Elrod's picked 15 of her favorite short works for this multi-genre collection spanning 15 years of publication.Also included is a never before published VAMPIRE FILES story, featuring her urban fantasy vampire PI, Jack Fleming!Each story has been polished afresh for this anthology, with pages of new material added.More information -- and previews of the stories! -- may be found at her website vampwriter-dot-com.Titles:1. A Night at the (Horse) Opera (Vampire Files, Fleming)2. The Breath of Bast (Vampire Files), Ecsott)3. Bossman (Original mystery, no vamps)4. Slaughter (Vampire Files, Fleming & Gordy)5. The Devil's Mark (Original historical vampire)6. You'll Catch Your Death (Vampire Files)7. Izzy's Shoe-In (Historical mystery introducing Izzy DeLeon, fearless girl reporter)8. The Quick Way Down (Vampire Files, Fleming and Gordy)9. The Scottish Ploy (Original romance/mystery)10. Grave-Robbed (Vampire Files, Fleming)11. The Company You Keep (Vampire Files, Gabriel Kroun)12. Death in Dover (Jonathan Barrett before he got vamped, historical mystery)13. Drawing Dead (ALL NEW VAMPIRE FILES, Fleming)14. King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet from a different point of view, mystery)15. Fugitive (Science fiction/space opera)16. BONUS STORY! The Wind Breathes Cold (Quincey Morris: Vampire)

    This was published as a Clarkesworld audiobook podcast in 2020.

    I had a three-day notice to pay rent or quit. The ad was the answer to my problem. Someone needed a party hostess for 24 hours on a private island. With my catering experience and model looks, I could get the gig. But when I set eyes on the man about to fly me to the island, I realized I might have made a mistake. The tall, older, arrogant stranger didn’t just undress me with his eyes, he used me right there on the pavement. Deviant desires seemed to radiate from him. He pulled a black leather dog collar out of his pocket. “Wait. You have to sign this before we do anything. Read it.” He handed me a contract. The wind swept a bottle down the runway and blew my skirt up. It was hard to read with his dark eyes looking right through my underwear and into my secret places. “This is a mistake. I didn’t know the ad meant —.” “You thought you were going to serve canapes on a tray?” He chuckled. “No, Brittani. You’re the main course.” His eyes worked me over again. “And you’re perfect.” He handed me a pen that probably cost more than my laptop. “Just sign at the bottom of the page. Full disclosure, full consent. That’s the way I do business.” “Can I leave?” “Of course you can leave. If you leave now. But you don’t get paid if you leave. Once we get to the island, you’re ours for 24-hours.” He tapped the contract with his long finger. “When your service is over, I transfer $10,000 to your account and send you home.” “$10,000?” I choked on it. That was more than generous. I scanned the contract again. It had long, dense paragraphs of disclaimers and waivers but not much in the way of details. “I’ll be — okay — when it’s over?” “You’ll be okay.” He smiled. I liked his smile. I needed the money. I signed. He put the collar around my neck and buckled it. If you like dark short erotica, kinky alpha billionaires — and no-entrances-barred hard-and-unprotected group interracial action with a white woman at the center, you'll love Q. Zayne's creamy story about Brittani’s scary-hot visit to The Billionaire’s Club. Click Buy and get the adventure! All characters are 18+ and readers should be, too, due to language and sexual content. If you're over 21, enjoy the dash of interracial BMWW romance sparked amid all the juicy action. :)

    Now forever means something vastly different for the two best friends. Taria just being a college student she never thought she would run into a vampire serial killer or being accused of murder, to becoming a vampire herself. Taria never thought that asking for excitement in her life she would end up with Michael a sexy vampire with deadly secrets but who made her his Queen. Michael has always seen visions, but he never saw Taria coming into his life. The couple is more than just lovers but soulmates who were destined to be together. Michael can feel his power growing as the New Year approaches as he fights whoever attacks his family and friends. He knows that he must protect his people as he takes the throne, but before that can happen, he had to take the Van Allans down. With Taria by his side, Michael knows he can defend and rule the vampire covens, or they would die trying. LaToya never imagined finding someone who loves her enough to let her be herself. She never thought she would have children and now can’t Imagine life without them. LaToya went looking for answers about herself and found that she was more than what she appeared. Quinn with deadly secrets himself found his mate and would never let her go. Finally finding of his own past, he has to find the True Alpha inside if he wants to keep his mate, children, and all wolf shifter packs safe. Enemies are all around the friends who became more. They found allies, friends and more secrets to uncover but before they can move on to their next adventure in their lives, they had to deal with the fact something wants to end the world, and another wants to rule it. It's up to these four to make it right even at the cost of their own lives. They will come to realize nothing lives forever. Will Michael gain the power that belongs to him or will Victor Van Allan finally take it? Will Quinn be able to be the True Alpha of his kind? Will LaToya keep her children safe while learning to use her birth given gifts? Will Taria be able to fulfill her hunter role, help Michael rule the vampire covens, and finally figure out the power that is hidden inside of her? Who will make it in this last installment of Deadly Secrets Brothers That Bite? This story will be best read if you read Deadly Secrets Brothers that Bite 1-4, Desire of the Harvest Moon: The Change, Twice Marked Witches and Wolves first.

    The stories traverse the magical and the mundane, where supernatural beings are indistinguishable from their mortal counterparts in their complexity and complicity.

    EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT brings together twenty stories from the extraordinary talent of fantasy author Cat Rambo. Here are tales from seaport city of Tabat, both before and after the sorcerous wars that destroyed the Old Continent. Here are alchemical explanations for failed blind dates. Here you'll find a dryad, the last great elephant, and an uneasy blur of humanity. Cat Rambo doesn't simply amaze and delight, she restores wonder to her readers with every page. You won't simply believe that pigs can fly, you'll question why you ever doubted the premise at all.Contents:Eight Letters of Wonder • essay by Michael LivingstonHer Eyes Like Sky, and Coal, and MoonlightThe AccordionI'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore SaidHeart in a BoxIn the Lesser Southern IslesUp the ChimneyThe Silent FamiliarEvents at Fort PlentitudeThe Dew Drop Coffee LoungeNarrative of a Beast's LifeEagle-Haunted Lake SammammishSugarA Key Decides Its DestinyThe Towering Monarch of His Mighty RaceIn Order to ConserveRare Pears and GreengagesA Twine of FlameThe Dead Girl's Wedding MarchWorm WithinMagnificent Pigs

    But when a child's doll appears in the middle of the road, the vacation comes to an abrupt end and Nightingale finds himself fighting for his life. The Doll is a fast-paced supernatural story about 10,000 words long.

    Collins. Dead Man's Hand collects the novellas "Walking Wolf" and "Lynch," the short stories "Calaverada" and "The Tortuga Hill Gang's Last Ride," and completes the five-card draw with the all-new vampire Western novella "Hell Come Sundown." The West has never been better or weirder. About the Author Nancy A. Collins is the author of Sunglasses After Dark , Darkest Heart and Dead Roses for a Blue Lady . She is a past recipient of the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Iecarus Awards, and a nominee for the 2003 Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards.

    Ward, a tier-one operator turned mercenary, has just flung himself off the cargo deck of a doomed C-130. Now he’s out of the Drop Zone and evading the undead as a terrible new breed of hunter enters the Wyrd. But these new, faster predators might not be the only thing to fear in an apocalypse beset by zombies, nukes and killer A.I.’s. One of the last warriors of a collapsed government is planning on putting up some big numbers in this final, ultimate game of Survivor, until he finds a mysterious new companion... a stranger dressed in black.

    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.

    

    A disused London Underground lift goes way beyond the bottom floor.A psychic boy discovers what terrors are buried in the fallow field.A handshake seals a midnight fate in an old farming dispute.A corpse must be buried by dawn.BLACK GATE TALES: Fourteen short stories of dread, hope, death and wonder.

    It was Halloween and Samantha`s contractions were unbearable so her husband rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their new bundle of joy. Mike told the doctor and nurse to take great care of his wife. The doctor and nurse reassured Mike they would take very good care of her and not to worry. Mike waited patiently in the waiting room as the doctor and nurse delivered their beautiful baby. After a few hours the baby finally arrived and the doctor entered the waiting room and told Mike to come in the room and see his new baby. Mike entered and his wife was all smiles and said "Honey, it`s a boy!" "I think he looks like a Johnny. What do you think?" asked his wife. "Johnny sounds fine to me," replied Mike. Mike was so excited and held his baby boy in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks and said "Darling, I think he likes me." Mike stayed the night in his wife's room with their new baby, but as they were both sleeping, an unforeseen force came in their room that was about to change their lives forever, when they both woke in the morning. Morning came, and Samantha was discharged from the hospital, and time for their new baby to be raised in their new home. It wasn't until after little Johnny turned 6 years of age that things around the Delany Estate turned deadly. The first sign that Johnny had the mark of the beast was June 6. It was the 6th month, 6th day, and Johnny was 6. All the numbers represented 666.

    The part of him that knows the deep, dark truth behind fairy stories and myths..."Guy is about to finish writing his breakthrough online article. He overheard the story by chance in a pub and it's guaranteed to go viral - all he needs to do is persuade the World's Unluckiest Man to talk to him. His best friend Larry's quest for killer clickbait material has led him to a recently-appeared shanty town in Glasgow, where he finds some kind of urban voodoo cult. Ex-cop Sam has already come face to face with the terrifying force behind both these phenomena, but he's been trying to put it out of his mind.When Larry is killed in inexplicably gruesome circumstances, Guy knows he's also a target. The evidence of malevolent power is suddenly proliferating - but why now? Together, Sam and Guy enter a shadow world of ancient monsters and modern curses, in a battle to figure out the rules of the game and bring them to the light before it's far too late.From the bestselling author of the Stone Man series, You See The Monster is for fans of contemporary horror kindle books at their most darkly inventive: a chilling, high-concept fable for our times.PRAISE FOR LUKE SMITHERD'S WRITING: "... a novel that intrigues, enthralls, horrifies, thrills, and hits the reader with an emotional resonance as only the best stories can." - Ain't It Cool News.com "... strong characterization, moral quandaries, mystery, and a whole lot of tense moments. Reading the final sentence was truly a bittersweet moment." - SFsignal.com, Hugo award-winning website"I couldn't help myself and read this is one sitting" - simon211175, Amazon Vine Voice

    Don’t miss these stories brought to you by series creators Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque, as well as other awesome comics talent like Becky Cloonan (BATMAN), Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon (DAYTRIPPER), Jeff Lemire (SWEET TOOTH), Greg Rucka (The Punisher, BATWOMAN), Gail Simone (BATGIRL) and many more!