Dying to be Immortal
If they are human, live forever and aren’t undead, then they are the few, the elite: the immortals. Whether they’re doomed to walk the Earth until the curse is broken or slough off their age and decadence onto a painting, the books in this list show how living forever can be a horrifying proposition.
This list is alphabetical by title.
 Coldheart Canyon  |
Coldheart CanyonAuthor: Barker, Clive |
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Nominated for the 2001 IHG Award Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in a Novel Hollywood has made a star of Todd Pickett. But time is catching up with him. He doesn’t have the perfect looks he had last year. After plastic surgery goes awry, Todd needs somewhere to hide away for a few months while his scars heal. As Todd settles into a mansion in Coldheart Canyon a corner of the city so secret it doesn’t even appear on any map Tammy Lauper, the president of his fan club, comes to the City of Angels determined to solve the mystery of Todd’s disappearance. Her journey will not be an easy one. The closer she gets to Todd the more of Coldheart Canyon’s secrets she uncovers: the ghosts of the A-list stars who came to the Canyon for wild parties; Katya Lupi, the cold-hearted, now forgotten star for whom the Canyon was named, who is alive and exquisite after a hundred years; and, finally, the door in the bowels of Katya’s dream palace that reputedly open up to another world, the Devil’s Country. No one who has ever ventured to this dark, barbaric corner of hell has returned without their souls shadowed by what they’d seen and done. Mingling an insiders’ view of modern Hollywood with a wild streak of visionary fantasy, Coldheart Canyon is a book without parallel. An irresistible and unmerciful picture of Hollywood and its demons, told with all the style and raw narrative power that has made Clive Barker’s books and films a phenomenon worldwide. |
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 The Damnation Game  |
The Damnation GameAuthor: Barker, Clive |
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Nominated for the 1987 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. From the Undead Rat: |
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 Dead Souls  |
Dead SoulsAuthor: Laimo, Michael |
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When Johnny Petrie inherits an estate from a man he’s never heard of before, he knows he can finally escape the hell of living with his religious zealot mother and drunken father. He doesn’t realize that the hell he is moving into will be far, far worse. The previous owner was Benjamin Conroy, a man obsessed with securing eternal life for himself and his family — even if he had to kill them to do it. Conroy’s perverse ceremony of blood and butchery went hideously wrong, denying him and his family the immortality he sought. But with Johnny’s arrival, Conroy’s spirit has a second chance . . . |
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 The Living Blood  |
The Living Blood (The African Immortals Series #2)Author: Due, Tananarive |
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From the Editors of Amazon.com: Jessica Jacobs-Wolde’s life was destroyed when her husband, David Wolde, disappeared after killing both their daughter Kira and Jessica herself — and reviving Jessica to immortality with his healing blood. David was a Life Brother, member of an ancient, secret, and immortal African clan. Now Jessica, hiding with her surviving daughter in rural Botswana, attempts to make sense of her new existence as she uses her altered blood to save the incurably ill. But her daughter Fana was born with the living blood in her veins, and at the age of 3 can raise a storm, kill with a thought, and possess her mother’s mind. The true extent of her abilities is unknown. Jessica’s only hope of teaching Fana to control her dangerous talents is to travel to Ethiopia and find the Life Brothers’ hidden colony. But the Life Brothers despise the new immortals and may possess the knowledge to end even immortal lives. And others, unknown to Jessica, are searching for her and Fana: Lucas Shepard, a Florida doctor driven to desperation by his young son’s untreatable leukemia; ruthless mercenaries in the pay of an aging medical-company executive, who will stop at nothing to gain immortality and the billion-dollar profits that a drug based on the living blood would bring; and a supernatural being or force called the Bee Lady, who stalks Fana in the world of dreams, seeking to possess Fana’s mind and powers for her own evil purposes. The Living Blood is the sequel to My Soul to Keep, one of the Publishers Weekly Best Novels of the Year in 1997. Due’s historical novel The Black Rose was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, and her debut novel, The Between, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Due is also coauthor, with Dave Barry, Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, and eight others, of the comic thriller Naked Came the Manatee. |
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 Melmoth the Wanderer  |
Melmoth the WandererAuthor: Maturin, Charles Robert |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. Part Faust, part Mephistopheles, Melmoth has made a satanic bargain for immortality. Now he wanders the earth, an outsider with an eerie, tortured existence, searching for someone who will take on his contract and release him to die a natural death. Written by an eccentric Anglican curate in Dublin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought the Gothic novel to a new pitch of claustrophobic intensity, surpassing the quiet tremors of Ann Radcliffe’s romances in its reckless accumulation of cruelties and blasphemies. Its tormented villain, a Faustian transgressor desperately seeking a victim to release him from his fatal bargain with the devil, was regarded by Balzac as one of the great outcasts of modern literature. Intended partly as an attack on Roman Catholicism, Maturin’s intriguing novel teeters giddily over abysses of sacrilege and raving paranoia, in moments of delirious panic worthy of Godwin or Poe. |
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 The Picture of Dorian Gray  |
The Picture of Dorian GrayAuthor: Wilde, Oscar |
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Spellbound before his own portrait, Dorian Gray utters a fateful wish. In exchange for eternal youth he gives his soul, to be corrupted by the malign influence of his mentor, the aesthete and hedonist Lord Henry Wotton. |
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 Sacrifice  |
SacrificeAuthor: Farris, John |
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From the Editors of Amazon.com: |
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 The Wandering Jew  |
The Wandering Jew (Vols. 1-11)Author: Sue, Eugene |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. No summary available. |
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Summary:
Title List:
1. Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker
2. The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
3. Dead Souls by Michael Laimo
4. The Living Blood by Tananarive Due
5. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. Sacrifice by John Farris
8. The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue
