Enough room for story and character development, yet short enough to get straight to the bloody point! This book from Bram Stoker Award-nominee Jeff Strand contains five of his macabre tales, collected together for the first time. You'll find nerve-wracking suspense, insane humor, a cute dog, and plenty of weirdness, especially in the last one. STALKING YOU NOW - The reprehensible man in the restaurant doesn’t know that somebody at another table is watching him. Somebody filled with hatred. Somebody waiting for him to be alone. Somebody with duct tape and a gun. It’s a night for vengeance. And a hell of a lot more. AN APOCALYPSE OF OUR OWN – Missy and Kevin are friends. Just friends. But now people are leaking blood from their eyeballs and turning into homicidal oozing mutants. Fortunately, Kevin has access to an underground shelter, but now they’re trapped down there. Can the Friend Zone survive the end of the world? FAINT OF HEART – Rebecca's husband doesn't return from his weekend camping trip. And when somebody shows up at the house, it’s not him. At gunpoint, Rebecca learns what has happened. Two men have kidnapped Gary. He went through a weekend of pure hell. They’ll give him back to her, but first, Rebecca has to relive his entire experience, step by horrific step…and survive… KUTTER - Charlie Stanlon is a serial killer. A ghastly, vicious sociopath who chains women to a table in his basement and tortures them to death. He has no friends. He has no family. He despises his co-workers. His only pleasure in life is to cause pain and terror. Until the day he finds an adorable Boston Terrier and takes it home… FACIAL - Greg has just killed the man he hired to kill one of his wife’s many lovers. He’s now got a dead body in his office. Carlton, Greg’s brother, desperately needs a dead body. It’s kind of related to the lion corpse that he found in his basement. This is the normal part of the story...

    It was a "big country needing big men and women to live in it." This volume presents five more of L'Amour's fine short stories about the West, restored according to how they first appeared in their initial publication in magazines. "Riding for the Brand" Jed Asbury was stripped naked by Indians and forced to run the gauntlet. He ran it better than they had expected and escaped with only a few minor wounds. Still on the dodge, Jed encounters a covered wagon in which the horses and humans have been killed, the wagon and its contents left to stand. He is able to outfit himself from clothes and guns he finds in the wagon, and in the process he learns what the intentions were of those who had driven the wagon--and the possible reason they were killed. Jed decides to push forward and accomplish precisely what they had intended to do. "Four Card Draw" Allen Ring drew four cards in a poker game with Ben Taylor, and he won a small ranch. The ranch cabin sits on a low ledge of grass backed up against a cliff of red rock, with a spring not more than fifty feet away. The ranch is all he had ever hoped to have. Only it isn't going to be that simple. Ross Bilton, the town marshal, shows up with two deputies and tells Allen that, whether he has a deed or not, no one is allowed to live on the ranch. A killing had taken place there years before and remains unsolved. But that's not enough to persuade Allen to leave. "His Brother's Debt" Rock Casady is considered a coward. When gunman Ben Kerr issued a challenge, Casady fled rather than stick around to fight. He rode on to new range and got himself a job. He did well at it, but everyone noticed that he avoided going to town, and he avoided people. That was before Sue Landon, niece of the ranch's owner, asked Rock to accompany her to town to make some necessary purchases. Though that might mean a confrontation with rustler and hardcase Pete Vorys, Rock agrees. However, minding his own business proves ineffective when Vorys decides that this stranger has to be cut down to size. "The Turkeyfeather Riders" Jim Sandifer swings down from his buckskin and stands for a long minute, staring across the saddle toward the dark bulk of Bearwallow Mountain. For three years he has been riding for the B Bar, and for two of those years he has been ranch foreman. Now he knows that what he is about to do will bring an end to that, an end to his life here, to his chance to win the girl he loves. He stopped a raid by some B Bar men on the Katrischen spread, and now he has to tell the B Bar's owner what he did--and suffer the consequences. "The Nester and the Paiute" The Paiute is the local bad man. But as bad as his rustling and killing has been, Sheriff Todd had never caught him with real evidence and so could only keep his eye on the Paiute, hope to catch him in the act. That was before the nester rode in, looking for the Paiute. Sheriff Todd is out of town, but that doesn't matter to the nester. He's been following the Paiute's tracks all the way here and now wants to know where he lives. That's easily told, but Sheriff Todd isn't going to like it if there's a shoot-out between the nester and the Paiute. What no one knows is that the sheriff has already run into the Paiute, and that the Paiute has finished him. For the Paiute, this has become the end game.

    Curl up in front of a warm fire on a silent night and choose your poison.

    Here, a priceless piece of furniture is the subject of a deceitful bargain . . . Parson's Pleasure is taken from the short story collection Kiss Kiss, which includes ten other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who pawns the mink coat from her lover with unexpected results; the young man in need of room who meets a most accommodating landlady; a wronged wife taking revenge on her dead husband, and others. 'Unnerving bedtime stories, subtle, proficient, hair-raising and done to a turn.' (San Francisco Chronicle ) This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Derek Jacobi. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

    A famous Australian short story

    They are going mad and Usher asks an old friend to help them. Can Usher win the fight against madness? And will Madeline ever be well again? Edgar Allan Poe's short stories are still popular a hundred and fifty years after his death. Other titles featured here include The Barrel of Amontillado and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

    Until the world we knew went up in sweltering, viral flames. Despite our differences, I couldn’t leave Loren for dead after hearing her petrified screams, and with no one else to turn to, that left us tied to one another as the apocalypse continued to unfold. Fast forward one year later, and there’s only thing I now desire more than our survival... Her. Getting her beneath me has become an obsession, an infection rooted deep within me like the very virus meant to kill us. I’m falling for her at the worst time possible, I know this, but she is, too. It was inevitable, really. Whether we supersede the Z’s or not, one thing’s for certain—in the end, Loren will be mine. *NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Snare is a 20k novella originally part of the Black Hearts anthology. It is SHORT, steamy, and straight to the point.

