But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. . . .A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

    If you were looking for the Holy Bible of the horror anthologies, consider yourself lucky, because you just found it!Cosmic horror, supernatural events, ghost stories, weird fiction, mystical fantasies, occult narratives, this book plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities.This collection of the greatest mysterious dark tales gathers together more than 100 authors and more than 1000 short stories (!), which makes it truly unique in its kind.Be aware that this book includes a big amount of stories that appear for the first time in digital print.

    These brave men and women stand up to the darkness, stare it right in the eye, and give it the finger. These are the stories of those who rage against the night, stories of triumph, sacrifice, and bravery in the face of overwhelming evil. Rage Against the Night features the megastars of dark fantasy and horror—including Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, F. Paul Wilson, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Nicholson, Nancy Holder, Sarah Langan, and many, many more.

    Kiernan’s short fiction was first published in 1995. Over the intervening decade and a half, she has proven not only one of dark fantasy and science fiction’s most prolific and versatile authors, but, to quote Ramsey Campbell, “One of the most accomplished writers in the field, and very possibly the most lyrical.” S. T. Joshi has written, “Kiernan’s witchery of words creates a mesmerizing effect that we haven’t seen since the days of Lovecraft and Bradbury.”Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One) presents a stunning retrospective of the first ten years of her work, a compilation of more than two hundred thousand words of short fiction, including many of her most acclaimed stories, as well as some of the author’s personal favorites, several previously uncollected, hard-to-find pieces, and her sf novella, The Dry Salvages, and a rare collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite. Destined to become the definitive look at the early development of Kiernan’s work, Two Worlds and In Between is a must for fans and collectors alike, as well as an unprecedented introduction to an author who, over the course of her career, has earned the praise of such luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Charles De Lint, and Clive Barker.

    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.

    But I write some decent stuff, and here's my way of sharing my odd dude thoughts.I'm the author of three 'major' series; Adrian's Undead Diary, Elmoryn's The Kinless Trilogy, and the Reemergence Novels, the first of which is Tesser: A Dragon Among Us.To help folks get a taste of my writing, I've put At Least He's Not On Fire together. Inside this wonderful electronic tome of my words, you'll find a healthy sized sampler of each of my major works, as well as several short stories that are mixed in for your entertainment. All in, Hell Hole, and The Vampire of Menlo Park are all great fun, and I hope you enjoy them.Dark Recollections: Book One of Adrian's Undead DiaryBeheading a zombie isn't easy in a world where you're more afraid of the living than the dead.Adrian Ring's simple life is thrown into chaos when the world is ripped apart by a plague of undead and legions of desperate survivors. Retreating to Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy, Adrian attempts to rescue friends and family on the way while dancing around his impending insanity over who and what he left behind, and evading maniac survivors. He saves his cat Otis, but shoots his mom. Pretty successful, all things considered.Dark Recollections is the first part of Adrian's own story of how he survived after "That Day." Told through his eyes as he talks to his laptop, affectionately named 'Mr. Journal," and through short stories that entwine with his tales that bring forth dark visions of a world being eaten alive by an unimaginable evil. Adrian's Undead Diary is an eight part epic about a solitary, guilt stricken man that didn't think he deserved to live, but realizes very soon that he survived, and suffered for a reason.The Wrath of the Orphans: Book One of The Kinless TrilogyMalwynn and his twin sister Umaryn live in a small town in northern Varrland. In idyllic New Picknell nearly nothing happens, and when their day to day routine is interrupted by a skirmish between an invading patrol of the dead from The Amaranth Empire and a defending force from Varrland, their world begins to come undone.With international war looming on the horizon New Picknell becomes the center of quite unwanted attention, and the twins have their world shattered. With nothing left to lose, they set out on a mission of vengeance that will take them to places they'd never dreamed of visiting, discovering mystical powers in The Way that will change their lives forever, and revealing dark knowledges best left undiscovered.Tesser: A Dragon Among Us A Novel of the ReemergenceImagine for a moment that you are a Dragon. A creature of unimaginable power, unending intelligence and strength, and you've just woken from ten thousand years of slumber. Worse yet, you've awoken underneath a city; Boston, an alien and strange place that defies everything you've ever known.Your last memories were of primordial forests, erupting volcanoes sculpting a developing world, faeries, witches, vampires, krakens, and monsters that feared where you turned your eyes.But all that is gone. Humans, only barely coming into their own in the world from your memory, have taken over. They have erected cities made of stone and steel erupting from the earth like stalagmites reaching for the high blue sky, and developed sciences that have overshadowed even the glory of old magic.This was not the way it was supposed to be.Meet Tesser, the Dragon. He who walks in any form, and flies the skies free of fear.A Dragon Among Us is Tesser's story. Walk with him as he learns the human way, and discovers the dark truth about why magic has really faded from the world he calls home.And just maybe, humanity will remember why dragons were most noble, and most savage creatures again.Welcome to The Reemergence.

