Fair and Fatal Warnings, or, Visits from the World of Spirits; Being Concise Relations of the Most Curious and Remarkable Apparitions, Ghosts, Spectres, and Visions, 1810.

You've heard of spinning yarns about ghosts, but some such yarns come directly "from the loom of the dead," as we learn in The Shape of Fear, and Other Ghostly Tales by Elia Wilkinson Peattie, 1898.

Here's a title page that wonders about the identity of its own author.  Plus, note the genre, which is our own personal favorite: "serio-ludicro, tragico-comico."

If you can't say, "I lava you," it's not a volcanic romance.  From The Phantom CIty, A Volcanic Romance by William Westall, 1886.

From The Phantom Future by Hugh Stowell Scott, 1897.

Seeing the number 7 stuck to Lady Barbarity, we wondered about the "barbarity of luck."  That phrase is a Googlewhack!

The Mysterious Half Cat by Margaret Sutton.  You, too, can be half a cat, if you follow just the first half of How to Be Your Own Cat.

When we saw the cover to Model for Murder, we immediately recognized the inspiration: the beloved film Burn, Witch, Burn!  (Book cover courtesy of 54mge.)

Dissertations Upon the Apparitions of Angels, Daemons, and Ghosts - And Concerning the Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia by Augustin Calmet, 1759.

Life: A Romance by three asterisks, 1844.

You've heard of coffee-table books, but here's a New England farmhouse's autobiography.  And just in case you couldn't believe it, the subtitle reassures that it's "A Book."  (The Autobiography of a New England Farm-house: A Book by Nathan Henry Chamberlain, 1864.)

In Search of the Unknown by Robert William Chambers, 1904.

From The Story of a Secret and the Secret of a Story by Ismay Thorn, 1887.

University of Glasgow Alchemists Club, 1935.  Also very much of interest: The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.

The Next Beyond by Anonymous, 1921.

Note the blurbs from none other than Shakespeare!  From A Commercial Traveller's Reminiscences, 1884.

How to Identify the Stars by Willis Isbister Milham, 1909.

Here's some relationship outsourcing: "Hell Upon Earth" Made Heaven, or The Marriage Secrets of a Chicago Contractor as told to Rev. George Washington Savory, 1907.  See The Collected Lost Meanings of Wedlock.

Which came first, the abbot or the monastery?  Here's your answer, from The Abbot, Being the Sequel to The Monastery by Walter Scott, 1832.

Uncharted Territory by Connie Willis, 1994.