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Varicose Worms

Scott Baker

World Fantasy Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in French translation in 1982. The first English publication was in Blood Is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism (1989), edited by Ellen Datlow. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Third Annual Collection (1990).

The Damnation Game

Clive Barker

Chance had ruled Marty Strauss' life for as long as he could remember. Now at last luck was turning his way. Parolled from prison, he becomes bodyguard to Joseph Whitehead, one of the richest men in Europe. But Whitehead has also played with chance - an ancient game which gave him vast power and wealth, in exchange for his immortal soul. Now the forces he played against are back to claim what's theirs. Terryifying forces, with the power to raise the dead; and Marty is trapped between his human masters and Hell itself, with just one last, desperate game left to play.

Weaveworld

Clive Barker

Set in contemporary England, two friends discover a secret magical world and are drawn into a battle between good and evil.

Procession of the Black Sloth

Laird Barron

Procession of the Black Sloth was first published in The Imago Sequence and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2007). It was the only story original to that collection.

Read this story for free on Baen's site.

Mr. Shivers

Robert Jackson Bennett

It is the time of the Great Depression.

Thousands have left their homes looking for a better life, a new life. But Marcus Connelly is not one of them. He searches for one thing, and one thing only. Revenge.

Because out there, riding the rails, stalking the camps, is the scarred vagrant who murdered Connelly's daughter. No one knows him, but everyone knows his name: Mr. Shivers.

In this extraordinary debut, Robert Jackson Bennett tells the story of an America haunted by murder and desperation. A world in which one man must face a dark truth and answer the question-how much is he willing to sacrifice for his satisfaction?

The Troupe

Robert Jackson Bennett

Vaudeville: mad, mercenary, dreamy, and absurd, a world of clashing cultures and ferocious showmanship and wickedly delightful deceptions.

But sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville for one reason only: to find the man he suspects to be his father, the great Heironomo Silenus. Yet as he chases down his father's troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are strange even for vaudeville: for wherever they happen to tour, the very nature of the world seems to change.

Because there is a secret within Silenus's show so ancient and dangerous that it has won him many powerful enemies. And it's not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe is not simply touring: they are running for their lives.

And soon... he is as well.

From Hell

Alan Moore
Eddie Campbell

FROM HELL is the story of Jack the Ripper, perhaps the most infamous man in the annals of murder. Detailing the events leading up to the Whitechapel killings and the cover-up that followed, FROM HELL is a meditation on the mind of a madman whose savagery and violence gave birth to the 20th century. The serialized story, presented in its entirety in this volume, has garnered widespread attention from critics and scholars. Often regarded as one of the most significant graphic novels ever published, FROM HELL combines meticulous research with educated speculation, resulting in a masterpiece of historical fiction both compelling and terrifying.

The Darkest Part of the Woods

Ramsey Campbell

For decades the lives of the Price family have been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. There, Dr. Lennox Price discovered an hallucinogenic moss which quickly became the focus of a cult. Though the moss is long gone, the whole forest can now affect the minds of visitors.

After Lennox is killed trying to return to his beloved wood, his widow sees and hears him in the trees-or is it a dark version of the Green Man that caresses her with leafy hands? Lennox's grandson heeds a call to lie in his lover's arms in the very heart of the forest-and cannot help but wonder what the fruit of that love will be.

And Heather, Lennox's daughter, who turned her back on her father's mysteries and sought sanctuary in the world of facts and history? Goodmanswood summons her as well...

Goddess of Filth

V. Castro

"Five of us sat in a circle doing our best to emulate the girls in The Craft, hoping to unleash some power to take us all away from our home to the place of our dreams. But we weren't witches. We were five Chicanas living in San Antonio, Texas, one year out of high school."

One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It's all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors.

Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely--smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it's something else--something far more ancient and powerful.

As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her "bruja Craft crew" and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right.

Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror

Ellen Datlow

Compiling the finest in frightening tales, this unique anthology offers a diverse selection of horror culled from the last 25 years. Hand selected from cutting-edge authors, each work blends subtle psychology and mischievousness with disturbingly visceral imagery. In the classic "Chattery Teeth," Stephen King provides a tautly drawn account of a traveling salesman who unwisely picks up yet another hitchhiker, while in Peter Straub's eerie "The Juniper Tree," a man whose nostalgia for the movies of his childhood leads to his stolen innocence.

