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Baal was Robert McCammon's first novel, a debut that would lead to some of the finest popular fiction of our time. Written at the age of 25 and published as a paperback original in 1978, it has been out of print for years. This deluxe new edition from Subterranean Press will give McCammon's many readers -- both newcomers and longtime fans -- the opportunity to trace the development of an extraordinarily talented man.

The story begins with a horrific rape on the streets of New York City. Nine months after that violation, a most unusual child is born. His name is Jeffrey Harper Raines, but he quickly assumes his true name -- and true purpose -- as Baal, a new incarnation of the ancient prince of demons. The narrative recounts his lethal progress through the 20th century, which begins with the destruction of his earthly "family." From there, Jeffrey/Baal moves to a doomed Catholic orphanage, where he unleashes carnage on an unprecedented scale, then out into the wider world, where he embraces his destiny as the Prophet of the Damned, generating a legacy of chaos, violence, and despair.

Baal is very much a young man's book, raw and brimming with emotion. Listen closely and you'll hear the voice of a gifted storyteller struggling to be born. In 1980, the career that would encompass Swan Song, Boy's Life, and The Five still lay waiting several years down the road. This is where it began.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Night Visions 4 (1987), edited by Paul J. Mikol.

Read the full story for free on the author's website.

Bethany's Sin is a tiny, picturesque village in rural Pennsylvania. Its tree-lined streets, beautiful houses, and manicured exteriors offer--or appear to offer--both peace and a place of refuge. Evan Reid, a man haunted by his memories of the Vietnam War and by a history of viscerally disturbing dreams, comes to the village with his wife and daughter, hoping to make a fresh start after a series of discouraging setbacks.

At first, all goes as planned. Evan resumes his career as a freelance writer while his wife, Kay, begins teaching math at a local college. But there are things going on in Bethany's Sin that no one wants to talk about: unexplained disappearances, houses that stand strangely vacant, half glimpsed figures that appear to be female, the impossible sound of hoof beats in the night.

At the center of it all stands a single imposing woman: Dr. Kathryn Drago, a scholar and community leader who holds the key to the mysteries that enshroud the town.

A novella and twelve stories from a master of supernatural horror

Father John has lived his whole life without knowing a woman's touch. Hard at first, his self-denial grew easier over time, as he learned to master his urges with a regimen of prayer, cold showers, and jigsaw puzzles. That changed the day that Debra Rocks entered his confessional. A rough-talking adult film actress, she has come to ask him to pray for a murdered costar. Her cinnamon perfume infects Father John, and after she departs he becomes obsessed. Around the corner from his church is a neon-lit alley of sin. He goes there hoping to save her life before he damns himself.

That is "Blue World," the novella that anchors this collection of chilling stories by Robert R. McCammon. Although monsters, demons, and murderers fill these pages, in McCammon's world the most terrifying landscape of all is the barren wasteland of a lost man's soul.

In 1964, on a cold day, Cory Mackenson is helping his father on his morning milk delivery when a car appears in the road before them and plunges into a lake. Cory's father tries to save the driver, but the driver is handcuffed to the steering wheel. Cory decides to find out what happened.

A moment of madness forces a Vietnam veteran to run for his life

Two decades after he finished serving his country in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Dan Lambert still pays the price. As he hustles for construction work in the heat of a brutal Louisiana summer, Dan tries to ignore the pounding in his head--a constant reminder of the Agent Orange--caused leukemia which will soon end his life. And now the bank wants to repossess his truck. His attempt to reason with the loan officer does not get him far. Dan loses himself in rage, and for a moment is back in the jungle again. When he comes out of his bloodlust, he has shot the banker through the chest. There is nothing to do but run.

On his trail are two peculiar bounty hunters: a onetime Siamese twin and a heavyset Elvis impersonator. To save his own life, Dan is going to have to remember why it was worth living in the first place.

