Search Worlds Without End

The river, the river. She thought it would never end... They were in search of The Slave Tree, and this had been a mistake. As the boat traveled up the river, deep into the heart of darkness, Henrietta watched Edwin closely. She watched him chew at his fingernails and spit into the river. She watched a vein in his temple that never stopped throbbing and the tic that made a muscle twitch beside his eye. She watched Edwin and the man named Crown whispering some secret, back and forth, as if Crown was hypnotizing Edwin. The most frightening part of this insane journey was not the fear of losing her husband. She had passed beyond fearing that. But if she did lose Edwin, here, so far upstream from the last outpost of civilization, surrounded by the green-walled forest and the dark and tangled terrors it contained, what in the name of God would become of her? There were things moving about the jungle, and there was a madman waiting for them at the end of their journey... and then, most importantly, there was The Slave Tree, which held a secret so dark it could drive a person mad. Amazonas is a piercing look into the true of heart of darkness into which many men enter... and few ever return.

The story is of a young Americal writer who goes to Ballyvas on the bleak west coast of Ireland to research a book on the Famine. He intends to spend his time in quiet solitude. Immediately he is disturbed by harrowing and inexplicable experiences. A gripping tale.

A novel of horror, terror and tantasy - a blizzard in the Catskills....

Hallowe'en - a time for pumpkin lanterns and trick or treat, for hot spiced drinks and party laughter. For some. But not for all. For those lonely souls Hallowe'en is a night of necromancy and bone-chilling fear, when the wild October wind cannot quite mask the high, keening scream of terror, when the ancient evils arise once more from the underworld to lure the unwary to their dark and terrible deaths...

Table of Contents:

• Halloween Night - poem by Alan Ryan
• He'll Come Knocking at Your Door - shortstory by Robert R. McCammon
• Eyes - shortstory by Charles L. Grant
• The Nixon Mask - shortstory by Whitley Strieber
• The Samhain Feis - (1984) - shortstory by Peter Tremayne
• Trickster - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Miss Mack - shortstory by Michael McDowell
• Hollow Eyes - shortstory by Guy N. Smith
• The Halloween House - shortstory by Alan Ryan
• Three Faces of the Night - novelette by Craig Shaw Gardner
• Pumpkin - shortstory by Bill Pronzini
• Love in the Wildwood - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
• Apples - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
• Pranks - shortstory by Robert Bloch

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1988) - essay by Alan Ryan
• The Renegade - (1948) - shortstory by Shirley Jackson
• The Villa Désirée - (1921) - shortstory by May Sinclair
• The House of the Famous Poet - (1966) - shortstory by Muriel Spark
• Loopy - (1983) - shortstory by Ruth Rendell
• The Yellow Wallpaper - (1892) - novelette by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Foghorn - (1933) - shortstory by Gertrude Atherton
• The Ghost - (1862) - shortstory by Mrs. Henry Wood
• Simon's Wife - (1984) - shortstory by Tanith Lee
• Hell on Both Sides of the Gate - (1979) - shortstory by Rosemary Timperley
• The Shadowy Third - (1916) - novelette by Ellen Glasgow
• The Sound of the River - (1966) - shortstory by Jean Rhys
• Robbie - (1982) - shortstory by Mary Danby
• Heartburn - (1951) - shortstory by Hortense Calisher
• The Cloak - (1957) - shortstory by Karen Blixen

A bag lady is torn apart and eaten on the steps of Carnegie Hall...

A slumlord is found in an alley with his stomach ripped open...

The black panther. The most feared of all deadly creatures of the jungle -- untamable and isatiable in its blood lust.

New York was the last place on earth where this creature should have been set loose.

