Book picks similar to
Cold to the Touch by Simon Strantzas


horror
short-stories
weird-fiction
fiction

Gathering the Bones


Ramsey CampbellGahan Wilson - 2003
    John HarrisonGahan WilsonThe anthology market these days is awash with small, themed works focused on very specific markets, like vampire erotica and tales of werewolves, or it features best of the year reprints. It has been years since anyone has dared to bring out a broad-reaching anthology that seeks to define the current state of the genre with all original tales from both masters and hot new writers.

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.

Christmas Horror Volume 1


Chris MoreyJ.F. Gonzalez - 2015
    Volume 1 features all new and original stories from authors Joe R. Lansdale, John Skipp, Cody Goodfellow, Jeff Strand, J. F. Gonzalez, Stephen Mark Rainey, Nate Southard, Shane McKenzie and (in deluxe hardcover retail editions only) William Meikle. Each story is preceded by a full page/full bleed color illustration by artist Zach McCain. Table of Contents “Santa Explains” by Joe R. Lansdale “The Endless Black of Friday” by Nate Southard “Red Rage” by Stephen Mark Rainey “Pointy Canes” by Jeff Strand “Naughty” by Shane McKenzie “Krampusnacht in Cell Block J” by Cody Goodfellow “The Shittiest Guy in the World (A Christmas Fable)” by John Skipp “Belsnickel” by J. F. Gonzalez “The Color That Stole Christmas” by William Meikle (Deluxe Hardcover Editions Only)

Falling in Love with Hominids


Nalo Hopkinson - 2015
    She has been dubbed “one of our most important writers,” (Junot Diaz), with “an imagination that most of us would kill for” (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called “stunning,” (New York Times) “rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery” (Kirkus), and “simply triumphant” (Dorothy Allison).Falling in Love with Hominids presents over a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Caribbean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.

And Hell Followed: An Anthology


Wrath James WhiteSam West - 2019
    What if the prophecies of Revelation hit today? What sort of craziness and evil would ensue? With this list of excellent authors contributing, it’s sure to be a Hell of a read! Wrath James White Sam West The Sisters of Slaughter Jeff Strand K Trap Jones C Derick Miller Christine Morgan Patrick C. Harrison III John Wayne Comunale Hyäne Sawbones Delphine Quinn James Watts Wile E. Young Chris Miller Mark Deloy Richard Raven

Every House is Haunted


Ian Rogers - 2012
    The landscape of death becomes the new frontier for scientific exploration. With remarkable deftness, Rogers draws together the disturbing and the diverting in twenty-two showcase stories that will guide you through terrain at once familiar and startlingly fresh.

Bagombo Snuff Box


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1999
    A young PR man working at General Electric sold his first magazine piece. By the time he'd sold his third, he decided to quit his job and join the likes of Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and make a living as a full-time writer. That young man was Kurt Vonnegut.Bagombo Snuff Box collects Vonnegut’s favourite stories from the postwar years that sharpened his dark, vaudevillian and quietly subversive voice. Here we see the mind-bending wit and central themes of his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. A must-read for Vonnegut aficionados new and old.

Slade House


David Mitchell - 2015
    Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late... Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories


Ray Bradbury - 2007
    Collecting rare and unknown tales as well as notable early triumphs,A Pleasure to Burn offers an unparalleled window into Bradbury’s creative process, and a unique glimpse at the evolution of one of the greatest works of 20th century American literature. Absolutely essential for fans of Bradbury books like Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes,The Illustrated Man, and The Martian Chronicles—and for readers of William Golding, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and other titans of speculative fiction—A Pleasure to Burn illuminates the unusual hidden corners of Bradbury’s expansive imagination, revealing a creative force as vivid and powerful as the hottest burning flame.

A Nest of Nightmares


Lisa Tuttle - 1986
    Sylvia would take long walks in the country; Pam would have tea ready by the fire for when she returned. Nice fantasies...The house had that kind of effect on people. It felt cosy, lived-in, though it had been empty for many years. Oddly, there was rubbish everywhere, but there was no other sign of a squatter's brief inhabitation.And though the windows were unbroken. the doors securely locked, Pam could never entirely rid herself of the thought that she and her sister might not be alone in the house...One of 13 terrifying tales of terror...

In the Court of the Yellow King


Glynn Owen BarrassChristine Morgan - 2014
    or to transport you into the bizarre world of Carcosa, and the King in Yellow. Banned, burned, yet never totally destroyed, the play lives on, eating away the fabric of society and rotting the veneer of civilization...Come and enjoy new visions of the King, expanding and deepening the fragments glimpsed in the award-winning True Detective television series, penned for your delight by a host of master scribes eager to guide you to a new world of delirium, despair, and madness.