A mother fights to rescue her newborn from a six-foot-tall madwoman

No one knows Mary Terrell's real name. She killed a man during the climax of the Summer of Love, and for two decades she has changed her name and location regularly, always keeping watch over her shoulder for the FBI. She has three passions: LSD, firearms, and children. She visits toy stores a few times a week, picking out a baby doll to take home and treat as a child. The new family always starts out happy, but when the baby refuses to eat, Mary gets angry. Murdered dolls fill her closet, and the woman who calls herself Mary Terror is tired of children made of plastic.

Laura Clayborne's marriage gives her little joy, but she can't wait for her son to come into the world. But if Mary Terror has her way, it won't be long before he leaves it again.

Two young psychics do battle with an ancient evil

Billy Creekmore was born to be a psychic. His mother, a Choctaw Indian schooled in her tribe's ancient mysticism, understood that the barrier between life and death is permeable. She knew how to cross it, and used that knowledge to help the dead rest easier. She passed that power on to her son, and he has spent his whole life learning how to communicate with the dead to prevent them from meddling with the living.

Though his powers are the same, Wayne Falconer's background could not be more different. The son of a prominent preacher, he would be disowned if his father learned he was using supernatural powers in service of the church. Though they don't know each other, Billy and Wayne share a recurring dream--and a common enemy. When a nightmarish monster descends on their community in Alabama, mankind's fate will rest in their hands.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Masques (1984), edited by J. N. Williamson and was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine, August 2013. The story can also be found in the anthology New Stories from the Twilight Zone (1991), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Blue World and Other Stories (1989).

Read the full story for free at Nightmare.

A UFO crash sends a small Texas town into uproar

The sun rises on Inferno and Bordertown: patches of civilization carved out of the tough Texas earth, watching each other and waiting to see which dies first. The copper mine is finished, and both towns-one for the whites and one for the Mexicans-are wasting away. Now a pair of mysterious visitors is about to make them shrink faster.

The black ball lands first. A small sphere, snapped off of an alien ship as it plummets through the atmosphere, it explodes onto Jessie Hammond's truck. When Jessie's daughter picks it up, the object possesses the young girl's body and begins trying to communicate. As Jessie tries to rescue her daughter, something far more deadly sets down in the desert. An interstellar war has come to Texas, and Inferno is going to burn.

An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war.

He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan -- and destroy her. But those who would protect the girl are determined to fight for what is left of the world?and their souls.

In a wasteland born of rage, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, the last survivors on earth have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil that will decide the fate of humanity....

World Fantasy award-winning, bestselling author Robert McCammon makes a triumphant return to the epic horror and apocalyptic tone reminiscent of his books "Swan Song" and "Stinger" in this gripping new novel, "The Border", a saga of an Earth devastated by a war between two marauding alien civilizations.

But it is not just the living ships of the monstrous Gorgons or the motion-blurred shock troops of the armored Cyphers that endanger the holdouts in the human bastion of Panther Ridge. The world itself has turned against the handful of survivors, as one by one they succumb to despair and suicide or, even worse, are transformed by otherworldly pollution into hideous Gray Men, cannibalistic mutants driven by insatiable hunger. Into these desperate circumstances comes an amnesiac teenaged boy who names himself Ethan--a boy who must overcome mistrust and suspicion to master unknowable powers that may prove to be the last hope for humanity's salvation. Those same powers make Ethan a threat to the warring aliens, long used to fearing only each other, and thrust him and his comrades into ever more perilous circumstances.

A major new novel from the unparalleled imagination of Robert McCammon, this dark epic of survival will both thrill readers and make them fall in love with his work all over again.

1934. Businesses went under by the hundreds, debt and foreclosures boomed, and breadlines grew in many American cities.

In the midst of this misery, some folks explored unscrupulous ways to make money. Angel-faced John Partlow and carnival huckster Ginger LaFrance are among the worst of this lot. Joining together they leave their small time confidence scams behind to attempt an elaborate kidnapping-for-ransom scheme in New Orleans.