But now it had happened, as twenty of these great killer-cats -- brought to Manhattan through one man's greed, and released by his madness -- made the clittering capital of the beautiful people their hunting ground, and every man, woman, and child their prey...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Alan Ryan
• The Pope of the Chimps - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Written in Water - shortstory by Tanith Lee
• The Meat Box - shortstory by Daniel Gilbert
• Ifrit - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Contamination - shortstory by Richard Bowker
• Instant With Loud Voices - shortstory by Alan Dean Foster
• Firestorm - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Be Fruitful and Multiply - shortstory by F. Paul Wilson
• The Emigrant - shortstory by Joel Rosenberg
• Angel of the Sixth Circle - novelette by Gregg Keizer
• Judgment Day - shortstory by Frank Ward
• The Theology of Water - novelette by Hilbert Schenck
• Hamburger Heaven - shortstory by Simon Hawke
• A Green Hill Far Away - novelette by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
• Small Miracles - shortstory by Mel Gilden
• Relativistic Effects - novelette by Gregory Benford
• God's Eyes - shortstory by Craig Shaw Gardner
• St. Joey the Action - shortstory by Shariann Lewitt
• The Magi - novelette by Damien Broderick
• Lest Levitation Come Upon Us - novelette by Suzette Haden Elgin
• The Rose of Knock - shortstory by Alan Ryan
• Confess the Seasons - novella by Charles L. Grant
• A Private Whale - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss

Table of Contents:

• Kiss the Vampire Goodbye - (1985) - novelette
• The Man Who Killed Forever - (1986) - novella
• Candlewyck - (1986) - novella
• The Queen of Killimanjaro - (1986) - novella

Each of these four brand new stories from Alan Peter Ryan -- the acclaimed author of The Kill, The Bone Wizard, and Amazonas -- feature men who are haunted by different demons in different places and different times...

In Brazil, there are signs that say "Sexual Exploration Is a Crime," and Jerry Crenshaw has traveled to the country in search of a girlfriend. He finds one and he has never known a girl like Renata. She is friendly and vivacious. She stands very close to him and looks up straight into his eyes and keeps one hand resting lightly on his arm. But Jerry's going to find a lot more in Brazil than he bargained for, including something in a bag that will change his world forever....

"The Winter's Tale" tells the story of a man who lives by a churchyard that is widely and firmly reputed to be the haunt of sprites and goblins. The man cares not for such tales, but he should have paid heed to the warnings because he's about to find out the hard way that he is not alone in the cold winter night...

In "Starvation Valley," a man and his son are on a cross country drive that is not going according to plan when they end up at a place called Janey's, which may or may not be real. It certainly feels real while they're there, but when the man goes back to find it again, he learns that some places in the world, once visited and then left behind, seem never to have existed at all...

In "Mountain Man," there's an old man named Hiram Fuller whose hands are thin and gray with dirt, the nails long and broken, each with a black crescent of dirt. He reeks to high heaven, not just of old sweat but of something thick and suffocating like the smell of a savage animal unwillingly caged... and when you meet him on the old trail he says he "ate his horse," and he "might just have to eat you as well..."

Journey with Alan Peter Ryan into the darkness that resides within all of these men... but don't travel too far off the path because you might not find your way home again.

Table of Contents:

• Sexual Exploration Is a Crime - novelette
• The Winter's Tale - novelette
• Starvation Valley - novelette
• Mountain Man - novella

World Fantasy Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Whispers #21-22, December 1984. The story can also be found in the anthology Whispers VI (1987), edited by Stuart David Schiff. It is included in the collection The Bones Wizard (1988).

Table of Contents:

• The Bones Wizard - (1984) - shortstory
• Babies from Heaven - (1988) - shortstory
• Bundoran, Co. Donegal - (1984) - shortstory
• Pieta - (1982) - shortstory
• Sand - (1985) - shortstory
• Following the Way - (1982) - shortstory
• The Lovely and Talented Maxine Kane - (1988) - novelette
• Sheets - (1979) - shortstory
• The Rose of Knock - (1982) - shortstory
• Hear the Whistle Blowing - (1986) - shortstory
• Waiting for the Papers - (1981) - shortstory
• Memory and Desire - (1985) - novelette

The Kill is Alan Peter Ryan's second novel and first horror novel, published in 1982. It is the story of Megan Todd and Jack Casey, a young couple who flee the pressures of the city to rural Deacons Kill in the Catskills. Their home becomes the target of an ancient and invisible evil that hides in the nearby deep wood. They must join with their new friends and neighbors to find and confront the monster. This is a fine example by a World Fantasy Award-winning author of a theme explored extensively by Golden Age (70s & 80s) horror writers. The prose is quick and clean and the characters finely delineated. Necon Ebooks will be publishing all of Ryan's horror fiction.

