This has made him the perfect target for abuse by those who would exploit his wild talent for their own power and glory.Disgusted by his part in the game, Jimmy’s bodyguard Mike takes him on the run. But Mike’s boss isn’t the sort to let a meal ticket go easily, so he dispatches a brutal hitman named Ash to hunt them down and bring Jimmy back to work.Winding through a snow-covered landscape of back alleys, cheap motels, and strip clubs, Mike must fight his own personal demons while desperately trying to keep Jimmy free.

    Nearly two decades after he made the winning shot in the state championship basketball game, he remains much adored and the focal point of community pride. Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't want to talk about "the game." Now approaching forty, Duke no longer wants to be defined solely by something he did when he was eighteen. So he decides to parlay his local popularity into a successful restaurant--"Duke's Place."But no sooner does he get his restaurant up and running than disaster strikes. One day, "Little Tony" DeMarco, his brother-in-law and a known mob enforcer, comes into the restaurant and murders Duke's oldest friend. Now Duke faces the hardest decision of his life. DeMarco thinks he's untouchable, but Duke discovers a way to take him down, along with his mob superiors.To do so, however, means leaving Mingo Junction and sacrificing his treasured identity as the town legend. And if he follows through, what will remain of his life?

    Never put a more slothful soul in a fella big enough to wrestle an ox to the ground."The Conklin Collection is haunted and haunting, powerful in its brutal simplicity. What looks like the work of a fevered imagination begins to appear more and more like the desperate attempts of a man toiling at the edge of his limits to depict what cannot be depicted…An underlying order as old as the hills, its thousand throats concealed beneath the roots and rocks, between the streams and trees, deep in the besieged mountains of Appalachia."My momma said it was their eighteenth summer when Cecil started shooting up like a weed again. That ain't normal."But the most crucial painting of all is missing. And the only place it could be is the last place that should be searched."The rest, I think they always knew deep down Cecil was the one in trouble, that something was after him already. He never should've gone over the mountain."I'll Bring You the Birds From Out of the Sky is a tale of art and obsession, of a dying heritage and cosmic horror, brought to rustic life with full-color paintings by artist Kim Parkhurst.

    Teddy’s parasitic condition is usually tempered easily and is invisible to most, unless she feeds from them. However, her insatiable hunger has already begun to threaten her safety. Trapped in her tiny Connecticut hometown thanks to a careless mistake which cost her a prestigious scholarship, Teddy grieves her father’s death and cares for her neurotic mother, Mercy, who is convinced scorpion venom is the only remedy for her own peculiar skin ailment linked to her daughter’s sadness.Once an aspiring songwriter, Teddy now merely alternates between shifts at the local market and visits to the house of her eccentric neighbor, Mr. Ridley, for fresh scorpions to bring to her mother. It’s during one of her routine visits to Mr. Ridley’s subterranean grotto of exotic animals that Teddy meets an unusual young girl named Kiiara. Immediately enamored with one another, Teddy soon discovers that Kiiara is hiding a gruesome secret, too – a secret that will threaten to undo everything Teddy has ever known and loved, and violently touch all those who cross their path with disaster.

    This isn't your cozy, broomstick-riding fairy tale… When Maria Jenkins awakens late one night in her family’s motel room and witnesses her younger brother, Michael, sleepwalking out into the desert moonlight, her family trip is plunged into a gruesome nightmare… …because the sprawling wasteland outside their door isn’t nearly as lifeless as it seems… Deep in the desert hills of Nevada, a forgotten evil emerges with a lust for sacrifice. Beneath their black-hooded robes, cackling under the veil of night, they're on the hunt for new blood—new blood for old rituals—until the perfect, most unsuspecting morsel catches their eye.

    She’s used to being discussed like a problem, a problem her mother has finally passed on to her father. What she hasn’t gotten used to is her stepmother…especially when she finds out that she’ll have to spend the summer with April in the remote woods of Washington to restore a broken-down old house.Set deep in a dense forest, the old Carver House is filled with abandoned antique furniture, rich architectural details, and its own chilling past. The only respite Penny can find away from April’s renovations is in Miller, the young guy who runs the local general store. He’s her only chance at a normal, and enjoyable, summer.But Miller has his own connection to the Carver House, and it’s one that goes beyond the mysterious tapping Penny hears at her window, the handprints she finds smudging the glass panes, and the visions of children who beckon Penny to follow them into the dark woods. Miller’s past just might threaten to become the terror of Penny’s future….

    Evidence points to a rebel group trying to stab fear into the very heart of the empire. Inspector Khlid begins a harrowing hunt for those responsible, but when a larger conspiracy comes to light, she struggles to trust even the officers around her.

    He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Lisa was looking forward to spending time alone with her husband, and telling him that they were going to have a baby. Instead, it became a nightmare when her husband was arrested and Lisa was kidnapped. But the kidnappers aren't asking for ransom. They want Lisa herself. They're going to make her a star . . . in a snuff film.

    Not thinking about what might be lurking in the shadows, he soon finds out that you are never truly alone in the woods.

    For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. "Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitely ends a good marriage. Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.(front flap)Contains:1922Big DriverA Fair ExtensionA Good Marriage

    Old money, old ties, old secrets. Marcie may have married into this world — but she’ll never be part of it.SOMETHING NEWThen Jason’s boss brings back a new wife from his trip to London. Young, attractive, reckless — nobody can take their eyes off Keisha. Including Marcie’s husband.SOMETHING YOU CAN NEVER, EVER UNDO…Some people would kill for the life Marcie has—what will she do to keep it?

    The Sweet Sixteen Killer is brutally murdering sixteen-year-old girls, and the authorities are baffled.A seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy has attacked his entire family and had to be chained to his bed. His uncle, police officer Danny Hartman, is convinced his nephew is possessed by a demon. Danny has sent his partner, Jack, to fetch the only priest in Chicago who has ever performed an exorcism.But Jack has other plans tonight. He believes the boy isn t possessed by a demon, but instead by an insatiable homicidal urge. Jack believes the boy is the Sweet Sixteen Killer. And he aims to end the reign of terror before another girl dies."

    Drive that route from east to west, and you’ll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven.But you’d better hope not.Titus and Melanie Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car . . .When, much later, a tow-truck arrives, the driver finds Titus lying in the middle of the road, but Melanie is nowhere to be found.

    When a careless exploration leaves her trapped underground, she learns to live again in the absence of everything she once knew. Even driven by love and light, Sally Ann finds the deepest darkness within herself in When Darkness Loves Us.Beauty Is... - Old Martha Mannes has been a part of Morgan, Illinois since her birth. The whole town knows her as the dim-witted woman who was born without a nose, but Martha's mind wasn't always a blank slate. Unlocking the monster buried deep in her memories may bring back the sparkling child she once was... or it may send those around her crashing down into the nightmares of a little girl gone wrong.