The House Of Long Shadows

The house at 889 Morgan Road has been empty almost thirty years. Maybe it should have stayed that way. Kevin Taylor is an internet-famous handyman on a mission: Find a house and renovate it in thirty days. By flipping a derelict house in a month's time and chronicling the entire thing on video for his online subscribers, he seeks to impress a handful of network TV producers and become a star. The problems that plague this property will require more than elbow grease to fix, however. Shadows throughout the home are distorted, and an enigmatic trespasser keeps showing up in his footage. Worse still are the hideous voices that issue from otherwise empty rooms in the dead of night. Amid mounting dangers, Kevin is forced to meet the house's shadowed past head-on

One of the most urgent issues facing the world today is how countries shape historical memory in the aftermath of calamity, making decisions that cast long shadows into the future. Combining gripping storytelling with sharp observation, Erna Paris takes us on an extraordinary journey through four continents to explore how nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events. She travels through the United States, with its long-buried memory of slavery; to South Africa, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission struggles to heal the wounds left by apartheid; to Japan, France, and Germany, where the unresolved pain of Hiroshima and the Holocaust still resonate; and to the former Yugoslavia, where she exposes the cynical shaping of historical memory. Through its insightful analysis, Long Shadows compels us to question where we stand as individuals in relation to our own collective histories. Erna Paris is the winner of ten national and international writing awards, three for Long Shadows. She is the author of six critically acclaimed books of literary non-fiction, including The End of Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, which won the 1996 Canadian National Jewish Book Award for History. She lives in Toronto. Winner of the Pearson Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Award, the inaugural Shaugnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the Dorothy Shoichet prize for history from the Canadian Jewish Book Awards. 'Long Shadows is magnificent. I would love to see this book taught in every history class in America.' - Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking 'Enlightening...Riveting...Paris raises questions of enormous importance.' - Kirkus 'Paris convincingly demonstrates that memory is not only selective but subject to calculated efforts to serve personal needs and national interests.' - The Christian Science Monitor 'Erna Paris gives us a rich, if p

Tom Smiley signed up as a private in the Confederate army when he was eighteen and quickly came to regret it. Spending the last year of the war in a Union prison scarred him so deeply that even death hasn't brought freedom from its memory. A ghost in his deserted childhood home, he can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, or shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early 21st century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced to not only face his own terrible secret but also come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in his house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, who is both fascinated and frightened by his ghostly presence—and whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both.

House of Small Shadows is the disturbing novel about a modern phobia – the fear of dolls and puppets – from award-winning horror author Adam Nevill. The Red House: home to the damaged genius of the late M. H. Mason, master taxidermist and puppeteer, where he lived and created some of his most disturbing works. The building and its treasure trove of antiques is long forgotten, but the time has come for his creations to rise from the darkness. Catherine Howard can't believe her luck when she's invited to value the contents of the house. When she first sees the elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals and macabre puppets, she's both thrilled and terrified. It's an opportunity to die for. But the Red House has secrets, secrets as dreadful and dark as those from Catherine's own past. At night the building comes alive with noises and movements: footsteps, and the fleeting glimpses of small shadows on the stairs. And soon the barriers between reality, sanity and nightmare begin to collapse . . . 'Adam Nevill is a fantastic storyteller, a master of slow-building tension, and he's written a fever dream of a book. House of Small Shadows is chilling, disorienting, and deeply creepy.' – Scott Smith, author of The Ruins

Reproduction of the original: Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers

This collection of short stories, some semi-autobiographical, by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901-74), the eminent German novelist and poet, reflects many of the themes to be found throughout her fiction, such as the dread of moral anarchy which leaves nothing in its wake, and the shaping of individual destinies by loneliness, insecurity and fear. Usually told from a woman's viewpoint, her works feature strong female characters whose inner strength enable them to overcome their fears and accept their fates with stoic determination. Kaschnitz's chief concern is the human condition, giving her work a continuing relevance; she confronts such universal issues as growing old, growing up and the loss of religious faith as well as those which have a more contemporary resonance, including the social problems of working parents and adoption.

Sophie's world is shattered when disaster bankrupts her family. She's still reeling when she's offered an unexpected solution: Mr. Argenton, a wealthy stranger, has asked for her hand in marriage. Marrying Mr. Argenton will save her family, but it condemns Sophie to a life in Northwood, a vast and unnaturally dark mansion situated hours from civilization. Still, she has no choice but accept the offer and hope the darkness won't swallow her whole. It's a struggle to adjust to her new position as mistress over the desolate house. Mr. Argenton's relatives are cold, and Mr. Argenton himself is keeping secrets. Even worse, the house is more than it seems. Doors slam. Inhuman figures slink through the surrounding forest. A piano plays itself in the middle of the night. Blood drips a macabre warning down the walls. Day by day, Sophie is inevitably pulled towards the terrifying truth at the heart of this gothic mystery: Northwood's ancient halls are haunted, and the man she married―the man she's coming to love―is hiding an unforgiveable truth about his ancestral home...and the spirits that now haunt them both.

“A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a more or less ordinary American city…Mature and thoughtful…A Helter Skelter for our time, though without a hint of sensationalism—unsettling in the extreme but written with confidence and deep empathy” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas—one of America’s poorest cities—John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her and set her on a six-year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts, ones so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity. Tillman spoke with the lawyers who tried the case, the family’s neighbors and relatives and teachers, even one of the murderers: John Allen Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for years and ultimately met in person. Her investigation is “a dogged attempt to understand what happened, a review of the psychological, sociological and spiritual explanations for the crime…a meditation on the death penalty and on the city of Brownsville” Star Tribune (Minneapolis). The result is a brilliant exploration of some of our age’s most important social issues and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that drive them. “This thought-provoking…book exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that does not settle for easy answers” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).