They're lurking under the cover of darkness... and between the covers of this book. Here, in all their horror and all their glory, are the great vampires of literature: male and female, invisible and metamorphic, doomed and daring.

Their skin deathly pale, their nails curved like claws, their fangs sharpened for the attack, they are gathered for the kill and for the chill, brought frighteningly to life by Bram Stoker, Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee, and other masters of the macabre. Careful--they are all crafty enough to steal their way into your imagination and steal away your hopes for a restful sleep.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Alan Ryan
• Fragment of a Novel - (1816) - shortstory by Lord George Gordon Byron
• The Vampyre: A Tale - (1819) - novelette by Dr. John William Polidori
• Varney, the Vampyre; or, The Feast of Blood (excerpt) - (1847) - shortfiction by James Malcolm Rymer
• The Mysterious Stranger - (1823) - novelette by Anonymous
• Carmilla - (1872) - novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• Good Lady Ducayne - (1896) - novelette by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Dracula's Guest - (1914) - shortstory by Bram Stoker
• Luella Miller - (1902) - shortstory by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• For the Blood Is the Life - (1905) - shortstory by F. Marion Crawford
• The Transfer - (1911) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• The Room in the Tower - (1912) - shortstory by E. F. Benson
• An Episode of Cathedral History - (1914) - shortstory by M. R. James
• A Rendezvous in Averoigne - (1931) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• Shambleau - (1933) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• Revelations in Black - (1933) - novelette by Carl Jacobi
• School for the Unspeakable - (1937) - shortstory by Manly Wade Wellman
• The Drifting Snow - (1939) - shortstory by August Derleth
• Over the River - (1941) - shortstory by P. Schuyler Miller
• The Girl with the Hungry Eyes - (1949) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• The Mindworm - (1950) - shortstory by C. M. Kornbluth
• Drink My Blood - (1951) - shortstory by Richard Matheson
• Place of Meeting - (1953) - shortstory by Charles Beaumont
• The Living Dead - (1967) - shortstory by Robert Bloch (variant of Underground)
• Pages from a Young Girl's Journal - (1973) - novelette by Robert Aickman
• The Werewolf and the Vampire - (1975) - novelette by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
• Love-Starved - (1979) - shortstory by Charles L. Grant
• Cabin 33 - (1980) - novella by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
• Unicorn Tapestry - (1980) - novella by Suzy McKee Charnas
• Following the Way - (1982) - shortstory by Alan Ryan
• The Sunshine Club - (1983) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
• The Men and Women of Rivendale - (1984) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Feu - (1984) - novelette by Tanith Lee

All Original Stories By Charles L. Grant, Steve Rasnic Tem, Tanith Lee.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Alan Ryan
• Friends in Dark Places - short story by Charles L. Grant
• Family - short story by Charles L. Grant
• What Are Deaths For - short story by Charles L. Grant
• Poor Thing - short story by Charles L. Grant
• To Laugh with You, Dear - short story by Charles L. Grant
• In the Blood - short story by Charles L. Grant
• And We'll Be Jolly Friends - short story by Charles L. Grant
• The Men and Women of Rivendale - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Dark Shapes in the Road - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Spidertalk - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Punishment - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Overcoat - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Rider - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Worms - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Tree: A Winter's Tale - novelette by Tanith Lee
• Simon's Wife - short story by Tanith Lee
• The Vampire Lover - novelette by Tanith Lee
• The Hunting of Death: The Unicorn - novella by Tanith Lee