Nightmare Valley

Soulless eyes of children stare into yours, opening the gateway to hell… Months have passed since the Malpas Massacre, and the media is in the midst of a feeding frenzy. Reporters and law enforcement are certain the murders can be traced to a cold-blooded serial killer. But those who have survived the carnage know the truth all too well. As the victims become suspects, they find themselves in a race against time to clear their names. Meanwhile, the peaceful town of Machen is hiding secrets darker than the eerie forest surrounding it. Vulnerable and wide-eyed children roam, pleading for help. Yet, behind their innocent façade lies a resurrected evil with an insatiable thirst for blood. Led by Doctor Zoffany and Ted Gould, the Romola Foundation won’t let that happen. They’re certain that their extensive tests on Machen’s supernatural forces will lead them to much needed answers. At the heart of it all is Denny Purcell, who slowly discovers that her intuition is more powerful than she could have ever imagined. As the night fills with predators, the mists of Machen lift to unveil hideous truths about its past. The whole town is on edge, and residents must face the violent souls that crave death and destruction. The quiet town will quickly learn that some secrets are better left untold…

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

They were searching for ghosts. But what they found was much worse… TV Producers Matt McKay and Ted Gould are looking for one thing… ghosts. As the creators of a popular paranormal investigation show, they’ve staked their reputation on the existence of the super-natural. But when they lead their camera crew deep into the cavernous interior of Malpas Abbey, they discover far more than they bargained for… The Abbey’s infamous history is marred with bloodshed. With its corrupt walls resting upon a foundation of death and torment, the bleak, decrepit manor house has been avoided by locals for centuries. As the unsuspecting crew ventures into the hell house, they are beset by one problem after another. Strange noises echo through the halls. Their equipment fails, and ominous shadows surround them. And they soon realize they are not alone in this sinister building. Something else stalks the dark halls of the abbey. Something that feeds upon their worst nightmares. A force of evil, stronger and older than the devil himself. And it hungers for fresh blood…

Amanda wants to go sledding down Nightmare Hill, but Sam has other ideas.

Something deadly is hiding in the shadows… When a TV crew seeking evidence of the supernatural enters the crumbling grounds of Malpas Abbey, they have no idea what they might find. Hoping to capture paranormal activity live on camera, they descend deeper into the shadows, hunting for ghosts and apparitions. But instead, they discover something much worse… Thrust into a battle against forces beyond their comprehension, the production team soon find themselves locked in a struggle for survival that reaches far beyond the crumbling old manor house. An ancient evil has been unleashed on the English countryside. Known as The Interlopers, these sinister invaders from another dimension live among us. And they have only one goal. Total dominion over the human race… This digital box set contains the first three books of the Nightmare series. Three novels of paranormal terror, guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. Nightmare Abbey: Overlooking a dark hill, Malpas Abbey has been avoided by locals for centuries. Its infamous history is marred with blood and terror. Only the foolish would dare enter such a place, where devilish hauntings have left a string of dead bodies in its wake. Nightmare Valley: The peaceful town of Machen is hiding secrets darker than the eerie forest surrounding it. Wide-eyed children roam the woods pleading for help. Yet, behind their innocent façade lies a resurrected evil with an insatiable thirst for blood. Nightmare Revelation: The nightmare continues to cast a deep shadow as dreadful stories of murder and mayhem make their way into London. But death comes knocking when a thick fog crawls through the night. The smell of fear lingers in the air, and no one is safe.

Winner of the 2012 Colby Award and the first Afghanistan memoir ever to be written by a Marine Harrier pilot, A Nightmare’s Prayer portrays the realities of war in the twenty-first century, taking a unique and powerful perspective on combat in Afghanistan as told by a former enlisted man turned officer. Lt. Col. Michael “Zak” Franzak was an AV-8B Marine Corps Harrier pilot who served as executive officer of VMA-513, “The Flying Nightmares,” while deployed in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003. The squadron was the first to base Harriers in Bagram in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. But what should have been a standard six-month deployment soon turned to a yearlong ordeal as the Iraq conflict intensified. And in what appeared to be a forgotten war half a world away from home, Franzak and his colleagues struggled to stay motivated and do their job providing air cover to soldiers patrolling the inhospitable terrain. I wasn’t in a foxhole. I was above it. I was safe and comfortable in my sheltered cocoon 20,000 feet over the Hindu Kush. But I prayed. I prayed when I heard the muted cries of men who at last understood their fate. Franzak’s personal narrative captures the day-by-day details of his deployment, from family good-byes on departure day to the squadron’s return home. He explains the role the Harrier played over the Afghanistan battlefields and chronicles the life of an attack pilot—from the challenges of nighttime, weather, and the austere mountain environment to the frustrations of working under higher command whose micromanagement often exacerbated difficulties. In vivid and poignant passages, he delivers the full impact of enemy ambushes, the violence of combat, and the heartbreaking aftermath. And as the Iraq War unfolded, Franzak became embroiled in another battle: one within himself. Plagued with doubts and wrestling with his ego and his belief in God, he discovered in himself a man he loathed. But the hardest test of his lifetime and career was still to come—one that would change him forever. A stunning true account of service and sacrifice that takes the reader from the harrowing dangers of the cockpit to the secret, interior spiritual struggle facing a man trained for combat, A Nightmare’s Prayer brings to life a Marine’s public and personal trials set against “the fine talcum brown soot of Afghanistan that permeated everything—even one’s soul.”

This is a science fiction novel that tells the story of Mr. Roland C. Jones, of New York City. He is onboard the ill-fated liner Lusitania, and awakens from a night's sleep to find himself struggling in the seas of an untamed island. Struggling to swim and breath, but the fight between man and sea was too unequal. Thoroughly exhausted, more than half drown, he finds himself rising upon the shoulder of a particularly mighty billow. Then the next wave pushes him and dumps him on the beach of a deserted island. Roland feels like a man in a dream, but the pain he suffers informs him that this is no dream, but a grim, incredible reality. What scary thing awaits him on the Island? Is it a dream or reality?