    Based on a True Story.

    These stories are also animaled with all manner of mammal, bird, fish, reptile-also flawed and endearing. She asks, what don't humans share with the so-called lesser species? Looking for the answer, she takes us back to her fictional home town of Fulton, North Carolina, to meet a broad range of characters facing up to the double-edged sword life offers hominids. The insight with which McCorkle tells their stories crackles with wit, but also with a deeper-and more forgiving-wisdom than ever before. In Billy Goats, Fulton's herd of seventh graders cruises the summer nights, peeking into parked cars, maddening the town madman. In Monkeys, a widow holds her husband's beloved spider monkey close along with his deepest secrets. In Dogs, a single mother who works for a veterinarian compares him-unfavorably-with his patients. In Snakes, a seasoned wife sees what might have been a snake in the grass and decides to step over it. And, in the exquisite final story, Fish, a grieving daughter remembers her father's empathy for the ugliest of all fishes. The success behind Jill McCorkle's short stories-and her novels-is, as one reviewer noted, her skill as an archaeologist of the absurd, an expert at excavating and examining the comedy of daily life (Richmond Times-Dispatch). Yes, and also the tragedy.

    Nightmares imagined into real places; from Nigeria to Japan, North America to Australia. Locations the authors have inhabited and imbued with the sinister–hiking trails, haunted lakes, relics of faded industry, and even a Hawaiian volcano!Is there a selkie who resides in the Wartrace Lake Dam, Tennessee?Can you summon a godlike entity on the coast of Oregon?There are many Crybaby Bridges, but which one belongs to author Gwendolyn Kiste?Tales from the British Isles - of cursed beaches, remote manor houses, and plagued villages. Fresh takes on old legends, newly minted stories attached to interesting landmarks, and even personal hauntings (which will never be pinned on Google Maps.)

    The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral truth heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to journey thither and be present. At my arrival, although the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet comparatively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a far off star alone in the firmament, there was merely visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have anticipated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue.

    Ten years later, Tripp McCall is now a rich business tycoon, offering to help her organize an over-the-top class reunion. Chelsea suspects he’s just trying to show her what she lost. But Chelsea doesn’t care about his money; she misses his humor, his gray eyes and soft lips. Could he ever give her a second chance?

    Le Guin * 197 • Understanding Human Behavior • (1982) • novelette by Thomas M. Disch * 221 • Relativistic Effects • (1982) • novelette by Gregory Benford * 243 • Firewatch • [Time Travel] • (1982) • novelette by Connie Willis (aka Fire Watch) * 283 • The Wooing of Slowboat Sadie • [Springfield] • (1982) • shortstory by George Alec Effinger [as by O. Niemand ] * 293 • With the Original Cast • (1982) • novelette by Nancy Kress * 323 • When the Fathers Go • (1982) • novelette by Bruce McAllister * 351 • The Science Fiction Year (1982) • (1983) • essay by Charles N. Brown * 359 • Recommended Reading - 1982 • (1983) • essay by Terry Carr

    The wind tries first, but however hard it blows it fails to make any progress because the traveller simply buttons his coat even tighter than before. Only when the sun shines brightly does he finally remove it, and the wind roars away in a bad temper.

    The Billionaire's Daughter (Part 1): Breaking FreeClaire Montgomery’s wealthy father has always given her everything she’d wanted – as long as she toed the line. When she refuses her father’s request for the first time, cancelling her engagement to the most successful bachelor at his firm, she discovers exactly how far he’ll go to punish her. Fleeing to San Francisco she experiences true independence for the first time, sharing a house and working in a coffee shop owned by Jordan Hunter. Mysterious and powerful, Jordan's involvement in the BDSM scene both intrigues and frightens her and Claire desperately tries to resist her growing attraction to him.Breaking her engagement has cost Claire her family. If she follows her instincts and submits to Jordan will she be risking her new found freedom?The Billionaire's Daughter (Part 2): San Franciso BreezeClaire's feelings towards Jordan confuse her. She’s always been raised to be a lady in the drawing room and a whore in the bedroom – at least, that’s what her mother said men wanted. But this? This is something entirely different. Jordan focuses his sexual and romantic energy on Claire, training her and caring for her physical and emotional needs. She feels as though she must make the choice to commit to Jordan and his lifestyle or to walk away forever.The Billionaire's Daughter (Part 3): Body and SoulClaire is settled into her new life in San Francisco and has accepted Jordan as her Master.A sudden call from her estranged mother, urging her to return to New York to help save the family business, leaves her feeling conflicted. How can she choose between her lover and her family? If she leaves Jordan now, will he still be there for her when she returns?