The first story in this collection has been adapted to film (Dark Water, Walter Salles), and another, "Adrift" is currently in production with Dimension Films.

    She sounds like me. Now she's trying to take my place.Liz Kendall wouldn't hurt a fly. She's a gentle woman devoted to bringing up her kids in the right way, no matter how hard times get.But there's another side to Liz - one which is dark and malicious. A version of her who will do anything to get her way, no matter how extreme or violent.And when this other side of her takes control, the consequences are devastating.The only way Liz can save herself and her family is if she can find out where this new alter-ego has come from, and how she can stop it.

    Banding together to survive, they soon discover that there is something far older and far crueler waiting for them in the woods – something that doesn’t want them to escape.As they plumb the depths of this forest that has seemingly swallowed them whole, haunted by ghosts figurative and literal, they come to understand the nature of the ancient cosmic horror that lies dead and dreaming in a lake in the center of the woods. As one among them is transformed through his own desperation into an agent of this dread, formless horror, the ones that remain must fight back to survive as they explore the dead towns and endless sprawls of trees, rivers and campgrounds deep in the Barrens.Steadily picked off one by one by this malevolent force and their turned friend, hope finally comes for the survivors in the form of their respective bonds to the forest itself – one a long-buried secret, the other an uninvited connection that allows one of the friends to see further than she ever could before. Together, their fight to finally escape twill take them to the heart of the woods and the secrets buried there, but only one of them will make it out alive.

    There's a heatwave on and people cannot turn their lights out or switch their appliances off. Then the terrible news breaks. In the city morgue, the dead are waking up...

    After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself–and his young family.A psychological thriller in the tradition of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History–with shades of The Exorcist–the smart and suspenseful A Good and Happy Child leaves you questioning the things you remember and frightened of the things you’ve forgotten.From the Hardcover edition.

    But something sinister lurks beneath the soil of the old estate.After heiress and current owner Caitlin Chaisson is witness to her husband’s stunning betrayal at her birthday party, she tries to take her own life in the mansion’s cherished gazebo. Instead, the blood she spills awakens dark forces in the ground below. Chaos ensues and by morning her husband has vanished without a trace and his mistress has gone mad.Nova, daughter to Spring House’s groundskeeper, has always suspected that something malevolent haunts the old place, and in the aftermath of the birthday party she enlists Caitlin’s estranged best friend, Blake, to help her get to the bottom of it. The pair soon realizes that the vengeance enacted by this sinister and otherworldly force comes at a terrible price.

    Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted - four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion...