This is true.Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.This was a terrible plan.Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.

    Something that causes healthy babies to turn cold in their cribs. Something that strikes at the heart of every parent's darkest fears. Something is taking the children one by one. Now, an entire town waits on the edge of panic for the next nightmare. there must be a reason for the terror. they all know it. But no one ever suspected...

    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)

      The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.   But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.   This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

    G. Wells was greeted in 1896 by howls of protest from reviewers, who found it horrifying and blasphemous. They wanted to know more about the wondrous possibilities of science shown in his first book, The Time Machine, not its potential for misuse and terror. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, a shipwrecked gentleman named Edward Prendick, stranded on a Pacific island lorded over by the notorious Dr. Moreau, confronts dark secrets, strange creatures, and a reason to run for his life.While this riveting tale was intended to be a commentary on evolution, divine creation, and the tension between human nature and culture, modern readers familiar with genetic engineering will marvel at Wells’s prediction of the ethical issues raised by producing “smarter” human beings or bringing back extinct species. These levels of interpretation add a richness to Prendick’s adventures on Dr. Moreau’s island of lost souls without distracting from what is still a rip-roaring good read.

    Nine misfit academics on an expedition to find the volcryn, a mythic race of intersteller nomads, and the only ship available for this strange quest is the Nightflyer, a cybernetic wonder with a never-seen captain...Nine innocents are about to find themselves in deep space, trapped with an insane murderer who can go anywhere, do anything, and intends to kill them all.

    A manhunt ensues—though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for.Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family—their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel—where, if rumors are true, biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable high school classmates that he’s a werewolf. Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late JR Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly control freak of a mother, Olivia. At once a riveting mystery and a fascinating revelation of the grotesque and the darkness in us all, Hemlock Grove has the architecture and energy to become a classic in its own right—and Brian McGreevy the talent and ambition to enthrall us for years to come.

    She remembers abandoned cars and children’s toys littered across the road. She remembers dark shapes in the snow and a terror she can’t explain. And then…nothing.When she wakes, aching and afraid in a stranger’s gothic home, he tells her she was in an accident. He claims he saved her. Clare wants to leave, but a vicious snowstorm has blanketed the world in white, trapping them together, and there’s nothing she can do but wait.At least the stranger seems kind…but Clare doesn’t know if she can trust him. He promised they were alone here, but she sees and hears things that convince her something else is creeping about the surrounding woods, watching. Waiting. Between the claustrophobic storm and the inescapable sense of being hunted, Clare is on edge…and increasingly certain of one thing:Her car crash wasn't an accident. Something is waiting for her to step outside the fragile safety of the house... something monstrous, something unfeeling.Something desperately hungry.

    The only thing standing in the way of a first-rate experience for the jet-setting VIPs is an unscrupulous businessman and sixty feet of prehistoric shark. As the underwater complex is besieged by a marauding behemoth, newly minted marine biologist Coco Keahi must face off against the ancient predator as it rises from the deep with a vengeance. Meanwhile, a human monster has decided he would be better off if Coco were one of the creature’s victims.

    It is a place where feasts never end, games of croquet have devastating consequences, and teenagers are punished for growing up. For a select group of Masters, it's a decadent paradise where time stands still. For those who serve them, however, it's a slow torture where their lives can be ended in a blink.In a bid to escape before their youth betrays them, Dora and Thistle--best friends and confidants--set out on a remarkable journey through time and space. Traveling between their world and ours, they hunt the one person who can grant them freedom. Along the way they encounter a mysterious traveler who trades in favors and never forgets debts, a crossroads at the center of the universe, our own world on the brink of war, and a traveling troupe of actors with the ability to unlock the fabric of reality.Endlessly inventive, The Memory Theater takes the reader to a wondrous place where destiny has yet to be written, life is a performance, and magic can erupt at any moment. It is Karin Tidbeck's most engrossing and irresistible tale yet.

    It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for-a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope-as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.

    Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.

    Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.These are the facts.Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

    He hates his job.Rhoda is a junkie whose babysitting charge ran off while she was scoring cocaine. She hates her life. Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the neon-lit corridors behind the mall, disturbing text messages lure them into the bowels of the building, where old mannequins are stored in grave-like piles and raw sewage drips off the ceiling. The only escape is down.Plummeting into the earth in a disused service lift playing head-splitting Musak, Dan and Rhoda enter a sinister underworld that mirrors their worst fears. They finally escape, but something feels different. Why are the shoppers all pumped full of silicone? Why are the shop assistants chained to their counters? And why is a café called McColon’s selling lumps of bleeding meat?Just when they think they’ve made it back to the mall, they realize the nightmare has only just begun...

    When evidence at the latest scene suggests that a massive predator may be the source of the carnage, a local crocodilian specialist is brought in as a consultant. Soon an effort is launched by the police and the coast guard to successfully locate and capture the ancient creature, which threatens the lives of everyone in the expedition, as well as the surrounding communities.