Meet the man who vacuums bewildered prairie dogs out of their burrows; a frustrated werewolf who roams the streets of Soho getting mistaken for Brian Blessed; a smug carbon-neutral eco-couple; a teenage girl who invites 45,000 MySpace friends to a house party; the author of a business book entitled Highly Successful Secrets to Standing on a Corner Holding Up a Golf Sale Sign and a man whose attempts to teach softball to a group of indolent British advertising executives sparks an international crisis.

    Ravenstone House, built in the early 1800s, was once a majestic home. Then it was used as an orphanage for decades. When it closed its doors in 1956, the building lay derelict for more than thirty years.In its neighbourhood, the house is well known for being haunted. But only when it is converted into luxury flats do the dark secrets from its past come to light. The unexpected events that follow will upend the lives of the residents as the tortured souls trapped beneath Ravenstone reveal themselves to demand justice.Get us to where we belong.It's not our fault.We did nothing wrong.

    

    After a night out with his girlfriend in one of the country's remote provinces, he wakes to find himself in a pitch-black coffin—and quickly running out of oxygen. With only his cell phone and his own wits to rely on, it's a race against time to escape the claustrophobic death trap. SIX BULLETS The end of civilization arrived in the form of a giant asteroid thirteen months ago. For Burt James, a survivalist, it was not a complete surprise. He'd spent much of his adult life prepping for such a catastrophe. Consequently, while the majority of the population scoured the post-apocalyptic landscape for water and food, regressing into primitive killers, he bunkered down in his fortified hilltop home in a small town in the middle of the Australian Outback. But now he's out of food and down to his last six bullets, and he will have to make the most difficult choice of his life. THE MAILMAN Los Angeles, 1985. Never was the motto sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll more apt than the scene on the legendary Sunset Strip with the arrival of the underground Hollywood glam bands. While Mick Freeman, a record executive with a major label, works tirelessly to sign five toxic rockers whom he believes might flip the entire music world on its head, his wife, Jade, spends her days bored and alone at home, struggling with a midlife crisis that threatens to topple their twenty-year marriage. And then she meets the new mailman. Young and handsome, he sweeps her off her feet—straight into a nightmare the likes of which she could never have imagined. RE-ROLL In the near future, breathtakingly humanoid robots called Mechs are for sale, and they're designed to fulfill whatever role you want: husband, wife, best friend, slave. Manufacturers allow new owners one free "roll" to randomly determine their Mech's three leading characteristics. But as everybody knows, scoring your ideal traits is a crapshoot, though you can always re-roll—at a price.

    V. Larson! This 60,000 word book is an Anthology of short stories. Most are Science Fiction mixed with Horror. Others might be called Dark Fantasy... Many have been published previously in various magazines.The Barrier – What does it take to go faster than light?Symptoms of Godhood – How far can you modify a body and still call the results human?Discharged – A long war and an even longer stay in an automated hospital.Teeth at Bedtime – Technology follows us everywhere.The Insect Requirement – Great sacrifices are required for Earth’s early colonists.Blind Eyes – If we can design our own children, how far will we go?TA96 – Do our genes belong to us?Zundra’s Movies – A future where video is created with the mind, and insanity is fun to watch.Pinball – A young man builds his own watchdog.Love Aboard the Kamadeva – A love triangle between two desperate souls and a digital mirage.Starplay – A window into the universe becomes a door.The One-Way Gang – Leaving Earth is easy, but you can never come back.Rusted Metal – What has spent the last century in the basement?Lunar Lotto – Death comes instantly to outlaws in vacuum.The Rollers – Crime has been mostly eliminated by removing all forms of cash... Mostly.

    A wave of sinkholes appears on the anniversary of a rural tragedy, and local residents begin to hear the voices of the dead. A woman encounters a predator from her youth—and a chance to turn the tables. A child’s inner beast takes on a sinister life of its own. An undetectable serial killer raises tensions on a college campus. Experimental physics reveals another world, and it might mean the end of ours. Shrouded in darkness, lurking in the shadows, NIGHT TERRORS III awaits you. The third installment of the chilling Night Terrors anthology series includes stories from Jack Ketchum, Steve Rasnic Tem, Dennis Etchison, Taylor Grant, Eric J. Guignard, Aric Sundquist, Jennifer Brozek, John McNee, Simon McCaffery, Patty Templeton, and many more!

