The Lottery and Other Stories


Shirley Jackson - 1949
    "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

The Magnus Archives: Season 1


Jonathan Sims - 2016
    Newall and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrates the stories in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly-appointed head archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute; an institution based in London centred on research into the paranormal.With each chapter released as a podcast episode, The Magnus Archive is structured as a series of statements recorded or written and then recorded for internal research use within The Magnus Institute. At the beginning of each statement, the statement-taker (mainly Jon, the head archivist) provides a brief description of the statement and the name of the statement-maker. Those who give or record statements in the Magnus Institute tend to lapse into a trance-like state not unlike reliving the event.

The Beauty


Aliya Whiteley - 2014
    For when the women are all gone the rest of your life is all there is for everyone. The men are waiting to pass into the night.The story shall be told to preserve the past. History has gone back to its aural roots and the power of words is strong. Meet Nate, the storyteller, and the new secrets he brings back from the woods. William rules the group with youth and strength, but how long can that last? And what about Uncle Ted, who spends so much time out in the woods?Hear the tales, watch a myth be formed. For what can man hope to achieve in a world without women? When the past is only grief how long should you hold on to it? What secrets can the forest offer to change it all? Discover the Beauty.

Burnt Black Suns


Simon Strantzas - 2014
    The nine stories in this volume exhibit Strantzas’s wide range in theme and subject matter, from the Lovecraftian “Thistle’s Find” to the Robert W. Chambers homage “Beyond the Banks of the River Seine.” But Strantzas’s imagination, while drawing upon the best weird fiction of the past, ventures into new territory in such works as “On Ice,” a grim novella of arctic horror; “One Last Bloom,” a grisly account of a scientific experiment gone hideously awry; and the title story, an emotionally wrenching account of terror and loss in the baked Mexican desert. With this volume, Strantzas lays claim to be discussed in the company of Caitlín R. Kiernan and Laird Barron as one of the premier weird fictionists of our time.Cover artwork by Santiago Caruso

Near the Bone


Christina Henry - 2021
    She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realizes that they're not alone after all.There's something in the woods that wasn't there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws.When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.

New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird


Paula GuranLaird Barron - 2011
    Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gamers. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history—written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread—remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the early twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction—bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters—eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

Tales from the Gas Station, Vol. 1


Jack Townsend - 2018
    The long hours. The helpless customers. The enormous eldritch horror living deep below the building… As the only full-time employee at the twenty-four hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all. But when he decides to start an online journal documenting the bizarre day-to-day occurrences, he unwittingly attracts the attention of much more than just a few conspiracy theorists. With the body count steadily on the rise and a dark, ancient force infecting the dreams of everyone around him, Jack will do everything in his power to stay out of the way and mind his own business. After all, he’s just a gas station clerk. It’s not like he’s getting paid enough to wage battle against the nightmarish aberrations plaguing his community. Besides, he already has his hands full attempting to manage all those mysterious lawn gnomes, the mutant raccoons, and the charming phantom cowboy who lives in the bathroom. Based on the award-winning creepypasta by GasStationJack, Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One is a love letter to the pioneers of classic horror tailored to a generation that grew up in the era of smartphones and WiFi.

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You


Scotto Moore - 2016
    Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band's fans.A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band's lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret.

Lovecraft Unbound


Ellen DatlowWilliam Browning Spencer - 2009
    Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. 9 • Introduction (Lovecraft Unbound) • essay by Ellen Datlow 11 • The Crevasse • short story by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud 31 • The Office of Doom • [Dust Devil] • short story by Richard Bowes 43 • Sincerely, Petrified • short fiction by Anna Tambour 73 • The Din of Celestial Birds • (1997) • short story by Brian Evenson 85 • The Tenderness of Jackals • short fiction by Amanda Downum 99 • Sight Unseen • short fiction by Joel Lane 113 • Cold Water Survival • short story by Holly Phillips 139 • Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love • short fiction by William Browning Spencer 161 • Houses Under the Sea • (2006) • novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan 195 • Machines of Concrete Light and Dark • short story by Michael Cisco 213 • Leng • short fiction by Marc Laidlaw 239 • In the Black Mill • (1997) • short story by Michael Chabon 267 • One Day, Soon • short fiction by Lavie Tidhar 277 • Commencement • (2001) • novelette by Joyce Carol Oates 305 • Vernon, Driving • short fiction by Simon Kurt Unsworth 315 • The Recruiter • short fiction by Michael Shea 331 • Marya Nox • short fiction by Gemma Files 347 • Mongoose • [Boojum] • novelette by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette 375 • Catch Hell • short fiction by Laird Barron 413 • That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable • short fiction by Nick Mamatas

Unseaming


Mike Allen - 2014
    A childhood doll arrives to tear its owner’s reality limb from limb. A portal to the spirit realm stretches wide on the Appalachian Trail, and something more than human crawls through on eight legs. Words of comfort change to terrifying sounds as a force from outside time speaks through them. The buttons in the bin will unseam your flesh to bare your nastiest secrets.

We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories


C. Robert Cargill - 2018
    Robert Cargill returns to the terrain of the Queen of the Dark Things to continue the story of Colby Stevens . . .A Triceratops and an Ankylosaurus join forces to survive a zombie apocalypse that may spell extinction for their kind in "Hell Creek" . . .In a grand old building atop a crack in the world, an Iraq War veteran must serve a one-year term as a punisher of the damned condemned to consume the sins of others in the hope that one day he may find peace in "In a Clean, White Room" (co-authored with Scott Derrickson) . . .In "The Town That Wasn’t Anymore," the village of Pine Hill Bluff loses its inhabitants one at a time as the angry dead return when night falls to steal the souls of the living . . .And in the title story, "We Are Where the Nightmares Go," a little girl crawls through a glowing door beneath her bed and finds herself trapped in a nightmarish wonderland—a crucible of the fragments of children’s bad dreams.These tales and four more are assembled here as testament to Cargill’s mastery of the phantasmagoric, making We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories a collection of unnerving horror and fantasy will keep you up all night and haunt your waking dreams.

Dark Water


Kōji Suzuki - 1996
    The first story in this collection has been adapted to film (Dark Water, Walter Salles), and another, "Adrift" is currently in production with Dimension Films.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream


Harlan Ellison - 1967
    This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition. Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.CONTENTS"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream""Big Sam Was My Friend""Eyes of Dust""World of the Myth""Lonelyache""Delusion for Dragonslayer""Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"

Everything That's Underneath


Kristi DeMeester - 2017
    Feel it. Tearing at your nails, gritty between your teeth, filling your nostrils. Consume it until it has consumed you. For there you will find the voices that have called from the shadows, the ones that promise to cherish you only to rip your body to shreds.In Everything That’s Underneath, Kristi DeMeester explores the dark places most people avoid. A hole in an abandoned lot, an illness twisting your loved one into someone you don’t recognize, lust that pushes you farther and farther until no one can hear yours cry for help. In these 18 stories the characters cannot escape the evil that is haunting them. They must make a choice: accept it and become part of what terrifies them the most or allow it to consume them and live in fear forever.

The Murders of Molly Southbourne


Tade Thompson - 2017
    Experience the horror of Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne.The rule is simple: don't bleed.For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?