Shipp.The stories include:GigglesPrincessDon’t LaughThe Glass Box

    A crabbing voyage that descends into chaos. Malevolent snowmen. The debut of a mysterious indie wrestler. A sacrifice in need of an hourglass. A paranormal cremator in search of a friend...and other choice cuts from the mind of Donnie Goodman. The razorblades have emerged. It is time to dig.

    In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

    A living form of money results in the unraveling of the world."The bank is there to save and lend.""Workers work and customers spend."

    After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over—but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?

    Population: 200...199...198...197...Gregory Tomasov has returned with his family to the quaint Arizona community of his youth. In McGuane, the air is clean, the land is unspoiled. Nothing much has changed. Except now, no one goes out after dark. And no one told Gregory that he shouldn't have moved into the old abandoned farm on the edge of town. Once upon a time something bad happened there. Something that's now buried in its walls. Something now reborn in the nightmares of Gregory's young son. Something about to be unleashed. What happened once is going to happen again in...The Town. You can't go home again.

    "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.

    A handful of Messengers brave the night between the increasingly isolated populace behind protective wards. Arlen Bales will search anywhere, dare anything, to save the world. Maybe Abban, a merchant in the Great Bazaar of Krasia who purports to sell anything, has the answer.

    "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination.Here are more than twenty of Matheson's most memorable tales of fear and paranoia, including:"Duel," the nail-biting tale of man versus machines that inspired Steven Spielberg's first film;"Prey," in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent Tiki doll, as chillingly captured in yet another legendary TV moment;"Blood Son," a disturbing portrait of a strange little boy who dreams of being a vampire;"Dress of White Silk," a seductively sinister tale of evil and innocence.Personally selected by Richard Matheson, the bestselling author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come, these and many other stories, more than demonstrate why he is rightfully regarded as one of the finest and most influential horror writers of our generation.

    But during the past eight years, he's transformed into somebody he no longer knows—a weak, pitiful, and passionless office drone.Barely hanging onto the last thread of his self-respect, he returns home one night to discover Hell has truly crossed its threshold.And Hell has lessons to teach him through what fragments remain.Slivers of dark light.Knowledge in blood.Forgiveness, clarity and redemption in commitment.

    In 1972, twenty-five people were brutally murdered in one of the bloodiest massacres in Texas history. The mystery of who committed the killings remains unsolved.Over forty years later, Sarah Donovan is dating an exciting man, Dean Stratton. Sarah's scared of just about everything--heights, tight places, the dark--but today she must confront all her fears, as she joins Dean and another couple on an exploring adventure. The old abandoned Blevins House, the scene of the gruesome massacre, is rumored to be haunted.The two couples are about to discover the mysterious house has been waiting all these years, craving fresh prey. And down in the cellar they will encounter a monstrous creature that hungers for more than just human flesh.

    For Kylie, the miracle of her survival is also her burden-as a doctor at one of the clinics for the infected, she is forced to witness endless suffering. What's worse, strange things are happening to the remains of the dead, and by the time she befriends Ben Archer, she's beginning to wonder if a global pandemic is the least of her problems.... Thistle & Thorne by Ann AguirreAfter a catastrophic spill turns the country into a vast chemical wasteland, those who could afford it retreated to fortresses, self-contained communities run by powerful corporations. But for Mari Thistle, life on the outside-in the Red Zone-is a constant struggle. To protect her family, Mari teams up with the mysterious Thorne Goodman. Together, they'll face an evil plot in both the underworld of the Red Zone and the society inside the fortresses that could destroy those on the outside...for good. Sun Storm by Karen DuvallSarah Daggot has been chasing storms since she was a child. But after the biggest solar flares in history nearly destroy the planet, she becomes a Kinetic, endowed by her exposure to extreme radiation with the power to sense coming storms-in the cosmos and beyond. And she's not the only one. Sarah believes the Kinetics are destined to join forces and halt the final onslaught of the sun. She'll vow to keep trying to convince the one missing link in their chain of defense, the enigmatic Ian Matthews, up until the world ends.

    A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).

    It's the one exciting thing in Larry Wilson's life, not counting the lovely brunette who works the concession stand. Settling in, he loses himself in the atmosphere of the old place: the crowd, the screams, the popcorn and the blood. But when the second feature ends, only thirteen moviegoers remain. Among them, a woman of nineteen with a fondness for piercings and the macabre, a cop and his wife, a trio of bad-tempered bullies, and a solitary figure sitting silently in the shadows of the back row. On this endless October night, Witching Hour Theatre will become Larry's worst nightmare. For the movie on the screen is growing stranger by the minute. His fellow theatergoers are disappearing one by one. And the figure from the shadows is advancing.

    Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In "The Disappeared", a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in "The Ruined Child". Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.