It is possible only on the fingers to list the authors who can write really ingenious novels. One of these authors is Charles Williams. Descent into Hell – one of his greatest novels. The story of the people who struggle with the inner „I”, they are closed in themselves. The story of how a person can choose their happiness in exchange for the misfortune of another.
”Great trump cards” – a novel, brilliantly built on the basis of an ancient deck of tarot cards. This novel is filled with secrets, there are various signs, symbols, riddles. Everyone has different opinions about these secrets, no one can come to a common opinion. Witchcraft can still kill, and the supernatural must be defeated by the supernatural.
The main task of Charles Williams was to show that man must obey God. The main thing in „Many Dimensions” is the all-powerful stone that can fulfill any desire. Above of all, „Many Dimensions” is a complex image of good and evil. Williams fascinatingly shows how evil is not in a particular thing, but in what we do with these things.
”War in Heaven” is a horrific romance, with many mythical creatures present. Instead of creating a unique secondary fantasy world or switching between two universes, Williams allows the supernatural to invade his modern world. This allows him to explore the influence of another reality on different characters. The object that guides the supernatural to the natural in this novel is the Holy Grail
Charles Williams is able to create wonderful ghostly episodes – powerful moments of disclosure. In the novel The Place of the Lion, the world of feelings is depicted as an illusion – simply a reflection of the „real world” from which it originates. This makes some absolutely fascinating scenes, as people suddenly face a reality that they cannot understand. The book raises some interesting questions about good and evil.
A terrible story that can cause goose bumps after reading. The story of The Doom of London describes the disasters that befell Victorian London. One of the largest cities is shocked by life threatening circumstances. Here there are underground explosions, poisoning, aplague of diphtheria. London is on the verge of death.
Czasem trzeba wiele poświęcić, by Słońce znów mogło wzejść. To był zwykły dzień. Nic nie zwiastowało tragedii, dopóki nie otworzyli tajemniczej księgi… Joanna nagle znika, a trójka przyjaciół natychmiast postanawia wyruszyć z misją ratunkową. Niespodziewanie okazuje się, że mają do wykonania o wiele poważniejsze zadanie – uratować Słońce i ocalić Ziemię przed wiecznymi ciemnościami. Trafiają w miejsca, o których nigdy nie słyszeli, poznają istoty, które dotąd znali jedynie z...
Po niespełna trzydziestu latach od krwawego buntu palatyna Awdańca kraj znów pogrąża się w wojnie domowej. Tym razem młodsi bracia powstają przeciwko seniorowi i zmuszają go do ucieczki. Władysław, zwany później Wygnańcem, znajduje schronienie w Saksonii. Lecz nie dane mu jest zaznać spokoju. Krew i cierpienia, którymi w przeszłości nasiąkła ta ziemia wracają, aby upomnieć się o swoje. Siły ciemności budzą strzygi, wilkołaki i inne potwory, wlewają w zmarłych upiorne pozory ż...
Cosmo Topper is an average American bank executive on holiday in the French Riveria. Feckless, fun-loving and totally uncontrollable ghosts, George and Marion Kerby and friends – the tortuously crooked Colonel Scott and his companion, the disreputable Mrs. Hart – return to bring chaos and merriment into the life of mild-mannered, stuffy, and somewhat plump, Topper. One of Thorne Smith’s best-loved comedies, it proves once again that he is the undisputed master of urbane wit...
Another magical, mischievous Thorne Smith classic. Though Thorne Smith’s most popular works involve elements of fantasy and science fiction, the clever novel „Turnabout” takes his penchant for incorporating supernatural and magical themes in his work and puts one such plot twist to use as a comedic tool. A classic battle of the sexes, it was published in 1931 and follows a married couple who fall prey to the tricks of an Egyptian idol who grows weary of the seemingly never-...
This early work by Thorne Smith was originally published in 1930. James Thorne Smith, Jr. was an American author who specialized in supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. „Did She Fall? „ (1930) is a straight murder mystery whose dialogue shows occasional traces of Smith’s wisecracking energy. America’s bawdiest, wittiest writer turns his talents to a startling novel of murder, suspense and brilliant detection. Welcome to the Crewe house, where it is on...
Thorne Smith’s imaginative novel „Skin and Bones” takes the concept of suffering for one’s art to a whole new level. This classic book contains the humorous and fantastical story of Mr. Quintus Bland, the eminent photographer, whose efforts to perfect X-ray film had, one evening, the unfortunate effect of leaving Mr. Bland in the position of an X-ray film himself; in other words, him found himself no more than a walking skeleton. Bland’s flesh does not merely become invisib...
Perhaps the best example of Thorne Smith’s acutely sharp social humor played out against a backdrop of the Prohibition. 60 year old Rex Pebble inadvertently discovers that the fountain of youth happens to be in his back yard swimming pool. A magical statue of a nymph by the name of Baggage, an ornamental pool decoration, has playfully endowed the Pebble swimming pool with the power to reverse the aging process. From there Rex, his wife and his mistress of twenty years, Spra...
A comic diary about entering life in the Navy. Published in 1918 and written for the Naval Reservist journal „The Broadside” while the author Thorne Smith was in the Navy, it is a series of short vignettes poking fun at the culture of the time in general and the military in particular. It’s the diary of Biltmore Oswald, a hapless naval recruit with no appreciable talents besides befriending animals and getting into trouble, and his day to day adventures during World War I. ...
