Maxima Library

If you don't shudder with every twist and sudden thrust of these 16 terror tales…

if you are able to turn off your bedside lamp after closing this volume and drift off to a deep, dreamless sleep…

if you can drink your morning coffee without thinking there just might be a peculiarly bitter taste to it, or turn your back on your spouse or best friend without feeling a funny itching between your shoulder blades…

then that lovable old master of menace, Alfred Hitchcock, apologizes and personally guarantees you your full payment in horror. All you have to do is meet him in the cemetery under the next murderer's moon…

Anche pubblicato come “Quel treno per l’inferno” ed “Il treno del diavolo”.

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.

An anthology of stories

The Devil is known by many names: Serpent, Tempter, Beast, Adversary, Wanderer, Dragon, Rebel. His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, Sympathy for the Devil has them all. Edited by Tim Pratt, Sympathy for the Devil collects the best Satanic short stories by Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and many others, revealing His Grand Infernal Majesty, in all his forms. Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen… and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.

A Cthulhu Cycle series book.

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors...

On the loose in the shadowy, gaslit streets of London’s East End — Jack the Ripper.

Baffled by the horrific series of murders in Victorian London, Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline is struck by the fact that all the killings have taken place near the London Hospital — famous for its surgeons.

A young American doctor at the hospital, Mark Robinson, comes to share Abbeline’s suspicions, but finds himself caught in a hall of mirrors in which one person after another seems to be a possible murderer…

Who was Jack the Ripper? In this chilling, harrowing tale of terror, master of the macabre Robert Bloch proposes a new answer — as shocking and ingenious as the conclusion of his classic Psycho.