Renowned fantasy author George R. R. Martin weaves a sinister yarn about a young woman encountering a neighbor who is overly enamored with her in "The Pear-Shaped Man." Combining acclaimed masters of the macabre, such as Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, and Thomas Ligotti, with bold new talents to the genre, including Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, this distinctive collection of stories will delight and terrify.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction - (2010) - essay by Ellen Datlow
  • Foreword - (2010) - essay by Stefan Dziemianowicz
  • Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament - (1984) - novelette by Clive Barker
  • Dancing Chickens - (1984) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
  • The Greater Festival of Masks - (1985) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
  • The Pear-Shaped Man - (1987) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
  • The Juniper Tree - (1988) - novelette by Peter Straub
  • Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds - (1988) - shortstory by Dan Simmons
  • The Power and the Passion - (1989) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
  • The Phone Woman - (1990) - shortstory by Joe R. Lansdale
  • Teratisms - (1991) - shortstory by Kathe Koja
  • Chattery Teeth - (1992) - novelette by Stephen King
  • A Little Night Music - (1992) - shortstory by Lucius Shepard
  • Calcutta, Lord of Nerves - (1992) - shortstory by Poppy Z. Brite
  • The Erl-King - (1993) - novelette by Elizabeth Hand
  • The Dog Park - (1993) - shortstory by Dennis Etchison
  • Rain Falls - (1994) - shortstory by Michael Marshall Smith
  • Refrigerator Heaven - (1995) - shortstory by David J. Schow
  • ¦¦¦¦¦ - (1995) - shortstory by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture) - (1996) - poem by Neil Gaiman
  • The Specialist's Hat - (1998) - shortstory by Kelly Link
  • The Tree Is My Hat - (1999) - novelette by Gene Wolfe
  • Heat - (1999) - shortstory by Steve Rasnic Tem
  • No Strings - (2000) - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell
  • Stitch - (2002) - shortstory by Terry Dowling
  • Dancing Men - (2003) - novelette by Glen Hirshberg
  • My Father's Mask - (2005) - novelette by Joe Hill

The Twenty Days of Turin

Giorgio De Maria

Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut.

In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another's personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library's users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city's occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what's shared can never be unshared.

An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of "lone-wolf" terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria's vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet?and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing?this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.

Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria's place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.

The Good House

Tananarive Due

The home that belonged to Angela Toussaint's late grandmother is so beloved that townspeople in Sacajawea, Washington, call it the Good House. But that all changes one summer when an unexpected tragedy takes place behind its closed doors... and the Toussaint's family history -- and future -- is dramatically transformed. Angela has not returned to the Good House since her son, Corey, died there two years ago. But now, Angela is finally ready to return to her hometown and go beyond the grave to unearth the truth about Corey's death. Could it be related to a terrifying entity Angela's grandmother battled seven decades ago? And what about the other senseless calamities that Sacajawea has seen in recent years? Has Angela's grandmother, an African American woman reputed to have "powers," put a curse on the entire community?

A thrilling exploration of secrets, lies, and divine inspiration, "The Good House" will haunt readers long after its chilling conclusion.

Our Share of Night

Mariana Enriquez

A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar's father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina's military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America's most original novelists, "a mesmerizing writer," says Dave Eggers, "who demands to be read."

Experimental Film

Gemma Files

Experimental Film is a contemporary ghost story in which former Canadian film history teacher Lois Cairns-jobless and depressed in the wake of her son's autism diagnosis-accidentally discovers the existence of lost early 20th century Ontario filmmaker Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb. By deciding to investigate how Mrs. Whitcomb's obsessions might have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs. Whitcomb's films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband and herself in danger. Experimental Film mixes painful character detail with a creeping aura of dread to produce a fictionalized "memoir" designed to play on its readers' narrative expectations and pack an existentialist punch.

We Will All Go Down Together

Gemma Files

In the woods outside Overdeere, Ontario, there are trees that speak, a village that doesn't appear on any map and a hill that opens wide, entrapping unwary travellers. Music drifts up from deep underground, while dreams—and nightmares—take on solid shape, flitting through the darkness. It's a place most people usually know better than to go, at least locally—until tonight, at least, when five bloodlines mired in ancient strife will finally converge once more.

Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke—these are the clans who make up the notorious Five-Family Coven. Four hundred years ago, this alliance of witches, changelings, and sorcerers sought to ruin and recreate the Earth in their own image, thwarted at the last only by treachery that sent half of them to be burned alive. Driven apart by rage and hatred, their descendants have continued to feud, intermarry, and breed with each other throughout the centuries, their mutual dislike becoming ever more destructively intimate.

But now, from downtown Toronto to the wilds beyond, where reality's walls grow thin, dark forces are drawing the Coven's last heirs to a final confrontation. Psychics, ex-possessees, defrocked changeling priests, shamans for hire, body-stealing witches, and monster-slaying nuns—the bastard children of a thousand evil angels—all are haunted by a ghost beyond any one person's power to exorcize unless they agree to stand together once more, at least long enough to wreak vengeance upon themselves.

Coyote Rage

Owl Goingback

Bram Stoker Award-Winning author Owl Goingback makes a triumphant return to horror and fantasy in this gripping new novel.

Coyote is on a murderous hunt, leaving behind a trail of carnage. The shape-shifter is determined to kill the human representatives to the Great Council in Galun'lati, eliminating the rule of mankind in the New World. But Raven has overheard the Trickster's evil plan, and will do anything to protect Luther Watie and his daughter, Sarah Reynolds, even if it means turning his skin inside out.

The forces of evil are aligning in two very different worlds. Can mankind be saved, or will creatures of fur and fangs once again reign supreme?

Cover art by Ben Baldwin

Cold Wind

Nicola Griffith

"Cold Wind", by Nicola Griffith, is a dark fantasy tale about a woman who enters a Seattle bar on a cold wintry night in the midst of the Christmas holidays, searching for something... or someone.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Wylding Hall

Elizabeth Hand

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group's lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers – including a psychic, a photographer, and the band's manager – meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?

This is a short novel of approximately 43,500 words.

The Spear

James Herbert

A terrifying tale of neo-Nazi occultism

When Steadman agreed to investigate the disappearance of a young Mossad agent, he had no idea he would be drawn into a malevolent conspiracy. Neo-Nazi cultists are bent on unleashing an age-old unholy power on an unsuspecting world - power rising out of a demonic relic from man's dark, primal past to threaten humanity with horror from beyond any nightmare.

The Devil Takes You Home

Gabino Iglesias

A father desperate to salvage what's left of his family--even if it means a descent into violence...

Buried in debt due to his young daughter's illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel's cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won't return the same.

The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones

Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation, who were childhood friends, find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives, against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier by killing them, their families, and friends.

The Deep

Alma Katsu

Someone, or something, is haunting the Titanic.

Deaths and disappearances have plagued the vast liner from the moment she began her maiden voyage on 10 April 1912. Four days later, caught in what feels like an eerie, unsettling twilight zone, some passengers - including millionaire Madeleine Astor and maid Annie Hebbley - are convinced that something sinister is afoot. And then disaster strikes.

Four years later and the world is at war. Having survived that fateful night, Annie is now a nurse on board the Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. And she is about to realise that those demons from her past and the terrors of that doomed voyage have not finished with her yet.

Born of the Sea

Victor Kelleher

Victor Kelleher's Born of the Sea is both a sequel to, and a correction of, its parent text, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". It is the autobiographical narrative of Madeleine Sauvage, the 'bride' Frankenstein began to produce for his monster, before abandoning his work and discarding its unfinished parts into the sea. In this version, she wasn't destroyed and her parts are not left lying on the bottom of the sea; instead, she goes out in search of her creator.

Inspired by the following quote from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:

"The remains of the half-finished creature... lay scattered on the floor, and I... put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and... determined to throw them into the sea that very night..."

Into The Dark

Victor Kelleher

First published in 1999, this dramatic retelling of the legend of Count Dracula deals with issues of friendship, passion and betrayal. Over a hundred years ago, a young man known as The Ox is called into domestic service. It is not a summons he can ignore, as it comes from Castle Dracula. Inside the castle, Ox meets the Count, who is no supernatural monster, but a man driven by passions that are all too real. In his service, Ox finds sheer survival a challenge. Yet the two form the least likely of friendships: a bonding of night and day, of cruelty and kindness. But when a woman they both want - and both need - is is seduced into a life not of her choosing, Ox and the Count become locked in a passionate duel...

The Ape's Wife and Other Stories

CaitlĂ­n R. Kiernan

In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories -- Kiernan's twelfth collection of short fiction since 2001 -- she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir. From the subtle horror of 'One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)' and 'Tall Bodies' to a demon-haunted, alternate reality Manhattan, from Mars to a near-future Philadelphia, and from ghoulish urban legends of New England to a feminist-queer retelling of Beowulf, these thirteen stories keep reader always on their toes, ever uncertain of the next twist or turn.

Table of Contents:

  • The Ape's Wife and Other Stories - interior artwork by Vince Locke
  • The Steam Dancer (1896) - (2008) - short story
  • The Maltese Unicorn - (2011) - novelette
  • One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm) - (2013) - short story
  • The Colliers' Venus (1893) - (2011) - novelette
  • Galápagos - (2009) - novelette
  • Tall Bodies - (2012) - short story
  • As Red as Red - (2010) - short story
  • Hydraguros - (2011) - novelette
  • Slouching Towards the House of Glass Coffins - (2011) - short story
  • Tidal Forces - (2011) - short story
  • The Sea Troll's Daughter - (2010) - novelette
  • Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash - (2012) - novelette
  • The Ape's Wife - (2007) - short story
  • Notes (The Ape's Wife and Other Stories) - essay

The Red Tree

CaitlĂ­n R. Kiernan

Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant-a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago...

It

Stephen King

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It's a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city's children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry's sewers.

Misery

Stephen King

After an automobile accident, novelist Paul Sheldon meets his biggest fan. Annie Wilkes is his nurse-and captor. Now, she wants Paul to write his greatest work-just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an ax. And if they don't work, she can get really nasty...

Needful Things

Stephen King

In Castle Rock, Maine, Leland Gaunt is a stranger. He runs a shop called Needful Things, where there's something for everyone-and a price for everyone, too. For Gaunt, the pleasure of doing business lies in seeing how much people will pay for their most secret desires. When two townspeople oppose him, it becomes an epic clash of good vs. evil.

Salem's Lot

Stephen King

Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot, is the story of a mundane town under siege from the forces of darkness. Considered one of the most terrifying vampire novels ever written, it cunningly probes the shadows of the human heart -- and the insular evils of small-town America.

The Stand

Stephen King

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

Midnight

Dean Koontz

The citizens of Moonlight Cove, California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their deepest emotions. Others are surrendering to their wildest urges. And the few who remain unchanged are absolutely terrified-if not brutally murdered in the dead of night.

Dean Koontz, the bestselling master of suspense, invites readers into the shocking world of Moonlight Cove-where four unlikely survivors confront the darkest realms of human nature. Here is the ultimate masterpiece of fear by the one and only Dean Koontz.

Big Machine

Victor LaValle

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.

Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle's fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.

The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories

H. P. Lovecraft

Plagued by insane nightmare visions, Walter Gilman seeks help in Miskatonic University's infamous library of forbidden books, where, in the pages of Abdul Alhazred's dreaded Necronomicon, he finds terrible hints that seem to connect his own studies in advanced mathematics with the fantastic legends of elder magic. "The Dreams in the Witch House," gathered together here with more than twenty other tales of terror, exemplifies H. P. Lovecraft's primacy among twentieth-century American horror writers.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • Suggestions for Further Reading - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • A Note on the Texts - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • Polaris - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
  • The Doom That Came to Sarnath - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
  • The Terrible Old Man - (1921) - short story
  • The Tree - (1921) - short story
  • The Cats of Ulthar - [Dream Cycle] - (1920) - short story
  • From Beyond - [Dream Cycle] - (1934) - short story
  • The Nameless City - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1921) - short story
  • The Moon-Bog - (1926) - short story
  • The Other Gods - [Dream Cycle] - (1933) - short story
  • Hypnos - [Dream Cycle] - (1922) - short story
  • The Lurking Fear - (1928) - novelette
  • The Unnamable - [Randolph Carter] - (1925) - short story
  • The Shunned House - (1928) - novelette
  • The Horror at Red Hook - (1927) - novelette
  • In the Vault - (1925) - short story
  • The Strange High House in the Mist - [Dream Cycle] - (1931) - short story
  • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - [Randolph Carter] - (1943) - novella
  • The Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1929) - short story
  • Through the Gates of the Silver Key - [Randolph Carter] - (1934) - novelette
  • The Dreams in the Witch House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1933) - novelette
  • The Shadow Out of Time - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novella
  • Explanatory Notes - essay by S. T. Joshi

The Dunwich Horror and Others

H. P. Lovecraft

In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny pace to an unsettling height, but the boy's arrival simply precedes that of a true horror: one of the Old Ones, that forces the people of the town to hole up by night.

The Dunwich Horror and Others contains the following tales:

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived chiefly from Edgar Allan Poe) with the genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1920s. This new Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • Suggestions for Further Reading - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • A Note on the Text - essay by S. T. Joshi
  • The Tomb - (1922) - short story
  • Beyond the Wall of Sleep - (1919) - short story
  • The White Ship - [Dream Cycle] - (1919) - short story
  • The Temple - (1925) - short story
  • The Quest of Iranon - [Dream Cycle] - (1935) - short story
  • The Music of Erich Zann - [Erich Zann] - (1922) - short story
  • Under the Pyramids - (1924) - novelette
  • Pickman's Model - (1927) - short story
  • The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - [Dream Cycle] - (1943) - novel
  • The Dunwich Horror - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - novelette
  • At the Mountains of Madness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novel
  • The Thing on the Doorstep - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1937) - novelette
  • Explanatory Notes - essay by S. T. Joshi

Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe

One of the most durable myths in Western culture, the story of Faust tells of a learned German doctor who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Early enactments of Faust's damnation were often the raffish fare of clowns and low comedians. But the young Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) recognized in the story of Faust's temptation and fall the elements of tragedy.

In his epic treatment of the Faust legend, Marlowe retains much of the rich phantasmagoria of its origins. There are florid visions of an enraged Lucifer, dueling angels, the Seven Deadly Sins, Faustus tormenting the Pope, and his summoning of the spirit of Alexander the Great. But the playwright created equally powerful scenes that invest the work with tragic dignity, among them the doomed man's calling upon Christ to save him and his ultimate rejection of salvation for the embrace of Helen of Troy.

With immense poetic skill, and psychological insight that foreshadowed the later work of Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwrights, Marlowe created in Dr. Faustus one of the first true tragedies in English. Vividly dramatic, rich in poetic grandeur, this classic play remains a robust and lively exemplar of the glories of Elizabethan drama.

Shadow on the Sun

Richard Matheson

Originally published as a mass-market Western in 1994, Shadow on the Sun has been out of print for years and was largely overlooked by horror fans and general readers.

Now at last this forgotten tale of supernatural terror returns to chill the blood of Matheson's many fans.

Southwest Arizona, a century ago. An uneasy true exists between the remote frontier community of Picture City and the neighboring Apaches. That delicate peace is shredded when the bodies of two white men are found hideously mutilated. The angry townspeople are certain the "savages" have broken the treaty, but Billjohn Finley, the local Indian agent, fears that darker, more unholy forces may be at work. There's a tall, dark stranger in town, who rode in wearing the dead men's clothes. A stranger who may not be entirely human....

A Monster Calls

Patrick Ness

An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting-- he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-- whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-- Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

The Reddening

Adam Nevill

One million years of evolution didn't change our nature. Nor did it bury the horrors predating civilisation. Ancient rites, old deities and savage ways can reappear in the places you least expect.

Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.

Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh's caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.

Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice. They were involved and condemned before they knew it.

The Ritual

Adam Nevill

It was the dead thing they found hanging from a tree that changed the trip beyond recognition. When four old University friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. A shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives.

Lost, hungry, and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, things couldn't possibly get any worse. But then they stumble across an old habitation. Ancient artefacts decorate the walls and there are bones scattered upon the floors. The residue of old rites for something that still exists in the forest. Something responsible for the bestial presence that follows their every step. And as the four friends stagger in the direction of salvation, they learn that death doesn't come easy among these ancient trees...

From Dark Places

Emma Newman

The debut anthology from Emma Newman is a dark and twisting journey across the urban landscape, mining the rich seam of human frailties with insight and humour. The stories traverse the magical and the mundane, where supernatural beings are indistinguishable from their mortal counterparts in their complexity and complicity.

Table of Contents

  • From Dark Places
  • The Straw
  • The Need to Create
  • Burnt
  • Someone to Watch Over Her
  • The Perfect Escape
  • The Tenth Lord
  • Sunday Lunch
  • The Art of Desire
  • No Surprise
  • Seeing Him Again
  • Shedding
  • The Victim
  • The Letter
  • The Unwoven Heart
  • And Then There Were None
  • Everything in its Place
  • The Best Pie in the World
  • The Handsome Dragon
  • The Bell
  • In the Bag
  • Her Fall
  • The Supporting Statement
  • Idolised
  • Getting Fixed

Island

Jane Rogers

The island is a place where things are not quite as they appear; a magical place where the murder of a reclusive woman is not a cut and dried case.

Nikki Black, intent on punishing the mother who abandoned her at birth, goes to the island with only one aim in mind: revenge. But her plans are confounded by the discovery that she has a brother. Not just any old brother, but a brother strangely possessed by their mother; a brother with a terrifying violent streak; an apparent simpleton whose head is filled with the stories of past islanders, crofters, Vikings, little people. A brother whose dangerous love and strange way of seeing the world transform Nikki's life.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

William Shakespeare

Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and it's writing was, perhaps, finished in 1606.

It tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness, and death.

All the Murmuring Bones

Angela Slatter

Long ago Miren O'Malley's family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer: safety for their ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and have fallen into decline. Miren's grandmother is determined to restore their glory, even at the price of Miren's freedom.

A spellbinding tale of dark family secrets, magic and witches, and creatures of myth and the sea; of strong women and the men who seek to control them.

Shadowland

Peter Straub

IF YOUR SHADOW DOESN'T MOVE WHEN YOU DO, THEN YOU'RE IN SHADOWLAND.

In a private school in New England, a friendship is forged between two boys that will change their lives for ever. As Del Nightingale and Tom Flanagan battle to survive the oppressive regime of bullying and terror overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Del introduces Tom to his world of magic tricks. But when they escape to spend the summer holiday together at Shadowland - the lakeside estate of Del's uncle - their hobby suddenly takes on much more sinister tones. After a summer exploring the mysteries and terrors of Shadowland nothing will be the same.

The Twisted Ones

T. Kingfisher

When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother's home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods in this chilling novel that reads like The Blair Witch Project meets The Andy Griffith Show.

When Mouse's dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be?

Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there's more--Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather's journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants... until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself.

Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors--because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they're looking for you. And if she doesn't face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale.

Little Eve

Catriona Ward

On New Year's Eve 1928, as a great thunderstorm beats about the Isle of Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands, Evelyn Bearings murders her adoptive family; members of the nature-worshipping sect known as the Children.

The Bearings have always been strange. They live away from people in their crumbling castle by the old circle of stones. Though they call themselves the Children they are not a family, but orphans and runaways taken in by Uncle. They dance in the stone circle at dawn, conduct arcane druidic rituals with snakes.

Evelyn is the strangest of them all. She can read minds. Only one of the Children can inherit the Isle from Uncle and become the adder. Eve is certain that it will be her. She is Uncle's favourite. But the Isle holds more secrets than Eve knows. As the year dies and that fateful night approaches her beliefs will be challenged, her loyalties tested to breaking point. Evelyn will be forced to confront truths she has been fleeing for many years -- and it will end in death.

House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Bottled Abyss

Benjamin Kane Ethridge

Herman and Janet Erikson are going through a crisis of grief and suffering after losing their daughter in a hit and run. They've given up on each other, they've given up on themselves. They are living day by day. One afternoon, to make a horrible situation worse, their dog goes missing in the coyote-infested badlands behind their property. Herman, resolved in preventing another tragedy, goes to find the dog, completely unaware he's on a hike to the River Styx, which according to Greek myth was the border between the Living World and the world of the Dead. Long ago the gods died and the River dried up, but a bottle containing its waters still remains in the badlands. What Herman discovers about the dark power contained in those waters will change his life forever…

Ararat

Ben Walker: Book 1

Christopher Golden

Meryam and Adam take risks for a living. But neither is prepared for what lies in the legendary heights of Mount Ararat, Turkey.

First to reach a massive cave revealed by an avalanche, they discover the hole in the mountain's heart is really an ancient ship, buried in time. A relic that some fervently believe is Noah's Ark.

Deep in its recesses stands a coffin inscribed with mysterious symbols that no one in their team of scholars, archaeologists and filmmakers can identify. Inside is a twisted, horned cadaver. Outside a storm threatens to break.

