Splatterpunk legend John Skipp turns the mirror back on ourselves, showing us all the ways that make us the worst monsters of all. A decade in the making, The Art of Horrible People collects John Skipp's most horrific, hilarious, and starkly honest short stories, raising horror fiction to gleefully deranged new heights.

    Shipp has brought together ten monster tales from today's masters of horror and supernatural suspense.Stories by:Scott NicholsonLisa TuttleNate KenyonLisa MortonKealan Patrick BurkeSimon WoodJeremy C. ShippElizabeth MassieJoe McKinneyJoseph NassisePraise for Jeremy C. Shipp:“Jeremy C. Shipp’s boldness, daring, originality, and sheer smarts make him one of the most vital younger writers who have colonized horror literature in the past decade. Shipp’s modernist clarity, plus his willingness to risk damn near everything, put him up at the head of the pack with the very best.”–Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story"Shipp's clear, insistent voice pulls you down into the rabbit hole and doesn't let go." --Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door

    . . until it swallows her up.Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in .

    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.

    Harrison’s The Silent Wife—a harrowing tale of psychological suspense set in New York’s Hudson Valley.When Jess and Clare Martin move from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to their former college town in the Hudson River valley, they are hoping for rejuvenation—of their marriage, their savings, and Jess's writing career.They take a caretaker's job at Riven House, a crumbling estate and the home of their old college writing professor. While Clare once had dreams of being a writer, those plans fell by the wayside when Jess made a big, splashy literary debut in their twenties. It's been years, now, since his first novel. The advance has long been spent. Clare's hope is that the pastoral beauty and nostalgia of the Hudson Valley will offer some inspiration.But their new life isn't all quaint town libraries and fragrant apple orchards. There is a haunting pall that hangs over Riven House like a funeral veil. Something is just not right. Soon, Clare begins to hear babies crying at night, and sees strange figures in fog at the edge of their property. Diving into the history of the area, she realizes that Riven House has a dark and anguished past. And whatever this thing is—this menacing force that destroys the inhabitants of the estate—it seems to be after Clare next…

    What else can you say?" - SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Hill William and CrapalachiaAs teenagers, two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, escape the world as it is known to live underground in a sprawling pillow fort that mirrors the structure of the human brain. Construction of the fort takes 25 years and once complete, their life exists to honor the fort in all it requires. Basal Ganglia begins countless years after they have become enslaved to the fort process. Rollo and Ingrid have lost any connection to their pasts and each other. Nothing exists beyond the patterns required by the fort. In an effort to become more than stasis, Ingrid expresses her desire to have a baby. Not wanting to subject another human to their strange world, she decides she will knit the baby using materials Rollo gathers from the fort. The emergence of this baby leads to paranoia between Rollo and Ingrid with both believing the other means the child harm. Within the confines of their cloistered world, the two engage in psychological warfare, desperately searching for a conclusion they don't understand. As a result, they will find connection with their past, each other and the true nature of their identities.

    Once you get it, you simply cannot stop screaming. You can’t eat or sleep. It drives you more and more insane until you can’t stand to be alive a second longer.When the phenomenon hits Chuck's city, the chronically unemployed pervert joins a band of misfits to make his final stand.Can Chuck, a bitter bartender, a dockside prostitute, a conspiracy theorist, and a homeless man find a way out of the apocalypse…Or will they all die screaming?They All Died Screaming is a plague novel by Splatterpunk Award-winning author Kristopher Triana. It is a pitch black book about the lowly and downtrodden being the last people on earth.

    Over the years, it has been the setting of unspeakable acts of horror that have gone undiscovered. It is the hunting ground for a serial killer who disposes the bodies in the junkyard behind the rambling, rundown complex. But the long dead victims are not going quietly-- Their spirits haunt the dingy hallways, sleeping rooms, gift shop and repair garage, seeking out someone who can solve their horrific deaths. Seeking someone who is a sensitive that can hear their cries for vengeance…That someone turns out to be Roger Dalton, a young rock guitarist, traveling with his seven year old daughter, who stops one rainy night at the haunted compound. What begins as a routine stop on his trip to Salt Lake City turns into a horrific nightmare when his daughter suddenly goes missing.As Roger and the handful of truck stop employees desperately search for his daughter, Roger is haunted by the long-dead mutilated victims, all trying to warn him of the serial killer who is in their midst. The tension ratchets higher when deteriorating weather isolates the truck stop and Roger makes a grisly discovery that causes the serial killer to go on a final, desperate killing spree.In the end it all comes down to Roger, racing to find out where the serial killer has taken his daughter before the killer can get to him.

