One in the morning. Three people—a couple and their child—hurry out the door, but it’s too late for them. As the virtuosic and terrifying opening scene of Broken River unfolds, a spectral presence seems to be watching with cold and mysterious interest. Soon the house lies abandoned, and years later a new family moves in.Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl’s infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother. As the ensemble cast grows to include Louis, a hapless salesman in a carpet warehouse who is haunted by his past, and Sam, a young woman newly reunited with her jailbird brother, the seemingly unrelated crime that opened the story becomes ominously relevant.Hovering over all this activity looms a gradually awakening narrative consciousness that watches these characters lie to themselves and each other, unleashing forces that none of them could have anticipated and that put them in mortal danger. Broken River is a cinematic, darkly comic, and sui generis psychological thriller that could only have been written by J. Robert Lennon.

    Investigations into brutal random murders on the California freeways dramatically touch the lives of a presidential aspirant, an aging movie star, and a brilliant scientist with a deadly secret.

    What if the devil on your shoulder could actually come out and play? Voices in my Head is just that. Meet Mikey, the sweetest five-year-old you've ever met, and his psychotic dark side Michael. When his mother changes his life forever Michael comes out to play.

    With the right connections and with the right amount of money you can run drugs, smuggle people, commit murder, and do much worse.Felix and Marta came to Mexico to film a documentary on illegal immigration. When Marta suddenly goes missing, Felix must find his lost love in the small border town. A dangerous place housing corrupt cops, borderline maniacs, and something much more worse than drug gangs, something to do with a strange Mexican food cart…From Shane McKenzie, one of the most imaginative new voices in horror comes a south of the border Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

    He gathers his wits and calls emergency services. Despite a torrential thunderstorm, Sheriff's deputies, the Fire Department, and an ambulance all respond quickly. But there's little they can do. The victims are not only dead, they are long dead. The snoop invites the emergency workers into his garage, out of the rain, to await the arrival of the coroner and the funeral home staff, who will take his neighbors away. The lightning flashes... The thunder rolls... And the setting inspires the police, firefighters, and paramedics to pass the time by telling stories, both thrilling and chilling - and you are invited to join them. In Seven For The Slab, Rondo award nominee Doug Lamoreux spins seven eerie tales of terror and mystery into one bewitching brew.

    . . . It was no ordinary murder. Though the torture and abuse that killed him were real, Andy Gage's death wasn't. Only his soul actually died, and when it died, it broke in pieces. Then the pieces became souls in their own right, coinheritors of Andy Gage's life. . . .While Andy deals with the outside world, more than a hundred other souls share an imaginary house inside Andy's head, struggling to maintain an orderly coexistence: Aaron, the father figure; Adam, the mischievous teenager; Jake, the frightened little boy; Aunt Sam, the artist; Seferis, the defender; and Gideon, who wants to get rid of Andy and the others and run things on his own.Andy's new coworker, Penny Driver, is also a multiple personality, a fact that Penny is only partially aware of. When several of Penny's other souls ask Andy for help, Andy reluctantly agrees, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy the stability of the house. Now Andy and Penny must work together to uncover a terrible secret that Andy has been keeping . . . from himself.

    He's looking forward to learning the craft, renewing last year's friendships, and above all, to seeing Jaime, and finally asking her to be his girlfriend.But before he even gets to see her, one of their own is violently attacked. JB goes on the hunt, and the students learn about his troubled past, which changes their views of him forever. As their project, they create Rabbit in Red's most terrifying and disturbing challenge yet, Hellfire, and use it to recruit a new class of horror students.Then the bodies start piling up, and the mysteries become more and more dangerous. Is this another one of JB's dark games-within-a-game, or will Rabbit in Red--and everyone in it--burn in the end

    He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll.George is of course the immediate suspect—the question of his guilt echoing in a story shot through with secrets both personal and professional. While his parents rescue him from suspicion, a persistent cop is stymied at every turn in proving Clare a heartless murderer. And three teenage brothers (orphaned by tragic circumstances) find themselves entangled in this mystery, not least because the Clares had moved into their childhood home, a once-thriving dairy farm. The pall of death is ongoing, and relentless; behind one crime there are others, and more than twenty years will pass before a hard kind of justice is finally served. A rich and complex portrait of a psychopath and a marriage, this is also an astute study of the various taints that can scar very different families, and even an entire community. Elizabeth Brundage is an essential talent who has given us a true modern classic.

    They thought it was abandoned. They thought they would be safe there until morning. They were wrong on all counts. The residents of the row house live in the cellar and rarely come out in the light of day. They're far worse than anything on the streets outside. And they don't like intruders. Before the sun comes up, Kerri and her friends will fight for their very lives... though death is only part of their nightmare.

    We staked out our territory and nailed this to the wall to guide us: YEAR'S BEST HARDEST HORROR Not your mama's best-of horror annual. This stuff comes from the edge of the abyss, stories you read at your own risk because you feel the abyss looking right back into you through the tainted lens of each twisted tale. Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect. Some of these quieter tales offer the reader some time to recover from the more disturbing ones preceding. Most of the stories collected here are from small and specialty press anthologies, with a few from periodicals, like the prestigious Splatterpunk Zine in the UK and Thuglit here in the US. Bizarro is also represented with a couple of tales from the unlikely anthology Blood For You: A Literary Tribute To GG Allin from Weirdpunk Books. (If you're not familiar with the late GG Allin, you can find snippets from some of his outrageous and obscene punk shows online, which will increase your appreciation of those two tales.) So for now, forget about that neighbor you suspect is a serial killer, don't worry about the drunk driver that could take you out on your next trip to the store, push those troubling news stories to the back of your mind and immerse yourself in the imaginary horrors at hand. But don't be surprised if you sense something dark staring back at you from between the lines. That is to be expected when you enter these forbidding realms. With any luck, you may find something useful to help you survive the approaching Apocalypse. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Year That Was "Worth the Having" by Michael Paul Gonzalez "Awakening" by Jeff Strand "Readings Off The Charts" by Adam Cesare "Reborn" by The Behrg "What's Worst" by David James Keaton "Dead End" by Kristopher Triana "What You Wish For" by Lilith Morgan "King Shits" by Charles Austin Muir "Cleanup On Aisle 3" by Adam Howe "Bath Salt Fetus" by George Palacious "Bored With Brutality" by MP Johnson "Exposed" by Monica J. O'Rourke "Eleanor" by Jason Parent "The Scavengers" by Tony Knighton "The Most Important Miracle" by Scott Emerson "Hungry For Control" by Clare de Lune "Clarissa" by Robert Essig & Jack Bantry "Where The Sun Don't Shine" by Pete Kahle "Blackbird Lullaby" by George Cotronis

    Living in San Francisco, recently separated, with two children and demanding jobs, they’ve started going to a marriage counselor. Unfolding over the course of ten months and taking place entirely in the marriage counselor’s office, John Jay Osborn’s Listen to the Marriage is the story of a fractured couple in a moment of crisis, and of the person who tries to get them to see each other again. A searing look at the obstacles we put in our own way, as well as the forces that drive us apart (and those that bring us together), Listen to the Marriage is a poignant exploration of marriage—heartbreaking and tender.

    But the angry, undead spirits of the island have a different, more original script in mind. And as horror after staggering horror unfolds, the camera keeps rolling. To the blood-spattered end...

    She’s pretty, healthy, and comes from a well-off family. She has everything a girl of sixteen is supposed to want. And she’s sick to death of it. In search of something to pull her out of suicidal thoughts, she decides to lose her virginity, having heard it’s a life-changing event. But Kim doesn’t want to do it the same way the other girls do. She seduces one of her teachers, hoping to ruin his life just for the fun of it. This starts Kim on a runaway train of sadism as she makes every effort to destroy the lives of those around her. But soon simple backstabbing is not enough to keep her excited, and she nosedives into sabotage, violence and even murder. When Kim finds out she’s pregnant with her teacher’s child, a new madness overtakes her, and she realizes there’s only one thing that will satisfy her baby’s hunger . . .

    Apeshit is Mellicks love letter to the great and terrible B-horror movie genre. Six trendy teenagers (three cheerleaders and three football players) go to an isolated cabin in the mountains for a weekend of drinking, partying, and crazy sex, only to find themselves in the middle of a life and death struggle against a horribly mutated psychotic freak that just wont stay dead. Mellick parodies this horror clich and twists it into something deeper and stranger. It is the literary equivalent of a grindhouse film. It is a splatterpunks wet dream. It is perhaps one of the most fucked up books ever written. If you are a fan of Takashi Miike, Evil Dead, or Eurotrash horror then you must read this book.

    Yet the only way she can afford it is to win acceptance to The Ingraham, an exclusive, privately funded medical school and reasearch center reputed to be the nation's finest. The few selected students chosen by The Ingraham receive a completely free medical education: tuition, room. board, and lab fees all paid by the school.Once accepted to the school of her dreams, Quinn dives into her studies and into a steady realationship with a classmate. At last, her life seems perfect.Or is it? Quinn begins to notice subtle changes in her classmates: the way they act, the way they think -- all seem to be falling eerily into line with the messanic verison of the school's director. She confides her concerns to her boyfriend, who laughs them off -- until he finds a suspicious electronic monitoring device in his room.Then he disappears....Alone on the deserted campus during midyear break, Quinn finally encounters the dark truth about The Ingraham -- the true purpose of the institute's seemingly humane medical research, the motives that have determined the school's policy, and the secret mission of the hospital's intimidating security force, a small private army that is drawing an ever tighter net around her with each passing minute.What she dicovers is immense and terrifying -- a conspiracy that exposes her to a danger more frightening than death -- a cynical plot that undermines everything she has ever believed about the healing arts.This is suspense fiction at its grandest: instantly and relentlessly compelling, and touching directly on an issue that heads the list of our national and personal priorites.