Who hasn’t waited for a ride in the pouring rain and wondered if there wasn’t something more to life? This is exactly how we find poor Mr. Owen, hopeless and downtrodden, wet and miserable. Suddenly, he is swept in through a doorway to a place full of wild imaginations, where loneliness and unfulfilled dreams are a thing of the past. It is the story an adulteress’s husband who embarks on inebriated adventures with his various partners and a girl who works in a pornographic ...
James Thorne Smith, Jr. was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and supernatural transformations. Smith’s literary debut was „Biltmore Oswald” (1918), the comic fictional diary of a hapless naval recruit, drawing heavily on wartime experience with the Navy. Episodes had featured in Broadside. The book sold well enough to...
A New York advertising executive leaves his job in the city to write poetry in a hut by the sea. Once there he finds himself caught in the coils of his attraction to two women – a situation that so unsettles his wits that he falls prey to a heavily symbolic dream obsession. The story centers on a love triangle that develops between Landor, the niece of the man he’s staying with, Scarlet and the wife of the local land baron, Hilda. „Dream’s End” is a radical departure from T...
If you’re in the mood for a wildly hilarious comic romp, give Thorne Smith’s „The Bishop’s Jaegars” a read. Mad, hilarious, degenerate, or simply fun fantasy? Only the reader can decide. Adrift and listless, a wealthy coffee heir Peter Van Dyke is searching for meaning in life. His young secretary Jo decides to shake things up and help him get back on track. Although he is engaged to another, she has far from given up. Laughter ensues as they go from one mishap to another a...
M.P. Shiel is a British writer of West Indian descent. He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances, published as serials, novels, and as short stories. „Children of the Wind” adventure set in South Central Africa. A lost race novel. An English scientist learns that the „White Queen” of the Wa-Ngwanyas is his own cousin and heiress to a fortune of which she is being kept in ignorance. There are tribal warfare including biological warfare, lesbianism, and...
The protagonist is a rich scientist who predicts the onset of a new flood due to the passage of the Earth through a nebula. Instead of panic, people had laughter, because no one believed in his words. They thought he was crazy. While everyone was laughing, the mad scientist built the ark. The rains did not stop. The world is sinking, but will the main character survive?
Not all invasion threats were purported to come from the Germans, the French or from Anarchists: in M.P. Shiel’s Yellow Danger it is an army of Chinese who invade Europe. In „The Yellow Danger” Mr. Shiel described in lurid colors the possibilities of the overwhelming of the white world by the yellow man, a possibility for the imagining of, which he claimed no originality. „The Yellow Danger” has been the bugbear of the Russians ever since the days of Tamerlane. But it must ...
In „Night Life of the Gods”, we meet Hunter Hawk, wealthy eccentric scientist in 1920s America, who, after numerous explosions, manages to invent an „atomic ray” that turns living beings into statues, and a second ray that restores them to their original state. With the help of Megaera, a fetching nine-hundred-year-old lady leprechaun he meets one night in the woods, he masters the art of transforming statues into people. Together, the two are invincible, especially when th...
Kategoria „Fantastyka / Horror” zawiera książki należące przede wszystkim do gatunku fantastyki. Jest to obszerny, rozbudowany oraz bardzo pojemny gatunek literacki charakteryzujący się osadzaniem opisywanej historii w świecie przedstawionym różnym od rzeczywistego. Autorzy takich publikacji często opisują zjawiska nadprzyrodzone oraz wykreowane przez siebie technologie czy bronie. W ramy fantastyki należy włączyć fantastykę naukową (science fiction), której akcja toczy się zazwyczaj w przyszłości, oraz fantasy, w której znaleźć możemy elementy mitologii i folkloru. W obrębie dokładniejszych podziałów funkcjonują również liczne podgatunki, takie jak na przykład weird fiction, low fantasy, urban fantasy czy space opera. W kategorii „Fantastyka / Horror” znajdują się również książki należące do literatury grozy, czyli horrory. Charakteryzują się one takim ukształtowaniem świata przedstawionego, że występujące w nim wydarzenia nie mogą zostać wytłumaczone bez odwołania się do zjawisk paranormalnych czy nadprzyrodzonych. Celem horroru jest wywołanie u odbiorcy poczucia zagrożenia, strachu czy obrzydzenia. Najczęściej podejmowanymi w horrorze motywami są nawiedzenia (ludzi, przedmiotów, miejsc), wampiry, zombie, duchy, wilkołaki, demony, diabły, wiedźmy i tym podobne. W serwisie Woblink.com odnaleźć można należącą do fantastyki postapokaliptycznej serię „Metro” napisaną przez rosyjskiego pisarza Dmitrija Głuchowskiego, nominowaną do licznych nagród literackich i utrzymaną w steampunkowym klimacie „Zadrę” Krzysztofa Piskorskiego, książkę „Player One” Ernesta Cline’a, na podstawie której powstał film pod tym samym tytułem w reżyserii Stevena Spielberga, powieści Terry’ego Pratchetta (zarówno te należące do „Świata Dysku”, jak i te spoza serii). Miłośnicy grozy znajdą tu natomiast zarówno „Frankensteina” Mary Shelley, uznawanego za prekursora całego gatunku, „Draculę” Brama Stokera, dzięki któremu postać wampira na trwałe weszła do popkultury, czy „Dziecko Rosemary” Iry Levin, na podstawie którego Roman Polański wyreżyserował kultowy film pod tym samym tytułem.