startreksce

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.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/Thirst%20of%20the%20White%20Moths%20-%20P.%20F.%20Costello.epub

Read free online: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/Thirst%20of%20the%20White%20Moths.pdf

Some poor bastard named Jonathan Pierce is running a little riverboat job in the Central American jungle. A big ass storm wrecks him, a schoolteacher, and a strange European guy on a muddy bank in the middle of nowhere.

They get wander into a village that has one very simple rule: when the sun goes down, ya stay inside and ya keep the herb smoke burning (and not the fun kind of herb!), or the white moths will find you.

These aren’t normal moths. They’re big, pale, and they drink blood. And I thought Miller moths were bad!

Thirst of the White Moths is pure 1930s pulp jungle horror, the kind of story where the wildlife is actively trying to turn you into a walking blood bank and the guy who seems most interested in the local legends is the last person you want watching your back.

It’s nasty, it’s sweaty, and ugly. They wrote the craziest shit back in the 1930s. Which is what makes the pulps so fun!

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Right? Love that older pulpy stuff. Back in Uni when I had to read them for class, the stilted, dated writing felt bizarre and hard to get through, because I was so used to modern stuff. Penny-a-word rates seemed to make them go overboard sometimes.

But man, oh man, once I got used to it, I fell for the over-the-top, batshit-crazy energy. Writers going wild, editors pumping out pure exploitation for a dime. Shock-value covers. Heck, sometimes the art came first and the story got built around it!

Now I actually prefer this schlock. Collecting it is my main hobby main speciality now. My study’s packed with old mags on every shelf, and I actually have the hard copy of this Weird Tales issue. My gf hates all of it! lol

 

Book download page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76539

Read free online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76539/pg76539-images.html

Here's wonderfully nasty piece of supernatural horror, complete with black magic, ghastly apparitions, agonizing deaths, and a doctor willing to fight the powers of hell with whatever he can get his hands on!

Something horrible is loose in the Louisiana swamps, and the good people of La Foubelle are dropping dead faster than the undertaker can bury them.

Victims are found shriveled, wrinkled, and sucked dry, their bodies reduced to horrible, withered husks.

Which is kinda what I felt like after last night's party at my bowling alley. That pizza did not agree with me.

But anyway, back to our story.

One dude claims to have seen a hideous, smoky thing hovering over his dying mother, its monstrous face grinning out of the darkness. But since he's the town drunk, no one listens.

So in comes Dr. Hugo Lamontaine, a big, red-bearded, hard-drinking (people really liked to drink in those days!) physician who knows considerably more about witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult than your average country doctor. Ya know, just a little fun side hobby.

Things are about to get considerably weirder. Which is my address, baby!

The Life-Eater appeared in the June 1937 issue of the legendary Weird Tales magazine, written by Harold Ward.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Dead%20Shall%20Claim%20Their%20Bride%21%20%28Revels%20-%20Arthur%20Leo%20Zagat.epub

Read free online: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1304571h.html

The graves are open, the corpses are marching, and somebody's getting married whether she likes it or not!

Poor Linda Loray. All this chick wanted was to marry her sweetheart. Instead, she arrives in the sleepy little town of Torburg to find her fiancé missing, the streets deserted, and a corpse laid out in an open coffin at the local hotel.

Wait a sec... why, exactly, does that corpse need an armed guard?

Linda doesn't have long to wonder. A gruesome outfit calling itself the League of Lazarus, have decided they have a special need for a pretty young bride.

Guess who they've chosen for the wedding?

What follows is six chapters of glorious 1930s pulp insanity, featuring walking corpses, shotgun blasts, graveyard raids, murderous fiends, and a particularly revolting form of bridal entertainment involving captive women forced into savage combat for the amusement of the dead!

The Dead Shall Claim Their Bride!, also published under the title Revels for the Lusting Dead, originally appeared in a 1937 issue of Terror Tales.