     A photographer reluctantly agrees to take images of an abandoned manor house on the Dorset cliff tops only to find the building is not completely empty. . .

    The exalted, memorable characters in Kirn's acclaimed debut short story col lection confront the real hard bargains in life that spring up from the business of simply living, and Kirn transforms these hard-luck stories into strapping moral lessons which evoke the bonds that unite us all.

    Chip Taylor’s girlfriend Liza had the perfect plan to rip off her rich sugar daddy. It should have been an easy in and out kind of deal. Nobody would get hurt and they would come out of it with enough loot to solve their problems. But things started going wrong as soon as they were inside the rich man’s house, and for Chip it was only the beginning of the longest, most terrifying ride of his life.

    West, Calvin Winslow is an unhappily married man who takes a late night exit and finds a hellish back road. This story is just one of the dark tales featured in West's critically-acclaimed collection, WHAT PRICE GORY. Midnight Snack is part of the Single Shot Short Story series which adds exclusive story notes and bonus content that you can only find in the Single Shot Story Series. What people have said about the collection, WHAT PRICE GORY?: "A Horror Library MUST HAVE... Deliciously Good Story Telling!"-Heather Omen, DIGITAL MACABRE "Terry M. West understands horror. He understands gory. And he handles them with the delicate touch of a master of the genre and a true wordsmith..."-Author, Charie D. LaMarr "5 STARS! Fear and extreme twists and an examination of human capacity rest within these tales, just waiting to be devoured..."-Vitina Molgaard, Horror Novel Reviews "5 STARS! One Hell of a collection!"-Dale Herring, Geekdom of Gore “What Price Gory is one of the damned finest collections of short stories I have ever had the privilege to read..."-Michael Donner, aka Captain Creeper of Creepercast.com

    The hunters have become the hunted, in an apocalyptic plague that pits man against beast—very tiny beasts. And Nick is determined to keep his strength, courage and family alive during what could very well be the last winter of their lives.

    Redefined.Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent - no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: They remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working out when Martin Ehrengraf is on the case. Evidence turns up, incriminating someone else. More murders occur, with the same M.O. And the gate of the jail cell opens, and the accused walks free.But be careful - hiring Martin Ehrengraf comes with a price. A high price, one that comes due even if he appears to have done nothing on your behalf. And you'd better be prepared to pay...Here at last are the complete exploits of Martin Ehrengraf: a dozen delicious tales of vice and villainy including one - ''The Ehrengraf Fandango'' - that is appearing for the first time anywhere. It's a 12-course meal of sinister surprises, exquisitely prepared and served simmering hot by the greatest living master of mystery fiction.

    His mother’s cooking. His father’s awkward sense of humor. He remembers air conditioning and warm beds and graduation. But all of that was before the end of the world. Now he is a survivor, one of them – part of a roving clan of killers that combs through the ruined neighborhoods and towns, looking for things to steal, men to butcher, women to enslave and abuse. Then he meets a woman who could kill him without blinking, and together they escape the world that was...

    Other outlandish tales include John Wayne battling cancer using a highly alternative therapy, a gene for integrity being harvested from the brain of an unwilling donor, and the landing of Christopher Columbus in modern-day Manhattan. Included are the Locus and Nebula Award-nominated novelette Auspicious Eggs and several previously unpublished pieces.ContentsIntroduction by Michael Swanwick“Auspicious Eggs”“Come Back, Dr. Sarcophagus”“Director’s Cut”“Fucking Justice”“Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail”“Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole”“The Cat’s Pajamas”“The Eye That Never Blinks”“The Fate of Nations”“The War of the Worldviews”“The Wisdom of the Skin”“The Zombies of Montrose”

    Mixing folk tale with fantasy, and history with myth, the narrative that unfolds is dark, playful and filled with magical moments, as it marches ever forward towards a strange convergence.