to investigate a cluster of inexplicable mutations among the young people of Innsmouth, a sickly and destitute town on the Massachusetts coast. Initially skeptical, she rapidly discovers that the true mystery is older and more horrifying than anything for which her training has prepared her. As the danger mounts, a double helix of history and urban folklore draws her inexorably to the door of a sinister, evangelical cult - and beyond the limits of her science and belief.

    Lives on the line. A new magic user. What could go wrong? Finn Foster just found out that magic is real, she can wield it, and now she’s the housekeeper of a magical house. Sure, to wind up here, she’s had to survive homicidal hail spells, enchanted discoing cacti, and assorted hocus pocus. But now that she’s housekeeper, Finn is ready to settle in and embrace her new magical path.But Finn hardly has a chance to get her feet wet before she gets thrown into the deep end without any floaties. Between the house’s mysterious errands, unexpected guests popping in, and the council trying to rain on her parade, Finn is barely treading water. With time running out, and magical enemies everywhere, it's time for Finn to sink or swim. A Pool for Keeping, an urban fantasy that appeals to young adult and new adult fans alike, is the second book in the Housekeeper series. This addictive adventure transports readers to an enchanted world filled with unusual magical characters and the kind of strong female protagonist you want as a best friend. Fans of hard-to-put-down mystery suspense and humorous magical action adventures will love Matteson Wynn’s Housekeeper series. Dive into the magic and grab your copy today! Follow Finn’s adventures from the beginning! Book 1: A House for Keeping *Fans of the transportive magical realism in the Harry Potter series and the relatable heroines in the Mercy Thompson and Edge series will be drawn to Matteson Wynn’s smart, humorous urban fantasy.*

    What else can you say?" - SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Hill William and CrapalachiaAs teenagers, two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, escape the world as it is known to live underground in a sprawling pillow fort that mirrors the structure of the human brain. Construction of the fort takes 25 years and once complete, their life exists to honor the fort in all it requires. Basal Ganglia begins countless years after they have become enslaved to the fort process. Rollo and Ingrid have lost any connection to their pasts and each other. Nothing exists beyond the patterns required by the fort. In an effort to become more than stasis, Ingrid expresses her desire to have a baby. Not wanting to subject another human to their strange world, she decides she will knit the baby using materials Rollo gathers from the fort. The emergence of this baby leads to paranoia between Rollo and Ingrid with both believing the other means the child harm. Within the confines of their cloistered world, the two engage in psychological warfare, desperately searching for a conclusion they don't understand. As a result, they will find connection with their past, each other and the true nature of their identities.

    Cities abandoned. Dreams invade waking minds. An invisible threat lures those who oppose its otherworldly violence to become acolytes of a nameless cult. As a teenage girl struggles for autonomy, a female weapons director in a secret research facility develops a living neuro-cognitive device that explodes into self-awareness. Discovering their hidden emotional bonds, all three women unveil a common enemy as their dissonant realities intertwine in a cosmic battle across hallucinatory dreamscapes.Time is the winning predator, and every moment spirals deeper into the heart of the beast.

    Chapters: Living Dead in Dallas, Dead to the World, Definitely Dead, Club Dead, Dead Until Dark, Dead as a Doornail, Dead and Gone, All Together Dead, From Dead to Worse, a Touch of Dead, Dead in the Family. Excerpt: A Touch of Dead A Touch of Dead is a collection of short stories from Charlaine Harris 's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries . This title was released on October 6th, 2009. This book only contains the short stories Harris has published in which Sookie Stackhouse is present. Stories References (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at All Together Dead All Together Dead is the seventh book in Charlaine Harris 's series The Southern Vampire Mysteries . After being betrayed by her vampire love, Bill Compton, Sookie Stackhouse attends an all-important central U.S. Vampire Summit on the shores of Lake Michigan as a "human geiger counter" for Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Vampire Queen of Louisiana and who will be tried during the event for murdering her husband, King of Arkansas. The summit is a tense situation. The queen is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Sookie knows the queen is innocent, but she is hardly prepared for other shocking murders, not to mention protests by the Fellowship of the Sun, a right-wing anti-vampire movement. Sookie's bond with Eric Northman gets closer and she discovers Quinn 's past. Plot summary The summit, which has attracted undead power players from all over the central United States, is sure to be tense, due in no small part to the rampi...

