Book picks similar to
The Hanging Game by Helen Marshall


short-stories
horror
fantasy
short-story

There Will Come Soft Rains


Ray Bradbury - 1950
    First published in Collier's, May 6, 1950.The story concerns a household in Allendale, California, in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Fox 8


George Saunders - 2013
    That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak "Yuman" by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children's bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after "danjer" arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.

She Walks in Shadows


Silvia Moreno-GarciaAngela Slatter - 2015
    The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath?Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!TABLE OF CONTENTS“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin“Body to Body to Body” Selena Chambers“Magna Mater” Arinn Dembo“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful“Hairwork” Gemma Files“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961″ Sharon Mock“The Eye of Juno” Eugenie Mora“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer“Lockbox” E. Catherine Tobler“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes“Queen of a New America” Wendy N. Wagner

Tender is the Flesh


Agustina Bazterrica - 2017
    After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You


Scotto Moore - 2016
    Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band's fans.A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band's lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret.

Blood in the Thread


Cheri Kamei - 2021
    In this retelling of “The Crane Wife”, a makeup artist and her actress lover struggle to stay together as the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood transforms into a cruel and manipulative beast that threatens to pluck them apart.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Houseguest and Other Stories


Amparo Dávila - 2018
    With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest—Dávila’s debut collection in English—you’ll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.

First Kill


Jennifer Fallon - 2016
    How do you kill with honor? When is murder not a murder?In "First Kill", assassin Kiam Miar will find out when his first assignment goes awry and he is faced with an ethical choice…as if assassins could have ethics.And if he makes the wrong choice, he could not only lose his life but throw a good chunk of his world into chaos…

The New Voices of Fantasy


Peter S. BeagleAmal El-Mohtar - 2017
    The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.

In the Sight of Akresa


Ray Wood - 2014
    A slave liberated from a heathen temple, Aya cannot tell the story of her stolen voice, or of her and Claire's unfolding love. She cannot speak her pain, her joy, or her sorrow. And if she sees that which eludes the blind goddess of justice, she cannot bear witness. "In the Sight of Akresa" is a tragic fantasy romance from debut author Ray Wood.

The Wilds


Julia Elliott - 2014
    At a deluxe medical spa on a nameless Caribbean island, a middle-aged woman hopes to revitalize her fading youth with grotesque rejuvenating therapies that combine cutting-edge medical technologies with holistic approaches and the pseudo-religious dogma of Zen-infused self-help. And in a rinky-dink mill town, an adolescent girl is unexpectedly inspired by the ravings and miraculous levitation of her fundamentalist friend’s weird grandmother. These are only a few of the scenarios readers encounter in Julia Elliott’s debut collection, The Wilds. In these genre-bending stories, teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott’s language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters’ lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play.

Across the Dark Water


Richard Kadrey - 2021
    A thief hires a guide to lead him safely through the city’s many dangers to the one person who can give him the travel papers he needs to escape.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Somewhere Beneath Those Waves


Sarah Monette - 2011
    Readers cannot resist journeying with her into realms-dangerously dark or illuminatingly revelatory-they could never imagine without her as their guide. From ghost stories in the tradition of M. R. James to darkly poetic tales to moving fictional examinations of the most basic of human emotion-fear, love, hate, loneliness-Monette's pen produces stories that are invariably unforgettable . . .

His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light


Mimi Mondal - 2019
    I am a trapeze master. An act of compassion puts a trapeze artist in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power in His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light: a Tor.com Original from Dalit writer Mimi Mondal.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.