Macabre Humor

What won't we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine - yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison - was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices.

SPECIAL PRICE: Just $1.99!!! "Let me show you what I see . . . I see the dead." I'm just an ordinary person . . . except that I can see the dead. They almost always communicate with me. I'm a Spiritualist . . . not by choice . . . but because of circumstances. I have seen the afterlife. And it does exist. It is real. And we don't die: We live forever. Questions Include: Do ghosts only haunt old houses? Do spirits smell like old socks or rotten eggs? Do people really get slimed like in horror movies? Can ghosts see us having sex? Answers to these and other questions include details of "...

While somewhat outdated and steeped in the prejudice of the day, the Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin fable The Lost Conscience is nevertheless a worthy tale to ponder and a great study of a mind seeking to discard its inhibitions (and not in a good way).

It is difficult to combine mysticism with humor, but Alexander Grin takes on the challenge and comes out with flying colors. For all its mystical and mythical references, An Incident at the Apartment of Madam Cerize, is quite a heartwarming story, giving all of us some hope that, sometimes, powers that be do care.

A brilliant and acerbic piece of satire by journalist, writer, and human rights activist Vladimir Korolenko, in the unusual form of a spooky story.

A finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne's ethnically diverse northern suburbs and the dark underbelly of city life. Down on his luck and hard up for cash, Carl works in the kitchen of a seedy rock 'n' roll joint in ethnically diverse Brunswick. The bouncers and bosses terrify him, he's desperately in love with a much younger Greek waitress, and to make matters worse his mother has come to stay with him. Then a dead body turns up. He and his best mate, Dave, will have to do something about it, and fast....

Steven is a writer, by all accounts of self-proclamation. But no artist can be expected to work under serious pressure, especially not when the pressure consists of his own mother indenting his tender skull with the muzzle of the pistol held in her hand. Suddenly, it's write or die for Steven. He better tap away on that typewriter or expect to be extracted from the land of the living before he's had the opportunity to finish anything he's ever written. Not to mention that his recently departed father lying on the floor beside him should supply enough motivation.

Fifteen short stories to trouble your soul.