In The Divine Comedy, Dante imagines himself as a lost pilgrim who is taken on a guided journey through the three realms of the dead: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. On his travels, he is given the challenge of exploring the darkest recesses of the human soul in an effort to understand the root of evil, sin, and, ultimately, forgiveness.

They come together by chance in the heart of New York City, four young women at turning points in their lives. Claire Kelly finds the walk-up apartment -- a spacious loft in Hell's Kitchen. But the aspiring shoe designer needs at least one roommate to manage it. She meets Abby Williams, a writer trying to make it on her own, far away from her successful family in L.A. Four years later, Morgan Shelby joins them. She's ambitious, with a serious finance...

The hideous zombie Pinhead terrifies his brother and his estranged wife now inhabiting his former home. When a drop of blood partially resurrects him, all hell breaks loose as Pinhead forces his sister-in-law, formerly his lover, to kill and kill again so he can become whole.

Hatcher McCord is an evening newscaster who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He's far from the only one to suffer this fate--in fact, he's surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including William Shakespeare, Humphrey Bogart, Richard M. Nixon, Jezebel, Judas Iscariot, Pope Boniface VIII, J. Edgar Hoover, and a panoply of present-day figures who will soon be in Hell. The question may be not who is in...

Hunter S. Thompson's vivid account of his experiences with California's most notorious motorcycle gang, the Hell's Angels. In the mid-1960s, Thompson spent almost two years living with the controversial Angels, cycling up and down the coast, reveling in the anarchic spirit of their clan, and, as befits their name, raising hell. His book successfully captures a singular moment in American history, when the biker lifestyle was first defined, and when...

"In Hell and Damnation, bestselling author Marq de Villiers takes readers on a journey into the strange richness of the human imaginings of hell, deep into time and across many faiths, back into early Egypt and the 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. This urbane, funny, and deeply researched guide ventures well beyond the Nine Circles of Dante's Hell and the many medieval Christian visions into the hellish descriptions in Islam, Buddhism,...

"Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison," declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk's subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose -- and the next thing she knows, she's...

"The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea once observed that, in his time, most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all would eventually attain salvation. But today, this view is no longer prevalent within Christian communities. In this ... book, David Bentley Hart makes the case that nearly two millennia of dogmatic tradition have misled readers on the crucial matter of universal salvation. On the basis of...

"Books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, but when restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories escape, it is up to the Librarian to track them down ... and keep the collection complete. Many years ago, Claire was named head librarian of the Unwritten Wing -- a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing...