A Masterpiece of Satire on Hell's Latest Novelties and Heaven's Unanswerable Answer

C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the unique vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis gives us the correspondence

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A medieval devil speaks directly to the reader, his tone murderous one moment, seductive the next, in a memoir allegedly penned in the year 1438. The demon has embedded himself in the very words of this tale of terror, turning the book itself into a dangerous object, laced with menace only too ready to break free and exert its power.

The professor and the poet who've come to Patriarch's Ponds for a stroll on a hot and stagnant Moscow afternoon are dismayed to encounter a quite extraordinary stranger, surely a deranged foreigner. As this quixotic character recalls a centuries-old story of destiny, his infamy becomes a matter of gruesome revelation for the doomed professor and his poor companion. And what will become of the Master's suppressed masterpiece? Something his lover, Margarita,...

A stranger arrives in a remote mountain village carrying a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. His mission is to discover whether human beings are essentially good or evil. The stranger puts a proposition to Chantal Prym, his first acquaintance in the village, and with it gives her the power to prove or disprove a supposition that has tormented him for years--given the right set of circumstances every human being on this earth would...

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery...

Isobel is riding circuit through the Territory as the Devil's Left Hand. But when she responds to a natural disaster, she learns the limits of her power and the growing danger of something mysterious that is threatening not just her life, but the whole Territory. Isobel is the left hand of the old man of the Territory, the Boss -- better known as the Devil. Along with her mentor, Gabriel, she is traveling circuit through Flood to represent the power...

"Rome, 1518. Johann Faust is a renowned magician, astrologer, and chiromancer traveling through Germany with his successful troupe: the orphaned juggler Greta and his loyal companion Karl. The avaricious Pope Leo X now requires Johann's services to replenish the papacy's drained coffers through alchemy. But the devil, with whom a regretful Johann once agreed to an unholy trade for fame, wants something else. Racked with paralyzing seizures, Johann...