Book picks similar to
The Grass Monkey and Other Dark Tales by Scott Langrel
horror
fantasy
paranormal
short-stories
Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More
C. GockelMary Ting - 2015
over one million words of divinely (and diabolically) inspired fantasy, adventure, and romance.Join the freshest voices in urban fantasy and paranormal, New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon bestselling authors, on unique journeys to heaven, hell, and worlds beyond.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Jeff VanderMeerWilliam Gibson - 2010
Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.
A Collapse of Horses
Brian Evenson - 2016
In these stories, Brian Evenson unsettles us with the everyday and the extraordinary—the terror of living with the knowledge of all we cannot know.
Handbook for the Criminally Insane
Brian Holtz - 2009
Zombies. A serial killer. Demons. And an evil Chihuahua. Monica's fresh start may not be everything she was hoping for, but who knows? She might just end up having the time of her life -- if she can find a way to avoid the time of her death.
What Neither Star Nor Sun Shall Waken
Ryan Notch - 2013
Where he will almost certainly be alone in the dark.Almost.
Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three
Clive Barker - 1984
For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago. These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster
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!
Limbus, Inc.
Jonathan Maberry - 2013
We employ. 1-800-555-0606 How lucky do you feel? So reads the business card from LIMBUS, INC., a shadowy employment agency that operates at the edge of the normal world. LIMBUS's employees are just as suspicious and ephemeral as the motives of the company, if indeed it could be called a company in the ordinary sense of the word. In this shared-world anthology, five heavy hitters from the dark worlds of horror, fantasy, and scifi pool their warped takes on the shadow organization that offers employment of the most unusual kind to those on the fringes of society. One thing's for sure - you'll never think the same way again about the fine print on your next employment application!
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
John Langan - 2013
Gifted with a supple and mellifluous prose style, an imagination that can conjure up clutching terrors with seeming effortlessness, and a thorough knowledge of the rich heritage of weird fiction, Langan has already garnered his share of accolades. This new collection of nine substantial stories includes such masterworks as “Technicolor,” an ingenious riff on Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”; “How the Day Runs Down,” a gripping tale of the undead; and “The Shallows,” a powerful tale of the Cthulhu Mythos. The capstone to the collection is a previously unpublished novella of supernatural terror, “Mother of Stone.” With an introduction by Jeffrey Ford and an afterword by Laird Barron.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reading Langan, by Jeffrey FordKidsHow the Day Runs DownTechnicolor The Wide, Carnivorous SkyCity of the DogThe ShallowsThe Revel June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris. Mother of Stone Story Notes Afterword: Note Found in a Glenfiddich Bottle, by Laird BarronAcknowledgments
The Spirit in the Crypt
Alexander Lound - 2019
To look at skeletons decaying in their graves.To hear the voice, screaming at him. Screaming into his mind. Commanding him to leave.For weeks afterwards, he is filled with dread, terror as to what the voice might have belonged to. A demon? A ghost? In his nightmares, skeletons strangle him. And when they clear, he has the mysterious nightmare of the girl from his school, making the long walk across the graveyard, and disappearing into the crypt. Never leaving before his waking.It's when something awful happens to this girl that his fear turns to panic. Panic which will force him to unravel the mystery of the crypt, and in doing so, many mysteries about himself.Book one in the chilling Jonny Roberts series! Follow everyone's favourite teen ghost-hunter in Lound's heart-stopping stories!
Wrath Child
Erik Henry Vick - 2020
DO NOT RESEARCH THESE EVENTS! Think of it as fiction, and nothing more.The Smith has returned, leaving a new trail of gruesome serial murders across Manhattan--all blonde, beautiful, beaten to death with a blacksmith's hammer. Gavin Gregory, an FBI agent who profiles serial killers for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, couldn't capture The Smith the first time around and wants a second stab at catching the killer. The case takes a bizarre turn when Debra Esteves, a psychiatrist from a New York mental hospital, says she knows The Smith's identity.Esteves spins a tale of disturbing horror from her past, claiming The Smith controlled one of her patients through his psychic influence. But Gavin considers himself a rational man. He believes in science over superstition and rejects her version of events.When his wife is kidnapped, Gavin has no choice but to turn to Esteves for help. Can she keep him safe from the devil hunting him long enough to free his wife from the clutches of the killer or will The Smith make him a pawn in future murders?
A Gift of Ghosts
Sarah Wynde - 2011
And ghosts.All the logic and reason in the world can’t protect her from the truth—she can see and communicate with spirits. But Akira is sure that her ability is just a genetic quirk and the ghosts she encounters simply leftover electromagnetic energy. Dangerous electromagnetic energy.Zane Latimer believes in telepathy, precognition, auras, and that playing Halo with your employees is an excellent management technique. He also thinks that maybe, just maybe, Akira Malone can help his family get in touch with their lost loved ones.But will Akira ever be able to face her fears and accept her gift? Or will Zane’s relatives be trapped between life and death forever?
The Druid Series 1-3: Reapers / Bled / Harvest
Marata Eros - 2012
When it's discovered that human females of Druid ancestry can be viable breeders...the harvest begins.Rachel Collins is a young woman living in the frozen north of Alaska in a dead-end job with a circular life. She yearns for something more.When murders begin taking place in the city where she lives, she and her girlfriend try to be more cautious, only to be caught in the middle of a dangerous situation in which an unlikely savior emerges.Can Rachel escape her destiny while two different factions hunt her?BLED:When Rachel is taken by Zach of the rogue she is determined to resist him. But her unique Druid biology controls her and she slips perilously close to succumbing. Cole searches for the one Druid that can make his life complete. While his comrade Nathan, in a heroic maneuver to help him, suffers at the hands of their sadistic ruler, Alexander. While searching for Cole, Nathan discovers another Druid in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could she be the catalyst that brings two enemies together? Is Holly more than she seems?HARVEST:Rachel and Holly escape from Alexander's clutches only to fall into the hands of his Reapers.Can Cole and Zach save their chosen before they are claimed by another?Will the Druid women fulfill their destiny to change the race of vampire forever?app. word count 54,000/150 pages+
Stories: All-New Tales
Neil GaimanDiana Wynne Jones - 2010
. . ." The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal. Stories is a groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction and affords some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley and Jodi Picoult—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and "master anthologist" (Booklist) Sarrantonio personally invited, read, and selected all the stories in this collection, and their standard for this "new literature of the imagination" is high. "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all." Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man's descent into evil in "Devil on the Staircase." In "Catch and Release," Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in "Unwell." Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in "Wildfire in Manhattan." Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams's "The Knife." Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in "The Therapist." A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains." As it transforms your view of the world, this brilliant and visionary volume—sure to become a classic—will ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.
A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
John Hornor Jacobs - 2019
P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself.Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.