Book picks similar to
In The End, Only Darkness by Monica J. O'Rourke
horror
short-stories
extreme-horror
wrath-james-white
Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road
Brian KeeneShane McKenzie - 2013
There is something seriously wrong with the house at Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road. Its history is awash with sadistic violence and fiendish sex. For generations the house has corrupted its inhabitants. Now Arrianne and Chuck have moved in, and the house is ready to hunt once more. But this time the house's occupants won't be the only targets. No one is safe-not the reader, not the authors, and not the horror genre itself... Nine of the biggest names in horror fiction collaborate on a gore-and-sex-soaked novel with all proceeds benefiting modern master of crime and terror, Tom Piccirilli.
Bone Meal Broth
Adam Cesare - 2012
Bone Meal Broth adds a few more.The nine stories in this collection vary in style and content, but all of them strive to unsettle.Inside Bone Meal Broth you'll meet a P.I. who works the dark streets of a post-biological-cataclysm New Orleans, a sleazy glamor photographer with a pest problem, and a misanthrope who's just made the most important (and deadly) purchase of his life. And those are the heroes.You'll visit the grotesque inhabitants of America's backwoods and shrink from the quiet terrors of suburbia. No matter your dark preference: a cup of Bone Meal Broth will hit the spot.
The Gate: 13 Dark and Odd Tales
Robert J. Duperre - 2010
Duperre, author of The Fall: The Rift Book I. Also contributing to this collection are the talented Mercedes M. Yardley, David Dalglish, David McAfee, and Daniel Pyle.
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares
Joyce Carol Oates - 2011
The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. Marissa s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. In Helping Hands, published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates s standing as one of the world s greatest writers of suspense."
999: Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense
Al SarrantonioRamsey Campbell - 1999
From dark fantasy and pure suspense to classic horror tales of vampires and zombies, 999 showcases the extraordinary scope of fantastical fright fiction. The stories in this anthology are a relentless tour de force of fear, which will haunt you, terrify you, and keep the adrenaline rushing all through the night.Amerikanski dead at the Moscow morgue / Kim Newman --The ruins of contracoeur / Joyce Carol Oates --The owl and the pussycat / Thomas M. Disch --The road virus heads north / Stephen King --Keepsakes and treasures: a love story / Neil Gaiman --Growing things / T.E.D. Klein --Good Friday / F. Paul Wilson --Excerpts from the records of the New Zodiac and the diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax / Chet Williamson --An exaltation of termagants / Eric Von Lustbader --Itinerary / Tim Powers --Catfish gal blues / Nancy A. Collins --The entertainment / Ramsey Campell --ICU / Edward Lee --The shadow, the darkness / Thomas Ligotti --Rio Grande Gothic / David Morrell --Des Saucisses, Sans doute / Peter Schneider --Angie / Ed Gorman --The ropy thing / Al Sarrantonio --The tree is my hat / Gene Wolfe --Styx and bones / Edward Bryant --Hemophage / Steven Spurill --The book of irrational numbers / Michael Marshall Smith --Mad dog summer / Joe R. Lansdale --The Theater / Bentley Little --Rehearsals / Thomas F. Monteleone --Darkness / Dennis L. McKiernan --Elsewhere / William Peter Blatty
What Good Girls Do
Jonathan Butcher - 2017
She lives with no name.She has never left her room.All she has ever known is pain and abuse.Until now.Today, she will breathe fresh air for the first time, feel sunshine against her skin and even witness human kindness.But she has a point to make - a bleak, violent point - and when she meets her neighbour, Serenity, she finds the perfect pupil.Forced to endure a lesson distilled from a nightmarish existence, Serenity must face unflinching evil, witness the unspeakable, and question her most deeply-held views, until at last she has no choice but to fight for her family's survival.
Nine Inches
Tom Perrotta - 2013
Whether he's dropping into the lives of two teachers―and their love lost and found―in "Nine Inches", documenting the unraveling of a dad at a Little League game in "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face", or gently marking the points of connection between an old woman and a benched high school football player in "Senior Season", Perrotta writes with a sure sense of his characters and their secret longings.Nine Inches contains an elegant collection of short fiction: stories that are as assured in their depictions of characters young and old, established and unsure, as any written today.
The Night Library
T.L. Barrett - 2012
Searching these sinister stacks you will find:A church picnic at a haunted reservoir where only a twelve year-old boy is aware that something waits in the water…A burnt-out teacher that finds a friend… in his cancer…The secret to surviving the zombie apocalypse…An inoculation for Lycanthropy which may be more horrible than the disease…Young lovers that, on the eve of World War II, partake of a most forbidden fruit…A haunted carnival ride which delivers its passengers into the unexpected…21 tales of night terror, night madness, nightmares, night woe and night wonder…Welcome to The Night LibraryBe warned: The late fees are killer!