As terror begins to infiltrate their every thought, is it the raging blizzard that chases them down the mountain - or something far worse?

The Great and Secret Show

Book of The Art: Book 1

Clive Barker

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

Books of Blood: Volumes 1-3

Books of Blood: Omnibus: Book 1

Clive Barker

With the 1984 publication of Books of Blood, Clive Barker became an overnight literary sensation. He was hailed by Stephen King as "the future of horror," and won both the British and World Fantasy Awards. Now, with his numerous bestsellers, graphic novels, and hit movies like the Hellraiser films, Clive Barker has become an industry unto himself. But it all started here, with this tour de force collection that rivals the dark masterpieces of Edgar Allan Poe. Read him. And rediscover the true meaning of fear.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction (Books of Blood) - (1984) - essay by Ramsey Campbell
  • Books of Blood, Volume I - [Books of Blood - 1] - (1984) - collection
  • The Book of Blood - (1984) - short story
  • The Midnight Meat Train - (1984) - novelette
  • The Yattering and Jack - (1984) - novelette
  • Pig Blood Blues - (1984) - novelette
  • Sex, Death and Starshine - (1984) - novelette
  • In the Hills, the Cities - (1984) - novelette
  • Books of Blood, Volume II - [Books of Blood - 2] - (1984) - collection
  • Dread - (1984) - novelette
  • Hell's Event - (1984) - novelette
  • Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament - (1984) - novelette
  • The Skins of the Fathers - (1984) - novelette
  • New Murders in the Rue Morgue - (1984) - novelette
  • Books of Blood, Volume III - [Books of Blood - 3] - (1984) - collection
  • Son of Celluloid - (1984) - novelette
  • Rawhead Rex - (1984) - novelette
  • Confession of a (Pornographer's) Shroud - (1984) - novelette
  • Scape-Goats - (1984) - novelette
  • Human Remains - (1984) - novelette

Cold Bath Street

Cold Bath Street: Book 1

A. J. Hartley

Preston Oldcorn is in a desolate void between life and death. In order to save his soul he must brave his greatest fear - Cold Bath Street.

Preston Oldcorn lay quite still, eyes tight shut, trying to shrug off the cold grip of the nightmare. It was 9:22 p.m. It was always 9:22 p.m. A cold hand had plunged into Preston's chest and tightened its icy grip around his heart. In an instant, Preston was dead. Preston finds himself in a desolate void, trapped in the chasm between life and death. Soon discovering that he is not alone, Preston must stay one-step ahead of his enemies and discover the mysteries held by this new world as he tries to save his soul. But doing so means braving the darkest and most feared part of town: Cold Bath Street.

Written Stone Lane

Cold Bath Street: Book 2

A. J. Hartley

RAUFFE RADCLIFFE LAID THIS STONE TO LYE FOREVER: AD1655... so said the mysterious monument lying in Written Stone Lane. What it meant and why it was first carved, no one seemed to remember, which is perhaps why - eventually - someone moved it. Things came out. Bad things. And now the only one that can save the world from murder and destruction is Preston Oldcorn, a 15-year-old Lancashire boy and Tracey, the girl with clever eyes.

Written Stone Lane is a gripping and atmospheric thriller that will set your heart racing and your mind questioning until the very end.

The Call of Cthulhu

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales in 1928. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories and The Dunwich Horror and Others.

It was the basis for the 2005 featurette The Call of Cthulhu.

The February 1928 issue of Weird Tales containing "The Call of Cthulhu" is available free on Internet Archives.

Dominion

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 5

Fred Saberhagen

When two ancient, ruthless beings, locked in a struggle for the ultimate magic Weapon, bring their blood feud to New York, Vlad Tepes races to hide the coveted weapon.

A Matter of Taste

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 6

Fred Saberhagen

Matthew Maule, no stranger to revenge, unexpectedly encounters enemies bent on his destruction for events now over five hundred years in the past—events revealed on a tape found in Uncle Matthew's Chicago apartment.

For a time, only the Southerlands and Joe Keogh stand between the poisoned and incapacitated Uncle Matthew and his attackers.

But Uncle Matthew is not one to easily surrender his existence.

A tale of revenge and honor.

A Question of Time

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 7

Fred Saberhagen

Drawn to the Grand Canyon where the earth exposes her life line, Edgar Tyrrell, a nosferatu sculptor builds a home on the South Rim. Edgar would capture the very forces of the earth in his stone statues. Hidden within a Great Unconformity Tyrrell's workshop offers a base from which he can work and travel through time. He needs helpers. A young woman artist from 1965 is entrapped. She lures a 1935 CCC worker into Tyrrell's camp. Together the captives are plotting Tyrrell's destruction and a way back to normal time.

Sixty years later, one of Tyrrell's young breathing relatives goes missing in the Canyon. Private detective Joe Keogh is hired for the search. Sensing the presence of nosferatu Joe calls on Mr. Strangeways aka Drakulya. Accessing the situation, Drakulya returns to England seeking the wisdom of Darwin, Merlin and his beloved Mina. Much more than a dangerous rogue nosferatu awaits in Deep Canyon.

