This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village's darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, evocative of Stephen King's classic short story "Children of the Corn" and infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm.

    Edward McNally: Captain Wil has command of his own ship, the respect of his crew, and his wife is expecting their first child. But at sea, the winds always become calm just before the storm breaks.The Smell of Death by Tara West: Maggie's unusual powers bring new threats to her already troubled childhood.Safe by Emma Jameson: In Victorian London, a grave robber makes a nice living off the dead, until he opens the wrong crypt.Soulfully Sweet by Shéa MacLeod: As if helping the living isn’t enough of a pain in her divine hindquarters, Branwen (former goddess of love and beauty) is stuck helping the dead on All Hallow’s Eve.May I Go Play? by Heather Marie Adkins: Micah inherits a southern mansion where ancestors long dead relive their violent deaths. And now, they want company...Blehdward, the Vampire who Couldn't Sparkle by Pj Jones: Blehdward desperately wants to fit in with the cool vamps. If only he could learn how to sparkle.Franscesca by Alan Nayes: Break a promise to a feiticeira and you will live to regret it.Soul Eaters by R.G. Porter: Kaitlyn never believed in the existence of other worlds. Now she's in the middle of one where humans aren't the hunters but the hunted.The Eclective is a group of authors dedicated to the premise that The Story is The Thing, and classifications of genre are mostly a matter for bookshelves. While the following stories share a "Haunting" theme, they might variously be filed as Horror, Paranormal, Fantasy, YA, etc., or anything else. Our idea is that the story itself is more important than whatever label somebody feels like giving it, and by bringing our work together in collections like this one, we hope readers may find a story they might like. Even if it is not in "their" genre.

    But when a powerful enemy threatens their beloved city of Boston, they form a reluctant alliance. It's supposed to be temporary--just one night, in fact. But as the tension between them builds to the breaking point, neither is prepared for what happens next.Taming the Vampire is a sexy paranormal romance novella of 17,000 words, or about 60 pages. It's the first book in the Blood and Absinthe series.The Blood and Absinthe series:Book 1 - Taming the Vampire (a novella)Book 2 - Bound by the Vampire (a novella)Book 3 - Claiming the Vampire (a full-length novel)Book 4 - Drawn to the Vampire (a full-length novel)Book 5 - Caught by the Wolf (coming in 2014!)EXCERPT"I'll stay on one condition," he said.Her heart thumped against her ribs. "What?""We'll do the ritual, but on my terms."She wished he wasn't so tall. It gave him an unfair advantage, being able to tower over her like this. It was hard to breathe, hard to-- "What do you mean, your terms?""Do you want to know a secret?"Her blood was rushing in her ears. She couldn't speak.He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her hard against him. She gasped, as shocked as if she'd stepped into icy water. She felt his strength, his power, and for a second her own power seemed to desert her. He bent his head close to hers. "I want you," he whispered.Her face flamed, like a teenager's."I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you," he said, and now his lips were on her throat, at her pulse point, against her collar bone.She opened her mouth but no words came out. Her eyes closed and her head went back, and he kissed his way up her throat, to her ear, and then he was whispering to her again."I can make you feel good, Liz. Better than anyone's ever made you feel."

    A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade.   When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day. But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.   John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola. Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.

    The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

    Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place.Juliette, convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.

    In addition to stories about scheming jack-o'-lanterns, vengeful ghosts, otherworldly changelings, disturbingly realistic haunted attractions, masks that cover terrifying faces, murderous urban legends, parties gone bad, cult Halloween movies, and trick or treating in the future, Haunted Nights also offers terrifying and mind-bending explorations of related holidays like All Souls' Day, Dia de los Muertos, and Devil's Night. -With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfbane Seeds- by Seanan McGuire -Dirtmouth- by Stephen Graham Jones--A Small Taste of the Old Countr- by Jonathan Maberry-Wick's End- by Joanna Parypinski -The Seventeen Year Itch- by Garth Nix-A Flicker of Light on Devil's Night- by Kate Jonez-Witch-Hazel- by Jeffrey Ford-Nos Galen Gaeaf- by Kelley Armstrong -We're Never Inviting Amber Again- by S. P. Miskowski-Sisters- by Brian Evenson-All Through the Night- by Elise Forier Edie -A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds- by Eric J. Guignard-The Turn- by Paul Kane-Jack- by Pat Cadigan-Lost in the Dark- by John Langan-The First Lunar Halloween- by John R. Little

    The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone. In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago. Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust. In spare, haunting prose, Francine Toon creates an unshakeable atmosphere of desolation and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.

    What's worse strange things are happening to the remains of the dead the and by the time she befriends Ben Archer she's beginning to wonder if a global pandemic is the least of her problems....

    Every grave, its secrets. Enter the world of Amanda Stevens's Graveyard Queen series--where forbidden passion and secrets from the past are as restless as the ghosts--in the series prequel novella, The Abandoned.There are rules for dealing with ghosts. Too bad Ree Hutchins doesn't know them.When her favorite patient at a private mental hospital passes away, psychology student Ree Hutchins mourns the elderly woman's death. But more unsettling is her growing suspicion that something unnatural is shadowing her.Amateur ghost hunter Hayden Priest believes Ree is being haunted. Even Amelia Gray, known in Charleston as the Graveyard Queen, senses a gathering darkness. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ree is compelled to uncover an old secret and put abandoned souls to rest--before she is locked away forever....Look for the other books in The Graveyard Queen series: The Restorer, The Kingdom and The Prophet, available now.

    "The Night Cyclist" by Stephen Graham Jones is a horror novelette about a middle-aged chef whose nightly bicycle ride home is interrupted by an unexpected encounter.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair. Fans of Let the Right One In will have to read the story, which is destined to generate much word of mouth both among fans and online.“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In "Final Processing," Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect. Totally transcending genre writing, these are world class stories from possibly the most impressive horror writer writing today.

    Experience the horror of Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne.The rule is simple: don't bleed.For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

    For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

    An enthralling glimpse into the Intangible world by an "author [who] has a way with words that just pulls you into the story and holds you there until the very last word, and even then you just do not want to be let go" (Shelly Hammond).Luke and his twin sister Sera have unusual abilities. Hers is a gift--she can heal with a touch of her hand. His is a curse--he can see the future but he can't do anything about it.On a hike up the mountain, Luke has a vision unlike any other--one that leaves him terrified. Knowing that it will come true--and that he must do everything in his power to stop it--leaves his own future uncertain.(This is a short story, and approximately 16 pages long.)Intangible (Book One), Imaginable (Book Two), and Indomitable (an Intangible novella) are available now. Book Three coming late 2015.