Notes ​from the Upside Down An ​Unofficial Guide to Stranger Things

Robert R. McCammon - Boy's ​Life
Robert ​McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in his award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch readers universally. Boy's Life is a richly imagined, spellbinding portrait of the magical worldview of the young -- and of innocence lost. Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson -- a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake -- and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him. From an ancient mystic who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown -- for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance...

Ismeretlen szerző - American ​Fantastic Tales - Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's to Now
The ​second volume of Peter Straub's pathbreaking anthology American Fantastic Tales picks up the story in 1940 and provides persuasive evidence that the decades since then have seen an extraordinary flowering. While continuing to explore the classic themes of horror and fantasy, successive generations of writers- including Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and Thomas Ligotti-have opened up the field to new subjects, new styles, and daringly fresh expansions of the genre's emotional and philosophical underpinnings. For many of these writers, the fantastic is simply the best available tool for describing the dislocations and newly hatched terrors of the modern era, from the nightmarish post- apocalyptic savagery of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" to proliferating identities set deliriously adrift in Tim Powers' "Pat Moore." "At its core," writes editor Peter Straub, "the fantastic is a way of seeing." In place of gothic trappings, the post-war masters of the fantastic often substitute an air of apparent normality. The surfaces of American life-department store displays in John Collier's "Evening Primrose," tar-paper roofs seen from an el train in Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost," the balcony of a dilapidated movie theater in Tennessee Williams' "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio"-become invested with haunting presences. The sphere of family life is transformed, in Davis Grubb's "Where the Woodbine Twineth" or Richard Matheson's "Prey," into an arena of eerie menace. Dramas of madness, malevolent temptation, and vampiristic appropriation play themselves out against the backdrop of modern urban life in John Cheever's "Torch Song" and Shirley Jackson's unforgettable "The Daemon Lover." Nearly half the stories collected in this volume were published in the last two decades, including work by Michael Chabon, M. Rickert, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and Benjamin Percy: writers for whom traditional genre boundaries have ceased to exist, and who have brought the fantastic into the mainstream of contemporary writing. The 42 stories in this second volume of American Fantastic Tales provide an irresistible journey into the phantasmagoric underside of the American imagination. "An encompassing and essential voyage to the dark side of the moon of American literature." -Jonathan Lethem

Justin Cronin - The ​Passage
Amy ​Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is. THE PASSAGE. Deep in the jungles of eastern Colombia, Professor Jonas Lear has finally found what he's been searching for - and wishes to God he hadn't. In Memphis, Tennessee, a six-year-old girl called Amy is left at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy and wonders why her mother has abandoned her. In a maximum security jail in Nevada, a convicted murderer called Giles Babcock has the same strange nightmare, over and over again, while he waits for a lethal injection. In a remote community in the California mountains, a young man called Peter waits for his beloved brother to return home, so he can kill him. Bound together in ways they cannot comprehend, for each of them a door is about to open into a future they could not have imagined. And a journey is about to begin. An epic journey that will take them through a world transformed by man's darkest dreams, to the very heart of what it means to be human. And beyond. THE PASSAGE.

Ira Levin - The ​Stepford Wives
For ​Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

Stephen King - Four ​Past Midnight
Featuring ​The Langoliers, Secret Window, The Library Policeman and The Sun Dog. The survivors of a plane crash awake in a nightmare, a writer finds himself at the end of an accusing finger, a businessman struggles to uncover the evil driving him mad, and a ravenous dog inhabits a camera, in a horror quartet.

Stephen King - Salem's ​Lot
Thousands ​of miles away from the small township of Salem's Lot, two terrified people still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. One is an eleven-year-old boy. He never speaks but his eyes betray the indescribable horror he has witnessed. The other is a man plagued by nightmares, a man who knows that soon he and the boy must return to Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town where no-one is human anymore...

Stephen King (Richard Bachman) - Thinner
'Thinner' ​- the old gypsy man barely whispers the word. Billy feels the touch of a withered hand on his cheek. 'Thinner' - the word, the old man's curse, has lodged in Billy's mind like a fattening worm, eating at his flesh, at his reason. And with his despair, comes violence.

Stephen King - The ​Stand
When ​a man crashes his car into a petrol station, he brings with him the foul corpses of his wife and daughter. He dies and it doesn't take long for the plague which killed him to spread across America and the world.

Stephen King - Cujo ​(angol)
Outside ​a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting...Cujo is a huge Saint Bernard dog, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day Cujo chases a rabbit into a bolt-hole, a cave inhabited by some very sick bats. What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inexorably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has written.

Stephen King - Needful ​Things
There ​was a new shop in town. Run by a stranger. Needful Things, the sign said. The oddest name. A name that caused some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castle Rock, Maine, while they waited for opening day. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk was the first customer and he got just what he wanted, a very rare 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card. Signed. Cyndi Rose Martin was next. A Lalique vase. A perfect match for her living room decor. Something for everyone. Something you really had to have. And always at a price you could just about afford. The cash price that is. Because there was another price. There always is when your heart’s most secret, true desire is for sale…

Stephen King - Cycle ​of the Werewolf
The ​first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom. Now scenes of unbelieving horror come each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure. When the moon grows fat, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind. And all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated...

