston Leroux.Here, in his first and most baffling case, the eighteen year old reporter astounds readers with his audacity and ingenuity. Who could have tried to murder Mademoiselle Stangerson, beauti...

Selected and with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.This gripping set of tales by the master storyteller Arthur Conan Doyle is bound to thrill and unnerve you. In these twilight excursions, Doyle's vivid imagination for the strange, the grotesque and the frightening is given full rein.We move from the mysteries of Egypt and the strange powers granted by The Ring of Thoth to the isolated ghostlands of the Arctic in The Captain of the Polest...

'Nothing is so improbable as what is true'Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later.Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21st...

The sixth novel in the Detective Johnny (One Eye) Hawke series.Two laser-sharp detectives, two thought-provoking cases and two skilful plots. Featuring private investigator Johnny (One Eye) Hawke, and his one-time colleague in the police force Detective David Llewellyn. Llewellyn is investigating the chilling crimes of a top psychiatrist and his scheming patient who the doctor believes has knuckled under his authority. In the meantime, Hawke is on the case of a mysterious suicide i...

With an Introduction by David Stuart Davies.Oliver Onions is unique in the realms of ghost story writers in that his tales are so far ranging in their background and substance that they are not easily categorised. His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, mak...