Showing results by author "Charles L. Grant" in All Categories

So, you think you like to be scared.... Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the coveted Nebula, the unforgettable tales in this magnificent collection are the work of one of today's most respected masters of horror. Here are stories designed to carry the listener across fear's threshold, to terror...and beyond.

To his neighbors in the sleepy hamlet of Inverness, New Jersey, Lincoln Blackthorne is a tailor. Far from major population centers, highways, airports, or trains, Inverness is just about the last place you’d expect to find an international soldier of fortune and treasure hunter. But that’s exactly what Blackthorne is - one of the best - and he’s about to embark on his most dangerous journey: the quest for a priceless work of art, a deadly magical talisman, an object of dire arcane power.

He turns into a bat. Drinks the blood of the living. And never pays income taxes. He's the Vampire Lamar, and since he's come to New England, the body count's been rising every time he rises. But even eternal nightlife can take on a chill without companionship. The unholy fiend-in-need seeks a down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood girl who's his type for a very long-term relationship. But where there are vampires, there are vampire hunters. Unfortunately their stakeout for an eccentric "nobleman" sends them chasing a mortal target named Kent Montana.

Don't look now, but a mad scientist has discovered the secret of (temporary) invisibility. He's not planning to sneak into the movies, either. He's mad, remember? He wants...revenge! It doesn't take a genius to see right through the faded fiend's transparent scheme: a festival of murder, destruction, and cheap practical jokes. But only one man can clean those unsightly stains on the fabric of society.... Kent Montana. He's the descendant of Scottish nobility, or so he claims.

Gideon Sunday, an ex-semi-professional American Football player, goes to his pantry to retrieve an awful bottle of his (dead) sister's fruit preserves. When he gets there, he discovers a meadow in his pantry. He closes the door, takes a few breaths, and begins to investigate. Upon discovering that A) no one is playing a trick on him, B) there really IS a meadow in his cupboard, and C) there is something three-quarters of ugly coming out of it, he decides to beat a monster to death with a baseball bat.

The Soft Whisper of the Dead is the first of the Oxrun tales to be placed in other than a contemporary setting. The first in a trilogy of historical horror novels, it is the account of the evil Count Braslov's attempt to subjugate the Oxrun population to his vampiric will.

IT is big. IT is ugly. IT has a heat ray and a bad disposition. IT is, in short, the worst thing to happen to New Jersey since the last election. Nothing can stop IT. Not the army. Not the scientist. Not the preacher. Not even a cute little girl and her dog. Only one man can save us all.... Kent Montana.

When Gideon Sunday is handed a ball, he takes it and runs. Unfortunately, the game this unemployed football player has found himself in will probably get him killed. The minute he stepped through his pantry door into the magical land of Chey, Gideon Sunday knew that the last thing he ever wanted to be was a hero. He has been trying to go home ever since. But the events that landed him in this most bewildering land now conspire to strand him forever, and Gideon is desperate.

When people need something, Inverness, New Jersey tailor Lincoln Blackthorne is the man they turn to and in turn Linc generally gets them what they want. Sometimes — like every time he turns around — there's somebody else there trying to do Blackthorne out of what he's after...usually threatening bodily harm and more often than not attempting to make good on the threat.

Charles L. Grant's town of Oxrun Station became real to horror fans (much like Lovecraft's Arkham and King's Castle Rock). While most of Grant's stories were contemporary, he did write a trilogy of "historical" novels placed in an earlier Oxrun. The Dark Cry of the Moon is a classic werewolf tale for fans of the old Universal and Hammer horror films. The emphasis is on character and atmosphere, not on gore. It is the second volume in Grant's acclaimed "historical horror" trilogy.

Charles L. Grant sets forth to take us across time and into a fantasy world to his remarkable little Connecticut town of Oxrun Station. There are new horrors on the loose to excite each listener.

A late-winter blizzard has closed the road beside Maclaren’s Food and Lodging. The staff of three - Neil Maclaren, former cop turned motel-keeper; Julia Sanders, as capable handling trouble as she is mixing drinks; Willie Ennin, whose fondness for knives makes him a superb cook - prepare to entertain their few customers through a long winter night, unaware that they are being watched. They all have secrets, secrets which have attracted the watcher.