Attic Clowns
Jeremy C. Shipp - 2012
Shipp spins 13 tales of horror and dark humor in this highly conceptual collection. Angels and demons, husbands and wives, tormented ghosts and an army of men made of soap—all of them trapped in attics of the mind, attics of heaven or hell, the attics we make for ourselves or with which we ensnare others. Meet a paranoid astronaut whose jealousy drives him to extremes beyond murder…a miniature circus spawned from the mind of woman with too much control…the underling demon Globcow who desires redemption even more than the taste of human feet… Men, women, children, and things beyond imagination all interconnect in ATTIC CLOWNS, where laughter is only the prelude to the bizarre and terrible.
sickEST B*stards
Matt Shaw - 2015
To understand this short story, and wrap the events of Sick B*stards up, you need to have read the previous two titles. READERS TAKE NOTE: This is A SHORT STORY. It is intended for the members of Kindle Unlimited who have been requesting me for short, sick, bedtime stories. As part of Kindle Unlimited they are able to download this title for free. If you wish for a longer story to read, please do not purchase any of the White Cover Books (aka 'F*cked-Up Shorts' range of tales). A good place to start would be The Black Cover Books (for lovers of extreme horror). sickEST B*stards continues on from both Sick B*stards and SickER B*stards, bringing the story to a shocking conclusion.
Aberrations
Jeremy C. ShippElizabeth Massie - 2011
Shipp has brought together ten monster tales from today's masters of horror and supernatural suspense.Stories by:Scott NicholsonLisa TuttleNate KenyonLisa MortonKealan Patrick BurkeSimon WoodJeremy C. ShippElizabeth MassieJoe McKinneyJoseph NassisePraise for Jeremy C. Shipp:“Jeremy C. Shipp’s boldness, daring, originality, and sheer smarts make him one of the most vital younger writers who have colonized horror literature in the past decade. Shipp’s modernist clarity, plus his willingness to risk damn near everything, put him up at the head of the pack with the very best.”–Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story"Shipp's clear, insistent voice pulls you down into the rabbit hole and doesn't let go." --Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door
Fantastic Orgy
Carlton Mellick III - 2011
Over the past few decades, sexually transmitted diseases have evolved in unusual ways. Herpes, AIDS, Gonorrhea; these are all STDs of the past. These days, sexually transmitted diseases are more extreme and bizarre. Not exactly diseases anymore, they are more like sexually transmitted body modifications. There's an STD that changes your hair color, an STD that causes your toes to grow larger, one causes you to grow extra breasts on your body, another causes your skin to grow long metal spikes, and there's an especially annoying STD that causes you to ejaculate miniature eyeballs. Tonight is Share Your STD Night at the Demon Seed Swingers Club. Although most members of society fear the idea of contracting these diseases, there are some underground deviants who embrace them. They believe the diseases make them strange, unique, and beautiful. So they come together once a month to trade their wonderful STDs with each other in a surreal, fantastical orgy. However, tonight will not be like other nights. There's a new disease spreading through the sex club, a disease that causes people to become rabid bloodthirsty killing machines. As the infected rampage through the Demon Seed, the survivors realize there's only one thing they can do to survive the night: turn their grotesque STDs into deadly super weapons. Also featuring the short stories: Candy-Coated - A buff dude with a lollipop for a head has a hard time picking up the laydaaays due to all of the bearded truckers who keep trying to lick his head. Ear Cat - A Kitty of the Month Club selection gone horribly wrong. City Hobgoblins - A member of a punk rock band falls in love with a shark-like creature. (a prequel to the cult novel Satan Burger) Porno in August - A group of porn actors find themselves floating in the middle of the ocean, unable to remember who they are or why they are there. (Chosen for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror)
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread
Chuck Palahniuk - 2015
The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club.Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. They have all the impact of a sharp blow to the solar plexus, with considerable collateral damage to the funny bone.
Hi I'm a Social Disease
Andersen Prunty - 2011
Also includes: "The Dust Season," "The Man With the Face Like a Bruise," "The Photographer," "The Night the Moon Made a Sound," and "The Funeralgoer."
Pump Six and Other Stories
Paolo Bacigalupi - 2008
Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning, and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience.The eleven stories in Pump Six represent the best Paolo's work, including the Hugo nominee "Yellow Card Man," the nebula and Hugo nominated story "The People of Sand and Slag," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."