In a different part of town, Curtis Mayhew, a young black man who works as a redcap for the Union Railroad Station, has a reputation for mending quarrels and misunderstandings among his friends. What those friends don't know is that Curtis has a special talent for listening... and he can sometimes hear things that aren't spoken aloud.

One day, Curtis Mayhew's special talent allows him to overhear a child's cry for help (THIS MAN IN THE CAR HE'S GOT A GUN), which draws him into the dangerous world of Partlow and LaFrance.

The Night Boat, Robert McCammon's third published novel, first appeared as a paperback original in 1980. Following on the heels of Baal and Bethany's Sin, it offered further proof that a writer of great narrative power and limitless potential--a writer who would achieve a significant position in modern popular fiction--had arrived.

The story begins with a vividly written prologue in which a German U-boat--sometimes known as an "Iron Coffin"--attacks an unsuspecting merchant vessel, and is itself attacked by a pair of Allied sub chasers. The action then shifts to the present day and to the idyllic Caribbean island of Coquina, where life is about to change in unimaginable ways. David Moore, a young man with a tragic and haunted past, is skin-diving in the waters off Coquina, searching for the salvageable remnants of shipwrecks. He accidentally detonates a long-unexploded depth charge, uncovering and releasing a submarine that has lain beneath those waters, virtually intact, for decades. The battered vessel that rises to the surface contains a bizarre and terrifying cargo that will transform a once peaceful island into a landscape of unrelenting nightmare.

The Night Boat is a story of cannibalism, ancient voodoo curses, and shambling, undead entities filled with a bottomless rage and an equally bottomless hunger. But it is also the story of a past that refuses to die, that lies in wait just beneath the surface of the unsuspecting present. Furiously paced and viscerally frightening, this horrific early gem is both an outstanding entertainment in its own right and a harbinger of the masterpieces to come.

A pall of terror blankets Los Angeles. Mutilated and marked by an insectoid calling card, the number of young women in the morgue is growing. It all seems to be the work of one man. They call him, the Roach.

Pressed on all sides to end the killings, it's no wonder that Police Captain Andy Palatzin is seeing things--his mother's ghost primarily, but also vague reminders of his father's supernatural death. As the body count rises, Andy begins to realize something much darker lurks behind the murders, something from his past, something unspeakably evil. The Roach is just a pawn in the war for humanity's eternal soul, a war no one is ready to fight.

Originally published over thirty years ago, New York Times Bestseller Robert McCammon spins a tale of the vampire that's as relevant today as it was then. They Thirst is a sprawling and terrifying horror epic that shines a light into the deepest shadows, where the monster that lives within us all resides, and wonders if it can be overcome by will alone.

Resplendent in vivid and gritty language, They Thirst takes an atmospheric journey through the cultural miasma of the City of Angels. Only there could an insatiable need for fame and fortune be as deadly as the fangs of the creatures that prowl the night. Because in the home of Hollywood, where lies and illusion are mundane, will anyone recognize evil when they see it?

A struggling author must confront the dreadful secrets of his famous family's past

Two men argue in the low light of one of nineteenth-century New York's vilest bars. One is an aristocrat, clearly slumming, while the other, in appearance no better than the gutter-trash around him, is the finest author of his age. The wealthy man is Hudson Usher, come to berate Edgar Allen Poe for using Usher's family history as fodder for his most famous story. The house of Usher has not fallen, Hudson boasts. It will endure into the centuries.

One hundred and fifty years later, the Usher line persists. The newest heir is Rix Usher, a hack horror writer whose ailing father has just called him back to the family's North Carolina estate. To become the new Usher patriarch, Rix must confront a Gothic mystery more twisted than anything even Poe could have imagined.

I Travel by Night marks Robert McCammon's triumphant return to the sort of flamboyant, go-for-broke horror fiction that has earned him an international reputation and a legion of devoted fans. The terrors of the Dark Society, the gothic sensibilities of old New Orleans, and the tortured existence of the unforgettable vampire adventurer Trevor Lawson all combine into a heady brew that will thrill McCammon s loyal readers and earn him new ones as well.

