Michel Parry – Countess Dracula

Michel Parry – Countess Dracula (Sphere, 1970)

Michel Parry Countess Dracula

Blurb (from Beagle edition)

The Countess was old. But she had discovered the secret of eternal youth – a secret which spread death and despair among the peasants on her estates. After her husband’s death the Countess quickly chose a young lieutenant of the Hussars to take his place in her bed.

See the Countess Dracula thread on the Vault of Evil forum.

Kurt Singer – The House in the Valley

Kurt Singer – (ed.) The House in the Valley (Sphere, 1970)

Ray Bradbury – The Handler
Sidney Austen – The Frightened Planet
August Derleth – The House in the Valley
Seabury Quinn –  Repayment
Frank Belknap Long – We, the Invisible
Allison V. Harding – Death Went That Way
Manly Wade Wellman – Dream-Dust from Mars

Thanks to James Doig for providing the cover scan!

Frances Mossiker – The Affair Of The Poisons

Frances Mossiker – The Affair Of The Poisons [#28] (Sphere, 1975)

Frances Mossiker - The Affair Of The Poisons

From The Introduction by Dennis Wheatley:

At no time has Satanism been so widely practised as in Paris in the 1670s. During this period Louis XIV – the Sun King, the builder of magnificent Versailles, the commander of the greatest army in Europe – was in his late thirties and at the height of his powers.

Yet, while he won for himself glory by personally conducting the victorious campaigns that greatly extended France’s borders, in his capital Black Masses were celebrated daily. Scores of beautiful women who made his Court the most splendid in Europe lay naked on altars and allowed often repulsive, elderly priests to copulate with them, then murder infants so that their blood might be offered up to the Devil.

The revelation of these appalling practices began in 1676 with the trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers. This terrible woman and her lover first visited hospitals with gifts of food for the inmates, into which they had inserted a variety of poisons to try out their effects. She then murdered her father and two of her brothers, but an attempt on her husband failed. She fled but was caught, tried and condemned to be first tortured then executed. Before her death she declared, ‘If I cared to talk you would learn that half the aristocracy are as guilty of poisoning as I am.’

And she was right.

The Affair Of The Poisons is volume 28 in the Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult