Book picks similar to
The Stay-Awake Men and Other Unstable Entities by Matthew M. Bartlett
horror
weird-fiction
short-stories
anthology
The Book of Cthulhu
Ross E. LockhartMichael Shea - 2011
Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
The Abominations of Yondo
Clark Ashton Smith - 1960
Lovecraft as 'unexcelled by any other writer, dead or living'. They will take you into unearthly realms of fantasy and horror beyond your wildest nightmares...Contents:1. The Nameless Offspring2. The Witchcraft of Ulua3. The Devotee of Evil4. The Epiphany of Death5. A Vintage From Atlantis6. The Abominations of Yondo7. The White Sybil8. The Ice-Demon9. The Voyage of King Euvoran10. The Master of the Crabs11. The Enchantress of Sylaire12. The Dweller in the Gulf13. The Dark Age14. The Third Episode of Vathek15. Chinoiserie16. The Mirror in the Hall of Ebony17. The Passing of Aphrodite
Fearful Symmetries
Ellen Datlow - 2014
There are children—those who victimize, and those who are victims. There are supernatural horrors, psychological terrors, nourish dark fantasies, and downright weird fictions. Featuring Nathan Ballingrud, Laird Barron, Pat Cadigan, Siobhan Carroll, Terry Dowling, Brian Evenson, Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Carole Johnstone, Stephen Graham Jones, Caitlín R Kiernan, John Langan, Catherine MacLeod, Helen Marshall, Bruce McAllister, Gary McMahon, Garth Nix, Robert Shearman, Michael Marshall Smith, and Kaaron Warren. Come on in, and make yourself a cozy little nook in the dark, and enjoy.
Poe's Children: The New Horror
Peter StraubM. Rickert - 2008
Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.
Worse Than Myself
Adam Golaski - 2008
These are stories to be savored late at night in bed, read by the light of a single lamp in an empty, dark house.
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
Margaret Atwood - 2014
An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.
By Light We Knew Our Names
Anne Valente - 2014
Across thirteen stories, this collection explores the thin border between magic and grief.
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).
Holes for Faces
Ramsey Campbell - 2013
Joshi. One of the heirs apparent to early-twentieth-century American author H. P. Lovecraft, Campbell's horror stories are often set in contemporary Merseyside, England, his own hometown, and involve quite ordinary characters. His unsettling, dreamlike prose, however, transforms his work into very effective horror fiction.The fourteen stories in this collection are:“Passing Through Peacehaven”“Peep”“Getting It Wrong”“The Room Beyond”“Holes for Faces”“The Rounds”“The Decorations”“The Address”“Recently Used”“Chucky Comes to Liverpool”“With the Angels”“Behind the Doors”“Holding the Light”“The Long Way”
The Complete Short Stories
Ambrose Bierce - 1984
Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.
Nox Pareidolia
Robert S. WilsonKristi DeMeester - 2019
Nox Pareidolia includes tales by Laird Barron, S.P. Miskowski, Brian Evenson, Gwendolyn Kiste, Micheal Wehunt, Kristi DeMeester, Christopher Ropes, Zin E. Rocklyn, Paul Jessup, Doungjai Gam, Don Webb and Duane Pesice, K.H. Vaughan, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, and more yet to be announced!
A Cathedral of Myth and Bone
Kat Howard - 2019
A desperate young woman makes a prayer to the Saint of Sidewalks, but the miracle she receives isn’t what she expected. A painter spies a naked man, crouched by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, transform into a beautiful white bird and decides to paint him, and becomes involved in his curse. Jeanne, a duelist and a sacred blade for God and Her holy saints, finds that the price of truth is always blood. And in the novella “Once, Future” Howard reimagines the Arthurian romance on a modern college campus as a story that is told, and told again, until the ending is right.
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales
Kate BernheimerKaren Joy Fowler - 2010
Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.
Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country And Other Stories
Chavisa Woods - 2017
Not stories of triumph over adversity, but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods's characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong—often the places where they were born. In "Zombie," a coming-of-age story like no other, two young girls find friendship with a mysterious woman in the local cemetery. "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" describes a lesbian couple trying to repair their relationship by dropping acid at a Mensa party. In "A New Mohawk," a man in romantic pursuit of a female political activist becomes inadvertently much more familiar with the Palestine/Israel conflict than anyone would have thought possible. And in the title story, Woods brings us into the mind of a queer goth teenager who faces ostracism from her small-town evangelical church.In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.
Let the Old Dreams Die
John Ajvide Lindqvist - 2011
Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair. Fans of Let the Right One In will have to read the story, which is destined to generate much word of mouth both among fans and online.“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In "Final Processing," Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect. Totally transcending genre writing, these are world class stories from possibly the most impressive horror writer writing today.