Book picks similar to
Black Butterflies by John Shirley


horror
short-stories
fiction
collections

Bible Stories for Adults


James K. Morrow - 1996
    Among the dozen selections is the Nebula Award-winning “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge.”Contents:Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge (1988)Daughter Earth (1991)Known but to God and Wilbur Hines (1991)Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower (1994)Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks (1987)The Assemblage of Kristin (1984)Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant (1989)Abe Lincoln in McDonald's (1989)The Confessions of Ebenezer Scrooge (1989)Bible Stories for Adults No. 46: The Soap Opera (1994)Diary of a Mad Deity (1988)Arms and the Woman (1991)

Borderlands 4


Elizabeth MonteleoneGary A. Braunbeck - 1991
    WuMorning Terrors — Peter CrowtherMisadventures in the Skin Trade — Don D’AmmassaCircle of Lias — Lawrence C. ConnollyWatching the Soldiers — Dirk StrasserOne in the A.M. — Rachel DrummondA Side of the Sea — Ramsey CampbellPainted Faces — Gerard Daniel HournerMonotone — Lawrence GreenbergDead Leaves — James C. DobbsFrom the Mouths of Babes — Bentley LittleThe Late Mr. Havel’s Apartment — David HerterUnion Dues — Gary BraunbeckEarshot — Glenn IsaacsonFee — Peter Straub

Silver Scream


David J. Schow - 1988
    Includes works from Clive Barker, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, and more. Original.

The Convulsion Factory


Brian Hodge - 1996
    Thematic collection of 12 stories based around the theme of urban decay.# From Out of the Angry Ruins • Philip Nutman • introduction# • Godflesh • # • Childhood at the Lost and Found • # • Androgyny • # • In a Roadhouse Far, Past the Edge of Town • # • Naked Lunchmeat •# • Cancer Causes Rats •# • Mostly Cloudy, Chance of Kurt •# • Heartsick • # • Extinctions in Paradise •# • The Meat in the Machine •# • Extract • # • Liturgical Music for Nihilists •# • Endnotes: The Ticking of an Unfriendly Clock

Haunted Legends


Ellen DatlowM.K. Hobson - 2010
    Lansdale, Caitlin Kiernan, Catherynne M. Valente, Kit Reed, Ekaterina Sedia, and thirteen other fine writers to create stories unlike any they've written before. Tales to make readers shiver with fear, jump at noises in the night, keep the lights on. These twenty nightmares, brought together by two renowned editors of the dark fantastic, are delightful visions sure to send shivers down the spines of horror readers.

Black Cocktail


Jonathan Carroll - 1990
    Michael is the sort of friend whose funny tales and charm can pull you out of the lowest depths and make life good once more. Along comes Clinton Deix, a friend of Michael's, who tells Ingram that most of those stories are lies. It isn't long before Ingram doesn't know who to believe, and what most confuses and upsets him is that both say they are old school chums. But Michael is in his late thirties while Clinton is still fifteen...

Blue World


Robert R. McCammon - 1989
    From the battlefields of a Vietnam veteran's memory to an old-time movie hero's search for a serial killer, from Halloween in a special town--where the rules of trick-or-treat are written in blood--to a Texas road where a wrong turn leads to a nest of evil, horror master McCammon is at his terrifying best in this collection of stories.

Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction


Leonard WolfHanns Heinz Ewers - 1997
    In film, television, novels, and short stories, he keeps coming back to life, fed by the vital imaginative energies of a world-wide audience that cannot seem to resist his abominable charms. Aristocratic and urbane, deeply erotic and profoundly evil, Dracula's bloodsucking savagery has cast a mesmerizing fascination not only over his victims but over his readers as well. And, as Leonard Wolf suggests, "Vampire fiction...exerts an amazing pull on readers for a reason that we may find disturbing. The blood exchange—the taking of blood by the vampire from his or her victim is, all by itself, felt to be a singularly symbolic event. Symbolic and attractive!" Now, in Blood Thirst; One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf brings together thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt;male and female, human and non-human, humorous and heroic;all of them kin to the dreadful bat. From Lafcadio Hearn, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Edith Wharton, August Derleth, and Ray Bradbury to such contemporary masters as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Woody Allen, and in settings as diverse as rural New England and outer space, this collection offers readers a dazzling compendium of vampire stories. Wolf organizes the collection into six categories;The Classic Adventure Tale, The Psychic Vampire, The Science Fiction Vampire, The Non-Human Vampire, The Comic Vampire, and The Heroic Vampire;which allows readers to see the many guises Dracula's descendants have assumed and the many ways they can be interpreted. In his penetrating introduction, Wolf argues that such an arrangement enables us to see the evolution of the vampire from an unmitigated evil to a creature we are more likely to identify with. "In a century in which God and Satan have become increasingly irrelevant in the popular arts, there has been an accompanying secularization of the vampire idea. And, as the stories in Blood Thirst will show, sympathy for the vampire has grown as we have become increasingly interested in the workings of the mind." Indeed, the vampire's ability to change over time, to draw into itself such a richness of symbolic meanings, to conjure itself into so many diabolical shapes, may account for the enduring appeal of the literature written about it. Here, then, is a definitive collection for aficionados and novices alike, and whether readers find the vampires who inhabit these pages sympathetic or horrific, psychologically intriguing or spiritually repellent, morbidly seductive or comically absurd,Blood Thirst gives us all something to sink our teeth into.