The author, Arthur Leo Zagat, knew exactly what readers of the notorious shudder pulps wanted: beautiful women in horrible trouble, fiendish villains, impossible situations, and enough grisly excitement to make a respectable ghost story seem positively wholesome.

It's lurid, ridiculous, sadistic, wildly melodramatic, and about as subtle as a coffin dropped down a flight of stairs.

So let's bring on the batsh*t crazy, 'cause baby, that's what I like to read!

 

Book download page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40510

Read online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40510/pg40510-images.html

Six wonderfully sinister stories collected in this 1894 volume by Irish horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

They are all pretty unpleasant, in the best possible way. A young woman is married off to a mysterious stranger who seems to have something in common with the dead. An Irish nobleman may have purchased his good fortune at a terrible price. A newlywed discovers that her husband's fine ancestral home has secrets that could get her killed.

There's also a particularly nasty little tale involving a dream that refuses to remain a dream.

Le Fanu was writing this stuff decades before Dracula, and he had a real knack for the sort of horror that starts with one peculiar incident and grows steadily worse. His characters tend to be respectable people who suddenly discover that the world isn't nearly as sensible or safe as they've always believed.

The collection contains six stories:

"The Watcher"

"Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess"

"Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter"

"The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh"

"The Dream"

"A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family"

The book also includes 21 illustrations by Le Fanu's son, Brinsley Sheridan Le Fanu.

If you like the older Weird Tales stories, particularly the ones involving supernatural persecution, ghastly family secrets, and mysterious visitors with questionable connections to the living, you'll find plenty to enjoy here.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Good question! It doesn't look easily replaceable from what I have seen online.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/Death%27s%20Mannikins%20%28Dolls%20of%20Death%29%20-%20Max%20Afford.epub

Read online: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600021h.html

Imagine receiving a small wooden doll in the mail, carved to look exactly like you.

That'd be some weird shit, right?

Now imagine discovering that the last person who received one was murdered shortly afterward.

The story takes place at an isolated English mansion belonging to Professor Cornelius Rochester, an eccentric scholar with an interest in the occult. Six miniature figures were originally carved to resemble members of his household, but the dolls disappeared. Now they're turning up again, one by one, and the inhabitants are understandably getting nervous.

Amateur detective Jeffery Blackburn and Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector William Read are called in to sort things out. What follows is a series of bizarre murders, suspicious characters, and impossible crimes.

Death's Mannikins, also published under the way cooler title of Dolls of Death, appeared in 1937 and was written by Australian novelist and radio dramatist Max Afford.

He's not particularly well remembered today, which is a shame. This story that wonderfully morbid quality found in some of the stranger detective fiction of the 1930s.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/Walking%20Among%20The%20Horrors_%2013%20Ghost%20Storie%20-%20Various%20authors.epub

A mysterious light burning on a deserted stretch of coastline. A passenger who refuses to stay dead. A perfectly ordinary house with something terribly wrong inside it. And an ancient black stone that would be better left undisturbed.

Walking Among the Horrors brings together 13 strange, unsettling stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including some forgotten gems and a few genuine pulp classics.

These are the kinds of stories people used to read by lamplight, when a good ghost story could keep you awake long after the house had gone quiet. The good old days, right?!

There's a little of everything here: restless spirits, haunted houses, strange visions, gruesome deaths, psychological terror, and even a touch of cosmic horror.

The Stories:

The Dark Lady (1848) by Anna Maria Hall. A mysterious woman dressed in black appears to members of a Swiss family.

Mistress Marian's Light (1889) by Gertrude Morton. A strange light along the rocky Maine coast.

At La Glorieuse (1891) by M. E. M. Davis. At an old Louisiana plantation, a young romance becomes entangled with family secrets and the disturbing mystery of an abandoned ballroom.

The Wrong Door (1891) by W. C. Morrow. A troubled man enters the wrong door at a friend's house and finds himself trapped in a terrifying situation.

Not on the Passenger List (1892) by Robert Barr. A steamship has a very strange Atlantic crossing.

Night and Silence (1906) by Maurice Level. Three impoverished, disabled siblings endure a night of terrible confusion and mounting horror.

The Man with the Nose (1909) by Morley Roberts. An unsuspecting English clergyman finds himself in mortal danger after being mistaken for another man.

Broken Glass (1911) by Georgia Wood Pangborn. A mother's mysterious encounter on a lonely winter road forces her to reconsider how she treats the young woman caring for her children.

Inexplicable (1917) by L. G. Moberly. A family moves into an attractive suburban house only to discover horrifying disturbances.

Shadows (1921) by Alma Newton. A woman's terrifying dream of a condemned prisoner becomes something far stranger than she imagined.

The Wade Monument (1921) by Violet Jacob. A mysterious woman appearing in an old church leads a war veteran toward a long-buried secret.

The Black Stone (1931) by Robert E. Howard. An investigator travels to a remote Hungarian village to examine an ancient monolith and uncovers evidence of something monstrous from before recorded history.

The Last of Mrs. DeBrugh (1937) by Harry Sivia. After the death of her kindly employer, a mistreated servant discovers that some promises may be kept even from beyond the grave.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Lone%20House%20Mystery%20and%20Other%20Stories%20-%20Edgar%20Wallace.epub

Read online: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600161h.html

A wealthy businessman found stabbed to death in his secluded mansion. A collection of suspicious visitors. An exotic African sword. And a Scotland Yard detective who has just about run out of patience with everybody.

Welcome to the wonderfully crooked world of Edgar Wallace!

In The Lone House Mystery, Superintendent Minter, better known as “Sooper,” investigates the murder of John C. Field, a wealthy man with a mysterious past, some decidedly unusual acquaintances, and apparently enough enemies to fill a police lineup.

When Field turns up dead in his study, the clues lead in all sorts of directions. There are secrets from Africa, possible blackmail, and suspicious visitors.

This 1929 collection also includes three additional detective stories:

  • The Sooper Speaking

  • Clues

  • Romance in It

All four feature Wallace's entertaining Superintendent Minter, a detective whose sharp tongue is almost as effective as his investigative skills.

Good read if ya enjoy old-fashioned murder mysteries with colorful suspects, clever detectives, and a little dark humor.

 

**Book download page:" https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79092

A knight in shining armor. A village living in terror. A mysterious dragon kidnapping innocent people.

Sounds like a pretty standard medieval fantasy adventure, right?

Um, not quite.

Meet Sir Jasper de Pomeroy, a wandering knight who's running out of monsters to slay and wrongs to right. When he hears about the dreaded Lavender Dragon of Yorkshire, a fearsome beast supposedly carrying off villagers to its hidden stronghold, he finally has a quest worthy of his sword.

Just one problem: the dragon might actually be the good guy.

It turns out this particular dragon has some rather unusual ideas about civilization. Instead of devouring his captives, he's created a strange little utopian society where people can escape the cruelty, greed, and general stupidity of the medieval world.

And the more Sir Jasper learns about the dragon and his peculiar community, the more complicated his heroic mission becomes.

Published in 1923, The Lavender Dragon is a wonderfully odd fantasy by British author Eden Phillpotts. It's part medieval adventure, part fairy tale, and part social satire, with a dragon who has some surprisingly progressive opinions about how human beings ought to treat one another.