Stephen King - The ​Eyes of the Dragon
Once ​upon a time, there was a terror... A tale of archetypal heroes and sweeping adventures, of dragons and princes and evil wizards, here is epic fantasy as only Stephen King could envision it. A kingdom is in turmoil after old King Roland dies and his worthy successor, Prince Peter, is imprisoned by the evil Flagg and his pawn, young Prince Thomas. But Flagg's evil plot is not perfect, for he knows naught of Thomas's terrible secret--or Prince Peter's daring plan to escape to claim what is rightfully his ... Stephen King has taken the classic fairy tale and transformed it into a masterpiece of fiction for the ages.

Stephen King - It
"A ​group of kids from Derry, Maine are terrorized by "IT". And now, 30 years later, they are being summond by "IT". And are faced with one final showdown with the evil that lives below Derry, and doesn't have a name..." William Henning, Resident Scholar "Little boy gets killed by monster brother remembers and wants revenge. him and his friends want to kill the monster because it is killing children" Gary Moles, Resident Scholar ""It" is your worst fear--literally. An ancient evil that returns periodically to feed upon the populace of a small town in Maine, the monstrous entity known as "It" can, and will, be everyone's worst nightmare come true. It attacked Derry years ago, but a group of kids defeated the monster--or so they'd believed. Now, they are adults, and "It" has come back. In fighting the monster, the adults recall what it was like to have fought it years before. The last time, they'd been lucky in one respect, at least. None of them had been killed. This time, one of them will die. A scary and suspenseful horror story that creates the world as it was in the late 1950's and early 1960's and as it was in the 1990's. " Gary Pullman, Resident Scholar "A group of friends faced a cruel monster dressed up like a clown when they were just kids. It killed children, because only children believed their fears. They thought they had killed it. They were wrong. 30 years later it is killing children again and the friends decide to meet again to destroy it." Katy, Resident Scholar "In this very discripted book these kids are all connected to "IT". And struggle to kill "IT"." Maggie Von, Resident Scholar "Kids in a small town called Derry are killed by "It". George, Bills brother, is one of these victims. Bill wants revenge. He and his other freinds try to kill it by going into the sewers. They think they killed it. They were wrong. Thirty years later they all find themselves back in Derry to fight It again." Janet Johnson, Resident Scholar

Stephen King - Desperation
Desperation ​is a deserted mining town in the Nevada desert. It`s not a place to visit by choice, and the few unhappy travellers who are forced to stop there witness the familiar-looking town undergo a terrible transformation. In the struggle between good and evil, sacrifice may be the only answer.

Neil Gaiman - American ​Gods
Shadow ​is a man with a past and wants nothing more now than to live a quiet life with his wife. When his wife is killed in a terrible accident, Shadow flies home for the funeral. As a raging storm rocks the plane, the strange man in the seat next to Shadow introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday. He knows more about Shadow than is possible--and he warns Shadow an even bigger storm is coming.

Stephen King - Night ​Shift
Never ​trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories "Children of the Corn," "The Lawnmower Man," "Graveyard Shift," "The Mangler," and "Sometimes They Come Back"-which were all made into hit horror films. From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.

Stephen King - The ​Green Mile
The ​Green Mile: those who walk it do not return, because at the end of that walk is the room in which sits Cold Mountain Penitentiary's electric chair. In 1932 the newest resident on death row is John Coffey, a giant black man convicted of the brutal murder of two little girls. But nothing is as it seems with John Coffey, and around him unfolds a bizarre and horrifying story. Evil murderer or holy innocent - whichever he is - Coffey has strange powers which may yet offer salvation to others, even if they can do nothing to save him.

Anne Rice - The ​Mummy
With ​this kick-off to a new series, Vampire Chronicler Rice abandons her troupe of nocturnals for the living dead of another kind. In a tale that's part horror and part romance, Egyptian King Ramses, made immortal in his youth, is awakened from self-imposed dormancy and deposited in 1914 London. Ramses's introduction to modern times is charming but slow. The plot, however, revs up a bit when he returns to Cairo and runs into an old girlfriend. Much in this book will be familiar to Rice's fans, except in this case it doesn't work. The characters are mostly boring and the conflict is flimsy. You know nothing bad is going to happen to anybody--and nothing does. You're also cheated out of a genuine conclusion, which is both dissatisfying and unfair. Stick to those blood drinkers, Anne, and let the sleeping mummies lie. - Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

Libba Bray - The ​Diviners
It's ​1920s New York City. It's flappers and Follies, jazz and gin. It's after the war but before the depression. And for certain group of bright young things it's the opportunity to party like never before. For Evie O'Neill, it's escape. She's never fit in in small town Ohio and when she causes yet another scandal, she's shipped off to stay with an uncle in the big city. But far from being exile, this is exactly what she's always wanted: the chance to show how thoroughly modern and incredibly daring she can be. But New York City isn't about just jazz babies and follies girls. It has a darker side. Young women are being murdered across the city. And these aren't crimes of passion. They're gruesome. They're planned. They bear a strange resemblance to an obscure group of tarot cards. And the New York City police can't solve them alone. Evie wasn't just escaping the stifling life of Ohio, she was running from the knowledge of what she could do. She has a secret. A mysterious power that could help catch the killer - if he doesn't catch her first.

Stephen King - Pet ​Sematary
The ​road in front of Dr. Louis Creed's rural Maine home frequently claims the lives of neighborhood pets. Louis has recently moved from Chicago to Ludlow with his wife Rachel, their children and pet cat. Near their house, local children have created a cemetery for the dogs and cats killed by the steady stream of transports on the busy highway. Deeper in the woods lies another graveyard, an ancient Indian burial ground whose sinister properties Louis discovers when the family cat is killed.