For Lawson, the horrors that stalked the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh were more than just those of war. After being forcibly given the gift of undeath by the mysterious vampire queen LaRouge, Lawson chose to cling to what remained of his humanity and fought his way free of the Dark Society's clutches. In the decades since, he has roamed late nineteenth century America, doing what good he can as he travels by night, combating evils mundane and supernatural, and always seeking the key to regaining a mortal life.

That key lies with his maker, and now Lawson hopes to find LaRouge at the heart of a Louisiana swamp with the aid of a haunted priest and an unexpected ally. In the tornado-wracked ghost town of Nocturne, Lawson must face down monstrous enemies, the rising sun, and his own nature. Readers will not want to miss this thrilling new dark novella from a master storyteller.

In I Travel by Night, master of horror Robert McCammon introduced the tortured and instantly unforgettable vampire adventurer Trevor Lawson--All Matters Handled--as he searched for his maker, LaRouge, in hope of becoming human once more. It wove a tale about the terrors of the Dark Society, featuring the gothic sensibilities of old New Orleans, and the unforgiving violence of the untamed frontier of 1886. Now McCammon returns to Lawson's gripping journey and sends him West, in the chilling sequel novella Last Train from Perdition.

Ever on the hunt for LaRouge, Lawson still travels by night, but no longer alone. Crack-shot, whip-smart Ann has become his companion, on her own search for her vampire-taken father and sister. Lawson has been summoned from New Orleans and the Hotel Sanctuaire to Omaha by a wealthy man who needs his son retrieved from a band of outlaws. Lawson and Ann agree to take the case and travel to the town of Perdition where they find their prey--but things get complicated fast when a saloon shootout leaves an innocent girl badly injured.

On a night train from Perdition to Helena to find medical help, it soon becomes clear that Lawson and Ann's enemies may also be looking to prey upon them. As they struggle against those forces of darkness with a trainload of their most unlikely allies yet, Lawson also wages battle with the darkness LaRouge left within him. This latest installment in Trevor Lawson's battle for redemption finds bestselling McCammon at his thrilling best.

Judgment of the Witch

The Carolinas, 1699: The Citizens of Fount Royal believe a witch has cursed their town with inexplicable tragedies--and they demand that beautiful widow Rachel Howarth be tried and executed for witchcraft. Presiding over the trial is traveling magistrate Isaac Woodward, aided by his astute young clerk, Matthew Corbett. Believing in Rachel's innocence, Matthew will soon confront the true evil at work in Fount Royal...

Evil Unveiled

After hearing damning testimony, magistrate Woodward sentences the accused witch to death by burning. Desperate to exonerate the woman he has come to love, Matthew begins his own investigation among the townspeople. Piecing together the truth, he has no choice but to vanquish a force more malevolent than witchcraft in order to save his beloved Rachel--and free Fount Royal from the menace claiming innocent lives.

His epic masterwork Speaks the Nightbird, a tour de force of witch hunt terror in a colonial town, was hailed by Sandra Brown as "deeply satisfying...told with matchless insight into the human soul." Now, Robert McCammon brings the hero of that spellbinding novel, Matthew Corbett, to eighteenth-century New York, where a killer wields a bloody and terrifying power over a bustling city carving out its identity -- and over Matthew's own uncertain destiny.

The unsolved murder of a respected doctor has sent ripples of fear throughout a city teeming with life and noise and commerce. Who snuffed out the good man's life with the slash of a blade on a midnight street? The local printmaster has labeled the fiend "the Masker," adding fuel to a volatile mystery...and when the Masker claims a new victim, hardworking young law clerk Matthew Corbett is lured into a maze of forensic clues and heart-pounding investigation that will both test his natural penchant for detection and inflame his hunger for justice.

In the strangest twist of all, the key to unmasking the Masker may await in an asylum where the Queen of Bedlam reigns -- and only a man of Matthew's reason and empathy can unlock her secrets. From the seaport to Wall Street, from society mansions to gutters glimmering with blood spilled by a deviant, Matthew's quest will tauntingly reveal the answers he seeks -- and the chilling truths he cannot escape.

The world of Colonial America comes vibrantly to life in this masterful new historical thriller by Robert McCammon. The latest entry in the popular Matthew Corbett series, which began with Speaks the Nightbird and continued in The Queen of Bedlam, Mister Slaughter opens in the emerging metropolis of New York City in 1702, and proceeds to take both Matthew and the reader on an unforgettable journey of horror, violence, and personal discovery.

The journey begins when Matthew, now an apprentice "problem solver" for the London-based Herrald Agency, accepts an unusual and hazardous commission. Together with his colleague, Hudson Greathouse, he agrees to escort the notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter from an asylum outside Philadelphia to the docks of New York. Along the way, Slaughter makes his captors a surprising - and extremely tempting - offer.

Mister Slaughter is at once a classic portrait of an archetypal serial killer and an exquisitely detailed account of a fledgling nation still in the process of inventing itself.

The Providence Rider is the fourth installment in the extraordinary series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver. The narrative begins in the winter of 1703, with Matthew still haunted by his lethal encounter with notorious mass murderer Tyranthus Slaughter. When an unexplained series of explosions rocks his Manhattan neighborhood, Matthew finds himself forced to confront a new and unexpected problem. Someone is trying--and trying very hard--to get his attention. That someone is a shadowy figure from out of Matthew's past: the elusive Dr. Fell. The doctor, it turns out, has a problem of his own, one that requires the exclusive services of Matthew Corbett.

The ensuing narrative moves swiftly and gracefully from the emerging metropolis of New York City to Pendulum Island in the remote Bermudas. In the course of his journey, Matthew encounters a truly Dickensian assortment of memorable, often grotesque, antagonists. These include Sirki, the giant, deceptively soft-spoken East Indian killer, Dr. Jonathan Gentry, an expert in exotic potions with a substance abuse problem of his own, the beautiful but murderous Aria Chillany, and, of course, the master manipulator and 'Emperor of Crime' on two continents, Dr. Fell himself.

The result is both an exquisitely constructed novel of suspense and a meticulous recreation of a bygone era. Filled with danger, narrative surprises, and an almost tangible sense of place, The Providence Rider is historical fiction at its finest and most developed. It is the novel that McCammon's many devoted readers have been waiting for. They will not be disappointed.

The year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. Matthew Corbett, professional 'problem solver,' has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball.

What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation. A sixteen-year-old girl has been stabbed to death on the grounds of a local plantation. The suspected killer is a slave who has escaped, with two family members, into the dubious protection of a nearby swamp. Troubled by certain discrepancies and determined to see some sort of justice done, Matthew joins the hunt for the runaway slaves. He embarks on a treacherous journey up the Solstice River, also known as the River of Souls. He discovers that something born of the swamp has joined the hunt...and is stalking the hunters with more than murder in mind.

What follows is a shattering ordeal encompassing snakes, alligators, exiled savages, mythical beasts, and ordinary human treachery. The journey up the River of Souls will test Matthew's courage, commitment, and powers of endurance. It will also lead him to a confrontation with a figure from his recent past, which will alter Matthew's life, setting the stage for the next installment in this compulsively readable series.

Gripping, unsettling, and richly atmospheric, The River of Souls is a masterful historical adventure and a major addition to Robert McCammon's extraordinary body of work.featuring the continuing exploits of a young hero USA Today has called 'the Early American James Bond.'

The year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional "problem solver," is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he's been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril. Following his hunch, Greathouse retraces Matthew's steps only to find him first presumed dead, then accused of murdering a young woman and apparently en route to London with a devious Prussian count last encountered on Professor Fell's Pendulum Island.

