Book picks similar to
We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone by Ronald Malfi
horror
short-stories
fiction
short-story-collections
The Trees Have Eyes: Horror Stories From The Forest
Tobias WadeKelly Childress - 2018
The silence is so heavy that you can hear your blood thundering through your veins. The stir of dry leaves in the darkness could be your friend finding his way back, but it sounds more like a primordial monster stalking its prey. And the lights between the trees? And the haunting songs which lure you ever deeper?
It's time to admit that you aren't afraid of being alone in the woods. You're afraid of not being alone.
Journey through the minds of 22 horror authors who have teamed up to reveal the most terrifying aspects of the forest. Over 400 pages of original supernatural and psychological horror stories include: ghosts, demons, serial-killers, true stories and unsolved mysteries, unique monsters, classic myths and legends, and above all else, a profound respect for the terror hidden within the mysterious trees. About Haunted House Publishing: We're passionate about publishing horror stories for adults, scary books for teens, and all sorts of dark fiction. We've got new horror kindle books every month, specializing in supernatural stories, supernatural book collections, and paranormal books for adults. We've got zombie books, demonic horror, ghosts and specters, angels and demons, gothic novels, and haunted houses and ghosts novels. We promise some of the top horror books 2018.
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales
Kate BernheimerKaren Joy Fowler - 2010
Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.
The Shell Collector
Anthony Doerr - 2001
Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.
M Is for Magic
Neil Gaiman - 2007
Collection includes:"The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds," "Troll Bridge," "Don't Ask Jack," "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge," "October in the Chair," "Chivalry," "The Price," "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," "Sunbird," "The Witch's Headstone," "Instructions"
Bødy
Asa Nonami - 1999
In the vein of the psychological suspense of the Twilight Zone, each story ends with a shock, leaving the reader unsettled with the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for," echoing in their bones. Appropriately, each of the five stories in Bødy gets its title from the body parts featured, buttocks, blood, face, hair and chin.
His Hideous Heart
Dahlia AdlerMarieke Nijkamp - 2019
Whether the stories are familiar to readers or discovered for the first time, readers will revel in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales, and how they’ve been brought to life in 13 unique and unforgettable ways.Contributors include Kendare Blake (reimagining “Metzengerstein”), Rin Chupeco (“The Murders in the Rue Morge”), Lamar Giles (“The Oval Portrait”), Tessa Gratton (“Annabel Lee”), Tiffany D. Jackson (“The Cask of Amontillado”), Stephanie Kuehn (“The Tell-Tale Heart”), Emily Lloyd-Jones (“The Purloined Letter”), Hillary Monahan (“The Masque of the Red Death”), Marieke Nijkamp (“Hop-Frog”), Caleb Roehrig (“The Pit and the Pendulum”), and Fran Wilde (“The Fall of the House of Usher”).
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison - 1967
This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition. Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.CONTENTS"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream""Big Sam Was My Friend""Eyes of Dust""World of the Myth""Lonelyache""Delusion for Dragonslayer""Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"
The Story: Love, Loss & The Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories
Victoria Hislop - 2013
Featuring two centuries of women's short fiction, ranging from established Queens of the short story like Alice Munro and Angela Carter, to contemporary rising stars like Miranda July and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this is the biggest and most beautiful collection in print today.Handpicked by one of the nation's favourite novelists, Victoria Hislop - herself a great writer of, and champion for, short stories - and divided thematically into collections on love, loss and the lives of women, there's a story for every mood, mindset and moment in life.CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Emma Donoghue, Daphne Du Maurier, Stella Duffy, Susan Hill, Doris Lessing, Penelope Lively, Katherine Mansfield, Hilary Mantel, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Ali Smith, Muriel Spark, Alice Walker, Jeanette Winterson, Virginia Woolf.
My Best Friend's Exorcism
Grady Hendrix - 2016
But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behavior start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favorite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night
James PattersonEric Van Lustbader - 2006
Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for Thriller to keep you up all night.
How to Pronounce Knife: Stories
Souvankham Thammavongsa - 2020
Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.How to pronounce knife --Paris --Slingshot --Randy Travis --Mani pedi --Chick-a-chee! --The universe would be so cruel --Edge of the world --The school bus driver --You are so embarassing --Ewwrrkk --The gas station --A far distant thing --Picking worms
The Book of Cthulhu
Ross E. LockhartMichael Shea - 2011
Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Just A Little Terrible
Vincent V. Cava - 2015
They’ve been known to burrow themselves into a reader’s imagination and are capable of warping dreams into twisted, unspeakable nightmares.Just a little…Unique – These aren’t your standard horror stories. Don’t think this collection will include tales of haunted mansions, or blood sucking vampires. Expect one-of-a-kind takes on every gothic ghoul and hideous monster you read about in this book.Just a little…Frightening – Prepare yourself for some of the most chilling flash fiction ever penned. The mad genius, Vincent V. Cava, has done it again with the latest entry in his creepy catalogue. Do yourself a favor and leave the lights on when you read it.Just A Little…Terrible
The Patient
Jasper DeWitt - 2020
In a series of online posts, Parker H., a young psychiatrist, chronicles the harrowing account of his time working at a dreary mental hospital in New England. Through this internet message board, Parker hopes to communicate with the world his effort to cure one bewildering patient. We learn, as Parker did on his first day at the hospital, of the facility’s most difficult, profoundly dangerous case—a forty-year-old man who was originally admitted to the hospital at age six. This patient has no known diagnosis. His symptoms seem to evolve over time. Every person who has attempted to treat him has been driven to madness or suicide. Desperate and fearful, the hospital’s directors keep him strictly confined and allow minimal contact with staff for their own safety, convinced that releasing him would unleash catastrophe on the outside world. Parker, brilliant and overconfident, takes it upon himself to discover what ails this mystery patient and finally cure him. But from his first encounter with the mystery patient, things spiral out of control, and, facing a possibility beyond his wildest imaginings, Parker is forced to question everything he thought he knew. Fans of Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes and Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World will be riveted by Jasper DeWitt’s astonishing debut.
My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Jeffrey Eugenides - 2008
But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.... It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer." --Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead All proceeds from My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.