This isn't your typical fire-breathing monster story. Phillpotts uses the familiar knight-and-dragon setup to poke fun at human society, religion, class distinctions, and the whole business of deciding who the real monsters are.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep! I got the x4 orgininal a few months, and was excited to use it after seeing reviews. The main OS and fonts that came with it were pretty bad. So much so that I regretted buying it. But once I put Crosspoint on it... holy crap. Changed everything. Now it's my daily reader. Love this little thing.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Strange%20Mars%20Trilogy%20Book%20Three_%20Snows%20-%20Jr.%20Sam%20Merwin.epub

.mobi download page (older ereaders): https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Strange%20Mars%20Trilogy%20Book%20Three_%20Snows%20-%20Jr.%20Sam%20Merwin.mobi

Read online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/78212/pg78212-images.html

First and second books in this trilogy: https://lemmy.today/post/61221855 https://lemmy.today/post/61267767

So this third and final book in the series has telepathic moms, some gnarly possessed Martian cattle, disembodied aliens, and some good old fastioned artificial snowstorms.

Turns out that Mars is turning out to be one hell of a strange place to raise a family.

Humanity has established itself on the Red Planet, but the mysteries of Mars are far from solved. Lynne Fenlay, the powerful telepath from Nightmare Tower and The White Rain Came, is back for the third and final adventure in this forgotten little 1950s science-fiction trilogy.

 

.epub download page: https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Strange%20Mars%20Trilogy%20Book%20Two_%20The%20Whi%20-%20Jr.%20Sam%20Merwin.epub

.mobi download page (older ereaders): https://hub.hubzilla.de/cloud/ebooker/ebooks/The%20Strange%20Mars%20Trilogy%20Book%20Two_%20The%20Whi%20-%20Jr.%20Sam%20Merwin.mobi

Read online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/78055/pg78055-images.html

First book in this trilogy: https://lemmy.today/post/61221855

Mars has a water problem. A very big water problem.

Human settlements are spreading across the planet, but Mars remains a dry, hostile frontier where keeping a colony alive is a constant battle.

Meanwhile, Lynne Fenlay, the powerful telepath, has been working with other telepaths to reach farther and farther into space.

Somebody answers.

A mental contact reveals the existence of an intelligence unlike anything humanity has encountered before, something immensely powerful, ancient, and operating on a scale that makes human beings look pretty insignificant.

Lynne and her partner Rolf Marcein soon realize that this strange discovery might be dangerous as hell.

Originally published in the May 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe, as the sequel to Nightmare Tower, bringing Lynne back for another adventure and expanding the strange version of Mars introduced in the first story.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Most Lemmy posters are very privileged and make more than the average citizen, so they don't realize how most people make do with what they get. Not to mention, that seems like returning a gifted Kindle seems rude.

I think Kindles are great, solid devices. I support jailbreaking and side-loading them because I like the hacking nature and the idea of changing stuff up. But most people just want a quick easy-to-use ereader that they can buy e-books on and read with no fuss, and don't want to spend hours trying to find out how to get non-DRM books, etc.

Kindles provide that. I own several Kindle ereaders, and several non-Kindle ereaders. I don't mind Kindles at all.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I would encourage anyone who will be gifted a Kindle to return it regardless.

Not gonna happen. And it's great hardware and they have the largest bestselling market of ebooks. Feel free to keep up with your personal boycott. But I'm not sure you're making a big dent in their bottom line.

I have no issues with Amazon or Kindles. As long as people are reading, I'm good.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

Kindles have pretty great devices though. Especially if you jailbreak them.

They are the biggest player in the ebook ereader space, so lots of people will be getting them as gifts and stuff over the holidays.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's still possible to use new Kindles without registering them, despite Amazon making it seem like you have to sign-in with an Amazon account.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 3 points 2 weeks ago

Good to know. I was just about to go and order one. But I don't need yet another ereader, so this is a good reason to stop me. My Xteink x4 is my daily reader anyway.

I was just in the mood to get something to hack. lol

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I never thought I would enjoy reading micro ereaders, but I read more on this thing than I do on my others. I love it!

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah, it's weird they didn't mention that. I have the original X4 with no backlight, and I don't need one. But I know it's a huge thing for a lot of people.

[–] startreksce@lemmy.today -1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The knee-jerk reactions to the androids (anything synthetic in the end)

Which is kinda what we are seeing right now in Lemmys attitude with AI.

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