Synopses & Reviews
Before The Exorcist and Rosemarys Baby, there was The Case Against Satan
By the twentieth century, the exorcism had all but vanished, wiped out by modern science and psychology. But Ray Russellpraised by Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro as a sophisticated practitioner of Gothic fictionresurrected the ritual with his classic 1962 horror novel, The Case Against Satan, giving new rise to the exorcism on page, screen, and even in real life.
Teenager Susan Garth was a clean-talking sweet little girl” of high school age before she started having fits”a sudden aversion to churches and a newfound fondness for vulgarity. Then one night, she strips in front of the parish priest and sinks her nails into his throat. If not madness, then the answer must be demonic possession. To vanquish the Devil, Bishop Crimmings recruits Father Gregory Sargent, a younger priest with a taste for modern ideas and brandy. As the two men fight not just the darkness tormenting Susan but also one another, a soul-chilling revelation lurks in the shadowsone that knows that the darkest evil goes by many names.
Review
"As a selection of 'weird' short stories,
The White People is a fine example of the precursor to what has become a popular subgenre of fantasy fiction, as well as a window on to the spiritual concerns of the Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947): the veil separating the phenomenal world and the supernal realm is thin. While we may have forgotten the rituals, spells, charms and wards once used to commune with the spirits, the spirits have not forgotten us."
Review
Praise for
The Case Against Satan:
“Provocative, shocking, moving.” —Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Ray Russell:
“[Sardonicus is] perhaps the finest example of the modern gothic ever written.” —Stephen King
“Russell links postpulp literature and the Grand Grand Guignol tradition with the modern sensibilities of America in the 1960s...[He is] a fascinating combination of the liberal and the heretic.” —Guillermo del Toro
Synopsis
By the 20th century, the centuries-old Roman Catholic exorcism ritual for combatting demonic possession was all but dead, eviscerated by the ascent of modern science and rationalism. But Ray Russell's 1962 novel, The Case Against Satan, set the stage for a proliferation of exorcisms on page, screen, and even bizarrely, in real life.
Just a few weeks ago, Susan Garth was "a very good girl, a clean-talking sweet little girl" of high school age. But that was before she started having "fits"-a sudden aversion to churches and a newfound fondness for vulgarity. If not madness, then the answer must be demonic possession, for which there is only one response: exorcism.
Synopsis
A much-awaited collection of prose and poetry from one of the great cosmic masters of the supernatural Not just any fantasy, horror, and science fiction author could impress H. P. Lovecraft into calling him unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living” or compel Fritz Lieber to employ the worthy term sui generis. Clark Ashton Smithautodidact, prolific poet, amateur philosopher, bizarre sculptor, and unmatched storytellersimply wrote like no one else, before or since. This new collection of his very best tales and poems is selected and introduced by supernatural literature scholar S. T. Joshi and allows readers to encounter Smiths visionary brand of fantastical, phantasmagorical worlds, each one filled with invention, terror, and a superlative sense of metaphysical wonder.
Synopsis
The only annotated edition of M. R. James’s writings currently available, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories contains the entire first two volumes of James’s ghost stories, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. These volumes are both the culmination of the nineteenth-century ghost story tradition and the inspiration for much of the best twentieth-century work in this genre. Included in this collection are such landmark tales as “Count Magnus,” set in the wilds of Sweden; “Number 13,” a distinctive tale about a haunted hotel room; “Casting the Runes,” a richly complex tale of sorcery that served as the basis for the classic horror film Curse of the Demon; and “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” one of the most frightening tales in literature. The appendix includes several rare texts, including “A Night in King’s College Chapel,” James’s first known ghost story.
- First time in Penguin Classics
Synopsis
"Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen." -H.P. Lovecraft
Actor, journalist , devotee of Celtic Christianity and the Holy Grail legend, Welshman Arthur Machen is considered one of the fathers of weird fiction, a master of mayhem whose work has drawn comparisons to H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Readers will find the perfect introduction to his style in this new collection. With the title story, an exercise in the bizarre that leaves the reader disoriented virtually from the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside down. "There have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin," explains the character Ambrose, "who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed.'"
About the Author
Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) is one of the originators and most influential writers of supernatural fiction. Among his many honors was the Order of Merit, bestowed upon him by King George V in 1930.
S. T. Joshi is a freelance writer and editor. He has edited Penguin Classics editions of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1999), and The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (2001), as well as Algernon Blackwood’s Ancient Sorceries and Other Strange Stories (2002). Among his critical and biographical studies are The Weird Tale (1990), Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (1995), H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), and The Modern Weird Tale (2001). He has also edited works by Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and H. L. Mencken, and is compiling a three-volume Encyclopedia of Supernatural Literature. He lives with his wife in Seattle, Washington.