The Black Hope Horror


Book Description

A chilling story of supernatural events that befell an entire Texas subdivision.




Horror Noire


Book Description

From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890's to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself. Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race. Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian "Nollywood" Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.




The Big Book of Texas Ghost Stories


Book Description

The best ghost stories from the Lone Star State, including . . . • Spirits of the Alamo • The Black Hope Horror • Hauntings at the Driskill Hotel • The legend of El Muerto • Woman Hollering Creek • Stampede Mesa




Out of Darkness


Book Description

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal




Joe Louis


Book Description

When Joe Louis (1914–1981) knocked out the German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938 in two minutes and four seconds, the entire nation—black and white—celebrated the "fight of the century" as a victory of the United States against the ominous tide of Nazism. Never had an African-American received such universal praise across racial lines. Heavyweight champion for a record twelve years from 1937 to 1949, Louis opened the doors for such future black athletes as Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Muhammad Ali.Joe Louis depicts the prizefighter's life, and the times in which he lived, from his childhood in a sharecropper's cabin in Alabama and his formative years in Detroit, to his legendary career, his service in the Army, his stint as a professional wrestler after retiring from boxing in 1951, and his professional demise as an official greeter for a Las Vegas casino. Along the way, Richard Bak compassionately, yet evenhandedly, details Louis's private vices: incessant womanizing, reckless spending habits, massive debts to the IRS, and drug abuse. Filled with over one hundred photographs, including twenty-two in color, Joe Louis is the most comprehensive portrait yet written of one of the greatest African-American heroes who used his fists figuratively—and literally—to fight racism.




Grave's End


Book Description

You leave us alone; we'll leave you alone. When Elaine Mercado and her first husband bought their home in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1982, they had no idea that they and their two young daughters were embarking on a thirteen-year nightmare. thin a few days of moving in, Elaine and her older daughter began to experience the sensation of being watched. Then came scratching noises and weird smells, followed by voices whispering, maniacal laughter, shadowy figures scurrying along baseboards, and small balls of light bouncing along the ceilings. From the beginning of the haunting, "suffocating dreams" were experienced by everyone except the younger daughter. These eventually accelerated to physical aggression directed at Elaine and both the girls. This book is the true story of how one family tried to cope with living in a haunted house. It also describes how, with the help of parapsychologist Dr. Hans Holzer and medium Marisa Anderson, the family discovered the tragic and heartbreaking secrets buried in the house at Grave's End. I struggle to open my eyes, but achieve nothing but frustration and failure. I am not asleep. I am fully conscious, in a state of panic unthinkable during the day intolerable in the dark of night, held prisoner by some tortured, invisible presence, insistent on abruptly invading my slumber. The more I struggle toward freedom, the more I am pushed into the mattress, perspiring, heart palpitating, a scream involuntarily silenced within my throat. Some nights I experience my skin being stroked while I fight to regain control of my body, my sight. Thank God, this was not one of those nights. Tonight it lets me open my eyes, shaken but unviolated, frightened, but not as frightened as I know I can become. First Runner up for the 2001 Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) Award for Best Biographical/Personal Book




The Dark Horse Book of Horror


Book Description

Explore the dark corners of the horror genre with this collection of spooky tales of witchcraft, ghosts, and the risen dead! Originally collected as a hardcover, these stories from the likes of Mike Mignola, Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson, Gary Gianni, Robert E. Howard and more first appeared in the Dark Horse Book of Monsters, the Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft, the Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, and the Dark Horse Book of the Dead. Now available for the first time in paperback, these haunting shorts have lost none of their spine-tingling genius!




The Clackity


Book Description

Reminiscent of Doll Bones and Small Spaces, this “delightfully eerie” (Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows) middle grade novel tells the story of a girl who must rescue her aunt by entering a world of ghosts, witches, and monsters to play a game with deadly consequences. Evie Von Rathe lives in Blight Harbor—the seventh-most haunted town in America—with her Aunt Desdemona, the local paranormal expert. Des doesn’t have many rules except one: Stay out of the abandoned slaughterhouse at the edge of town. But when her aunt disappears into the building, Evie goes searching for her. There she meets The Clackity, a creature who lives in the shadows and seams of the slaughterhouse. The Clackity makes a deal with Evie to help get Des back in exchange for the ghost of John Jeffrey Pope, a serial killer who stalked Blight Harbor a hundred years earlier. Evie reluctantly embarks on a journey into a strange otherworld filled with hungry witches, penny-eyed ghosts, and a memory-thief, all while being pursued by a dead man whose only goal is to add Evie to his collection of lost souls. Will she ever find Des, or is The Clackity planning something far more sinister?




Great Scenes from Horror Stories


Book Description

Filled with thrills and chills, this coloring book features bloodcurdling scenes from more than two dozen well-known tales of horror. Includes memorable scenes from Frankenstein, The Raven, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and more.




Black Mountain


Book Description

Ex-mob enforcer Isaiah Coledrige has hung out a shingle as a private eye in New York's Hudson Valley, and in his newest case, a seemingly simple murder investigation leads him to the most terrifying enemy he has ever faced When a small-time criminal named Harold Lee turns up in the Ashokan reservoir--sans a heartbeat, head, or hands--the local mafia capo hires Isaiah Coleridge to look into the matter. The mob likes crime, but only the crime it controls . . . and as it turns out, Lee is the second independent contractor to meet a bad end on the business side of a serrated knife. One such death can be overlooked. Two makes a man wonder. A guy in Harold Lee's business would make his fair share of enemies, and it seems a likely case of pure revenge. But as Coledrige turns over more stones, he finds himself dragged into something deeper and more insidious than he could have imagined, in a labyrinthine case spanning decades. At the center are an heiress moonlighting as a cabaret dancer, a powerful corporation with high-placed connections, and a serial killer who may have been honing his skills since the Vietnam War. . . A twisty, action-packed follow-up to the acclaimed Blood Standard, Black Mountain cements Laird Barron as an inventive and remarkable voice in crime fiction.