Book picks similar to
Harmlessly Insane: The Complete Collection by Evans Light


short-story-collections
horror
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horror-short-story-anthology

Megashark


Viktor Zarkov - 2015
    They suspect that the deaths are due to poachers and they are all driven by a need for justice. Elsewhere, an experimental government vessel is enhancing deep sea mining equipment. They see one of these dead whales up close and personal...and are fairly certain that it wasn't poachers that killed it. Both of these teams are about to discover that poachers are the least of their worries. There is something hunting the whales... Something big Something prehistoric. Something terrifying. MEGATOOTH!

Halloween Horrors


Alan Ryan - 1986
    McCammon, Whitley Strieber, Michael McDowell, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Charles L. Grant and others. Edited by Alan Ryan, author of The Kill and Dead White.

By the Light of His Lantern: A Novel


Abe Moss - 2019
    Disoriented, he blinks his eyes, rubs them for good measure, but the result is the same. The sky is as black as the beach below it. In this place, the sun and moon and stars are long dead. But the darkness, full of eyes and teeth, is very much alive. Others like him say it’s a curse. Someone he knows has sentenced him to an eternity here, and now Lewis must ask himself if it’s an eternity he deserves. Guided only by his own hands, hunted by otherworldly forces, it’s up to him to scour the darkness of his past in search of his own redemption. Only the truth will light the way.

A Vaudeville of Devils


Robert Girardi - 1999
    Soon this haggard SS officer will be dispatched to perform the menial but necessary task of locating and assassinating a degenerate Belgian painter.Join "The Dinner Party," where a man stands adrift in a distinctly Borgesian universe, somewhere at the end of time. It could be the Apocalypse or some ghoulish carnival. He's attending a feast at an anonymous mansion while the fall of Babylon is acted out around him, and he struggles to hold on to the faint remnants of his conscience while the world goes up in flames.Turn to a search for "The Primordial Face," in which two expatriates, one of them mute, go diving for a mythological treasure at the bottom of the sea and wind up competing for the love of the obsessive expedition leader's young daughter.And spend "Sunday Evenings at Contessa Pasquali's," where a man and a woman torture each other with indifference and affection and find that love can be born of terrible schemes. With this volume, Robert Girardi illustrates a world that is both beautifully alluring and brilliantly sinister, where souls are lost and won on the simple weight of everyday decisions. Rich with history and irony, vastly entertaining and told in the timeless style of tales, fables, and myths, these meditations on morality remind us of the eternal human condition.From the Hardcover edition.

Catharsis


Jonathan Face - 2011
    Its residents have secrets - or so they think. These will be exposed and their true natures revealed during an unexpected winter storm. Chaos unfolds as the snow falls, ushered along by the ghosts of the town's previous inhabitants. Acting on orders from some unknown power, it's their duty to see that the town gets the justice it has been lacking. If anyone's alive by dawn, they're either lucky - or innocent. This is Spring City's last night, but its citizens won't go quietly.

Sawfish


Rick Chesler - 2016
    Mason Rayman is experimenting with gigantism in sea creatures when he accidentally creates a monstrously large sawfish. When it grows so big he can no longer keep it in his Miami lab, he is preparing to have it destroyed when he learns he is being terminated from his position. By way of revenge, he dumps the oversized shark relative into the ocean, where it soon roams out of control, slaughtering bathers at nearby trendy South Beach.Dr. Rayman doesn't let on that it's his fish responsible for the killings, but someone knows what he did, and she's blackmailing him. He plays along for a while but then decides she needs to be eliminated. Breaking into a lab at his former workplace, he deliberately creates more monster sawfish and releases them into the local waters.Rayman then attempts to get his job back by stepping forward as the expert on how to stop the scourge of gigantic predators now ravaging swimmers and water sports enthusiasts on South Florida beaches. But his blackmailer will not let up, leading to an ultimate confrontation between woman and beast, and finally, woman and man.

The Claw


Ramsey Campbell - 1983
    Beautiful, hypnotic, ancient, it was the sacred -- and deadly -- talisman of the fabled Leopard Men of Africa.Unsuspected, it would crawl its way into his mind, bringing horrifying destruction into his home. And unresisted, it would demand an unbelievable sacrifice. And then -- perhaps -- it would move on...

Breed


Owl Goingback - 2002
    Augustine, Florida. An ancient evil is awakened in the Tolomato Cemetery, and is intent on stalking and destroying the citizens of the town. The evil creature, a Shiru, was believed to be a mythical beast from ancient Indian legend. The legend says the Shiru once roamed the earth attempting to mate with the women of the local Indian tribes in an effort to breed, but the Indians recognized the danger and hunted them down, destroying their hideous deformed offspring. But this legend is so old, that almost no one in modern day St. Augustine knows of it, and if they did they wouldn't believe it...that is until one, summoned by three women dabbling in black magic, crosses over from the dead. Now the Shiru is determined to get revenge on the human race, and to breed with a strong woman with an ancient blood line. Unbeknownst to her, local tour-guide, half Cherokee Ssabra Onih, is the Shiru's target. Fortunately for her, and the rest of the town, the spirit of Chief Tolomato comes to guide her, and enlist her help to hunt down the evil Shiru and send it back to the underworld. At the same time city police officer, Jack Colvin is working hard to track down the perpetrator of a series of grisly murders. Soon Colvin's and Onih's paths cross, and they join forces with the help of Chief Tolomato and other friendly spirits, in a desperate attempt to stop the seemingly invincible Shiru.

