Motionless now and in absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch. Ambrose Bierce was one of America’s leading writers of the nineteenth century, seen by contemporaries as a successor to Edgar Allan Poe with an authentic grasp of horror based on his experiences fighting for the Union in the American Civil War. Despite his contributions to the genre of supernatural and weird tales, today his name remains unknown to many readers. This new collection presents over thirty of Bierce’s most terrifying and unusual stories, from essential classics such as ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ and ‘The Eyes of the Panther’ to the writer’s lesser-known series recounting macabre local legends of haunted houses, mysterious disappearances and chilling encounters with the dead.

The fact that humanity is not alone in the universe has long preoccupied our thoughts. In this compelling new collection of short stories from SF's classic age our visions of `other' are shown in a myriad of forms - beings from other worlds, corrupted lifeforms from our own planet and entities from unimaginable dimensions. Amongst these tales, the humble ant becomes humanity's greatest foe, a sailor awakes in a hellish landscape terrified by a monstrous creature from the deep, an extra-terrestrial apocalypse devastates our world but also brings us together, and our race becomes the unwitting agent of another species' survival. Be prepared to face your greatest fears and relinquish your hold on reality as you confront the menace of the monster.

At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the world she looked at suffered a change... It was the same world, flat field for flat field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, infinitely transparent. Tales of eternal damnation, love, sexuality, death and supernatural talents form the core of May Sinclair’s essential and groundbreaking oeuvre. Literary and still thrilling today, her stories explore the strangeness at the heart of human experience and relationships, where the mundane and the everyday meets lurking, otherworldly weirdness. Including the contents of the classic collections Uncanny Stories (1923) and The Intercessor and Other Stories (1931), this new volume also features two rare strange tales from a third, lesser-known book which explore further facets of Sinclair’s fascination with the uncanny.

Sound the sirens! The end is here, and it comes in many forms in this new collection of apocalyptic short stories from the classic age of science fiction. Join humanity on the brink of destruction in 13 doom-laden visions from the 1890s to the 1960s, featuring rare tales from the Library's vaults. Tales of plague seizing an over-polluted capital, a world engulfed in absolute darkness by some cosmic disaster, and of poignant dreams of a silent planet after the last echoes of humanity have died away. Extreme climate change, nuclear annihilation, comet strike; calamities self-inflicted and from beyond the steer of humankind vie to deal the last blow in this countdown from the first whisper of possible extinction to the Earth's final sunrise.

'Back from the shouting floor and ceiling came the chorus of images that stormed and clamoured for expression. Jones lay still and listened; he let them come. There was nothing else to do.' Algernon Blackwood was one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century weird and supernatural fiction. He once told a correspondent that every story he wrote was based on either a personal experience or that of someone he knew, and thus the vast collection of short stories and novels published in his lifetime can be seen to form a kind of autobiography. In this collection of his most atmospheric and uneasy tales, Mike Ashley provides the facts of Blackwood's life which inspired each story - including experiences as an intelligence agent in the First World War and adventures in New York - to tell the parallel tale of the author's lifetime of the supernatural.

'There was not a soul to be seen, up or down; and the trees stood like ghosts, and the silence was terrible, and everything clear as day. You don’t know what silence is until you find it in the light like that...' Margaret Oliphant’s superbly strange tales have been long overdue their rediscovery as classics of the Victorian ghost story genre. From suspenseful hauntings to weird experiences of the afterlife and encounters with sympathetic ghosts, Oliphant tells her tales with well-wrought imagery and a nuanced voice to deliver a thoroughly unnerving and unforgettable reading experience. This newly edited volume collects six of her greatest ‘Seen and Unseen’ stories – Oliphant’s most popular series in her day – and includes a new introduction exploring the life of this pioneering novelist.

Occult or psychic detective tales have been chilling readers for almost as long as there have been ghost stories. This beguiling subgenre follows specialists in occult lore - often with years of arcane training - investigating strange supernatural occurrences and pitting their wits against the bizarre and inexplicable. With tales featuring the most prominent psychic detectives such as William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, the Ghost Finder and Algernon Blackwood's Dr. Silence, this new collection also includes rare and never-before-reprinted cases investigated by the likes of Flaxman Low, Cosmo Thor, Aylmer Vance and Mesmer Milann.

The disquieting tales of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman explore a world of contrast, where the supernatural erupts out of authentically drawn portraits of New England life. This is a world of witchcraft, secrecy, domestic spaces turned uncanny and ancestral vengeances inflicted upon the unfortunates of the present. Collecting the best of the author's strange tales - including 'The White Shawl', which was unpublished during her lifetime - this volume casts a light on an underappreciated contributor to weird fiction and the shadowy corners of a dark imagination.