    . . ." 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.

    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.

    Billions died, civilization collapsed, and the human race teetered on the brink of extinction. Humanity's only hope was not a cure, but another bioweapon. When deployed it killed ninety percent of the infected, but the remaining ten percent transformed into even more terrifying creatures called Variants.  Heroes have risen up to meet these abominations. Men like Master Sergeant Reed Beckham of Delta Force Team Ghost and Marine Corporal Joe Fitzpatrick. Women like Dr. Kate Lovato and firefighter Meg Pratt. Throughout the world, survivors band together to fight the evolving monsters in an effort to save humanity. Now, for the first time ever in print, comes a collection of Extinction Cycle short stories that explore the human spirit and the fight for survival in the face of overwhelming odds from some of the leading voices in the post-apocalyptic genre.   Featured Authors Include:  Mark Tufo - Extinction Trippin'Anthony Melchiorri - Darkness EvolvedJeff Olah - The Bone Collector Russell Blake - Extinction Thailand Rachel Aukes - The Fall of Fort Bragg Note: All stories were previously published in the Extinction Cycle Kindle world, but are now being offered in print, and audio for the first time. Readers outside of the USA will also get to experience these stories for the first time as well. Thank you for reading!

    

    From dark fantasy and pure suspense to classic horror tales of vampires and zombies, 999 showcases the extraordinary scope of fantastical fright fiction. The stories in this anthology are a relentless tour de force of fear, which will haunt you, terrify you, and keep the adrenaline rushing all through the night.Amerikanski dead at the Moscow morgue / Kim Newman --The ruins of contracoeur / Joyce Carol Oates --The owl and the pussycat / Thomas M. Disch --The road virus heads north / Stephen King --Keepsakes and treasures: a love story / Neil Gaiman --Growing things / T.E.D. Klein --Good Friday / F. Paul Wilson --Excerpts from the records of the New Zodiac and the diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax / Chet Williamson --An exaltation of termagants / Eric Von Lustbader --Itinerary / Tim Powers --Catfish gal blues / Nancy A. Collins --The entertainment / Ramsey Campell --ICU / Edward Lee --The shadow, the darkness / Thomas Ligotti --Rio Grande Gothic / David Morrell --Des Saucisses, Sans doute / Peter Schneider --Angie / Ed Gorman --The ropy thing / Al Sarrantonio --The tree is my hat / Gene Wolfe --Styx and bones / Edward Bryant --Hemophage / Steven Spurill --The book of irrational numbers / Michael Marshall Smith --Mad dog summer / Joe R. Lansdale --The Theater / Bentley Little --Rehearsals / Thomas F. Monteleone --Darkness / Dennis L. McKiernan --Elsewhere / William Peter Blatty

    Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.

    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

    Lovecraft)By turns bizarre, unsettling, spooky, and sublime, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories showcases nine incomparable stories from master conjuror Algernon Blackwood. Evoking the uncanny spiritual forces of Nature, Blackwood's writings all tread the nebulous borderland between fantasy, awe, wonder, and horror. Here Blackwood displays his best and most disturbing work-including the title story, the inspiration for Val Lewton's classic film Cat People; "The Willows," which Lovecraft singled out as "the single finest weird tale in literature"; "The Wendigo"; "The Insanity of Jones"; and "Sand.""Of the equality of Mr. Blackwood's genius there can be no dispute; for no one has ever approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences." --H.P. Lovecraft

    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.