    P. Lovecraft's cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. A soldier in 1967, serving in Berlin with the Royal Military Police, Lumley jump-started his literary career by writing to August Derleth, the then dean of macabre publishers at his home in Sauk City, Wisconsin, telling of his fascination with the Mythos, and purchasing books by the "Old Gentleman of Providence, RI." In addition, he sent a page or two of written work allegedly culled from the various forbidden or "black books" of the Mythos. Suitably impressed, the master of Arkham House invited Lumley to write something solid in the Mythos as a possible contribution to a new volume he was currently contemplating, , to be titled—what else but?—Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. And as might well be imagined, that set everything in motion.Forty years have passed since then and a good many words of Mythos fiction written, including critically acclaimed and award-nominated work, stories that have appeared in prestigious magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, and hardcover volumes from publishers all over the world from the USA to China and the United Kingdom to Russia. But while Lumley's novels are all currently available, many of them in hardcover format, his Mythos short stories and novellas have until now remained uncollected.Subterranean Press is proud to correct that omission in volumes that are guaranteed to be the pride of any collector's library of Mythos fiction other than tales written by H. P. Lovecraft himself. Here in this book are found the shorter stories. Thus the best of Brian Lumley's works in this sub-genre are collected and presented for the first time in this much more worthy and durable format…

    Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror of the ancient town, and of the moldy, unhallowed garret gable where he wrote and studied and wrestled with figures and formulae when he was not tossing on the meager iron bed. His ears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree, and he had long ago stopped the cheap mantel clock whose ticking had come to seem like a thunder of artillery. At night the subtle stirring of the black city outside, the sinister scurrying of rats in the wormy partitions, and the creaking of hidden timbers in the centuried house, were enough to give him a sense of strident pandemonium. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound—and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard should subside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them.

    When an oil rig drills too deep under the Gulf of Mexico it breaks the capstone separating our world from the UnderRealms - home to monsters, daemons and dark magiks. The nightmares of our long ago come flooding back into the world where they are met by automatic weapons fire, heating seeking missiles (they're hell on dragons, don'tcha know) and one drunken, dissolute son of a bitch called Dave. But this is not Dave's story. This is the story of the poor bastards who had to put up with him while he saved the world and acted like a jerk.

    Strange light fixtures. Mutant cockroaches. There are some odd things about Nate’s new apartment.Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn’t perfect, it’s livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and the odd little mysteries don’t nag at him too much.At least, not until he meets Mandy, his neighbour across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela’s apartment. And Tim’s. And Veek’s. Because every room in this old Los Angeles brownstone has a mystery or two. Mysteries that stretch back over a hundred years. Some of them are in plain sight. Some are behind locked doors. And all together these mysteries could mean the end of Nate and his friends. Or the end of everything...

    "Robert Aickman was a master of what he called 'strange stories,' and though his fiction has been categorized as horror, it's actually its own beast.As we move further away from the horror boom of the last century and its focus on the mainstream appeal of small town horrors, we are encountering successive generations of writers open to exploring new avenues of the subtly bizarre, an area Aickman frequently mastered.This book is a sampler of how Robert Aickman's work has beoome a significant source of inspiration for contemporary writers."

    These objects are dangerous to the touch, but not to Jack.When his superiors discover he can interact with the objects, he's brought even further into the fold.Soon he's introduced to bizarre creatures that just a handful of people have ever witnessed.His simple life has turned into a freak show.And it only gets worse.

     Every teenage girl has a diary in which she vents her frustrations with siblings and parents. But a zombie apocalypse? This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things During the Zombie Apocalypse is a comedic adventure about a teenage girl, her frustrating family, two high-spirited dogs, and a neighborhood of loveable rednecks coming together to survive a zombie outbreak.

    Seventeen years ago, five knights from Earth's magical twin, Theia, entombed Asmodeous the Pale, Lord of the Drynn, in Skip's town. Now that the dark god is free again, he's anxious to get back home and finish the war he began…to enslave all life. It begins with killing the knights who trapped him.Deprived of their magic, the knights fight back using whatever they can get their hands on, from samurai swords to assault rifles. Skip gets reluctantly drawn in to their struggle while Donovan Smith, the demi-god murderer whom Skip was after in the first place, plots to find the Lord of the Underworld and butcher him on his own.Together, these unlikely heroes might just save the world. If they don't kill each other first.

    This excerpt from The Hazel Wood—Melissa Albert's fiercely stunning contemporary fantasy perfect for fans of The Magicians—contains the first six chapters.Everyone is talking about The Hazel Wood!“Thoroughly, creepily captivating.” —Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling and Jane, Unlimited “This book is pure imagination candy.” —Stephanie Garber, author of Caraval “Destined to be a classic.” —Kami Garcia, author of The Lovely Reckless “Absolutely breathtaking.” —Seanan McGuire, author of Every Heart a Doorway “Terrifying, magical, and surprisingly funny.” —Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places “Unlike anything else I’ve ever read before.” —Evelyn Skye, author of The Crown’s Game “A part of me will never leave The Hazel Wood.” —Heidi Heilig, author of The Girl from Everywhere “An elegant dark fairy tale, full of the power of story.” —Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot

    In this war, immortal cultists worship other-dimensional entities, and plot to raise an army of the dead. Incomprehensible undersea intelligences infiltrate and colonize American seaports, and alien races lurk beneath the ice of Antarctica and high in the mountains of Afghanistan. It is only through constant vigilance and violence that the earth has survived. Also included are threat reports describing the indescribable-- humanity's deadliest foes serving Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. Strange times are upon us, the world is changing, and even death may die-- but, until then, the war continues.