Don Miguel Navarro lives in Britain - a Britain which failed to repel the Spanish Armada invasion. He is part of the Society of Time, an organisation which polices the improper use of time travel, and which is galvanised into action when an ancient relic from a parallel time's South America is spotted on the black market. In three fascinating and ground-breaking novellas, John Brunner weaves an ingenious tale of a divergent and compelling timeline, and poses complex questions of how we perceive the fourth dimension and its relation to our own identity. When collected previously the three original Society of Time stories were abridged. Here, 'The Spoils of Yesterday', 'The Word Not Written' and 'The Fullness of Time' are reprinted in full, along with the two mesmerising Brunner novellas 'The Analysts' and 'Father of Lies'.

"Detective Patrolman McClane watched the two-man space station spin into view, a shining disc against the black backdrop... Waiting for the airlock to fill, he though bitterly of his situation—promotion due and he had to get a job like this..." Telepaths, time machines and alien encounters collide with the crime and mystery genre in this new collection exploring the space where detective stories and science fiction meet. To reflect the broad spectrum of this crossover genre Mike Ashley has selected ten of its most ingenious mysteries spanning the decades from 1912 to 1972. These are stories of AI acting against programming, locked-room murders in the confines of spacecraft and cases pitching the police against psychic perpetrators, penned by some of the greatest writers of crime and science fiction including P. D. James, Anthony Boucher, Isaac Asimov and Miriam Allen deFord.

`I was suddenly struck with the sight of a trail of rich red vegetation of several miles in the midst of the eternal snows. I approached with curiosity this oasis in the frozen desert.' An antique shop owner gets a glimpse of the red planet through an intriguing artefact. A Martian's wife contemplates the possibility of life on Earth. A resident of Venus describes his travels across the two alien planets. From an arid desert to an advanced society far superior to that of Earth, portrayals of Mars have differed radically in their attempt to uncover the truth about our neighbouring planet. Since the 1880s, writers of science fiction have delighted in speculating on what life on Mars might look like and what might happen should we make contact with the planet's inhabitants. These ten short stories from the golden age of science fiction feature classic SF writers including H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury and J.G. Ballard, as well as lesser-known writers from the genre. They reveal much about how we understand our place in the universe. Lost Mars: The Golden Age of the Red Planet is the first volume in the British Library Science Fiction Classics series.

Pre- and post-apocalyptic science fiction is on the rise, and some of the genre's best new stories are collected here, with contributions by Stephen Baxter, Alistair Reynolds, Robert Reed, Robert Silverberg, and Damien Broderick.

With stories from modern writers, and the founding fathers of horror fiction, weird or cosmic horror combines the dark brooding shadows of the night with the presence of elder gods at the edges of our world. Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell sit alongside new tales by new writers from open submissions. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

It is too often accepted that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake - but this is far from the truth. This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors. See the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sensitively-drawn nightmares of Marie Corelli and Violet Quirk. Hear the captivating voices of Weird Tales magazine contributors Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Greye La Spina and Margaret St Clair, and bow down to the sensational, surreal and challenging writers who broke down the barriers of the day. Featuring material never before republished, from the abyssal depths of the British Library vaults.

The Rise of the Cyberzines concludes Mike Ashley's five-volume series, which has tracked the evolution of the science-fiction magazine from its earliest days in the 1920s to its current explosion via the internet. This series has traced the ways in which the science-fiction magazine has reacted to the times and often led the way in breaking down barriers, for example in encouraging a greater contribution by women writers and stimulating science fiction globally. Magazines have continued to build upon past revolutions such as the 'new wave' and 'cyberpunk', producing a blend of high-tech science fiction and expansive speculative fiction that has broadened the understanding of science and its impact on society. This final volume, which covers the years 1991-2020, shows how the online magazine has superseded the print magazine and has continued to break down barriers, especially for the LGBTQ community and for writers of colour.

Science fiction has always confronted the concerns of society, and our concern over humanity's ecological impact on nature has inspired incredible stories for generations. In this new collection of stories from the classic period of the genre, explore both tales of eco-catastrophe and ruin following abuse of Earth's natural resources, and stories of hope and learning for humankind's future forays into the new environments of the future. Featuring rare stories from the science fiction and fantasy magazines in the British Library collection and pieces from some of the most influential writers in the field including Brian W Aldiss, Clifford D Simak, Margaret St Clair and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.

During her lifetime Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as 'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction', and yet today she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to return to those ranks today. From modernised folk tales such as 'Marsyas in Flanders' and 'The Legend of Madame Krasinska' to ingenious psychological hauntings such as the titular 'A Phantom Lover' and 'A Wicked Voice', Lee's own voice is just as distinctive and captivating - her weird imaginings just as freshly unsettling - as in her fin-de-siecle heyday.