Magic Terror


Peter Straub - 2000
    Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying and the terror that lies in between…No one tells a story like Peter Straub. He dazzles with the richness of his plots and the eloquence of his prose. He startles you into laughter in the face of events so dark that you begin to question your own moral compass. Then he reduces you to jelly by spinning a tale so terrifying – and surprising – that you have to sleep with the lights on. Now, with these seven acclaimed stories he has given us his finest and most imaginatively unsettling collection yet.‘WHEN STRAUB TURNS ON ALL HIS JETS, NO ONE IN THE SCREAM FACTORY CAN EQUAL HIM.’STEPHEN KING

The Abyssal Plain: The R'lyeh Cycle


William Holloway - 2019
    A cup full of tentacles mixed with existential nihilism and sprinkled with liberal quantities of gore, this is Lovecraftian horror with a bloody bent that few others have dared to explore. --Peter Rawlik, author of ReanimatorsThey called it the Event.The Event changed everything. The earthquakes came first, including the Big One, shattering the Pacific Rim and plunging the world into chaos. Then the seas came, the skies opened, and the never-ending rain began. But as bad as that was, there is something worse.The Rising has begun.A lone man who abandoned the world for his addictions searches a waterlogged Austin for something, anything to cling to. Little does he know that something else searches for him.In the Sonoran Desert, the downtrodden of the world search for a better life north of the border, only to see the desert become an ocean: an ocean that takes life and gives death.In the woods of Alabama, survivors escape to Fort Resistance, but soon discover that it isn't just the horrors of the deep places of the world that they need to fear; but rather a new and more deadly pestilence that has grown in their own ranks.In England, it's too late to fight, and all that's left is to survive. One man reaches for his own humanity, but what to do when humanity is an endangered species?And in the Pacific, He is rising.In The Abyssal Plain: The R'lyeh Cycle, authors William Holloway, Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason, Brett J. Talley, and Rich Hawkins have created a timely and uniquely modern reimagining of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Mangled Meat


Edward Lee - 2011
    His world is one of torture, bizarre fetishes, and alien autopsies. Prepare yourself, as these three novellas from the king of splatterspunk are guaranteed to make you gasp, gag, and laugh your ass off. The Decortication Technician What secrets do a crashed alien spaceship hold? One man and his surgical tools will find out. The Cyesolagniac A man with a pregnancy fetish meets the girl of his dreams-and his worst nightmares. Room 415 From his hotel room window, Flood will see his darkest desires become real.

The New Weird


Ann VanderMeerHal Duncan - 2008
    Assembling an array of talent, this collection includes contributions from visionaries Michael Moorcock and China Miéville, modern icon Clive Barker, and audacious new talents Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, and Sarah Monette. An essential snapshot of a vibrant movement in popular fiction, this anthology also features critical writings from authors, theorists, and international editors as well as witty selections from online debates.ContentsIntroduction: The New Weird: “It’s Alice?” by Jeff VanderMeer“The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines” by Alistair Rennie“Watson’s Boy” by Brian Evenson“Cornflowers Beside the Unuttered” by Cat Rambo“Jack” by China Miéville“In the Hills, the Cities” by Clive Barker“Forfend the Heaven’s Rending” by Conrad Williams“Locust-Mind” by Daniel Abraham“Tracking Phantoms” by Darja Malcolm-Clarke“Constable Chalch and the Ten Thousand Heroes” by Felix Gilman“The Lizard of Ooze” by Jay Lake“Festival Lives: Preamble: An Essay” by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer“At Reparata” by Jeffrey Ford“Immolation” by Jeffrey Thomas“The Art of Dying” by Darja Malcolm-Clarke“Whose Words You Wear” by K. J. Bishop“The Neglected Garden” by Kathy Koja“Letters from Tainaron” by Leena Krohn“The Luck in the Head” by M. John Harrison“Crossing Cambodia” by Michael Moorcock“Death in a Dirty Dhorti” by Paul Di Filippo“All God’s Chillun Got Wings” by Sarah Monette“The Braining of Mother Lamprey” by Simon D. Ings“The Ride of the Gabbleratchet” by Steph Swainston“A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing” by Thomas Ligotti“European Editor Perspectives on the New Weird: An Essay” by Martin Šust, Michael Haulica, Hannes Riffel, Jukka Halme, Konrad Walewski“The New Weird: I Think We’re the Scene” by Michael Cisco“New Weird Discussions: The Creation of a Term” by various authors