Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man


Maynard WillsDavid Ian McKendry - 2020
    In the popular podcast Video Palace, Mark Cambria, aided by his girlfriend Tamra Wulff, investigated the origins of a series of esoteric white videotapes. Cambria went missing in pursuit of these tapes, but not before hearing whispers of an ominous figure called the Eyeless Man.Fascinated by the podcast and Cambria’s disappearance, Maynard Wills, PhD, a professor of folklore, embarks on his own investigation into the origins of the tapes and the Eyeless Man, who he believes has lurked in the dark corners of media culture and urban legends for at least seventy-five years. As part of his study, he has invited popular writers of horror and gothic fiction to share their own Eyeless Man stories, whether heard around the campfire or experienced themselves.Get swept away in this thrilling and terrifying collection of tales from contributors including: Bob DeRosa, Meirav Devash and Eddie McNamara, Owl Goingback, Brea Grant, Merrin J. McCormick, Rebekah and David Ian McKendry, Ben Rock, John Skipp, Graham Skipper, Gordon B. White, Tamra Wulff, and Mary Phillips-Sandy.

Suite 606


J.D. Robb - 2008
    RobbLieutenant Eve Dallas plunges into the violent aftermath of a ritualistic murder--and into the mind of an alleged witness who can't remember a thing to save his life."Love Endures" / Mary BlayneyInvestigates the connection between a ghost, a magic coin, and a deliberate deception that has kept two lovers apart for years."Cold Case" / Ruth Ryan LanganBrings a lost man out of a pounding storm and into the arms of a welcoming woman for a breathtaking twist of fate."Wayward Wizard" / Mary Kay McComasFollows a mother and son lost in the threads of history and an impaired wizard who must return them to their own world to fulfill his own destiny--in time.

Dark Celebrations


Calvin Demmer - 2020
    But sometimes, inhabitants of the dark arrive with the desire to disturb proceedings. Dark Celebrations is a collection of twelve short stories... and the holidays will never be the same.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Chronicles


Joe GentileMark Dawidziak - 2005
    For the first time ever, a monster collection of 26 new original Kolchak short fiction stories by noted authors from comics, horror fiction, and film! With the advent of the new Kolchak ABC TV show, Moonstone proudly announces new contemporary prose adventures of the original Kolchak, TV's first and foremost paranormal investigator! Plus all kinds of other cool stuff, like tales from Kolchak's untold past, monster huntings, noir thrillers, and even horror stories of more cerebral type!

October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween


Richard ChizmarJack Ketchum - 2000
    Brite * Rick Hautala * Steve Rasnic Tem * Elizabeth Engstrom * Thomas Ligotti * Gary A. Braunbeck * Jack Ketchum * Thomas F. Monteleone * Hugh B. Cave * Simon Clark * Christopher Golden * Ray Bradbury * Jack Ketchum * Alan M. Clark * Gahan Wilson * Paula Guran * John Shirley * Tom Piccirilli * Jack Cady * David B. Silva * Robert Morrish * William F. Nolan * Michael Cadnum * Richard Laymon * Douglas Clegg * Douglas E. Winter * Stanley Wiater * Caitlín R. Kiernan * Lewis Shiner * Yvonne Navarro * Tim Lebbon * Kim Newman * F. Paul Wilson * Owl Goingback * Dennis Etchison * Stephen Mark Rainey * Charles L. Grant * Kelly Laymon * Dominick Cancilla * Kristine Kathryn Rusch * Michael Marshall Smith * Wayne Allen Sallee * Ramsey Campbell * Ed Gorman * Stefan Dziemianowicz * Peter Crowther

The Dark Descent


David G. Hartwell - 1987
    Adopted by colleges across the country to be used in literature courses, The Dark Descent showcases some of the finest horror fiction ever written.Contents: Pt. 1 - The Color of EvilThe Reach / Stephen KingEvening Primrose / John CollierThe Ash-Tree / M. R. JamesThe New Mother / Lucy CliffordThere's a Long, Long Trail A-winding / Russell KirkThe Call of Cthulhu / H. P. LovecraftThe Summer People / Shirley JacksonThe Whimper of Whipped Dogs / Harlan EllisonYoung Goodman Brown / Nathaniel HawthorneMr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Crowd / Ray BradburyThe Autopsy / Michael SheaJohn Charrington's Wedding / E. NesbitSticks / Karl Edward WagnerLarger Than Oneself / Robert AickmanBelsen Express / Fritz LeiberYours Truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert BlochIf Damon Comes / Charles L. GrantVandy, Vandy / Manly Wade WellmanPt. 2 - The Medusa in the ShieldThe Swords / Robert AickmanThe Roaches / Thomas M. DischBright Segment / Theodore SturgeonDread / Clive BarkerThe Fall of the House of Usher / Edgar Allan PoeThe Monkey / Stephen KingWithin the Walls of Tyre / Michael BishopThe Rats in the Walls / H. P. LovecraftSchalken the Painter / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Yellow Wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins GilmanA Rose for Emily / William FaulknerHow Love Came to Professor Guildea / Robert HichensBorn of Man and Woman / Richard MathesonMy Dear Emily / Joanna RussYou Can Go Now / Dennis EtchisonThe Rocking-Horse Winner / D. H. LawrenceThree Days / Tanith LeeGood Country People / Flannery O'ConnorMackintosh Willy / Ramsey CampbellThe Jolly Corner / Henry JamesPt. 3 - A Fabulous Formless Darkness Smoke Ghost / Fritz LeiberSeven American Nights / Gene WolfeThe Signal-Man / Charles DickensCrouch End / Stephen KingNight-Side / Joyce Carol OatesSeaton's Aunt / Walter de la MareClara Militch / Ivan TurgenevThe Repairer of Reputations / Robert W. ChambersThe Beckoning Fair One / Oliver OnionsWhat Was It? / Fitz-James O'BrienThe Beautiful Stranger / Shirley JacksonThe Damned Thing / Ambrose BierceAfterward / Edith WhartonThe Willows / Algernon BlackwoodThe Asian Shore / Thomas M. DischThe Hospice / Robert AickmanA Little Something for Us Tempunauts / Philip K. Dick

Sour Candy


Kealan Patrick Burke - 2015
    They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat together overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories


Joyce Carol OatesWilliam Carlos Williams - 1992
    Why, she asks, when writers such as Samuel Clemens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Saul Bellow, and John Updike have among them written hundreds of short stories, do anthologists settle on the same two or three titles by each author again and again? Isn't the implicit promise of an anthology that it will, or aspires to, present something different, unexpected? In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with many different, unexpected gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some selections simply can't be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving's Rip Van Winkle, Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, and Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. But alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain's Cannibalism in the Cars, a story that reveals a darker side to his humor (That morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to...a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy). From Melville come the juxtaposed tales The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, of which Oates says, Only Melville could have fashioned out of 'real' events...such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction. From Flannery O'Connor we find A Late Encounter With the Enemy, and from John Cheever, The Death of Justina, one of Cheever's own favorites, though rarely anthologized. The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master. This then is a book of surprises, a fascinating portrait of American short fiction, as filtered through the sensibility of a major modern writer.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories


Karen Russell - 2013
    ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Vampires in the lemon grove --Reeling for the Empire --Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --Proving up --Barn at the end of our term --Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --New veterans --Graveless doll of Eric Mutis

The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories


Kevin Brockmeier - 2021
    Kevin Brockmeier's fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive--or, as it happens, not to be.

Short & Shivery: Thirty Chilling Tales


Robert D. San Souci - 1987
    Those who are found the next day, if they are still alive, will have gone mad.”  Chills and thrills to make your flesh crawl with fear! Turn the lights down low and grab your favorite reading chair. But first, you’d better check behind you. . . .   Ghosts, monsters, murders, and madmen! These thirty stories have been collected for your reading displeasure from all over the globe, and represent the world’s best scary stories and frightening folktales, featuring famous authors such as Washington Irving and the Brothers Grimm. Welcome to a chilling world of hair-raising tales!

Terror in the Shadows: Volume II


Emma Salam - 2019
    A party girl’s addiction gives birth to a monster within. Man’s best friend must fend off a woman’s greatest nightmare…Scare Street is proud to present eleven chilling tales of the supernatural, in one monstrous volume. Horror authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy, and many more unite to bring you a terrifying collection of short stories, each one guaranteed to haunt your dreams. And each one more chilling than the last.Once you start reading you won’t be able to stop. Because when these authors sink their teeth into you, it’s already too late.The only way to escape from these nightmares… is to wake up screaming.

Like a Charm


Karin SlaughterPeter Robinson - 2004
    In Like A Charm, the cream of British and American crime writers combine for a must-have collection. From nineteenth-century Georgia, where the bracelet is forged in fire, to wartime Leeds, a steam train across Europe, the violent backstreets of 1980s Scotland, present-day London, a Manhattan taxi, the Mojave desert and back to Georgia, each writer weaves a gripping story of murder, betrayal and intrigue.

Phantoms: Haunting Tales from Masters of the Genre


Marie O'Regan - 2018
    CareyThe brightest names in horror showcase a ghastly collection of eighteen ghost stories that will have you watching over your shoulder, heart racing at every bump in the night. In “My Life in Politics” by M.R. Carey the spirits of those without a voice refuse to let a politician keep them silent. In “The Adjoining Room” by A.K. Benedict a woman finds her hotel neighbour trapped and screaming behind a door that doesn’t exist. George Mann’s “The Restoration” sees a young artist become obsessed with returning a forgotten painting to its former glory, even if it kills her. And Laura Purcell’s “Cameo” shows that the parting gift of a loved one can have far darker consequences than ever imagined…These unsettling tales from the some of the best modern horror writers will send a chill down your spine like someone has walked over your grave…or perhaps just woken up in their own.

New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird


Paula GuranLaird Barron - 2011
    Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gamers. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history—written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread—remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the early twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction—bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters—eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.