Since space flight was achieved, and long before, science fiction writers have imagined a myriad of stories set in the depths of the great darkness beyond our atmosphere. From generation ships – which are in space so long that there will be new generations aboard who have never experienced planetary life – to orbiting satellites in the unforgiving reaches of the vacuum, there is a vast range of these insular environments in which innovative and emotionally complex stories may unfold. With the British Library’s matchless collection of periodicals and magazines at his fingertips, Mike Ashley presents a stellar selection of tales from the infinite void above us, including contributions from Judith Merril, Jack Vance and John Brunner.

A vicious plague has broken out in China and spread to Japan. The world governments look on callously, until the shadow of the Hueste virus begins to sweep across the rest of the globe. The pandemic draws nearer to Britain; shelters are hastily constructed across the country, but for whom? As the death toll booms and the populace finds themselves sacrificed for the sake of the elite, the cry for revolution rings out amidst the sirens. Maine's savage portrayal of society on the brink of ruin is a cruel forerunner of a more pessimistic science fiction of the 1960s. This subversive novel shows that even the heroes may succumb to brutality as the world descends into a desperate scramble for the last shred of what it means to be human: survival.

Originally conceived as a trilogy, this is the first of five volumes that chart the history of the science fiction magazine from the earliest days to the present. This first volume looks at the exuberant years of the pulp magazines. It traces the growth and development of the science fiction magazines from when Hugo Gernsback launched the very first, Amazing Stories, in 1926 through to the birth of the atomic age and the death of the pulps in the early 1950s. These were the days of the youth of science fiction, when it was brash, raw and exciting: the days of the first great space operas by Edward Elmer Smith and Edmond Hamilton, through the cosmic thought variants by Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson and others to the early 1940s when John W. Campbell at Astounding did his best to nurture the infant genre into adulthood. Under him such major names as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon emerged who, along with other such new talents as Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, helped create modern science fiction. For over forty years magazines were at the heart of science fiction and this book considers how the magazines, and their publishers, editors and authors influenced the growth and perception of this fascinating genre.

From atop the choppy waves to the choking darkness of the abyss, the seas are full of mystery and rife with tales of inexplicable events and encounters with the unknown. In this anthology we see a thrilling spread of narratives; sailors are pitched against a nightmare from the depths, invisible to the naked eye; a German U-boat commander is tormented by an impossible transmission via Morse Code; a ship ensnares itself in the kelp of the Sargasso Sea and dooms a crew of mutineers, seemingly out of revenge for her lost captain... The supernatural is set alongside the grim affairs of sailors scorned in these salt-soaked tales, recovered from obscurity for the 21st century.

A figure emerges from a painting to pursue a bitter vengeance; the last transmission of a dying man haunts the airwaves, seeking to reveal his murderer; a treasure hunt disturbs an ancient presence in the silence of a lost tomb... From the vaults of the British Library comes a new anthology celebrating the best works of forgotten, never since republished, supernatural fiction from the early 20th century. Waiting within are malevolent spirits eager to possess the living and mysterious spectral guardians - a diverse host of phantoms exhumed from the rare pages of literary magazines and newspaper serials to thrill once more.

Howling down the tunnels comes a new collection showcasing the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are republished here for the first time since their original departure. Waiting beyond the barrier are ghostly travelling companions bent on disturbing the commutes of the living, a subway car disappearing into a different dimension without a trace, and a man's greatest fears realized on the ghost train of a carnival. An express ticket to unforgettable journeys into the supernatural, from the open railways of Europe and America to the pressing dark of the tube.

Between horror and fantasy lies a world in which the inexplicable remains unsolved and the rational mind is assailed by impossible questions. Welcome to the realm of Dark Fantasy, where safe answers are beyond reach and accounts of unanswerable dilemma find their home. Delving deep into the sub-genre, fiction expert Mike Ashley has gathered an unsettling mixture of twisted tales, encounters with logic-defying creatures and nightmarish fables certain to perplex, beguile and of course, entertain.

Terror in the steamy jungles of Venus, encounters on the arid expanse of Jupiter; asteroids mysteriously bursting with vegetation whizz past and reveal worlds beyond imagination orbiting the giver of all known life - the Sun. Mike Ashley curates this literary tour through the space around this heavenly body, taking in the sights of Mercury, Venus, Mars, an alternate Earth, strange goings on on Saturn and tales from a bizarre civilization on Neptune. Pluto (still a planet in the Classic period of SF) becomes the site for a desperate tale of isolation, and a nameless point at the limits of the Sun's orbital space gives rise to a final poetic vision of this spot in the universe we call home... Born of the Sun collects one story for each of the planets thought to be in our solar system during the Golden Age of SF, from some of the greatest, and from some of the most obscure, authors of the genre. Featuring the genius works of Larry Niven, Poul Andersen, Clifford D Simak, Clare Winger Harris and many more.