Maxima Library

Innamorato di una donna vissuta molto tempo prima, il protagonista di questo libro straordinario comincia a studiarne i ritratti, la carriera, l’ambiente. Finché l’ossessione lo porta a tentare di raggiungere la misteriosa attrice… nel passato. Ma è solo l’inizio dell’avventura. Da questo grande romanzo è stato tratto un film con Christopher Reeve.

Fasten your seatbelts for an anthology of turbulent tales curated by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. This exciting new anthology, perfect for airport or airplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, along with brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill.

Stephen King hates to fly.

Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.

Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you’re suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like—gulp!—a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we’ll bet you’ve never thought of before… but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.

Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, “ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents… Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight.”

The bestselling author of such classic novels as I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come, Richard Matheson is one of the twentieth century’s acknowledged masters of suspense. Hunted Past Reason is a major literary event: Matheson’s first new novel in seven years—and a gripping tale of madness, paranoia, and murder.

It’s supposed to be just an ordinary camping trip, two old acquaintances hiking through the wilderness toward a remote cabin in the woods of northern California. Bob Hansen, a middle-aged family man and author, isn’t anticipating anything worse than sore muscles and maybe a few chilly nights.

But the enforced isolation of the hike soon exposes long-hidden rivalries and resentments between Bob and his guide through the forest, a fading TV actor whom Bob has known for several years. The deeper they get into the primeval wilderness and the farther from civilization, the greater the tension between the two men becomes-until the simmering hostility erupts into a terrifying life-or-death struggle for survival.

Two men entered the woods, but only one may emerge alive. Hunted Past Reason is a nail-biting thriller in the classic Matheson tradition.

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth… but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.

By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.

How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

“The most clever and riveting vampire novel since

Dracula

.”

—Dean Koontz

Per più di venti anni la casa appartenuta a Belasco è rimasta vuota. Indicata come la più inaccessibile delle case infestate, è un antico palazzo le cui mura hanno assistito a scene di orrore e depravazione inimmaginabili. Due tentativi di investigarne i misteri si sono conclusi terribilmente. Ora si prepara una nuova spedizione: quattro persone entrano in quel luogo misterioso, determinate a sondare gli ultimi segreti di vita e di morte che vi si celano. Ognuno di loro è spinto da una ragione personale per sfidare le mille tentazioni di quella dimora: ma potranno le loro anime sopravvivere di fronte a quanto si nasconde nella casa più infestata al mondo?

Remember that monster on the wing of the airplane? William Shatner saw it on The Twilight Zone, John Lithgow saw it in the movie—even Bart Simpson saw it. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination. Here are more than twenty of Matheson’s most memorable tales of fear and paranoia, including:

“Duel,” the nail-biting tale of man versus machines that inspired Steven Spielberg’s first film;

“Prey,” in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent Tiki doll, as chillingly captured in yet another legendary TV moment;

“Blood Son,” a disturbing portrait of a strange little boy who dreams of being a vampire;

“Dress of White Silk,” a seductively sinister tale of evil and innocence.

Personally selected by Richard Matheson, the bestselling author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come, these and many other stories, more than demonstrate why he is rightfully regarded as one of the finest and most influential horror writers of our generation.

For over half a century, Richard Matheson has enthralled and terrified readers with such timeless classics as I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Duel, Somewhere in Time, and What Dreams May Come. Now the Grand Master returns with a bewitching tale of erotic suspense and enchantment….

1918. A young American soldier, recently wounded in the Great War, Alex White comes to Gatford to escape his troubled past. The pastoral English village seems the perfect spot to heal his wounded body and soul. True, the neighboring woods are said to be haunted by capricious, even malevolent spirits, but surely those are just old wives’ tales.

Aren’t they?

A frightening encounter in the forest leads Alex into the arms of Magda Variel, an alluring red-haired widow rumored to be a witch. She warns him to steer clear of the wood and the perilous faerie kingdom it borders, but Alex cannot help himself. Drawn to its verdant mysteries, he finds love, danger… and wonders that will forever change his view of the world.

Other Kingdoms casts a magical spell, as conjured by a truly legendary storyteller.

A secret from Chris Martin’s past disrupts his happy suburban life. A novel of suspense.

STARK TERROR BECOMES A TOTAL REALITY.

There is a special numbing quality to fear that strikes in the safety of your own home. Here is where you should feel most secure. Here’s where you wash the dishes, polish the car; where friends can drop in; where nobody intrudes except the in-laws. Murder has no place here. Terror doesn’t belong.And when monstrous fear and murder bludgeon their way in, you don’t believe it. You’re numb. Until the bleak, deadly truth forces you to frantic terror for those you love. Then you believe it—then you RIDE THE NIGHTMARE.

The anthology contains fourteen stories, selected by Frederik Pohl as the cream from the earlier six volumes of “Star Science Fiction Stories”. There is a three page introduction by the editor, Frederik Pohl, and a brief introduction to each story.  These are all good stories, well worth reading, even if some of them are a little dated, though that’s hardly surprising given it’s around sixty years since they first appeared.

John Benton was one of the toughest men ever to wear a Texas Ranger badge.  But eight years ago, in August 1871, he hung up his guns for good.

Or so he hoped.

Then young Robby Coles challenged him to a fight over some imagined slight to the boy’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend.  At first Benton tried to laugh off the affair.  Why, the boy was little more than a child.  But rumors and gossip spread like wildfire through their dusty frontier town and soon enough the entire community seems to be goading both men towards a fatal confrontation neither one truly wants.

Benton doesn’t want to kill again.  Robby is secretly terrified of facing the legendary gunfighter.  Yet, with both men’s honor on the line, is there any way to avoid a duel to the death?