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Ranging from the Persian Gulf to the American South, from ancient Greece to pre-Islamic Arabia, Ali Eteraz's stories observe the clash of civilizations through the surrealist's monocle: lovers playing with Koranic numerology; the sorrows of the Minotaur; the innocence of a genie; a woman obsessed with wine and virgins; brothers caught in a national security dragnet. Sensual, fabulist, mystical, gothic, the stories in Falsipedies & Fibsiennes search for love and solidarity within madness and oppression.

The iconic Gothic horror classics that gave birth to the monstrous myths that still inhabit our nightmares. Tragic heroines, windswept moors, dark and stormy nights, castle prisons, and forbidden desires realized at the greatest cost-these are the elements of Gothic horror, given its finest expression in these five enduring novels. Frankenstein: Obsessed with the secret of creation, Swiss scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein cobbles together a body he is determined to bring to life.

From the New York Times-bestselling "master of suspense": A woman's mysterious past is unearthed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (Mary Higgins Clark). Sara Bishop was raised in Chicago, but her heart belongs in San Francisco, where her childhood sweetheart, Ritchie Temple, has moved to pursue a career in architecture. Convinced he feels the same way for her, she hopes his fiancee, the manipulative Judith Renwick, is just a passing fancy. And now Sara has packed her bags to prove it.

From a New York Times-bestselling author: In New Orleans, a young woman uncovers a family conspiracy only to find solace in a man with a dangerous past. In nineteenth-century New England, flame-haired Skye Cameron was proud to be named for the misty island in the Scottish Hebrides where her father had been born-but it was the Creole heritage of her seductive mother, Louise, that would determine her destiny. In the wake of her father's death, with finances dwindling, Louise has accepted an invitation to return to her family home in New Orleans and start fresh.

From a New York Times-bestselling author: In nineteenth-century New England, a desperate young woman's only refuge becomes an inescapable trap. It was fitting that Miranda Heath's first glimpse of the forbidding home at Bascomb's Point was in the fury of a thunderstorm. Despite her late father's caution to steer clear of his friend Obadiah Bascomb's New England mansion, Miranda, destitute as she was, had no choice but to accept the old captain's charitable request.

From a New York Times-bestselling author: An island off the Georgia coast holds the memory of a broken heart and the secrets of a woman's past. It's been years since Lacey Ames last saw Hampton Island, where she grew up amid the sandy marshes with her childhood sweetheart, Giles Severn, and her cousin Elise-and where Elise had stolen the man Lacey loved. Lacey never forgot the hurt and betrayal she once suffered at Giles's grand family home of Sea Oaks, but a curious and compelling summons from Elise prompts her return. Once Lacey arrives, she realizes how little has changed.

From a New York Times-bestselling author: In nineteenth-century Manhattan, a young woman is hired to care for a child haunted by murder. Having just lost her brother and mother in a tragic accident, dressmaker Megan Kincaid has never felt so vulnerable and alone. Then comes the startling request from the wealthy Brandon Reid of Washington Square to work as a private caretaker to his violently tempered nine-year-old stepson, Jeremy. Megan reluctantly accepts, despite the facts of Jeremy's troubled past.

From the "Queen of the American gothics": In turn-of-the-century New York, a strange inheritance lures a vulnerable governess into a trap (The New York Times). Camilla King knows little of her family history, having never met her estranged relatives. Her late father wanted it that way.

From a New York Times-bestselling author: After the Civil War, a young Confederate bride finds herself living in the shadow of her husband's first love. Having lost her fiance in battle, Lora Blair knew it was the heartache of war, not true love, that drew her to Union soldier Wade Taylor, a grieving widower who still mourned his late wife, Virginia. Married quickly in the ravished little Southern border town where Lora was born, they headed back North to Wade's Staten Island mansion, where he lives with his motherless son and bitterly unwelcoming family.

Family secrets are locked away at the intimidating Virginia estate of a prima ballerina in this suspenseful tale from a New York Times-bestselling author. Susan Prentice is a young nurse at a crossroads. She's broken off an engagement, the father who raised her has just died, and now she's leaving the western shores behind for a trip to her family's home on Virginia's Northern Neck-where she saw her mother fall to her death twenty-five years ago.