Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R.R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.Follow along with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Cherie Priest, Garth Nix, and Connie Willis, as well as other masters of literary sleight-of-hand, in this rogues gallery of stories that will plunder your heart — and yet leave you all the richer for it.Contents:- Tough Times All Over by Joe Abercrombie (a Red Country story)- What Do You Do? (aka The Grownup) by Gillian Flynn- The Inn of the Seven Blessings by Matthew Hughes- Bent Twig by Joe R. Lansdale (a Hap and Leonard story)- Tawny Petticoats by Michael Swanwick- Provenance by David Ball- The Roaring Twenties by Carrie Vaughn- A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch- Bad Brass by Bradley Denton- Heavy Metal by Cherie Priest- The Meaning of Love by Daniel Abraham- A Better Way to Die by Paul Cornell (a Jonathan Hamilton story)- Ill Seen in Tyre by Steven Saylor- A Cargo of Ivories by Garth Nix (a Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz story)- Diamonds From Tequila by Walter Jon Williams (a Dagmar story)- The Caravan to Nowhere by Phyllis Eisenstein (a Tales of Alaric the Minstrel story)- The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives by Lisa Tuttle- How the Marquis Got His Coat Back by Neil Gaiman (a Neverwhere story)- Now Showing by Connie Willis- The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss (a Kingkiller Chronicle story)- The Rogue Prince, or, A King’s Brother by George R.R. Martin (a Song of Ice and Fire story)

    Howard” Contains: • An aesthetic cover page. • A beginning click-able Table of Contents for all titles. • Inner click-able Tables of Contents for all individual books with multiple chapters. • Nicely organized chapters and text. Author’s works include: • SKULLS IN THE STARS • THE FOOTFALLS WITHIN • THE MOON OF SKULLS • THE HILLS OF THE DEAD • WINGS IN THE NIGHT • RATTLE OF BONES • RED SHADOWS • THE DAUGHTER OF ERLIK KHAN • HAWK OF THE HILLS • BLOOD OF THE GODS • SON OF THE WHITE WOLF • THE COUNTRY OF THE KNIFE • THE PHOENIX ON THE SWORD • THE SCARLET CITADEL • THE TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT • BLACK COLOSSUS • THE SLITHERING SHADOW • THE POOL OF THE BLACK ONE • GODS OF THE NORTH • ROGUES IN THE HOUSE • SHADOWS IN THE MOONLIGHT • QUEEN OF THE BACK COAST • THE DEVIL IN IRON • THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE • A WITCH SHALL BE BORN • JEWELS OF GWAHLUR • BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER • SHADOWS IN ZAMBOULA • RED NAILS • THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON • THE HYBORIAN AGE • THE VALLEY OF THE WORM • THE GARDEN OF FEAR • APPARITION IN THE PRIZE RING • ALLEYS OF DARKNESS • ALLEYS OF PERIL • ALMURIC • WORMS OF THE EARTH • THE LOST RACE • EVIL DEEDS AT RED COUGAR • A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK (NOVELLA) • A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK (SHORT STORY) • CUPID FROM BEAR CREEK • GUNS OF THE MOUNTAINS • HIGH HORSE RAMPAGE • MOUNTAIN MAN • NO COWHERDERS WANTED • PILGRIMS TO THE PECOS • TEXAS JOHN ALDEN • WHILE SMOKE ROLLED • PISTOL POLITICS • SHARP’S GUN SERENADE • THE APACHE MOUNTAIN WAR • THE CONQUERIN’ HERO OF THE HUMBOLTS • THE FEUD BUSTER • THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN • THE RIOT AT COUGAR PAW • THE ROAD TO BEAR CREEK • THE SCALP HUNTER • WAR ON BEAR CREEK • THE TOMB’S SECRET • CHAMP OF THE FORECASTLE • CIRCUS FISTS • THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT • THE HAUNTER OF THE RING • HAWKS OF OUTREMER • THE BLOOD OF BELSHAZZAR • THE BLACK STONE • THE FIRE OF ASSHURBANIPAL • THE THING ON THE ROOF • CUPID VS POLLUX • IN THE FOREST OF VILLEFÉRE • WOLFSHEAD • BLACK CANAAN • THE HOUSE OF ARABU • PEOPLE OF THE DARK • THE VOICE OF EL-LIL • SPEAR AND FANG • SEA CURSE • FIST AND FANG • GENERAL IRONFIST • GATES OF EMPIRE • LORD OF SAMARCAND • THE LION OF TIBERIAS • THE SOWERS OF THE THUNDER • THE CAIRN ON THE HEADLAND • THE DREAM SNAKE • THE FEARSOME TOUCH OF DEATH • THE HYENA • THE TREASURES OF TARTARY • THE SHADOW KINGDOM • THE MIRRORS OF TUZUN THUNE • KINGS OF THE NIGHT • NIGHT OF BATTLE • OLD GARFIELD’S HEART • T

    Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.

    Each story begins with the setup of someone walking into a workplace with a gun. From there each author takes the tale wherever his twisted imagination leads him. Original.

    Searching these sinister stacks you will find:A church picnic at a haunted reservoir where only a twelve year-old boy is aware that something waits in the water…A burnt-out teacher that finds a friend… in his cancer…The secret to surviving the zombie apocalypse…An inoculation for Lycanthropy which may be more horrible than the disease…Young lovers that, on the eve of World War II, partake of a most forbidden fruit…A haunted carnival ride which delivers its passengers into the unexpected…21 tales of night terror, night madness, nightmares, night woe and night wonder…Welcome to The Night LibraryBe warned: The late fees are killer!

    "The Dreams in the Witch House," gathered together here with more than twenty tales of terror, exemplifies H.P. Lovecraft's primacy among twentieth-century American horror writers.A companion volume to The Call of Cthulhu and The Thing on the Doorstep, this original Penguin Classics collection presents the definitive texts of the work, including a newly restored text of "The Shadow out of Time", along with S.T. Joshi's invaluable Introduction and Notes."Lovecraft's fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror . . . A unique and visionary world of wonder, terror, and delirium."- Clive Barker

    Included are: Introduction (The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack) • essay by Shawn Garrett Dreams of Yith • (1934) • poem by Duane W. Rimel and H. P. Lovecraft Out of the Aeons • short fiction by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft (variant of Out of the Eons 1935) Fishhead • (1913) • short story by Irvin S. Cobb When Chaugnar Wakes • (1932) • poem by Frank Belknap Long The Mound • (1940) • novella by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop The Thing on the Roof • (1932) • short story by Robert E. Howard The Isle of Dark Magic • (1934) • novelette by Hugh B. Cave The Secret in the Tomb • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Horror from the Hills • (1931) • novella by Frank Belknap Long The Terrible Parchment • (1937) • short story by Manly Wade Wellman The Shambler from the Stars • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Diary of Alonzo Typer • (1938) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft and William Lumley Hydra• (1939) • short story by Henry Kuttner The Suicide in the Study • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch Marmok • (1940) • poem by Emil Petaja The Intruder • (1940) • short story by Emil Petaja Out of the Jar • (1941) • short story by Charles R. Tanner [as by Charles A. Tanner] Skydrift • (1949) • short story by Emil Petaja Anonymous • (1951) • short story by George T. Wetzel Why Abdul Alhazred Went Mad • (1950) • short story by D. R. Smith (variant of Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad) Caer Sidhi • (1954) • short story by George T. Wetzel Dead of Night • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter Death of a Damned Good Man • (1991) • short story by Avram Davidson Medusa's Coil • short fiction by Zealia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop] Perchance to Dream • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter The Winfield Heritence • short fiction by Lin Carter (variant of The Winfield Heritance 1981) The Challenge from Beyond • (1935) • short story by C. L. Moore and A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long The Last Horror Out of Arkham • (1977) • short story by Darrell Schweitzer If you enjoy this ebook, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more of the 300+ volumes in this series, covering adventure, historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, ghost stories, science fiction -- and much, much more!

    Joshi. One of the heirs apparent to early-twentieth-century American author H. P. Lovecraft, Campbell's horror stories are often set in contemporary Merseyside, England, his own hometown, and involve quite ordinary characters. His unsettling, dreamlike prose, however, transforms his work into very effective horror fiction.The fourteen stories in this collection are:“Passing Through Peacehaven”“Peep”“Getting It Wrong”“The Room Beyond”“Holes for Faces”“The Rounds”“The Decorations”“The Address”“Recently Used”“Chucky Comes to Liverpool”“With the Angels”“Behind the Doors”“Holding the Light”“The Long Way”

    Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

    P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Proboscis" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.

    . . ." The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal. Stories is a groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction and affords some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley and Jodi Picoult—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and "master anthologist" (Booklist) Sarrantonio personally invited, read, and selected all the stories in this collection, and their standard for this "new literature of the imagination" is high. "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all." Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man's descent into evil in "Devil on the Staircase." In "Catch and Release," Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in "Unwell." Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in "Wildfire in Manhattan." Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams's "The Knife." Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in "The Therapist." A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains." As it transforms your view of the world, this brilliant and visionary volume—sure to become a classic—will ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.

    Here are 25 stories (plus a bonus interview with best-selling author George R.R. Martin) by some of the field's greatest authors. Included are:THE TRUE DARKNESS, by Pamela SargentPERMANENT FATAL ERRORS, by Jay LakeADJUSTMENT TEAM, by Philip K. DickROBOTS DON’T CRY, by Mike ResnickNO GREAT MAGIC, by Fritz LeiberESCAPE HATCH, by Brenda W. CloughBACKLASH, by Winston K. MarksTHE PICK-UP, by Lawrence Watt-EvansPOPULATION IMPLOSION, by Andrew J. OffuttWAY DOWN EAST, by Tim SullivanTHROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 28, by Grendel BriartonTO INVADE NEW YORK, by Irwin LewisTHEY WERE THE WIND, by C.J. HendersonSTOPOVER, by William GerkenCONSEQUENCES OF STEAM, by Michael HemmingsonOUTSIDE LOOKING IN, by Mark E. BurgessDEAD WORLD, by Jack DouglasNEFERTITI'S TENTH LIFE, by Mary A. TurzilloQUICKSILVER, by Lonni LeesAFTER ALL, by Robert ReginaldTHE BARBARIANS, by Algis BudrysEX MACHINA, by Cynthia WardMONKEY ON HIS BACK, by Charles V. De VetTHE SURVIVORS, by Tom GodwinTHROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 99, by Grendel BriartonSPEAKING WITH GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: Interview conducted by Darrell SchweitzerAnd don't forget to search this ebook store for "Wildside Megapack" to see more entries in this series, covering classic authors and subjects like mysteries, science fiction, westerns, ghost stories -- and much, much more!

    We employ. 1-800-555-0606 How lucky do you feel? So reads the business card from LIMBUS, INC., a shadowy employment agency that operates at the edge of the normal world. LIMBUS's employees are just as suspicious and ephemeral as the motives of the company, if indeed it could be called a company in the ordinary sense of the word. In this shared-world anthology, five heavy hitters from the dark worlds of horror, fantasy, and scifi pool their warped takes on the shadow organization that offers employment of the most unusual kind to those on the fringes of society. One thing's for sure - you'll never think the same way again about the fine print on your next employment application!

    Nightmares imagined into real places; from Nigeria to Japan, North America to Australia. Locations the authors have inhabited and imbued with the sinister–hiking trails, haunted lakes, relics of faded industry, and even a Hawaiian volcano!Is there a selkie who resides in the Wartrace Lake Dam, Tennessee?Can you summon a godlike entity on the coast of Oregon?There are many Crybaby Bridges, but which one belongs to author Gwendolyn Kiste?Tales from the British Isles - of cursed beaches, remote manor houses, and plagued villages. Fresh takes on old legends, newly minted stories attached to interesting landmarks, and even personal hauntings (which will never be pinned on Google Maps.)

    Hamantaschen’s third collection of short stories delivers more inimitable dark fiction. These are eleven tales of macabre horror, filled with estrangement, honor, wonder, terror, delusion, pity, desperation and perseverance.