Here's what you'll find in this issue:"Jenny's House" is a great place to play, but an unexpected playmate makes for a dark session of show-and-tell.Three kids seek to steal from a traveling carnival and get more than they bargained for in "A Lullaby for Caliban"In "The Last Nephew", Nephew yearns to be free of Uncle's depredations, but when Uncle leaves his pocket watch behind one night, it gives him the key to his escape.Crossing "The Cornfield" is harrowing on the best of winter nights, but this night, Jack turns to see eyes in the darkness, and knows that something is following him...In "The Ginger Men", mother is baking a special ingredient into a treat for father, an ingredient that gives her pie dough a life of its own. Featuring stories by Ada Hoffmann, Julie Jansen, Mark Onspaugh, Mike Trier, and Elizabeth Twist.Be sure to check out the other volumes in this ongoing anthology series, and watch for new volumes coming soon!

    Tourists and New Agers all talk about the strange energy coming from Eternity’s greatest attraction: a mountain called Icehouse. But the locals talk about something else.The seemingly quiet town has been haunted by strange deaths, grisly murders, unspeakable mutilations, all the work of a serial killer who some say is the same serial killer for over a century. Now as the first snow starts to fall, terror grips Eternity as an undying evil begins its hunt once again…

    If you found Love in Vein too disturbingly dark, too exquisitely explicit, too deliciously erotic in the secrets it revealed -- you're going to adore Love in Vein II. Poppy Z. Brite has done it again with a provocative new collection even more dangerously seductive, more boldly erotic than her first. It is not for everyone. But it may be what you need.

     THE STICK WOMAN - Priscilla has been held hostage, physically mutilated, and fed feces for years. And her situation is about to get much, much worse. SHIT-HOUSE - How bad is the world around you? How much worse could it get? How far would you go to fix it? THE USHERS - They are always there - somewhere in the background and just out of sight. A force of violence and lust. They are the ushers... THE SEA-SLOP THING - June needs a new job - and she's found it, along with something from the deepest depths of the sea.

    Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” have been long regarded as literary classics, while others, such as Frank Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?” and Ellis Parker Butler’s “Pigs Is Pigs,” are lesser known but well worth discovering.The carefully selected stories, each preceded by an illuminating headnote, powerfully illustrate the varied richness of our national literature and history. This beautifully packaged volume, containing the unforgettable classic short stories that evoke our shared American tradition and national identity, makes the perfect gift for the short story aficionado and novice alike.

    Here are stories culled from hundreds of writing programs such as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Johns Hopkins and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf—as well as a complete list of contact information for these programs. This collection showcases tomorrow’s literary stars: Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, David Benioff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, Jennifer Vanderbes, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. The best new American voices are heard here first.

    . . he just didn't say what kind. So when the small-town televangelist and con man climbs out of his coffin at his own wake, it becomes Judgement Day for everyone gathered to mourn - or celebrate - his death. Jake is back, in the rotting flesh, filled with anger and vengeance. And accompanied by demons even more fightening than himself. What follows is a long night of endless terror, a blood-drenched rampage by the man not even death could stop.

    A sweet romance ends in a shallow grave to be revisited again and again. A girl's field hockey team exacts revenge on their coach and her dreaded 'whistle of the damned'. Parker Stephens discovers that some paths are not safe to walk after sunset.In these twelve dark and powerful tales, Glenn Rolfe, author of The Haunted Halls and Boom Town, welcomes you to the dark side. Take his hand and slip into the shadows...Edited by Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi Cover Art by Jason Lynch, Cover design by Glenn Rolfe

    Moses by Joyce Carol OatesWorse than Bones by Ramsey CampbellKing of Outer Space by Peter AtkinsPiano Bar Blues by Melanie TemThose Vanished I Recognize by Tom PiccirilliInland, Shoreline by Darren O. GodfreyThe Window by by Joel LaneAuthor, Author by Gordon LinznerHammerhead by Richard LaymonImbroglio by Conrad WilliamsTransorbital Love Probe by Th. MetzgerThe Impressionists in Winter by Susan FryWhose Ghosts These Are by Charles L. GrantPerdido: A Fragment from a Work in Progress by Peter StraubIn Real Life by William F. NolanPound Rots in Fragrant Harbour by Lisa MortonApologia by Robert DevereauxThe Bird Catcher by S.P. Somtow

    This collection of delightfully twisted, supernatural short stories will captivate your imagination and entertain your darker side. A monster with a love of bakery, an old woman living in fear with her ex-con nephew, a widow with only one chance left, and a demon with a dark and powerful heart, are some of the characters wrestling with their darker selves in this enjoyable collection.

    Howard had a gritty, vibrant style–broadsword writing that cut its way to the heart, with heroes who are truly larger than life.”–David GemmellIn a meteoric career that spanned a mere twelve years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan is indisputably Howard’s greatest creation, it was in his earlier sequence of tales featuring Kull, a fearless warrior with the brooding intellect of a philosopher, that Howard began to develop the distinctive themes, and the richly evocative blend of history and mythology, that would distinguish his later tales of the Hyborian Age.Much more than simply the prototype for Conan, Kull is a fascinating character in his own right: an exile from fabled Atlantis who wins the crown of Valusia, only to find it as much a burden as a prize.This groundbreaking collection, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Justin Sweet, gathers together all Howard’s stories featuring Kull, from Kull’s first published appearance, in “The Shadow Kingdom,” to “Kings of the Night,” Howard’s last tale featuring the cerebral swordsman. The stories are presented just as Howard wrote them, with all subsequent editorial emendations removed. Also included are previously unpublished stories, drafts, and fragments, plus extensive notes on the texts, an introduction by Howard authority Steve Tompkins, and an essay by noted editor Patrice Louinet. “Howard was a true storyteller–one of the first, and certainly among the best, you’ll find in heroic fantasy. If you’ve never read him before, you’re in for a real treat.”–Charles de Lint“For stark, living fear . . . what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”–H. P. Lovecraft

    A young botanist leads a small expedition to find a way out to rescue humanity.

    

    When troubled musician Alex Rossiter relocates to the Big Easy, he soon finds his rock star mojo working again. Not only is his new band attracting notice, he's also having affairs with two gorgeous women: the sexy voodoo queen Ti Alice, and beautiful businesswoman Charlotte "Charlie" Calder. But when Rossiter stumbles across a long-lost book of ancient spells, he unwittingly invites the evil spirit known as Tempter into his dreams--and, soon, his waking hours as well. Tempter is eager to escape his other-dimensional prison so he can once more slake his perverted lusts on the flesh of the living, starting with Charlie. It's up to Jerry Sloan--Rossiter's boyhood friend and Charlie's not-so-secret admirer--and the one-eyed hoodoo woman known as Mad Aggie to stop Tempter's evil plans before he destroys not Charlie but the descendants of the voodoo priestess who imprisoned him over a century ago. Together this unlikely duo must travel to the abandoned plantation deep in Louisiana's haunted bayou country, and face the dark secret that lies waiting for them, locked inside its rotting heart.

    In "Mercury Rain" a soldier fighting a new enemy learns the importance of holding on to his memories. "Blackwater," the title story of the collection, is an homage to Stephen King's short story, "Graveyard Shift," and it tells the tale of Paul Hawkins, a mine worker who disturbs something terrifying in the Blackwater Hills of Durham, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976.