Here are 5 books that The Oxford Spy Ring fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Oxford Spy Ring series.
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When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
Richard Matheson’s “Button, Button” is a classic story of a couple given a box with a button on it that, if pressed, will yield them great riches…but will also kill someone unknown to them. Matheson’s most famous acolyte, Stephen King (who has said, “without Richard Matheson, I wouldn’t be around”), joins forces with master storyteller Richard Chizmar to create a short novel that is a fascinating variation and extension of Matheson’s tale.
'A resonant novella set in one of King's signature locales: the small town of Castle Rock, Maine' Washington Post
The small town of CASTLE ROCK, MAINE has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told...until now.
There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside.
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
If someone asked me to name the greatest American horror story writer of the second half of the twentieth century, I would say “Richard Matheson” without hesitation. But if I were allowed two names, the other—equally without hesitation—would be Dennis Etchison, a writer who resembles Matheson in his economy of language, Southern California settings, and intense, twisty plots. His stories are as dark and disturbing as Matheson’s—and that’s really saying something.
In this second printing, Cycatrix Press is proud to bring the highly acclaimed collection Dennis Etchison's It Only Comes Out at Night, previously only available as a limited-edition hardcover (out of print) from Centipede Press to an affordable trade paperback with the addition of previously uncollected fiction, new illustrations, and unpublished appreciations by fellow authors.
More about It Only Comes Out at Night: Few writers of horror fiction are held in such high regard as Dennis Etchison. This career retrospective takes his best fiction, culled from nearly fifty years in the field.
Dennis Etchison (1943-2019) was an American writer and…
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
The Ritual of Illusion is a brilliant short novel by Richard Christian Matheson (Richard Matheson’s son). Written entirely in dialogue from the points of view of numerous different witnesses, it tells the story of Hollywood star Sephanie Vamore’s strange rise and bizarre fall. This is Sunset Boulevard Matheson-style…another generation of Matheson, that is.
A sinister love letter to the movies, acclaimed author Richard Christian Matheson’s The Ritual of Illusion is a novella of modern fear about where stars truly come from. Oscar-winning film siren, Sephanie Vamore, meteors to iconic fame … but like cinema itself, nothing is as it appears. The fifty witnesses to her mythic ascent and bizarre fate are film royalty … many based on Hollywood glitterati; directors, stars, agents, studio heads, screenwriters, lovers, producers.
Widescreen with lies and revelation, Vamore’s story is told Rashomon-style with dialogue alone—each hypnotic character adding poignant or lurid details to the shocking truth of what…
When I was about twelve years old I noticed a tattered old paperback in a box at a flea market. Titled Third From the Sun and Other Stories,it featured a colorfully bizarre illustration on the cover along with the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I bought the book—nearly fifty years later I still have it—and so began my journey into the works of one of America’s greatest fantasists. Decades later, I had the honor of working with the man himself, which ultimately led to the creation of my anthology,He Is Legend. Richard is gone now, but his timeless works live on.
Charles Beaumont was close friends with Richard Matheson, and they worked together on such projects as the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films and Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone. Beaumont’s stories are as rich and varied as Matheson’s, with delightfully witty language and fantastic plot twists. If you love classic Matheson short stories like “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Death Ship,” you’re bound to love Beaumont.
That Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone is only natural: for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. So take one uneasy step and fall headlong into his world: a world where lions stalk the plains, classics cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five stories that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
Since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of time. I’ve spent hours studying the physics of time as a hobby, and to this day, as an adult, that fascination continues. Whenever the topic of time arises in conversation, I will be the first to contribute my understanding of this mystery that has baffled humankind since the beginning of...well, time.
This book did something amazing to me. I was mesmerized by Finney’s narrative of the past, which negated the method of self-hypnosis he used to bring the protagonist from the future to the past, so it no longer seemed far-fetched.
The narrative recreation of the late 19th century captivated my imagination, enabling me to feel the protagonist’s awe at seeing, feeling, and smelling the past as actual reality. Isn’t this every writer’s dream?
Si Morley is bored with his job as a commercial illustrator and his social life doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So, when he is approached by an affable ex-football star and told that he is just what the government is looking for to take part in a top-secret programme, he doesn't hesitate for too long. And so one day Si steps out of his twentieth-century, New York apartment and finds himself back in January 1882. There are no cars, no planes, no computers, no television and the word 'nuclear' appears in no dictionaries. For Si, it's very like Eden,…