You saw something you shouldn't have


Brandon Faircloth - 2018
    To be entertained. Then you find yourself in a school where a group of friends have brought something terrible to life. You meet a family whose extraordinary luck comes at a horrific price. You write a letter to yourself and get a reply that leads to death and madness. As you journey through these shrouded lands, you look back and can't make out where you started. Because once you're traveling through the darkness, the only way out is through. Read the collection of novellas and short stories that is being called "genius", "amazing", and "scary AF". But be prepared. You won't be the same when you come out the other side.

The Grass Monkey and Other Dark Tales


Scott Langrel - 2012
    It's not a nice place to visit, and an even worse place to live. Evil dwells in the mountains and lakes surrounding the town. Creatures more ancient than the Appalachian Mountains themselves lurk in the shadows and prey on the unsuspecting.Consisting of three short stories and a novella, The Grass Monkey and Other Dark Tales takes the reader on a terrifying tour of Shallow Springs:A family moves to the Springs from the city, only to discover that their new, peaceful surroundings are nothing but a deception...A telephone lineman, out in a bitter winter storm, must fight demons--both his own, and the ones stalking him in the snowy woods...A group of loggers set out to harass a tree-hugging environmentalist and instead find an ancient horror...A paranormal "handler" returns home to Shallow Springs to help a woman who is being stalked by a creature as intelligent as it is evil...Welcome to Shallow Springs. Sit back. Stay a while. But you might want to be on your way before the sun sets.

Menagerie


E. Stuart Marlowe - 2014
    They belong to the world of storybooks and legends. Or so you have been led to believe. For the past twenty years, Gomer Horsenick has been building the world's strangest zoo. He and his ragtag group of men have explored the globe, collecting monsters of the sea, sand, sky and sewers. And now the zoo is ready to open. But not if Juniper Lowery can stop him. A fervent animal activist, Juniper gets wind of Gomer’s intentions and makes it her mission to set these creatures free. When her plan backfires, the monsters flee, descending upon the nearby town. A horrific nightmare of chaos and destruction ensues. It is up to Juniper and Gomer to reconcile their differences and save the city before the terror spreads.

Slice


William Patterson - 2013
    She knew Emil would do anything to prevent her incriminating him—if he ever found her. Staying alive for the sake of her child was all that mattered. Inch By InchFive years later, Emil is dead and Jessie is ready to stop running. With her daughter Abby starting school, going home to be among friends and family makes sense. Until the murders start. All the victims are viciously stabbed and slashed across the throat. And each of them has a connection to Jessie. He’s Getting Close Enough To KillIs Emil still alive, tracking her down—or do the answers lie elsewhere in her troubled past? One horrifying crime at a time, a killer is making his intentions clear. Jessie may have escaped Sayer’s Brook once. But someone is making sure she never leaves again…

Ghosts of The Silent Hills


Anita Krishan - 2019
    You have arrived in the hills. In here, you are surrounded by dense, menacing forests, enveloped in a deadly silence... You never know what lurks here in the Cold, dark night. Do not walk alone after sunset in the hills. A beautiful woman in white haunts the Lonely pathways, looking to enchant and ensnare men... All the people who died in accidents here... They say you hear their screams at night. And the deserted lodges sitting amidst lush greenery and calm streams... Spirits lie in wait here, ready to prey on the living. There are sceptics who did not heed these warnings. They tried to rationalize what they saw, what they felt. But when they came face to face with the beings that they believed didn’t exist, they couldn’t run away anymore... Ghosts of the silent hills is a collection that will make your nights a little scarier, encompassing the very best spine-chilling stories based on true hauntings.About the AuthorBorn in Shimla in 1955, Anita Krishan spent the initial twenty-two years of her life in this pristine Himalayan town, earning her master’s degree in English literature from Himachal University, and moving on to a career of introducing delights of the language to her young learners. In her long tenure as an educator, she has enriched the lives of countless students with the mystery of the narrative. A versatile writer, each of her literary works appertains to a different genre... from the joys and travails of life, to terrorism that has brought the world to its tenterhooks, to now the paranormal. She has travelled extensively around the globe absorbing the diverse human ethos and cultures—the delectable food for her thoughts. Presently, she lives in Gurgaon with her family.

The Best of Richard Matheson


Richard Matheson - 2017
    Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his sixteen Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J.J. Abrams. Matheson revolutionized horror by taking it out of Gothic castles and strange cosmos and setting it in the darkened streets and suburbs we recognize as our own. He infused tales of the fantastic and supernormal with dark explorations of human nature, delving deep into the universal dread of feeling alone and threatened in a dangerous world. The Best of Richard Matheson brings together his greatest hits as chosen by Victor LaValle, an expert on horror fiction and one of its brightest talents, marking the first major overview of Matheson's legendary career.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Chronicles


Joe GentileMark Dawidziak - 2005
    For the first time ever, a monster collection of 26 new original Kolchak short fiction stories by noted authors from comics, horror fiction, and film! With the advent of the new Kolchak ABC TV show, Moonstone proudly announces new contemporary prose adventures of the original Kolchak, TV's first and foremost paranormal investigator! Plus all kinds of other cool stuff, like tales from Kolchak's untold past, monster huntings, noir thrillers, and even horror stories of more cerebral type!