Seance for a Vampire

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 8

Fred Saberhagen

A seance held in an aristocratic London home goes horribly awry when one of the undead nosferatu appear. The resulting chaos leaves one of the fraudulent spiritualists dead, Sherlock Holmes missing, and Dr. Watson alone and mystified. With time running out, Watson has no choice but to summon the only one who might be able to help--Holmes' vampire cousin, Prince Dracula.

A Sharpness on the Neck

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 9

Fred Saberhagen

In 1792, Philip Radcliffe, the bastard son of Benjamin Franklin, comes to France to deliver a letter to Thomas Paine--only to get caught up in a conflict far more horrifying than the Revolution. By foiling a powerful vampire's attempt at fratricide, Radcliffe dooms himself and his descendants to suffer the vampire's eternal vengeance.

In present day, Philip and June Radcliffe are kidnapped on their honeymoon. Their captor, a mysterious Mr. Graves, swears that he aims to protect them. Yet as the thrilling story unfolds, involving Napoleon, the Marquis de Sade, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, as well as Jerry Cruncher and Detective Dupin, the young couple refuses to believe him--a mistake that is certain to cost them their lives.

A Coldness in the Blood

Dracula: The Dracula Sequence: Book 10

Fred Saberhagen

The Bram Stoker Award–Winning saga continues . . . .

Matthew Maule has seen many horrific things in his five hundred years as one of the most powerful vampires in the world. But even his formidable talents cannot predict the unthinkable acts about to occur within his own home.

When the vampire Dickon and his human partner appear in the middle of the night frightened for their lives, Matthew offers them protection. They carry with them a small Egyptian statue of great value and many secrets. By morning, Matthew has woken from a mysterious trance to discover that Dickon's human friend has been brutally murdered, the vampire has gone missing, and their statue has been smashed to pieces. Matthew has also made a dangerous new enemy, one who possesses strength even Matthew may be no match for.

For the statue is no ordinary artifact, but one of six replicas. However, only one contains a gem in the center, a stone of unimaginable magical power that could spell the end of humanity if it ever fell in the wrong hands.

Matthew sets out on a heart-pounding journey to track down the remaining statues before his ancient foe finds them. Racing across the country, the vampire teams up with both the living and the undead, though not all are the allies they pretend to be. Using his wits, he must unearth the answers to a millennia-old mystery in order to prepare himself for a final showdown against the evil stalking him at every turn. Acclaimed fantasy and science fiction author Fred Saberhagen takes readers along for a trek of unbelievable suspense, action, and pure page-turning entertainment.

The Scarlet Gospels

Hellraiser: Book 2

Clive Barker

The Scarlet Gospels takes readers back many years to the early days of two of Barker's most iconic characters in a battle of good and evil as old as time: The long beleaguered detective Harry D'Amour, investigator of all supernatural, magical, and malevolent crimes faces off against his formidable, and intensley evil rival, Pinhead, the priest of hell. Barker devotees have been waiting for The Scarlet Gospels with bated breath for years, and it's everyting they have begged for and more. Bloody, terrifying, and brilliantly complex, fans and newcomers alike will not be disappointed by the epic, visonary tale that is The Scarlet Gospels. Barker's horror will make your worst nightmares seem like bedtime stories. The Gospals are coming. Are you ready?

The Girl from the Well

Okiku: Book 1

Rin Chupeco

I am where dead children go.

Okiku is a lonely soul. She has wandered the world for centuries, freeing the spirits of the murdered-dead. Once a victim herself, she now takes the lives of killers with the vengeance they're due. But releasing innocent ghosts from their ethereal tethers does not bring Okiku peace. Still she drifts on.

Such is her existence, until she meets Tark. Evil writhes beneath the moody teen's skin, trapped by a series of intricate tattoos. While his neighbors fear him, Okiku knows the boy is not a monster. Tark needs to be freed from the malevolence that clings to him. There's just one problem: if the demon dies, so does its host.

The Suffering

Okiku: Book 2

Rin Chupeco

The darkness will find you.

Seventeen-year-old Tark knows what it is to be powerless. But Okiku changed that. A restless spirit who ended life as a victim and started death as an avenger, she's groomed Tark to destroy the wicked. But when darkness pulls them deep into Aokigahara, known as Japan's suicide forest, Okiku's justice becomes blurred, and Tark is the one who will pay the price...

Breathtaking and haunting, Rin Chupeco's second novel is a chilling companion to her debut, The Girl from the Well.

A Nest of Nightmares

Paperbacks From Hell: Book 8

Lisa Tuttle

Table of Contents:

  • Bug House - (1980) - shortstory
  • Dollburger - (1973) - shortstory
  • Community Property - (1980) - shortstory
  • Flying to Byzantium - (1985) - novelette
  • Treading the Maze - (1981) - shortstory
  • The Horse Lord - (1977) - shortstory
  • The Other Mother - (1980) - novelette
  • Need - (1981) - shortstory
  • The Memory of Wood - (1982) - shortstory
  • A Friend in Need - (1981) - shortstory
  • Stranger in the House - (1972) - shortstory
  • Sun City - (1980) - shortstory
  • The Nest - (1983) - novelette

Relic

Pendergast: Book 1

Douglas Preston
Lincoln Child

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...

But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.

Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who-or what-is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?

The Tomb

Repairman Jack: Book 1

F. Paul Wilson

Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn't deal with appliances. He fixes situations - situations that too often land him in deadly danger. His latest fix is finding a stolen necklace which, unknown to him, is more than a simple piece of jewelry.

Some might say it's cursed, others might call it blessed. The quest leads Jack to a rusty freighter on Manhattan's West Side docks. What he finds in its hold threatens his sanity and the city around him. But worst of all, it threatens Gia's daughter Vicky, the last surviving member of a bloodline marked for extinction.

Note from the author:

Some of you who read pre-1998 editions of The Tomb have questioned (and rightfully so) how Legacies, so obviously a contemporary novel, could take place only months after The Tomb, which was definitely set in the mid 1980s. The answer is simple: I cheated. I changed The Tomb for the new 1998 edition.

You see, I never planned to bring Jack back. But when I did, I realized I'd either have to set his new stories in the eighties, or go back and change The Tomb. I chose the latter and removed all references that would moor The Tomb in a specific era. The 1998 edition is now what we authors like to call "the preferred text."

All the new Repairman Jack novels loop out from The Tomb and will weave their way back toward Nightworld. I don't know how many we'll end up with. When they stop being fun to write or when I notice I'm starting to repeat myself, I'll quit and move on to something else.

Summer of Night

Seasons of Horror: Book 1

Dan Simmons

In the summer of 1960 in Elm Haven, Illinois, a sinister being is stalking the town's children, and when a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the night, the townfolk know it marks the end of innocence.

What Moves the Dead

Sworn Soldier: Book 1

T. Kingfisher

A gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher."

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

The Keep

The Adversary Cycle: Book 1

F. Paul Wilson

"Something is murdering my men."

Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims.

When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore--who just happens to be Jewish--to shed some light on the mysterious happenings. And unbeknownst to anyone, there is another visitor on his way--a man who awoke from a nightmare and immediately set out to meet his destiny.

The battle has begun: On one side, the ultimate evil created by man, and on the other... the unthinkable, unstoppable, unknowing terror that man has inevitably awakened

Into the Drowning Deep

The Deep

Mira Grant

Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a "mockumentary" bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy.

Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.

Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves.

But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

The Monstrumologist

The Monstrumologist: Book 1

Rick Yancey

These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me... and the one who cursed me.

So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a doctor with a most unusual speciality: monster hunting. In the short time he has lived with the doctor, will has grown accustomed to his late callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, Will's world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagi. Now, will and the doctor must face the horror threatenning to overtake and consume our world before it is too late.

The Curse of the Wendigo

The Monstrumologist: Book 2

Rick Yancey

While attempting to disprove that Homo Vampiris, the vampire, could exist, Dr. Warthrop is asked by his former fiance to rescue her husband from the Wendigo, a ceature that starves even as it gorges itself on human flesh, which has snatched him in the Canadian wilderness. Although Warthrop also considers the Wendigo to be fictious, he relents and rescues her husband from death and starvation, and then sees the man transform into a Wendigo. Can the doctor and Will Henry hunt down the ultimate predator, who, like the legendary vampire, is neither living nor dead, whose hunger for human flesh is never satisfied? This second book in The Monstrumologist series explores the line between myth and reality, love and hate, genius and madness.

The Isle of Blood

The Monstrumologist: Book 3

Rick Yancey

When Dr. Warthrop goes hunting for the "Holy Grail of Monstrumology" with his eager new assistant, Arkwright, he leaves Will Henry in Victorian New York. Finally, Will can enjoy something that always seemed out of reach: a normal life with a real family. But part of Will can't let go of Dr. Warthrop, and when Arkwright returns, claiming the doctor is dead, Will is devastated - and not convinced.

Determined to discover the truth, Will travels to London, knowing that if he succeeds, he will be plunging into depths of horror worse than anything he has experienced so far. His journey takes him to Socotra, The Isle of Blood, where human beings are used to make nests and blood rains from the sky - and puts Will Henry's loyalty to the ultimate test.

The Final Descent

The Monstrumologist: Book 4

Rick Yancey

Will Henry has been through more than seems possible for a boy of fourteen. He's been on the brink of death on more than one occasion, he has gazed into hell - and hell has stared back at him, and known his face. But through it all, Dr Warthrop has been at his side.

When Dr. Wathrop fears that Will's loyalties may be shifting, he turns on Will with a fury, determined to reclaim his young apprentice's devotion. And so Will must face one of the most horrific creatures of his monstrumology career - and he must face it alone.

Over the course of one day, Will's life - and Pellinor Warthrop's destiny - will lie in balance. In the terrifying depths of the Monstrumarium, they will face a monster more terrible than any they could have imagined - and their fates will be decided.

Black Helicopters

Tinfoil Dossier: Book 2

CaitlĂ­n R. Kiernan

Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency's world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.

Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known. Two rival agencies stare across the Void at one another. Two sisters, the deadly, sickened products of experiments going back decades, desperately evade their hunters.

An invisible war rages at the fringes of our world, with unimaginable consequences and Lovecraftian horrors that ripple centuries into the future.

This edition of Caitlín R. Kiernan's Black Helicopters is an expanded and completed version of the World Fantasy Award-nominated novella of the same name.