    When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

    A short psychological YA thriller by Richard Denney.

    Although Suki, his little girl, seemed thrilled to be kidnapped from her mom’s parents’ house, an electric storm has hit, and it looks like the Lord isn’t going to make it easy for Braydon to get away. Braydon’s right. A huge truck jack-knifes in front of him, his car catches alight, and Sukie winds up in hospital with terrible burns – burns which only exacerbate the terrible nightmare she’s had for years about scary things flying through the sky, like shadows . . .

    A thriller that actually manages to thrill, and a very dark comedy that twists and spirals towards a completely unexpected ending. This is one play where seeing isn't quite believing and reading the text is the only way to uncover all the clues.

    himself. After all, he never even knew he had a "second cousin, twice removed" in America, much less that the eccentric gentleman had recently committed suicide by jumping out of the third floor bedroom window—at the same age and in the same way as his father had before him . . .Together, A. and Niamh quickly come to feel as if they have inherited much more than just a rambling home and a cushy lifestyle. Axton House is haunted, they know it, but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the secrets they slowly but surely uncover. Why all the suicides? What became of the Axton House butler who fled shortly after his master died? What lurks in the garden maze and what does the basement vault keep? And what of the rumors in town about a mysterious gathering at Axton House on the night of the winter solstice?Told vividly through a series of journal entries, scrawled notes, recovered security footage, letters to Aunt Liza, audio recordings, complicated ciphers, and even advertisements, Edgar Cantero has written a dazzling and original supernatural adventure featuring classic horror elements with a Neil Gaiman-ish twist.

    Naomi Evans, the ordinary kindergarten teacher, a devoted mother of two and wife to her loving husband, Tyree, never would have imagined falling for a fine ass street king.Naomi and Tyree have been together since their freshman year in college and he is all that she knows. Three years of marriage to the love of her life seemed perfect… At first. She made the money, he stayed at home with the kids. To many it seems that they are living the New American Dream and to Naomi there is no greater feeling than being with her family.However, that all suddenly changes once she meets a sexy thug named Marquise who desires Naomi from the very moment he lays eyes on her. With just the flash of that million-dollar smile, his cocky attitude and irresistible lips, Naomi becomes intoxicated in Marquise and lets him seduce her on the very first night of their meeting. Ashamed and guilty for stepping out on her husband, Naomi tries her best to forget her encounter with Marquise, but as life continues to throw him in her path, she finds him harder and harder to resist. Marquise suddenly opens Naomi’s eyes to a world of pure ecstasy that she never knew existed, as he pushes her beyond her limits. Limits that Tyree could never dare to reach. Naomi is now torn between the only life that she’s ever known and the life that she has now become so addicted to. And to make matters worse, she begins to drift away from her family in order to get her daily fix with her new addiction. But that isn’t even the best part… Her new addiction has no idea about his competition waiting for Naomi to come home every night. So how will he react to finding out that Naomi Evans isn’t the sweet, single, innocent but freaky girl she made herself out to be?Only time will tell…

    After being forcibly given the gift of undeath by the mysterious vampire queen LaRouge, Lawson chose to cling to what remained of his humanity and fought his way free of the Dark Societys clutches. In the decades since, he has roamed late nineteenth-century America, doing what good he can as he travels by night, combating evils mundane and supernatural, and always seeking the key to regaining a mortal life.That key lies with his maker, and now Lawson hopes to find LaRouge at the heart of a Louisiana swamp with the aid of a haunted priest and an unexpected ally. In the tornado-wracked ghost town of Nocturne, Lawson must face down monstrous enemies, the rising sun, and his own nature. Readers will not want to miss this thrilling new dark novella from a master storyteller.