Book picks similar to
Dig Ten Graves by Heath Lowrance
horror
short-stories
unread-anthologies
3-star
This Game Has No Loyalty
Brooklyn June - 2010
It quickly became the most sought out employment for street kids who learned how to distribute, package and sell it for a profit. What no one anticipated was the havoc and destruction it would bring to their hood because of the unlimited potential of stacks of money they stood to make. Murder, betrayal and disloyalty surfaced without prejudice and took young lives almost immediately. Welcome to Bushwick and Bed-Stuy Brooklyn where Junior catapults you into life in the drug dealer game and takes you on an up close and personal voyage that will have you smelling gun smoke and running for your life. Being a kingpin in a hood you're not from is usually unheard of but for Junior it wasn't. He's the boss of Baptiste projects and believes there are two reasons he's avoided drama from the locals. For one, he hired dudes from Baptiste to help him and the second was because his girl Shondra was born and raised in Baptiste and had mad love and respect in her hood. Junior enjoyed getting money relatively with no consequences but nothing remains the same for long. He gets his first taste of disloyalty from within his camp and that compromises his once solidly run drug empire. Junior's first instinct is impulsive and he rushes to deal with the betrayal with lethal intentions, but his premeditated move proves to be the wrong move and he finds himself in a deadly gun battle with KB and his crew. He barely escapes and flees Baptiste to Bed-Stuy to plan his next strategic move. He turns to Shondra to give him inside information on what is happening in Baptiste in his absence while he temporarily turns over the reins of his business to one of his trusted workers who was with him during his gunfight with KB's crew. Shondra finds out some information that will help him eliminate his enemies but it jeopardizes her relationship with her best friend Gloria. While Junior is plotting his revenge he runs into Muffin, a girlfriend from his past. He decides to use her as a part of his team but their emotions cause romantic turmoil that eventually leads to a love triangle although he tells Muffin he's in a relationship with Shondra. Muffin plays as if she respects the boundaries placed in front of her but has her own plans on taking Shondra out of the picture so she can claim her place as Junior's main girl. Junior's goal is to change the way the drug game is played but after being set up he's on a mission to stay alive and make everyone involved pay for their disloyalty. He also tries to find a balance between his love for Shondra and his business/love relationship he developed with Muffin. When Shondra finds out about Junior's affair with Muffin her anger is temporarily derailed when they find themselves in the middle of a deadly shootout. The massacre affects everyone's life in a dramatic way, spilling all secrets out in the open. Junior and Muffin's infidelity is revealed, Gloria discovers Shondra's disloyalty to her and KB's life hangs in the balance. Junior's empire, life and relationship are at stake as he executes his deadly plan of revenge. One Brooklyn neighborhood tells a gangster love story that is fueled by murder, betrayal, unfaithfulness, revenge and remarkably, love. To live the so called drug life, don;t try to find loyalty in something you believe in if you are not willing to commit to it completely.
Welcome to the Funhouse
Kelly Brocklehurst - 2021
With twelve grisly stories of coming-of-age terror, carnival cruelty and fairground frights, this collection brings together the best and most exciting talents in the horror community. Roll up! with the following stories:"Mirrors" by Robin Grieve"Candy Apple Smiles" by Christopher Robertson"The Cyclone Sisters' Travelling Circus" by Angela Sylvaine"Anna and Abby" by L. Pine"The Prop" by Nikki R. Leigh"The Viperess of Las Cruces" by C.W. Blackwell"The Golden Tickets" by Roxie Voorhees"Dance With Us" by Kelly Brocklehurst"No Strings" by Jamie Stewart"Family Outing" by Briana Morgan"Mirrored" by Dave Musson"Smile at All the Good Times We Had" by Spencer HamiltonWith a foreword from the editors.
The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery
Justin Richards - 2012
It was featured in the episode "The Angels Take Manhattan", with The Doctor reading it.The story of "The Angels Take Manhattan" is formed in The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Story.Synopsis:On some days, New York is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.This was one of the other days…Melody Malone, owner and sole employee of the Angel Detective Agency, has an unexpected caller. It’s movie star Rock Railton, and he thinks someone is out to kill him. When he mentions the ‘kiss of the Angel’, she takes the case. Angels are Melody’s business…At the press party for Railton’s latest movie, studio owner Max Kliener invites Melody to the film set of their next blockbuster. He’s obviously spotted her potential, and Melody is flattered when Kliener asks her to become a star. But the cost of fame, she’ll soon discover, is greater than anyone could possibly imagine.Will Melody be able to escape Kliener’s dastardly plan – before the Angels take Manhattan?
Three Moments of an Explosion
China Miéville - 2009
Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.
Showdown
Dan Moren - 2019
But Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic knows nothing ever goes to plan. So, when a duplicitous bounty hunter lives up to his reputation, Kovalic’s ready—just maybe not ready enough.Now he and his team must get offworld, before their enemies catch up with them…
The Six Fingers of Time
R.A. Lafferty - 1960
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The Complete Crime Stories
James M. Cain - 1936
A nineteen-year-old hobo just starting to ride the rails, he is hiding in the coal car when the railroad detective comes through. They get into a scuffle, and Lucky’s hand finds a railroad spike. Before he knows it, he has smashed the investigator’s head and shoved him out of the car. If he hurries, if he’s lucky, he will get back to Los Angeles in time to establish an alibi, burn his clothes, and avoid the electric chair. But as Lucky will discover, the deadliest threat is lurking within his own mind. “Dead Man” is just one of the outstanding stories included in this volume. The author of some of the most hard-boiled prose ever written, James M. Cain understood fear in all its forms—and knew better than anyone the terror of a killer on the run.
Breach of Peace
Daniel B. Greene - 2021
Evidence points to a rebel group trying to stab fear into the very heart of the empire. Inspector Khlid begins a harrowing hunt for those responsible, but when a larger conspiracy comes to light, she struggles to trust even the officers around her.
Randomize
Andy Weir - 2019
The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house—unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
Black Cherry
Doug TenNapel - 2007
The priest tells Eddie that the body was stolen from his monastery by the Mafia. Father McHugh is accompanied by a beautiful woman Eddie swears looks just like a stripper he once fell in love with named Black Cherry.
Peacock's Tale: A Tartan Noir Murder Mystery (Peacock Johnson Scottish Mystery Series Book 1)
Stuart David - 2015
Peacock’s wife thinks he did it, the police think he did it, even Frank McAlpine said he did it, moments before he died. But Peacock knows he’s innocent, and he knows he’s going to work out who really killed Frank to clear his name. But commiting crimes are more in Peacock’s line of work, he doesn’t have the first clue about how to solve one. Luckily, though, he knows a man who does, a man who owes him a favour. A second Scottish noir writer, Ian Rankin, has featured Peacock as the main villain in one of his bestselling Rebus novels- A Question of Blood. And Peacock feels he was somewhat misrepresented, made out to be much more of a hardened criminal than he actually is. He’d been planning to seek compensation from Rankin, on a massive scale, but now he sees an opportunity for Ian to make things good. If Rankin can use his detective skills to work out who actually killed Frank McAlpine then Peacock is willing to drop the action for libel. The only questions are, will Rankin agree. And is he up to the job.
I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories
William Gay - 2002
Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls. Mining that same fertile soil, his debut collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, brings together thirteen stories charting the pathos of interior lives. Among the colorful people readers meet are: old man Meecham, who escapes from his nursing home only to find his son has rented their homestead to "white trash"; Quincy Nell Qualls, who not only falls in love with the town lothario but, pregnant, faces an inescapable end when he abandons her; Finis and Doneita Beasley, whose forty-year marriage is broken up by a dead dog; and Bobby Pettijohn -- awakened in the night by a search party after a body is discovered in his back woods. William Gay expertly sets these conflicted characters against lush backcountry scenery and defies our moral logic as we grow to love them for the weight of their human errors.
Strange Weather
Joe Hill - 2017
. . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in Aloft.On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. Rain explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.In Loaded, a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016
John Joseph AdamsMaria Dahvana Headley - 2016
Valente, Dexter Palmer and others KAREN JOY FOWLER, guest editor, is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and has won numerous Nebula and World Fantasy awards. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the best-selling editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and Wastelands. He is the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare and is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new science fiction/fantasy novel imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Table of Contents:"Meet Me in Iram" by Sofia Samatar"The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link"Interesting Facts" by Adam Johnson"Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente"The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary" by Kij Johnson"By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang"The Mushroom Queen" by Liz Ziemska"The Daydreamer by Proxy" by Dexter Palmer"Tea Time" by Rachel Swirsky"Headshot" by Julian Mortimer Smith"The Duniazát" by Salman Rushdie"No Placeholder for You, My Love" by Nick Wolven"The Thirteen Mercies" by Maria Dahvana Headley"Lightning Jack’s Last Ride" by Dale Bailey"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman"Rat Catcher’s Yellows" by Charlie Jane Anders"The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History" by Sam J. Miller"Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson"Ambiguity Machines: an Examination" by Vandana Singh"The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang
The Dark Dark
Samantha Hunt - 2017
An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.