An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.

    To know them will be to know him. And thus we have decided to release a new and expanded third edition of Robert Bloch’s Mysteries of the Worm. This collection contains four more Mythos tales–”The Opener of the Way”, “The Eyes of the Mummy”, “Black Bargain”, and “Philtre Tip”–not included in the first two editions.

    This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village's darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, evocative of Stephen King's classic short story "Children of the Corn" and infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm.

    This collection, showcasing Bear’s unique imagination and singular voice, includes her Hugo- and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning story “Tideline” and Hugo-winning novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom,” as well as an original, never-published story. Recipient of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, the Locus Award, a World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick nominee, Bear is one of speculative fiction’s most acclaimed, respected, and prolific authors.ContentTidelineSonny Liston Takes the FallSoundingThe Something-Dreaming GameThe Cold BlacksmithIn the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal BurnsOrm the BeautifulThe Inevitable Heat Death of the UniverseLove Among the TalusCryptic ColorationThe LadiesShoggoths in BloomThe Girl Who Sang Rose MadderDollyGods of the ForgeAnnie WebberThe Horrid Glory of Its WingsConfessorThe Leavings of the WolfThe Death of Terrestrial Radio

    High up on the windswept cliffs of Pale Peak, Faye and Felix celebrate their new engagement. But soon, a chorus of ghastly noises erupts from the nearby woods: the screams of animals, the cries of children, and the mad babble of a hundred mournful voices. A dark figure looms near the windows in the dead of night, whispering to Faye. As the weather turns deadly, Felix discovers that his terrified fiancée isn’t just mumbling in her sleep – she’s whispering back. Originally a contest-winning story on reddit.com’s horror community NoSleep, Stolen Tongues has received widespread acclaim and is now being adapted into a feature film.

    In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, The Unfinished World and Other Stories heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.

    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.

    ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Vampires in the lemon grove --Reeling for the Empire --Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --Proving up --Barn at the end of our term --Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --New veterans --Graveless doll of Eric Mutis

    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]

    But what happens where the human world touches the domain of races ancient and alien? Museum curators, surveyors, police officers, archaeologists, mathematicians; from derelict buildings to country houses to the London Underground, another world is just a breath away, around the corner, watching and waiting for you to step into its power. The Private Life of Elder Things is a collection of new Lovecraftian fiction about confronting, discovering and living alongside the creatures of the Mythos.

    The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Taken by an older girl from her school who has told two friends in her thrall of the Indian legend of the Corn Maiden, in which a girl is sacrificed to ensure a good crop, Marissa is kept in a secluded basement and convinced that the world has ended. Marissa s seemingly inevitable fate becomes ever more terrifying as the older girl relishes her power, giving the tale unbearable tension with a shocking conclusion. In Helping Hands, published here for the first time, a lonely woman meets a man in the unlikely clutter of a dingy charity shop and extends friendship. She has no idea what kinds of doors she may be opening. The powerful stories in this extraordinary collection further enhance Joyce Carol Oates s standing as one of the world s greatest writers of suspense."

    A Human Stain by Kelly Robson is a disturbing horror novelette about a British expatriate at loose ends who is hired by her friend to temporarily care for his young, orphaned nephew in a remote castle-like structure in Germany.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Kiernan, Molly Tanzer, Lois H. Gresh, Nancy Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Bear, Gemma Files and many more fully color illustrated by Daniele Serra, Dreams from the Witch House highlights some of the very best women writers of weird fiction and Lovecraftian horror. The history of the Old World is shrouded in secrecy. Creatures and forces unimaginable inhabited this realm for eons, long before any human navigated the surface of the earth. As the Old Ones have slumbered or observed from afar, humans have assembled civilization upon this fragile planet. Yet the whispers from the elders have been growing stronger, their energy once again seeping into the world. These whispers are being felt throughout the earth; from the roots of our flora to the dreams of our children. They are preparing us for what is to come. In Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror the most intuitive dreamers have been assembled to give us glimpses into these ancient terrors and their whispered warnings. Featuring authors Joyce Carol Oates, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Lois Gresh, Gemma Files, Nancy Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Bear, Storm Constantine and others accompanied by the lavish artwork of Daniele Serra, Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror is a representation of some of the finest cosmic horror and weird fiction from female authors in the field today.

    P. Lovecraft, published his first story, the monstrosities that crawled out of his brain have become legend: the massive, tentacled Cthulhu, who lurks beneath the sea waiting for his moment to rise; the demon Sultan Azathoth, who lies babbling at the center of the universe, mad beyond imagining; the Deep Ones, who come to shore to breed with mortal men; and the unspeakably-evil Hastur, whose very name brings death. These creatures have been the nightmarish fuel for generations of horror writers, and the inspiration for some of their greatest works.This impressive anthology celebrates Lovecraft's most famous beasts in all their grotesque glory, with each story a gripping new take on a classic mythos creature and affectionately accompanied by an illuminating illustration. Within these accursed pages something unnatural slouches from the sea into an all-night diner to meet the foolish young woman waiting for him, while the Hounds of Tindalos struggle to survive trapped in human bodies, haunting pool halls for men they can lure into the dark. Strange, haunting, and undeniably monstrous, this is Lovecraft as you have never seen him before.Contents"Only the End of the World Again" by Neil Gaiman"The Bleeding Shadow" by Joe R. Lansdale"Love is Forbidden, We Croak & Howl" by Caitlín R. Kiernan"Bulldozer" by Laird Barron"A Quarter to Three" by Kim Newman"Inelastic Collisions" by Elizabeth Bear"That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" by Nick Mamatas"Red Goat Black Goat" by Nadia Bulkin"Jar of Salts" and "Haruspicy" by Gemma Files"Black is the Pit From Pole to Pole" by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley"I've Come to Speak with You Again" by Karl Edward Wagner"The Sect of the Idiot" by Thomas Ligotti"The Dappled Things" by William Browning Spencer"The Same Deep Waters as You" by Brian Hodge"Remnants" by Fred Chappell"Waiting at the Cross Roads" by Steve Rasnic Tem"Children of the Fang" by John Langan

    Imagine mephitic gardens where the sarcophage, selenotrope, and necrophilium bloom. Then throw in star-crossed lovers, crazed zealots, stalwart heroes, bloodthirsty renegade armies, hideous monsters, and likeable misfits. You've got just a hint of the wondrous and original visions in the dark fantasy world of Brian McNaughton. Horror scholar S. T. Joshi, in the afterword to this collection of stories, notes the strong influence of Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Greco-Roman decadent works such as Petronius's Satyricon. "McNaughton seems to have mastered one of the most difficult of literary arts: to draw upon the classics of the field without losing his own voice.... The world that McNaughton has created in this book is the world of the ghoul; and who knows but that The Throne of Bones will become the standard textbook for the care and feeding of ghouls just as Dracula has become that for vampires?"Contents:Ringard and Dendra (1996)The Throne of Bones (1997)The Vendren Worm (1990)Meryphillia (1990)Reunion in Cephalune (1997)The Art of Tiphytsorn Glocque (1997)A Scholar from Sythiphore (1995)Vendriel and Vendreela (1988)The Retrograde Necromancer (1993)The Return of Liron Wolfbaiter (1997)