It didn't give you the date and it didn't give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die." Machine of Death tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out. Featuring stories by: * Randall Munroe* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw* Tom Francis* Camille Alexa* Erin McKean* James L. Sutter* Douglas J. Lane* and many others.Featuring illustrations by: * Kate Beaton* Kazu Kibuishi* Aaron Diaz* Jeffrey Brown* Scott C.* Roger Langridge* Karl Kerschl* Cameron Stewart* and many others

    None more so than that of its founding father Horace Whisker.Martin Parcell is an ex-journalist with shattered dreams of an author’s career. Sidelined through a car crash’s injuries, he finds himself forced through governmental austerity measures having to take a custodians position at a private mental health hospital. A writer with undoubted talent, but an author without a story.He begins his new job deep in depression and drowning under waves of his lost dreams. On his first night he meets Jimmy, his elderly supervisor who has spent most of his life within the hospital walls. Jimmy is nearing retirement age and desperate to rest his weary bones. Jimmy offers Martin a way out for both of them, access to the background histories and stories of the hospital’s patients. A collection of 13 tales from the darkly disturbed minds of the residents of Blackwater Heights.As the long night unwinds, Martin finds himself deeply troubled as the tales unfold before him and threaten to drag him down into their insanity.

    Unfortunately, the way home isn't as clear-cut as he'd hoped and he's forced to turn to Aria, his GPS, for an alternate route. However, Aria has something far more sinister in mind...

    They unlock opportunities for wealth and travel, but also create incredible chaos--uprooting populations and blighting landscapes. Work on or around the rails leads to unwelcome discoveries and, in light of the Mythos, dire implications in the spread of the rail system as a whole. A certain path to uncovering unwelcome truths about the universe is to venture beyond our own "placid island of ignorance" and encounter foreign cultures. The Orient Express serves as the perfect vehicle for such excursions, designed as a bridge between West and East. Movement into mystery forms the central action for many stories in this volume. The only limitation placed upon writers for this collection was that their works somehow involve the Orient Express and the Mythos. The last warning whistle has blown, and we are getting underway. Have your tickets at the ready and settle in for a journey across unexpected landscapes to a destination that--well, we'll just let you see for yourself when you arrive. We promise this though: murder will be the least of your problems on this trip aboard the Orient Express!

    ValdemarThe Black CatThe Fall of the House of UsherSilence - A FableThe Masque of the Red DeathThe Cask of AmontilladoThe Imp of the PerverseThe Island of the FayThe AssignationThe Pit and the PendulumThe Premature BurialThe Domain of ArnheimLandor's CottageWilliam WilsonThe Tell-tale HeartBereniceEleonora

    Lovecraft, the most-fevered mind of 20th century horror and weirdness! These weird tales blend horror, science-fiction and fantasy to weave stories of darkness and terror that will alternately leave you checking dark spaces for hidden horrors and wondering at the nature of reality itself. From the horror/mystery of The Altar in the Hills to the private confessions and revelations of one of mankind's most brilliant minds in Through the Ether, these seven stories bring with them Old Gods, strange twists and interesting characters that will both surprise and delight fans of horror fiction.

    This collection of delightfully twisted, supernatural short stories will captivate your imagination and entertain your darker side. A monster with a love of bakery, an old woman living in fear with her ex-con nephew, a widow with only one chance left, and a demon with a dark and powerful heart, are some of the characters wrestling with their darker selves in this enjoyable collection.

    Edward McNally: Captain Wil has command of his own ship, the respect of his crew, and his wife is expecting their first child. But at sea, the winds always become calm just before the storm breaks.The Smell of Death by Tara West: Maggie's unusual powers bring new threats to her already troubled childhood.Safe by Emma Jameson: In Victorian London, a grave robber makes a nice living off the dead, until he opens the wrong crypt.Soulfully Sweet by Shéa MacLeod: As if helping the living isn’t enough of a pain in her divine hindquarters, Branwen (former goddess of love and beauty) is stuck helping the dead on All Hallow’s Eve.May I Go Play? by Heather Marie Adkins: Micah inherits a southern mansion where ancestors long dead relive their violent deaths. And now, they want company...Blehdward, the Vampire who Couldn't Sparkle by Pj Jones: Blehdward desperately wants to fit in with the cool vamps. If only he could learn how to sparkle.Franscesca by Alan Nayes: Break a promise to a feiticeira and you will live to regret it.Soul Eaters by R.G. Porter: Kaitlyn never believed in the existence of other worlds. Now she's in the middle of one where humans aren't the hunters but the hunted.The Eclective is a group of authors dedicated to the premise that The Story is The Thing, and classifications of genre are mostly a matter for bookshelves. While the following stories share a "Haunting" theme, they might variously be filed as Horror, Paranormal, Fantasy, YA, etc., or anything else. Our idea is that the story itself is more important than whatever label somebody feels like giving it, and by bringing our work together in collections like this one, we hope readers may find a story they might like. Even if it is not in "their" genre.

    Murder, death and the dead. Family, friends, love and relationships. Food and eating. Fear, dread, and the unknown. Crime and punishment. The human body. Lock the doors, turn up the lights, and take a deep breath. A series of brief, horrible moments await.

     "PAPERCLIP" by Kenneth Hite. "A Spider With Barbed-Wire Legs" by Davide Mana. "Le Pain Maudit" by Jeff C. Carter. "Cracks in the Door" by Jason Mical. "Ganzfeld Gate" by Cody Goodfellow. "Utopia" by David Farnell. "The Perplexing Demise of Stooge Wilson" by David J. Fielding. "Dark" by Daniel Harms."Morning in America" by James Lowder. "Boxes Inside Boxes" and "The Mirror Maze" by Dennis Detwiller. "A Question of Memory" by Greg Stolze. "Pluperfect" by Ray Winninger. "Friendly Advice" by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. "Passing the Torch" by Adam Scott Glancy. "The Lucky Ones" by John Scott Tynes. "Syndemic" and an introduction by Shane Ivey. These stories are recommended for mature readers. Excerpted from the introduction: We know a program called Delta Green really existed. You can find a couple of references to it in documents uncovered by Freedom of Information Act requests. Delta Green was a psychological operations unit in World War II, created to take advantage of the bizarre occult beliefs of Axis leaders. The public documents, which may have been released with the name unredacted by mistake, don’t say whether it had any success. The OSS was shut down after the war. Many of its people helped launch the CIA in 1947. We can only speculate whether the OSS’s lessons from Delta Green informed the CIA’s notorious psychological operations in the coming decades.  Conspiracy theorists have done more than speculate. Delta Green came back as a secret project to track down Nazis after the war, they say. Delta Green brought federal agents, spies, and special forces together for missions too secret even for the CIA. Delta Green was the precursor and rival to Majestic-12, the U.S. government conspiracy that allied itself with aliens after Roswell. Delta Green fights otherworldly monsters and evil sorcerers under the cover of the Global War on Terror. Once you climb into the rabbit hole, the fall never ends. In this book we turn up tales from the rabbit hole: Delta Green case histories rendered as short stories. They begin in the Dust Bowl, with a Naval intelligence unit supposedly called “P4” and memories of the abandoned New England town of Innsmouth (another bottomless well of conspiracy theories). They look at the days after World War II when secret agents pursued Nazis all over Europe, the early CIA attempted its first infamous schemes, and anticommunist witch-hunts seized on American terrors back home. They bring us through the Cold War desperation of the Seventies and Eighties, when America was shocked by its own crimes and Delta Green allegedly went underground again. And they come to the present day, and a Delta Green divided after it rebuilt itself in the secret government—but many old outlaws refused to trust the new order.

    Here are stories culled from hundreds of writing programs such as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Johns Hopkins and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf—as well as a complete list of contact information for these programs. This collection showcases tomorrow’s literary stars: Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, David Benioff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, Jennifer Vanderbes, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. The best new American voices are heard here first.

    Fan. Author. Editor. Creative force. He has been an integral part of the field for longer than most of his readers have been alive. Earlier this year, he kindly agreed to put together a MEGAPACK® of his short stories, so here, then, is a selection of early works by one of the all-time greats. Included are:ALAREEBIRDS OF A FEATHERBLAZE OF GLORYDELIVERY GUARANTEEDTHE DESSICATORTHE HAPPY UNFORTUNATETHE HUNTED HEROESTHE IRON STARTHE ISOLATIONISTSTHE LONELY ONETHE MAN WHO CAME BACKNEUTRAL PLANETOZYMANDIASTHE PAIN PEDDLERSTHE PLEASURE OF THEIR COMPANYPOINT OF FOCUSPOSTMARK GANYMEDEPRIME COMMANDMENTTHE SONGS OF SUMMERSPACEROGUETHERE WAS AN OLD WOMANTHE WOMAN YOU WANTEDVALLEY BEYOND TIMEWE KNOW WHO WE AREIf you enjoy this ebook, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more of the 300+ volumes in this series, covering adventure, historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, ghost stories, science fiction -- and much, much more![Version 1.4]

    A treasured source used by almost all the significant writers in the American pulp tradition — H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and many others — it endures as a work of remarkable power and one of the most chillingly original books in the genre.This collection reprints all the supernatural stories from The King in Yellow, including the grisly "Yellow Sign," the disquieting "Repairer of Reputations," the tender "Demoiselle d'Ys," and others. Robert W. Chambers' finest stories from other sources have also been added, such as the thrilling "Maker of Moons" and "The Messenger." In addition, an unusual pleasure awaits those who know Chambers only by his horror stories: three of his finest early biological science-fiction fantasies from In Search of the Unknown appear here as well.

    These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction.But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie, Tessa, and Brenna have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website merryfates.com. Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author's comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors.So, are you curious now?

    Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.