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The modern mind usually associates witchcraft with the middle ages. We think of witches as Shakespeare depicted them in Macbeth. We see them as secret, black and midnight hags, doing a deed without a name. We close our eyes and immediately the vision of a cauldron filled with foul ingredients appears before us; here are the fenny snake, adder’s fork, wool of bat, scale of dragon and tooth of wolf.

But this does not go far enough back. There was witchcraft in the world long before medieval times. The Witch of Endor who practiced her strange arts in the reign of King Saul is familiar to all students of the Old Testament. The writings of Homer abound with references to witchcraft and sorcery. The very earliest human societies had witch doctors, medicine men, shamans and priests of the black art.

Perhaps so ancient and widespread a cult has some basis in fact. There are powers beyond science. Ancient occult laws will still hold good. It is not wise to cross the path of a being whose age is measured in centuries and whose dark powers can alter the stars in their courses.

In the realm of science things are often far from what they seem. In the science of sociology this is truest of all. Those who seem to control human affairs may only be figure-heads. The real power lies in unsuspected places…sinister…alien…

Mervyn Wayne called at the offices of an apparently normal, respectable, old-established city firm and overheard intrigue of nightmare quality. He found himself a fugitive from an organisation whose ramifications extended everywhere.

Society was being master-minded by someone, or something, so irresistibly powerful that Mervyn’s first reaction was hopeless fear. Gradually, however, he learnt how to distinguish allies from organisation men and began building a counter-group of his own.

Uma, a beautiful but frightened dancing girl, sells a strange bronze statuette of Nataraja, the dancing Siva, to Dr Chris Anderson, while he was visiting a bazaar in Pollachi, Southern India. He travels back to Kerala and puts the statuette on the bedside cabinet in his hotel room. His sleep is tortured by fantastic nightmares in which he seems hosts of ancient Indian gods and demons, in all their splendour and horror.

He wakes in terror to hear a faint voice whispering in the darkness. The bronze statuette is glowing with unearthly light and there is a smell if incense.

Can a human soul be imprisoned in bronze by the power of weird, unearthly dark magic?

Can Dr Chris Anderson release the psychic prisoner? Who is Uma, the mysterious dancing girl?

Thursday began as an ordinary day as far as Estelle was concerned. Breakfast… Tube… Office… Lunch… And then the sane, sane, simple everyday world began to fade. One moment she was walking along the pleasant tree-lined familiarity of her home town… the next she was involved in a strange translucent sphere and life had turned into a nightmare.
Without warning and without explanation she found herself alone in a strange new environment. There were strange stars in the unknown sky above her and the flora and fauna of her new surroundings were disturbingly unfamiliar. Most minds would have yielded to the easy escape of insanity. But Estelle Wilde was made of sterner stuff. She fought back at the strangeness of her new setting and tried desperately to establish a new set of survival data before it was too late.
Piece by piece she collected her information and sat down to the mammoth task of answering the great questions. Where was she? How had she been brought there? And why?
Above all… was it possible to get home?

As a child, Rook had been taken in by the bards of Luly, and raised as one of their own. Of his past he knew nothing – except faint memories of fire and death that he’d do anything to forget. But nightmares, and a new threat to the island that had become his own, would not let him escape the dreaded fate of his true family. Haunted by the music of the bards, he left the only home he knew to wander the land of the power-hungry basilisk who had destroyed his family. And perhaps, finally, to find a future in the fulfillment of his forgotten destiny.

They came out of the star-strewn wilderness around Sol, these alien creatures. And their object was the vicious, total destruction of the Federation of Worlds.

Earth was one of the last pf the planets to be attacked and here they were opposed by the Earth Council: six men who held the destinies of a hundred billion people in their hands.

But in the end, there remained only one man out of the six to fight. Velga Dorne, Earth Councillor and Member of the Triumvirate of Worlds. And he himself was a hunted man. Death and terrible destruction followed him across the wastes of space in the search for the crazy, nightmare planet that had spawned these creatures. Fear and terror were his only companions.

Until he reached the nameless planet of a still more insignificant sun and learned that there were others to join him in the struggle against the black, inhuman monsters. These were the Hheroni, scientists whose achievements had progressed along a slightly different path of research to humanity. And Astraea, the girl who went with him on the suicidal mission to where the Aliens originated: on a world that no one in their wildest dreams had thought possible to exist, one which even science said was impossible.

In this, the second book of the epic trilogy begun in The Forging of the Shadows, the once-glorious city of Thrull has become a place of death and despair. Seven years before, Lord Faran Groton, High Priest of the God of Darkness, overthrew Thrull and set loose his army of vampires to plague the city, waiting for the day the sun would rise no more…But the God of Light has his champions as well. A motley trio of survivors searches for the three ancient artifacts which can defeat the darkness. Traveling far beyond their own lands, they will encounter nightmares and disasters before facing their most dangerous enemies — the Dark-born Nations of the Night!