Little does he know that Matthews's circumstances are growing worse by the second. For when Matthew arrives in the bustling squalor of Londontown, he's come shackled, charged for the murder of Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren. No matter the lack of body, presumed lost to the ocean. He soon finds himself locked up in the infamous Newgate prison, and has drawn the interest of a mysterious mask-wearing vigilante accused of several gruesome murders. Greathouse and the woman Matthew loves, Berry Grigsby, travel across the high seas to England to aid their friend, but it is impossible to know whether they will reach him in time to save his life.

Freedom of the Mask is the sixth installment in bestselling author Robert McCammon's acclaimed series of standalone historical thrillers featuring the exploits of a young hero the USA Character Approved Blog has called "the Early American James Bond." The most surprising and ambitious volume to date, this is a novel filled with unpredictable twists and a note-perfect depiction of early 1700s London. Fans will not want to miss Matthew Corbett's most dangerous adventure yet.

December 1703 finds Berry Grigsby living as Mary Lynn Nash in a small English village where she has fallen victim to Professor Fell's involuntary drug experiments. Her mind is quickly deteriorating under the drug s influence, and the only way to save her is a potion book that was stolen in an attack on the village orchestrated by a mysterious madman going by the name Cardinal Black.

Matthew Corbett has volunteered to travel with Julian Devane, a self-proclaimed "fool and bad man" in the employ of Professor Fell, to hunt down the potion book. They follow the trail to London, where the book will be sold at a secret auction. Matthew and Julian manage to secure a seat at the auction by masquerading as respected and feared underground operatives, but to prevail in their high-stakes mission, they will require help from a very unlikely source. Even if they are successful, their race to save Berry Grigsby will leave a trail of destruction in its wake.

It's January of 1704, and Matthew Corbett continues his mission to Italy, accompanied by Hudson Greathouse and former enemy Professor Fell. They seek Brazio Valeriani and information about the mirror created by his father, the sorcerer Ciro. Legend claims the mirror can be used to summon demons from beyond.

But fate has other plans for Matthew as their ship is disabled by a pod of whales, and they seek refuge on a secluded island. The islanders welcome them with a massive feast, but all is not what it seems. As the island pulls them deeper into its influence, the castaways struggle to maintain their grip on reality, even their very identity. Matthew must keep his wits about him and solve the mystery enshrouding the other side of the island, where an active volcano looms and a secretive creature lurks.

The Wolf's Hour is a 1989 World War II adventure novel with a twist by Robert R. McCammon. A British secret agent goes behind German lines to stop a secret weapon from being launched against the Allies. The twist is that this agent is a werewolf. The book also includes some of the agent's history, namely how he became a werewolf.

In the shadowed corners behind enemy lines, Michael Gallatin is England's most potent weapon against Nazi Germany. Blessed and cursed by the ability to transform his flesh, Michael lives between worlds as both man and wolf. A gifted spy and a cunning warrior, he is unmatched in the field. No ordinary agent of the British Crown, he's the one they send when there s no one else.

Returning to a vision first imagined in the New York Times Bestseller ''The Wolf's Hour,'' horror master Robert McCammon traces the life of a single man in the midst of the Second World War. From a traveling circus in the Russian steppes, to the skies of North Africa, to the gritty underworld of Berlin itself, ''The Hunter from the Woods'' pits Michael against impossible odds, where failure means death and so, too, might victory.

Told through a series of interconnected novellas and short stories, McCammon shows us how Michael lived and loved during a time in history when there was little room for either. A visceral and primal journey, ''The Hunter from the Woods'' revels in the intimate cruelty of war, but never fails to illuminate the resilience of the human spirit.

''The Wolf's Hour'' may be Michael Gallatin's greatest adventure, but these are the stories that comprise his life. They present an alternate history every Robert McCammon fan, and every fan of thrilling fiction, will want to read.