Search Worlds Without End

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 Polestar, we encounter a monstrous creature in The Terror of Blue John Cap and the beings that live above our heads in The Brazilian Cat and The Leather Funnel; and we shudder at the thing in the next room in Lot 249.

Other Stories include:

• The Lord of Château Noir
• The New Catacomb
• The Case of Lady Sannox
• The Brown Hand
• The Horror of the Heights
• How It Happened
• Playing with Fire

The Horror of the Heights & Other Strange Tales collects fourteen vintage stories, told as only a master of the Victorian terror tale can tell them.

In these sophisticated fictions souls change bodies, monsters haunt the upper atmosphere, séances summon creatures from the astral plane, and mummies stalk the fog shrouded streets of London.

This volume features the best of Doyle's incomparable tales of the macabre, including:

• "The Captain of the 'Pole-Star' " -- In the wild wastes of the arctic, a sea captain confronts the specter of a memory that has haunted him for much of his life.
• "Lot No. 249" -- Woe betide the man who crossed Bellingham, a student of Egyptian lore who could reanimate the dead to do his bidding.
• "The Parasite" -- Who was safe from the irresistible Miss Penclosa, a woman who could insert herself into a person's thoughts and assert her will against their wishes?
• "The Leather Funnel" -- Anyone who slept in the room with the antique artifact endured horrible dreams of cruel tortures.
• "The Horror of the Heights" -- The first aeronaut to ascend to the stratosphere finds it populated by a species that is alien -- and hostile.

Open this book and enter a world of gas-lit thrills and chills, where the most logical thing of all is to be scared.

The sunken city of Atlantis is discovered by a team of explorers led by Professor Maracot. He is accompanied by Cyrus Headley, a young research zoologist and Bill Scanlan, an expert mechanic working with an iron works in Philadelphia who is in charge of the construction of the submersible which the team takes to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Presented by the Horror Writers Association, this collection of classic short stories were written by iconic author--and creator of Sherlock Holmes--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: A Beast That Has Tasted Blood - essay by Daniel Stashower
• The Parasite - (1894) - novella
• The Mystery of Sasassa Valley - (1879) - short story
• J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement - (1884) - novelette
• The Captain of the "Pole-Star" - (1883) - novelette
• The Great Keinplatz Experiment - (1885) - short story
• The Ring of Thoth - (1890) - short story
• The Bully of Brocas Court - (1921) - short story
• Selecting a Ghost: The Ghosts of Goresthorpe Grange - (1887) - short story
• How It Happened - (1913) - short story
• About The Author, Arthur Conan Doyle - essay by Eric J. Guignard
• Suggested Discussion Questions For Classroom Use - essay by Eric J. Guignard
• Suggested Further Reading of Fiction - essay by Eric J. Guignard

In 1894, the publishing house of Archibald Constable & Co. launched a series of novels by well-known authors called The Acme Library. The two tales paired in this volume were the first two entries in the set. Unlike Constable's publication of Dracula in 1897, the Acme Library was a failure, and copies of books in the short-lived series are quite rare today.

In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite, a sceptical scientist engages in dangerous experiments with Miss Penelosa, a hypnotist with deadly powers. Bram Stoker's The Watter's Mou' is a thrilling tale of romance and smuggling along the Scottish coast. These two short novels are fascinating in their own right, but also in how they reveal different sides of these two authors, best known for their creations Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

This edition features the unabridged texts of both novellas, taken from the scarce British first editions, and includes a substantial introduction by Catherine Wynne tracing the many parallels and convergences of the two authors' lives and literary careers. Also included are explanatory footnotes and an appendix containing Doyle's haunting story "John Barrington Cowles," Stoker's surreal "The Coming of Abel Behenna," and a 1907 interview of Doyle by Stoker.

This is scientific romance about a disenchanted gold maker who has discovered a way to turn lead into solid gold and uses his wealth to help people. But when he sees that his philanthropic activities don't benefit anyone, he becomes disillusioned.

Raffles Haw, a mysterious millionaire, moves to Staffordshire, England amid much gossip and speculation such is the grandeur of his new home. Upon his arrival, Haw befriends the McIntyre family. McIntyre senior was a wealthy gun merchant before going bankrupt and losing his sanity. But this is only the start of the mysterious family's tale and the deadly secrets they hold close.

An exciting account of a jungle expedition’s encounter with living dinosaurs, written with the same panache exhibited in the author’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. This 1912 novel, the first installment of the Professor Challenger series, follows an eccentric paleontologist and his companions into the wilds of the Amazon, where they discover iguanodons, pterodactyls, and savage ape-people.

Professor Challenger sends telegrams asking his three companions from The Lost World - Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee - to join him at his home outside of London and to bring a tank of oxygen. When they arrive, they are ushered into a sealed room, along with Challenger and his wife. In the course of his research, Challenger has predicted that the Earth is about to come into contact with a belt of poisonous ether, which will cause the end of humanity. Can they survive?

"The Poison Belt" is the second story in the Professor Challenger series. Written in 1913, roughly a year before the outbreak of World War I, "The Poison Belt" would be the last story written about Challenger until the 1920s.

The 'Land of Mist' is the third novel in Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Professor Challenger' series. The first was written in 1912 and is entitled 'The Lost World', describing an expedition to a plateau in South America where dinosaurs still survive. Then in 1913 he wrote 'The Poison Belt', describing a disaster as the earth passes through a cloud of poisonous ether. Finally, in 1926 'The Land of Mist', which is heavily influenced by Doyle's growing belief in Spiritualism after a number of his close relatives died. It is therefore seem as semi-autobiographical, Challenger and Conan Doyle both grieving men and both interested in Spirituality.