Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN13 9780380395866 here.Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

The supernatural stories that make up Robert W. Chambers’s classic piece of weird fiction are tied together by a play that brings madness to all who read it: The King in Yellow. It’s a book that draws readers in with an irresistible yet innocent opening act, then drives them insane with the poisonous words of Act 2. It’s a book that cannot be suppressed, spreading like a disease from city to city, continent to continent. An influence on writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Neil Gaiman, The King in Yellow is one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction. In this dangerously unputdownable graphic-novel adaptation, I. N. J. Culbard brings to life a thrilling tale of horror that will make readers laugh and cry and tremble with fright . . . Read at your own risk.

Doctor Impossible—evil genius, diabolical scientist, wannabe world dominator—languishes in a federal detention facility. He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress. Over the years he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable: doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. All failures. But not this time. This time it's going to be different... Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, trying to come together in the face of unthinkable evil. Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel; a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it—the Southern Reach—has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril.Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X—what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X—and who may have been corrupted by it?In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound—or terrifying.

One of the most gripping fantasies ever written, The Moon Pool embodies all the romanticism and poetic nostalgia characteristic of A. Merritt's writings. Set on the island of Ponape, full of ruins from ancient civilizations, the novel chronicles the adventures of a party of explorers who discover a previously unknown underground world full of strange peoples and super-scientific wonders. From the depths of this world, the party unwittingly unleashes the Dweller, a monstrous terror that threatens the islands of the South Pacific. Although Merritt did not invent the lost world novel, following in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Burroughs and others, he greatly elaborated upon that tradition. This new edition includes a biography of the author, and an introduction detailing Merritt's many sources and influences, including the occult, mythological, and scientific discourses of his day.

Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.""The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known short stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.

Three friends in a large old dilapidated house are laughing. They seem as giddy as an acting troupe at closing night. But their laughter is callous, cruel; you might say, evil. One of them, a young woman described as piquant rather than beautiful with eyes of a shining hazel, carries a neatly wrapped parcel. She says it is for the doctor's museum. It is dripping. Do you want to know why? Then, listen! There's more than one tale told, but what is the truth? My dears, are you sure you want to know?

I've been meaning to read this series for a while. I'm a fan of the original publishing company (Pacific), as they seemed to be one of the best indy publishers during the direct market boom of the early 80's. Alien Worlds and Twisted Tales are two of my favorite titles from this era (when is someone going to reprint those?), and with an all start team heading up this series I thought it would surely be a good time. Additionally, it seems like every Elric story is being adapted to comics, so it made sense to start with the chronologically first story.It probably isn't fair to bash an adaptation without having ever read the original source material, so I'll lay off the story itself and only say that the plot line and pacing of this adaptation did not seem to flow very well. Cliffhanger moments seemed to happen in the first few pages or else 3 pages before the end of the chapter, and never at the actual end of the chapter where they would work much better.The artwork in this is not great. P. Craig Russel, who did the layouts, inks and coloring in this volume, has become one of my top ranked artists, but this showing of his early work leaves much to be desired. Or maybe Michael Gilbert's pencils were what ruined it for me. I'm having a hard time deciding where to lay blame. The pages seem to be laid out well (Russel) for the most part, but the figure drawings are bothersome (Gilbert). Not much can be done about that at the inking phase (Russel), but then the colors in this series look like they were done with a 12 pack of Crayola colored pencils (Russel). I should point out that I read this in the original comic book format, published by Pacific in 1983, and it is possible that Dark Horse re-colored this story for collection in the trade as is popular to do with stories from the early Bronze Age of Comics.Overall I'm going to have to pass on further Elric adaptations.

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