Baroque killings in a Soviet city of murderers on the shores of Lake Baikal. Suspected vampirism in the lost cemeteries of Calcutta. The terrible secret of the mosque of Al-Shirazi in the Karakum desert. Re-animated corpses in Cairo, Hittite curses in London, hungry Chinese ghosts, and the Japanese art of murder and suicide. This book is a Devilish, labyrinthine collection of antiquarian horror. 'Abomination takes many forms, in beasts as in men.'