One night Ed Smith thought he was having a waking nightmare when he saw a monstrous face at his window, but in the morning his neighbors were missing. The people who later turned up were not quite right, and gradually Smith realized they not only weren’t his neighbors, but weren’t even human – they were the creatures he had seen . . .

The Mannschenn Drive was the gateway to the stars, but it had one unfortunate site effect: Traveling faster than light, mankind reverted to the bestial form of his own legendary nightmare-the lycanthropic horror that the full moon once called forth from the soul’s depths, now no longer howling at the moon but soaring far beyond it…

Awakened from suspended animation aboard his exploration starship, John Jackson is shocked to discover that the ship never left Earth – and that he has slept a century after a world war. Facing a nightmare wilderness inhabited by neo-barbarians and sentient tanks, Jackson is the only man who can bring the world to its senses.

The world, as Lafayette O’Leary knew it, disappeared in a flash. Perhaps it was his own doing – after all, he had the uncanny gift of creating alternate realities by sheer mental power.

But the result was a nightmare gone out of control. All O’Leary wanted was to find his wife and return to the familiar world of Artesia. Yet no sooner did he manage to extricate himself from one bizarre situation than he was thrust into another, equally threatening…

There was only one thing to do: he had to penetrate the very center of power from which his destiny was being controlled and – take it into his own hands!

THE DEMONS HAD TO STOP JOHN BRAVAIS

His secret assignment was simply – to save mankind from the savage dog-like ‘things’ that used their hands like men. Yet an unknown number of apparently ‘human’ beings were against him too.

First transformed by surgery into a superman, John Bravais probes ever more deeply into the secret nightmare world of the ‘things’. At last, when only his mind remains – trapped in a vast robot war machine on the moon – only by an immense act of will-power can he give humanity a future.

Nightmare at Stonehenge

When Legion meets a strange old millionaire called ‘Foster’, he doesn’t know that his whole life will never be the same again. For ‘Foster’ has a strange story to tell. Part of his story is contained in his diary, which not only describes things in the very recent past, but goes back for centuries…

‘The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck – It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.’

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house he is disturbed by the horrifying discoveries he makes in his client’s castle. But worse, Harker’s actions introduce Dracula to London. Soon afterwards, the Count embarks on a reign of seduction and terror. And all, it seems, who encounter the charismatic Eastern European aristocrat – a succession of madmen, physicians and beautiful women – are never seen in daylight again…

Bram Stoker’s DRACULA has inspired countless movies, books, and plays since it’s first publication in 1897. Few, if any, have been fully faithful to Stoker’s original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. But in DRACULA, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.

This classic of Gothic horror follows Laura, a woman haunted by a girlhood dream of a beautiful visitor to her bedroom. Now, a decade later, Laura finds Carmilla, who appears to be her own age, on the side of the road after a carriage accident. The two recognize each other from the same childhood dream and become fast friends. Soon after, Laura begins to experience mysterious feelings and is once again haunted by nightmares. She finds Carmilla strangely irresistible and longs to be with her.

But as the two friends grow closer, Laura’s health begins to fail. It becomes apparent that her enchanting companion is harboring a sinister secret. To free herself from Carmilla’s grasp, Laura and her family must fight for their lives.

Spatial Body 232: Zone K, because of its valuable strategic position as a satellite of Zennor, was the goal set by the exploratory expeditions from the Earth controlled ports of Zennor itself. A base on 232 offered many advantages for defence of the spaceways, and establishing a settlement there was a must lest rival races in the Galaxy gain a foothold on it first. But though successive ships blasted off with the avowed intent of claiming the cheerless grey satellite none had ever been heard of again, save one whose crew had returned to report fantastic storms of unknown origin. It was not until Tony Wayne and John Reece crash-landed their ship on 232 that they learnt its incredible secrets – and found there a fellow whose story was akin to a nightmare . . .

Godslayer – was the name Al Larson earned when, torn away from the midst of the firefight in Vietnam and catapulted to a time and place where the Norse gods fought a deadly war of their own, he was instrumental in the death of Loki, a key lord of Chaos. But now Larson, the master swordsman Gaelinar, and the elusive thief known as the Shadow Climber were about to embark on an even more desperate quest. For the balance between Chaos and Law had been all but lost. Fenris Wolf stalked the lands of men, thirsting to drink the lifeblood of Larson and Gaelinar, while Hel herself sought vengeance for Loki’s destruction. Pursued by these foes out of nightmare, could Larson and the others survive long enough to recover the one hope of the forces of Law – the legendary rod of Geirmagnus, the first Dragonrank mage – a mission that would take them from the citadel of Dragonrank powers to war-torn Vietnam to Hel’s dark realm and beyond?

After rescuing Marianne Cadogan from an incoming tide on a lonely and forgotten part of Britain’s coast, ex-con Ryan O’Donnell is cornered into helping her escape a supposedly abusive father to reach the safety of her mother.

Too late, he finds himself compromised, the subject of a trans-European manhunt while he struggles to deliver the child and prove his motives pure/

The deeper in he gets, the more trapped he will become.

Alien horror becomes a living nightmare as the Xenos, meaning “strangers”, inflict mayhem on earth.

International distress alerts are sent out when planes first seem to disappear, disturbing concepts of space and time and leaving a trail of death and disillusionment. This bizarre series of “cosmic skyjackings” is shrouded in secrecy by a baffled and frightened military. Intense surveillance fails to reveal the cause of a seemingly hostile yet invisible enemy. Aircraft continue to disappear, plucked out of the sky without warning, only to reappear months later, thousands of miles off course.

National and global security is under threat and the ICARUS committee is formed to investigate. Military officials, the government and the FBI work alongside physician Mark Freedman and Soviet scientists to uncover the supernatural mystery that lies behind these unexplainable events. Earth has been found by a horde of creatures that not even the wildest imagination could invent – sinister parasitic creatures that took to their human hosts with deadly speed and bloodthirsty precision.

The terror that unfolds has terrifying consequences for all involved, and the invasion reveals something much more frightening and final than ever suspected.

Life on the moon under anything less than optimal conditions had always been a nightmare, and as Joe Kenmore and his colleague, Moreau, drove back to the City On The Moon on that day the Earth shuttle was due to land, the nearby mountain supporting critical elements of the shuttle’s landing mechanisms crumbled causing an avalanche and resulting in chaos.

Optimal conditions were no where in sight that day and as Kenmore and Moreau’s investigations lead to their conclusion that explosions had been responsible for the avalanche. Now they realized that they were in a race against the clock to restore the landing beam before the shuttle had reached it’s point of no return prior to landing.

Kenmore had more than strictly humanitarian reasons for wanting to prevent a mishap aboard the shuttle that day, because on this particular mission, Arlene Gray was aboard. Kenmore had been anxiously awaiting her arrival, and now his love’s life might hang in the balance.

The RIM STAR seemed to be an ordinary enough spaceship bound for the planet Handel on a routine mission. Then young Braden, a merchant-space officer, discovered that there was something all wrong about the RIM STAR . . . The captain was wrong, the crew mutinous, and there was even something going on with the passengers. The ship was in deadly danger . . .

For centuries space travelers had dreaded a place they called the Other Side of Nowhere – a place in the universe where up was down, where right was wrong, and where all direction was lost . . .

To save the RIM STAR Braden had to bring the ship to that place of nightmare. . .

A graveyard, sinister music, a small child’s nightmare…

A children’s tune played on a hurdy-gurdy
A small boy’s nightmare
The same tune played by an old blind beggar outside a foggy graveyard – and heard again by an old, bed-ridden woman
And heard again, at the dead of night on a London street corner

What is the connection – and why is this disturbing melody the prelude to a brutal crime …

Jessica Raven’s brother is going to die.

She dreams of finding a cure for Adam’s illness, but that isn’t going to happen.

While on holiday in France, she encounters a strange band of children, mysterious and ragged, who seem to urgently want HER help. Who are they? And who is Jean-Luc, their leader?

As she learns more, Jessica realises that the game they’re playing isn’t a game, that Jean-Luc is a prisoner, and the children aren’t children but nightmares, guarding a priceless treasure. Adam is the only one who could help them, but Adam is dying.

And his cure is trapped in the ghosts of a horrifying past . . .

Award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam, delivers another terrifying story for teens that raises the dead and spans time, from the modern day back to WWII. You can find more information on the writing Gwyneth did as Ann Halam on her website: http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm

WINNER OF THE DRACULA SOCIETY’S CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT AWARD

There’s a deserted house on Roman Road.

They say it has a dreadful secret.

Is that why Andrei can’t stay away from it?

Something stalks his family at night, and the threat looms of the father he has never known. Andrei wants to be ordinary, but he’s living a nightmare.

Writing as Ann Halam, award-winning author Gwyneth Jones delivers a story of the creatures that haunt the darkness, and the monsters that don’t stay there . . .


You can find out more about Gwyneth’s writing as Ann Halam here: http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm