They don't know each other and they don't know how they got there. Their only refuge from the heat and sun is the ghost town shimmering on the horizon.Once inside the ghost town they become pawns in a twisted game. They must figure out the clues, the connection they all have to each other, and the rules of this game if they have any hope of surviving.

    We attach no manacles to the word truth to bind it to our visions. Instead we free it to find its own way through the minds of the two dozen writers who have shared their vision of the future in either sensitively written allegorical tales such as Relics by Louise Marley, a woman who grew up bucking hay in Montana and moved on to a talented musical performer and successful novelist; or the raw humor of Adam Troy-Castro in his Q & A, which takes on the verbal veracity of Donald J. Trump. Jim Wright (of Stonekettle Station) imagines Trump giving the Gettysburg Address. Blaze Ward, Daniel Kimmel, Janka Hobbs and I explore dystopias. Marleen Barr and Adam Troy-Castro envision humorous, kinky, and scatological endings. What can I say? It rocks.

    Includes three previously unpublished stories, and two stories which have been filmed for "The Hunger" TV series: 'The Secret Shih-Tan' and 'Anais.'

    His name was Death and Hell was following close behind...Book zero of the America Falls series is an action-packed novella that tells the story of a mysterious traveler with a hook hand who travels the post-apocalyptic eastern states of America spreading a message of hope about 'The Cities' and the budding rebirth of the United States.It isn't always smooth travelling at the end of the world though, and when he stumbles across a gang of cannibals out for the blood of the innocent, he must decide whether to interrupt his mission and risk death at the hands of psychopaths to help someone in need.

    R. James is best remembered for his ghost stories which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature. One of James' most important achievements was to redefine the ghost story for the new century by dispensing with many of the formal gothic trappings of his predecessors, and replacing them with more realistic contemporary settings.According to James, a story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself: 'If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'"

    In “Vortex,” by Gregory Benford, astronauts find a once thriving microbial lifeform that carpets the caves of Mars dying off. A code monkey tracks down the vain creator of a pernicious software virus that people jack cerebrally in “RedKing,” by Craig DeLancey. In “Number Nine Moon,” by Alex Irvine, illicit scavengers on Mars are on a rescue mission to save themselves after one of their team members dies. A young girl’s thirst for vengeance becomes a struggle for survival when she is swallowed by a gigantic sea creature on an alien planet in “Of the Beast in the Belly,” by C.W. Johnson. In “The Seventh Gamer,” by Gwyneth Jones, a writer immerses herself into a MMORPG community to search for characters being played by real aliens from other worlds. A woman armed with a rifle stalks a herd of cloned wooly mammoths in British Columbia in “Chasing Ivory,” by Ted Kosmatka. In “Fieldwork,” by Shariann Lewitt, a volcanologist struggles with her research on Europa where both her mother and grandmother suffered dire consequences. A daughter pays homage to her mother with mega-engineering projects to deal with climate change over eons in “Seven Birthdays,” by Ken Liu. In “The Visitor from Taured,” by Ian R. MacLeod, a cosmologist in the near future is obsessed with proving his theory of multiverses. The citizens of a small town on a “Jackaroo” planet object to a corporation placing a radio telescope near local alien artifacts in “Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was,” by Paul McAuley. And finally, in “Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee,” by Alastair Reynolds, a graduate student defends her dissertation on a solar anomaly that threatens humanity.

    Jerry’s Stahl’s perverse, yet often touching tales, many of which first appeared in publications ranging from Playboy to the Pushcart Prize to Best Erotic Fiction, plumb the depths of eccentric romance, sex-starved adolescence, mid-life crisis, and family dysfunction. From a teenager’s tryst with a recently widowed middle-aged woman on an airplane, to a dissatisfied dentist’s attempt to find freedom on the road with a much younger woman, all the way to an intensely erotic love affair between an ex-junkie and an ex-circus midget with a sexual obsession with vegetables, this collection never fails to arouse and surprise. With a disarmingly immediate prose style, Stahl finds great eroticism, humor, and humanity in the wildest of encounters.

    Also included are stories of ghost animals, haunted houses, vengeful spirits, guardian angels and much, much more. Many of the stories you are about to read will warm your heart, while others will leave you in a cold sweat. Sit back and relax. Make sure you are locked in safe and sound as you settle in for a scary read. Oh, and if you hear a strange noise in the hallway, don't worry, it's probably just the house settling. Well, maybe not.

    The Man Who Had No Idea (1978)The Black Cat (1976)The Santa Claus Compromise (1974)The Vengeance of Hera or, Monogamy Triumphant (1980)Concepts (1978)The Apartment Next to the War (1975)The Foetus (1980)The Fire Began to Burn the Stick, the Stick Began to Beat the Dog (1976)At the Pleasure Centre (1974)The Grown-Up (1981)How to Fly (1977)Planet of the Rapes (1977)The Revelation (1980)Pyramids for Minnesota (1974)Josie and the Elevator: A Cautionary Tale (1980)An Italian Lesson (1982)Understanding Human Behavior (1982)

    The author has put together promising stories for every alphabet that are guaranteed to scare you out of your wits and question the presence of the supernatural.Pick up the book as the night crawls by for feeling those chills creeping up your skin and your heart beating out of your chest.

    All that stood in their way was a man on Deald's World named Benno Tallant, about as lousy a candidate for hero as one could imagine: junkie, looter, coward, betrayer. So the retreating Earth forces made him the last man on Deald's World. They surgically implanted a cataclysmic bomb in his body, turned him loose, and let the Kyben hunt him down. SEE BENNO RUN. RUN, BENNO, RUN LIKE HELL.

    A locked front door is to an adult what a duvet it is to a child. Once the key is turned in the lock, and once the child is safely snuggled under the duvet, the monsters are kept at bay.Except they’re not. A closed door won’t keep out the boogeymen… And a blanket won’t keep away the monsters. The safety of our cosy homes is a lie. There are bad people out there, who want to do bad things to you in the dead of night, and a locked door isn’t going to stop them. There are bad things already lurking IN our homes; monsters that live in the shadows and in closets, just waiting for you to close your eyes at night.From the real to the supernatural, this collection of stories, held together with a wraparound story, explores all manners of evil that can invade our homes at night.Lock your doors, bolt your windows and sleep with the light on, because THEY are coming to get you….

    After watching it, one of them vanishes...A heart transplant recipient gets much more than he bargained for when he digs into his donor's sinister past...Mourning the death of their son, a young couple is plunged into madness after encountering something otherworldly in the wilderness...DREAMS IN BLACK STATIC is a collection of eight terrifying stories by Ambrose Ibsen, author of The Haunting of Beacon Hill and Asylum. The tales included are:"Me and Mr. Ray" **"Decatur Road" **"Dreams in Black Static" **"Distortional Addict" **"Trim" **"Subterrane Dream" **"Orchard""The Uncanny" **** = Appearing in print for the first time

    Desperate to win back his father’s approval, the boy hatches a plan involving his father’s love of slasher films. If the boy can become a real-life slasher right out of the movies, it just might be an opportunity to make his father proud again, no matter what the cost.In Iain Rob Wright’s “The Reckoning,” the year is 2035 and people live inside their individual worlds. Amelie’s ‘pod’ is a marvel of tech-centric existence, taking care of her every need. But when a serial killer that the press have named ’The Reckoning’ comes calling for Amelie, her futuristic living space turns deadly.In William Malmborg's "Billy's Blade," a budding serial killer bites off more than he can chew when he tries to stab Stacy Collins to death on the Prairie Path. A ruthless investigative journalist, Stacy goes on the offensive, goading the killer with unflattering articles, all in hopes of sparking a second encounter. Will Billy and Stacy meet again?Jeff Strand’s “Twentieth Anniversary Screening” recounts the grisly events surrounding the terrible slasher flick THE ROOFER, remembered only because an obsessed fan tried to reenact the murders as they played out on the screen. When the same theater shows the film twenty years later, will the warnings that this is a really, really bad idea be justified?

    From the painted faces of a child's nightmare to discovering what we really put in our bodies in the name of health. Here are 10 tales to read with the light on.TALE #1 - "Roll up, Roll up"TALE #2 - "Late Shift"TALE #3 - "You call that music?"TALE #4 - "Whose face is this anyway?"TALE #5 - "Pink Bow"TALE #6 - "Careful what you wish for"TALE #7 - "Recycling can be hazardous to your health"TALE #8 - "Mommy's little soldier"TALE #9 - "Trick or Treat"TALE #10 - "You are what you eat"