Book picks similar to
Nightingale Songs by Simon Strantzas


horror
short-stories
weird-fiction
anthology

Hair Side, Flesh Side


Helen Marshall - 2012
    A rebelling angel rewrites the Book of Judgement to protect the woman he loves. A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. A 747 populated by a dying pantheon makes the extraordinary journey to the beginning of the universe. Lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, Helen Marshall’s exceptional debut collection weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human in fifteen modern parables about history, memory, and cost of creating art.

Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea


Michael Shea - 2017
    P. Lovecraft—an entire universe of gods and monsters that hundreds of writers have imitated. But Shea has done a lot more than merely mimic Lovecraft’s prose or add a new god or “forbidden book” to the Mythos. In his Mythos tales, Shea has infused his own unique vision and perspective. The much-reprinted “Fat Face” takes us into the seedy underworld of prostitutes and drug dealers in San Francisco, while other tales such as “Dagoniad,” “Copping Squid,” and “Tsathoggua” vividly meld Lovecraftian cosmic horror with the contemporary world of California, with its swimming pools and beachcombers. Shea was also fascinated with Lovecraft’s novel of Antarctic horror, At the Mountains of Madness, and his stories “Under the Shelf” and “Beneath the Beardmore” take us to that frozen land of death and terror. The title story, “Demiurge,” is a previously unpublished novella that draws upon Lovecraft’s tales of psychic possession in its chilling portrayal of a nameless monster who may be the harbinger of the overthrow of the entire human race. Michael Shea (1946–2014) was the award-winning author of The Color out of Time, the Nifft the Lean series of fantasy novels, and the classic tales “Polyphemus” and “The Autopsy.” This volume of his complete Cthulhu Mythos tales has been assembled by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Lovecraft and the Mythos. This volume features wraparound cover artwork and five interior illustrations by renowned artist Aeron Alfrey (MADHOUSE).

New Tales of the Yellow Sign


Robin D. Laws - 2012
    A slim, sinister text called The King in Yellow drove those who read it to madness. Despite suppression by anxious authorities, it spread through global culture, and history itself, like a virus. Now the contagion bears hideous fruit.New Tales of the Yellow Sign expands the classic horror mythos of weird tales pioneer and Lovecraft precursor Robert W. Chambers into new vistas of unease and imagination. Over the course of eight troubling stories, writer and visionary game designer Robin D. Laws lures you into diseased timelines, impossible pasts, and the all-too-terrifying present.Sterilize your suicide chamber, harken to the remorseless clicking of your black box, and whistle for the monstrous creature that lives in your basement. The pallid mask awaits.

The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron


Ross E. LockhartCody Goodfellow - 2014
    These Things have always been here. They predate you. They will outlast you. This book pays tribute to those Things. For We are the Children of Old Leech...and we love you.

Academic Exercises


K.J. Parker - 2014
    Parker, and it is a stunner. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this generous volume gathers together thirteen highly distinctive stories, essays, and novellas, including the recent World Fantasy Award-Winner, “Let Maps to Others”. The result is a significant publishing event, a book that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of imaginative fiction.The collection opens with the World Fantasy Award-winning “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, a story of music and murder set against a complex mentor/pupil relationship, and closes with the superb novella “Blue & Gold”, which features what may be the most beguiling opening lines in recent memory. In between, Parker has assembled a treasure house of narrative pleasures. In “A Rich, Full Week”, an itinerant “wizard” undergoes a transformative encounter with a member of the “restless dead.” “Purple & Black”, the longest story in the book, is an epistolary tale about a man who inherits the most hazardous position imaginable: Emperor. “Amor Vincit Omnia” recounts a confrontation with a mass murderer who may have mastered an impossible form of magic.Rounding out the volume — and enriching it enormously — are three fascinating and illuminating essays that bear direct relevance to Parker’s unique brand of fiction: “On Sieges”, “Cutting Edge Technology”, and “Rich Men’s Skins”.Taken singly, each of these thirteen pieces is a lovingly crafted gem. Together, they constitute a major and enduring achievement. Rich, varied, and constantly absorbing, Academic Exercises is, without a doubt, the fantasy collection of the year.Contents:- A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong (2011)- A Rich, Full Week (2010)- Amor Vincit Omnia (2010)- On Sieges (2009)- Let Maps to Others (2012)- A Room with a View (2011)- Cutting Edge Technology (2011)- Illuminated (2012)- Purple and Black (2009)- Rich Men’s Skins; A Social History of Armour (2013)- The Sun and I (2013)- One Little Room an Everywhere (2012)- Blue and Gold (2010)Cover illustration by Vincent Chong

Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed


Scott Nicolay - 2014
    "A sprawling treatise of the macabre" in short stories, novelettes, and novellas.

The Grimscribe's Puppets


Joseph S. Pulver Sr.Nicole Cushing - 2013
    In The Grimscribe’s Puppets, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., has commissioned both new and established talents in the world of weird fiction and horror to contribute all new tales that pay hoame to Ligotti and celebrate his eerie and essential nightmares. Poppy Z. Brite once asked, “Are you out here, Thomas Ligotti?” This anthology proves not only is he alive and well, but his extraordinary illuminations have proven to be visionary and fertile source of inspiration for some of today’s most accomplished authors.List of tales: Livia Llewellyn “Furnace” [5,800]Daniel Mills “The Lord Came at Twilight” [3,950]Michael Cisco “The Secrets of the Universe” [3,360]Kaaron Warren “The Human Moth” [2,700]Joel Lane “Basement Angels” [2,697]Darrell Schweitzer “No Signal” [1,735]Robin Spriggs “THE XENAMBULIST: A Fable in Four Acts” [3,369]Nicole Cushing “The Company Town” [1,700]Cody Goodfellow “The Man Who Escaped This Story” [8,490]Michael Kelly “Pieces of Blackness” [3,750]Eddie M. Angerhuber “The Blue Star” [2,970]Jon Padgett “20 SIMPLE STEPS TO VENTRILOQUISM” [4,490]Mike Griffin “Diamond Dust” [4,900]Richard Gavin “After the Final” [3,100]Scott Nicolay “Eyes Exchange Bank” [9,050]Simon Strantzas “BY INVISIBLE HANDS” [6,200]Paul Tremblay “Where We Will All Be” [4,900]Ally Bird “Gailestis” [4,019]Jeff Thomas “The Prosthesis” [4,835]John Langan “Into the Darkness, Fearlessly” [10,499]Gemma Files “OUBLIETTE” [8,424]

Dreamsongs, Volume I


George R.R. Martin - 2003
    Martin is a giant in the field of fantasy literature and one of the most exciting storytellers of our time. Now he delivers a rare treat for readers: a compendium of his shorter works, collected into two stunning volumes, that offer fascinating insight into his journey from young writer to award-winning master.Gathered here in Volume I are the very best of George R.R. Martin's early works, including never-before-published fan pieces, his Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Award-winning stories plus the original novella The Ice Dragon, from which Martin's New York Times bestselling children's book of the same title originated. A dazzling array that features extensive author commentary, Dreamsongs, Volume I, is the perfect collection for both Martin devotees and a new generation of fans.Contents:- Introduction by Gardner Dozois One: A Four-Color Fanboy (2003)- Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark (1967)- The Fortress (2003)- And Death His Legacy (2003)Two: The Filthy Pro (2003)- The Hero (1971)- The Exit to San Breta (1972)- The Second Kind of Loneliness (1972)- With Morning Comes Mistfall (1973)Three: The Light of Distant Stars (2003)- A Song for Lya (1974)- The Stone City (1977)- This Tower of Ashes (1976)- And Seven Times Never Kill Man (1975)- Bitterblooms (1977)- The Way of Cross and Dragon (1979)Four: The Heirs of Turtle Castle (2003)- The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr (1976)- The Ice Dragon (1980)- In the Lost Lands (1982)Five: Hybrids and Horrors (2003)- Meathouse Man (1976)- Remembering Melody (1981)- Sandkings (1979)- Nightflyers (1980)- The Monkey Treatment (1983)- The Pear-Shaped Man (1987)

Night Terrors III


Theresa DillonPaul Tremblay - 2014
    A wave of sinkholes appears on the anniversary of a rural tragedy, and local residents begin to hear the voices of the dead. A woman encounters a predator from her youth—and a chance to turn the tables. A child’s inner beast takes on a sinister life of its own. An undetectable serial killer raises tensions on a college campus. Experimental physics reveals another world, and it might mean the end of ours. Shrouded in darkness, lurking in the shadows, NIGHT TERRORS III awaits you. The third installment of the chilling Night Terrors anthology series includes stories from Jack Ketchum, Steve Rasnic Tem, Dennis Etchison, Taylor Grant, Eric J. Guignard, Aric Sundquist, Jennifer Brozek, John McNee, Simon McCaffery, Patty Templeton, and many more!

Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural


Marvin KayeJ. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1985
    A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.

Vile Things: Extreme Deviations in Horror


Cheryl MullenaxAngel Leigh McCoy - 2009
    Authors include John Bruni, Garry Bushell, Ramsey Campbell, Randy Chandler, Tim Curran, Ralph Greco, Jr., C.J. Henderson, Z.F. Kilgore,Sean Logan, Graham Masterton, Angel Leigh McCoy, C. Dennis Moore, Stefan Pearson, Brian Rosenberger, and Jeffrey Thomas.Witness the history of a sexually rapacious zombie . . . A starving soldier descends into insatiable ghoulism . . . A concentration camp SS guard gets a taste of his own medicine . . . Recycling takes on a whole new grisly meaning when a man obsessed with going green discovers a regenerative serum . . . A man buys his alcoholic mother a bottle of tequila-with the wrong kind of worm . . . An occult detective moves to a town in the Pine Barrens and discovers its sinister past-and his own . . . A tenant gets revenge on a self-centered landlord-with irritating results . . . A fisherman discovers his rival's secret of always getting the biggest catch . . . and much more!The fisherman / Brian Rosenberger --Fungoid / Randy Chandler --Tenant's rights / Sean Logan --Again / Ramsey Campbell --Maggots / Tim Curran --Going green / Stefan Pearson --Coquettrice / Angel Leigh McCoy --The fear in the waiting / C.J. Henderson --The worm / John Bruni --Sepsis / Graham Masterton --What you wish for / Garry Bushell --The devil lives in Jersey / Z.F. Kilgore --Rat king / Jeffrey Thomas --The caterpillar / C. Dennis Moore --"Poor Brother Ed" or the man who visited / Ralph Greco, Jr.

Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread


Chuck Palahniuk - 2015
    The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. And in "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precursor story to Fight Club.Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. They have all the impact of a sharp blow to the solar plexus, with considerable collateral damage to the funny bone.

Wormwood


Poppy Z. Brite - 1993
    Behind a dusty Georgia carny show... In a mausoleum in Baton Rouge, or in an alley in Calcutta... Here wanderers come to rest, the lost and lonely press their bodies up against each other, the heat rises, flesh yields, bones are bared, blood spills. This is the landscape of today's most brilliant young horror writer, Poppy Z. Brite.Now, in a collection that sings like cutting edge rock 'n' roll and shows the deft touch of a master storyteller, Poppy Z. Brite weaves her unique spell of the sensual, the frightening, and the forbidden....

Where the Summer Ends: The Best Horror Stories of Karl Edward Wagner, Volume One


Karl Edward Wagner - 2012
    Lavishly designed and illustrated, Wagner's psychological portrayals and ingenious use of Southern landscape make this publication an event.

The Dark Verse, Vol. 1: From the Passages of Revenants


M. Amanuensis Sharkchild - 2009
    2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal Winner in the Category of HorrorTwenty-six short stories of occult, metaphysical, and fantastical horror that will follow you to the visions of your sleep.This is Sharkchild's first tome of terror.