Cheerleaders are seriously injured and even killed at a higher rate than other high school sports. Their stunts are performed in skimpy uniforms without the benefit of proper safety equipment…and yet they love them, glittery eyeshadow, spirit bows, and all.And then there are the Fighting Pumpkins, who take that injury rate as a challenge. Students of Johnson’s Crossing High School, they answer to a higher calling than the pyramid and the basket toss, pursuing the pep rally that is rising up against mysteries and monsters, kicking gods with the pointed toes of professional athletes chasing a collegiate career.Meet Jude, half-vampire squad leader; Laurie, who can compel anyone to do as she asks; Heather, occasionally recreationally dead; Marti, strong enough to provide a foundation for any stunt; Colleen, who knows the rule book so well she may as well have written it; and Steph, who may or may not be the goddess of the harvest. The rest of the squad is ready to support them, and braced for the chaos of the big game, which may have a big body count. Prepare to jump high, yell loud, and look pretty with the Fighting Pumpkins, those glorious girls in the orange and green, whose high kicks could still be enough to save the world.And if they’re not, it isn’t going to be for lack of trying.Dying with Her Cheer Pants On includes three stories appearing for the first time anywhere: "Tryouts," "Trial by Fire," and "Compete Me."

    From Sir Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, today's most acclaimed award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories and use their own unique styles to rebuild these timeless stories, the ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them, the ones that have become ingrained in modern culture, and the ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these twelve stories and boil them down to their bones, and reassemble them for a new generation of readers. Written from a twenty-first century perspective and set within the realms of science fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, and realistic fiction, these short stories are as moving and thought provoking as their originators. They pay homage to groundbreaking literary achievements of the past while celebrating each author's unique perception and innovative style.Contents:Introduction: Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (2013) • essay by Tim Pratt and Melissa MarrThat the Machine May Progress Eternally (2013) / shortfiction by Carrie Ryan, inspired by E.M. Forster's The Machine StopsThe King of Elfland's Daughter (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessLosing Her Divinity [Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz] (2013) / shortfiction by Garth Nix, inspired by The Man Who Would Be KingThe Sleeper and the Spindle (2013) / novelette by Neil Gaiman, inspired by Sleeping BeautyKai Lung's Golden Hours (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessThe Cold Corner (2013) / shortfiction by Tim Pratt, inspired by Henry James' The Jolly CornerMillcara (2013) / shortfiction by Holly Black, inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's CarmillaFigures of Earth (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessWhen First We Were Gods (2013) / shortfiction by Rick Yancey, inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The BirthmarkSirocco (2013) / shortfiction by Margaret Stohl, inspired by Horace Walpole's The Castle of OtrantoThe Shaving of Shagpat (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessAwakened (2013) / shortfiction by Melissa Marr, inspired by Kate Chopin's The AwakeningNew Chicago (2013) / shortfiction by Kelley Armstrong, inspired by W. W. Jacob's The Monkey's PawThe Wood Beyond the World (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessThe Soul Collector (2013) / shortfiction by Kami Garcia, inspired by the Brothers Grimm's RumpelstiltskinWithout Faith, Without Law, Without Joy (2013) / shortfiction by Saladin Ahmed, inspired by Sir Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueeneGoblin Market (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessUncaged (2013) / shortfiction by Gene Wolf, inspired by William Seabrook's The Caged White Werewolf..

    Three novellas linked by their setting in the strange magical city of Paradys, in a timeless France, evoke an alternate world of dark fantasy, bizarre imagination, and decadent atmosphere.

    and The Witching Hour begins.It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.  Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life.  He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.  An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first "witch," Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher... a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.From the coffee plantations of Port au Prince, where the great Mayfair fortune is made and the legacy of their dark power is almost destroyed, to Civil War New Orleans, as Julien—the clan's only male to be endowed with occult powers—provides for the dynasty its foothold in America, the dark, luminous story encompasses dramas of seduction and death, episodes of tenderness and healing.  And always—through peril and escape, tension and release—there swirl around us the echoes of eternal war: innocence versus the corruption of the spirit, sanity against madness, life against death.  With a dreamlike power, the novel draws us, through circuitous, twilight paths, to the present and Rowan's increasingly inspired and risky moves in the merciless game that binds her to her heritage. And in New Orleans, on Christmas Eve, this strangest of family sagas is brought to its startling climax.

    But what happens where the human world touches the domain of races ancient and alien? Museum curators, surveyors, police officers, archaeologists, mathematicians; from derelict buildings to country houses to the London Underground, another world is just a breath away, around the corner, watching and waiting for you to step into its power. The Private Life of Elder Things is a collection of new Lovecraftian fiction about confronting, discovering and living alongside the creatures of the Mythos.

    In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills - vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although barely making ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood. Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice, and her life.

    Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant--an anthropologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property.Tied to local legends of supernatural magic, as well as documented accidents and murders, the gnarled tree takes root in Sarah's imagination, prompting her to write her own account of its unsavory history.And as the oak continues to possess her dreams and nearly almost all her waking thoughts, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago...

    LovecraftNew Tales of Terror!What would happen if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his allies were to find themselves faced with Lovecraftian mysteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but beyond sanity itself. In this collection of original tales, twenty of today's cutting-edge writers provide answers to that burning question.Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Bright, Barbara Hambly, Steve Perry, and Caitlin R. Kierman. These and other masters of horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction spin dark tales within a terrifyingly surreal universe.Includes the Hugo Award-winning story A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman.Cover design: David StevensonCover Illustration: John Jude Palencar

    Anderson, and Rob Thurman—nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil..Unfortunately, that’s exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.In #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s Cold Case, Molly Carpenter—Harry Dresden’s apprentice-turned-Winter Lady—must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you’re a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad...New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything “weird.” They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.In New York Times bestselling Kevin J. Anderson’s Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble’s latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner...And New York Times bestselling author Rob Thurman’s infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue—and nightmarish—vengeance involving some quite nasty Impossible Monsters .ALSO INCLUDES STORIES BYTanya Huff * Kat Richardson * Jim C. Hines * Anton Strout * Lucy A. Snyder * Kristine Kathryn Rusch * Erik Scott de Bie *From the Trade Paperback edition.

    His chilling mythology established a gateway between the known universe and an ancient dimension of otherworldly terror, whose unspeakable denizens and monstrous landscapes - dread Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, the Plateau of Leng, the Mountains of Madness - have earned him a permanent place in the history of the macabre.In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of horror and fantasy's finest authors pay tribute to the master of the macabre with a collection of original stories set in the fearsome Lovecraft tradition.Contents:- Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn! (1990) by Jim Turner [as by James Turner] - The Call of Cthulhu (1928) by H.P. Lovecraft- The Return of the Sorcerer (1931) by Clark Ashton Smith- Ubbo-Sathla (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith- The Black Stone (1931) by Robert E. Howard- The Hounds of Tindalos (1929) by Frank Belknap Long- The Space-Eaters (1928) by Frank Belknap Long- The Dweller in Darkness (1944) by August Derleth- Beyond the Threshold (1941) by August Derleth- The Shambler from the Stars (1935) by Robert Bloch- The Haunter of the Dark (1936) by H.P. Lovecraft- The Shadow from the Steeple (1950) by Robert Bloch- Notebook Found in a Deserted House (1951) by Robert Bloch- The Salem Horror (1937) by Henry Kuttner- The Terror from the Depths (1976) by Fritz Leiber- Rising with Surtsey (1971) by Brian Lumley- Cold Print (1969) by Ramsey Campbell- The Return of the Lloigor (1969) by Colin Wilson- My Boat (1976) by Joanna Russ- Sticks (1974) by Karl Edward Wagner- The Freshman (1979) by Philip José Farmer- Jerusalem's Lot (1978) by Stephen King- Discovery of the Ghooric Zone (1977) by Richard A. LupoffCover illustration by John Jude Palencar

    The natural world is a place of curves and softened edges, of gentle mists and welcoming spirals. Nature remembers deviation; nature does not forgive.For Harlowe Upton-Jones, life has never been a straight line. Shipped off to live with her paternal grandparents after a mysterious cult killed her mother and father, she has grown up chasing the question behind the curve, becoming part of a tight-knit teen detective agency. But “teen” is a limited time offer, and when her friends start looking for adult professions, it’s up to Harlowe to find them one last case so that they can go out in a blaze of glory.Welcome to Spindrift House.The stories and legends surrounding the decrepit property are countless and contradictory, but one thing is clear: there are people willing to pay a great deal to determine the legal ownership of the house. When Harlowe and her friends agree to investigate the mystery behind the manor, they do so on the assumption that they’ll be going down in history as the ones who determined who built Spindrift House—and why. The house has secrets. They have the skills. They have a plan. They have everything they need to solve the mystery.Everything they need except for time. Because Spindrift House keeps its secrets for a reason, and it has no intention of letting them go.Nature abhors a straight line.Here’s where the story bends.

    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.

    After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can't take off her resume --- human.Not to be put off by anything -- especially not her blood drinking boss or death goddess coworker -- Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her job turns deadly when the careful balance between human and monsters starts to crumble -- with Zoe right in the middle.

    Lovecraft, the most-fevered mind of 20th century horror and weirdness! These weird tales blend horror, science-fiction and fantasy to weave stories of darkness and terror that will alternately leave you checking dark spaces for hidden horrors and wondering at the nature of reality itself. From the horror/mystery of The Altar in the Hills to the private confessions and revelations of one of mankind's most brilliant minds in Through the Ether, these seven stories bring with them Old Gods, strange twists and interesting characters that will both surprise and delight fans of horror fiction.

    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.