Gleefully Macabre Tales


Jeff Strand - 2008
    But you don't want to read them.So if you're looking to laugh, gasp, gag, or do all three at the same time, making sort of a weird sound that hurts your lungs and elicits odd glances from nearby pedestrians, don't miss Gleefully Macabre Tales!

The Many Faces of Van Helsing


Jeanne CavelosElizabeth Hand - 2004
    Twenty-two masters of horror and fantasy give Van Helsing, the vampire hunter from Bram Stoker's Dracula, his due as they reimagine the adventures of the greatest foe of the most evil vampire in literary history.

Borderlands 2


Thomas F. Monteleone - 1991
    Yet the fiction books in the Borealis imprint certainly belong to a world other than our own. This line encompasses our science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and anthologies.

The Dunwich Horror and Others


H.P. Lovecraft - 1929
    Lovecraft and His Work · August Derleth · in 10 · In the Vault · ss The Tryout Nov ’25; Weird Tales Apr ’32 19 · Pickman’s Model · ss Weird Tales Oct ’27 33 · The Rats in the Walls · ss Weird Tales Mar ’24 53 · The Outsider · ss Weird Tales Apr ’26 60 · The Colour Out of Space · nv Amazing Sep ’27 89 · The Music of Erich Zann · ss The National Amateur Mar ’22; Weird Tales Nov ’34 98 · The Haunter of the Dark · nv Weird Tales Dec ’36 121 · The Picture in the House · ss The National Amateur Jul ’19; Weird Tales Mar ’37 130 · The Call of Cthulhu [Inspector Legrasse] · nv Weird Tales Feb ’28 160 · The Dunwich Horror · nv Weird Tales Apr ’29 203 · Cool Air · ss Tales of Magic and Mystery Mar ’28; Weird Tales Jul ’27 212 · The Whisperer in Darkness · na Weird Tales Aug ’31 278 · The Terrible Old Man · vi The Tryout Jul ’20; Weird Tales Aug ’26 281 · The Thing on the Door-step · nv Weird Tales Jan ’37 308 · The Shadow Over Innsmouth · na Visionary Press: Everett, PA, 1936; Weird Tales Jan ’42 370 · The Shadow Out of Time · na Astounding Jun ’36

Dark Delicacies


Del HowisonRoberta Lannes - 2005
    Paul Wilson, and Chelsea Quinn Yarboro serve up a veritable feast of fear. For the first time ever, Dark Delicacies, the world's foremost horror bookstore, lends its famous name and imprimatur to an anthology designed to please the palate of the genre's most discriminating fans. Throughout, the editors—Del Howison (co-owner of Dark Delicacies) and leading horror anthologist Jeff Gelb—present perfectly crafted, freshly original horror-fiction fare that is as terrifying as it is chillingly delicious.

Fears Unnamed


Tim Lebbon - 2004
    He is the winner of numerous awards, including a Bram Stoker Award. Critics have raved about his work and fans have eagerly embraced him as a contemporary master of the macabre. — Perhaps nowhere are the reasons for his popularity more evident than in this collection of four of his most chilling novellas. Two of these dark gems received British Fantasy Awards, and another was written specifically for this book and has never previously been published. Together, these terrifying tales form a perfect showcase for this startling talent, a window into a world of horrors that once experienced, can never be forgotten.

Great Tales Of Terror


Edgar Allan Poe - 1845
    Each descending sweep of the sharp pendulum brings the prisoner closer to death. One stroke neatly slices his robe. Another brings agonizing pain. Surely the next will end it all... If you like stories of mystery and suspense, get ready for Great Tales of Terror, by Edgar Allen Poe. This nightmarish collection includes these famous tales: "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat," and "Ligeia."