. . ." 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.

    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.

    Tolkien--from which almost all fantasylands have devolved--also took shape and flower from Dunsany's example." --The Encyclopedia of Fantasy Most fantasy enthusiasts consider Lord Dunsany one of the most significant forces in modern fantasy; his influences have been observed in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, and many other modern writers. The Book of Wonder is Dunsany at his peak of his talent. The stories here are a lush tapestry of language, conjuring images of people, places, and things which cannot possibly exist, yet somehow ring true. They are, in short, full of wonder. Together with Dunsany's other major collections, A Dreamer's Tales and Tales of Three Hemispheres, they are a necessary part of any fantasy collection.

    In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination.Contains 40 stories, including "The Duck," "The Man and the Moose," and "Death and the Fruits of the Tree," as heard on NPR's This American Life, "The Book," as heard on Selected Shorts, and "The TV," as found in The New Yorker.A selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and the Starbucks Coffee Bookish Reading Club.Winner of the 2011 Nobbie Award for Best Book of the Year."This guy can write!" –Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

    His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives.This collection contains such masterpieces as The Rosewood Door, The Ascending Dream, The Painted Face and The Beckoning Fair One, a story which both Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft regarded as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature. Long out of print, these classic tales are a treasure trove of nightmarish gems.

    His short stories present a brilliantly dark and audaciously weird realm where cosmic nightmares collide with all-too-human characters and apocalypses of all shapes and sizes loom ominously. In “Persistence Hunting,” a lonely distance runner is seduced into a brutal life of crime with an ever-narrowing path for escape. In “When Susurrus Stirs,” an unlucky pacifist must stop a horrifying parasite from turning his body into a sentient hive. Running through all of Johnson’s work is a hallucinatory vision and deeply-felt empathy, earning the author a reputation as one of today’s most daring and thrilling writers.Featuring the best of his previously independently-published short fiction, as well as an exclusive, never-before-published novella “The Sleep of Judges”—where a father’s fight against the denizens of a drug den becomes a mind-bending suburban nightmare—Entropy in Bloom is a perfect compendium for avid fans and an ideal entry point for adventurous readers seeking the humor, heartbreak, and terror of JRJ’s strange new worlds.

    One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley.

    "Robert Aickman was a master of what he called 'strange stories,' and though his fiction has been categorized as horror, it's actually its own beast.As we move further away from the horror boom of the last century and its focus on the mainstream appeal of small town horrors, we are encountering successive generations of writers open to exploring new avenues of the subtly bizarre, an area Aickman frequently mastered.This book is a sampler of how Robert Aickman's work has beoome a significant source of inspiration for contemporary writers."

    Some of the stories are inspired by true events. Find out which ones inside this scary collection. “Night Visitors” Once or twice a year, dark creatures show up at the foot of Annie`s bed and take her with them and conduct grisly experiments on her. This is happening for years now. She doesn’t understand who they are and why they do this. But this, last time, it's different. This time she gets the answers, and nothing on Earth will be the same afterward. “Agatha” A man falls in love with a mysterious timid red-haired girl. As he begins to know more about her, he finds out that her secrets are more complicated than he fathoms. A series of abnormal accidents begin to happen in her presence. Who is she and why does she have these paranormal powers? "Grandpa Jesse" Three months have passed since the death of their grandfather, and sisters Jen and Kim are struggling to cope with the loss. As Jen and Kim spend more time at their grandmother’s house, they slowly begin to realize some specter is visiting her on a daily basis and he means no good.

    A couple are invited over to a neighbor's daughter's exorcism. A country witch with a sea-captain's head in a glass globe intercedes on behalf of abused and abandoned children. In July of 1915, in Hardin County, Ohio, a boy sees ghosts. Explore contemporary natural history in a baker's dozen of exhilarating visions.Contains:-The Blameless-Word Doll-The Angel Seems-Mount Chary Galore-A Natural History of Autumn-Blood Drive-A Terror Rocket Ship to Hell-The Fairy Enterprise-The Last Triangle-Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart The Thyme Fiend-The Prelate's Commission

    E. D. KleinThe Detective of Dreams by Gene WolfeVengeance Is. By Theodore SturgeonThe Brood by Ramsey CampbellThe Whistling Well by Clifford D. SimakThe Peculiar Demesne by Russell KirkWhere the Stones Grow by Lisa TuttleThe Night Before Christmas by Robert BlochThe Stupid Joke by Edward GoreyA Touch of Petulance by Ray BradburyLindsay and the Red City Blues by Joe HaldemanA Garden of Blackred Roses by Charles L. GrantOwls Hoot in the Daytime by Manly Wade WellmanWhere There’s a Will by Richard Matheson and Richard Christian MathesonTraps by Gahan WilsonThe Mist by Stephen King

    In here you'll find Verne and Wells, Tolstoy and Checkov, Stevenson and Oliphant, Kipling, Twain, Haggard and Blavatsky alongside their hosts.Come, join us for dinner and a story: Robert Louis Stevenson - Wee Davie Makes a Friend Rudyard Kipling - The High Bungalow Leo Tolstoy - The Immortal Memory Bram Stoker - The House of the Dead Mark Twain - Once a Jackass Herbert George Wells - Farside Margaret Oliphant - To the Manor Born Oscar Wilde - The Angry Ghost Henry Rider Haggard - The Black Ziggurat Helena P Blavatsky - Born of Ether Henry James - The Scrimshaw Set Anton Checkov - At the Molenzki Junction Jules Verne - To the Moon and Beyond Arthur Conan Doyle - The Curious Affair on the Embankment Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths. Interview with the author:So what makes this short story collection so special?Meikle: I love the idea that all these famous writers knew each other, and met for a meal, a drink, a smoke and some storytelling in an old London club / bar setting. It chimes almost exactly with my own idea of a good time. It's special to me in that it's a culmination of the past half dozen or so years of writing. Before this collection there were the Carnacki stories, the Holmes stories, the Challenger stories, and the collaborations with M Wayne Miller in numerous deluxe hardcovers. THE GHOST CLUB feels like an endpiece to all of that, a last celebration of everything I love about the era and the storytellers. Plus it's the most ambitious piece of work I've undertaken in my writing so far, the cause of much worrying and fretting on my part, so seeing the lovely blurbs and comments from writers I have long admired makes it extra special to me.Why should horror fans give Victorian Terror a try?Meikle: It's where we come from. The Victorian era storytelling tradition was the launching point for horror, and also for crime fiction, for science fiction, for fantasy and for much of how we see the world today. It gave us Sherlock Holmes, Dr Jeckyll, Dracula, the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, and all manner of ghosts, spooks and spectres that still fill our entertainment of choice today. It's my way of paying homage to that tradition. This is who I am.How did you choose which authors to use in this book?Meikle: Initially all I knew was that Doyle and Stoker were founder members of the club in London. Then I found out that Henry James was in London at the same time as them and it started to come together.

    Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods. Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in Ireland, to create these chilling tales. They are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.

    Hear me! Or don't. For there are those obsessed with uncovering the witcheries that fester in man's foul heart. There are those who would invoke the awful powers that yet remain in Earth's cursed places. Joseph Payne Brenna is such a one. This is his book. Dare you make it yours? (back cover copy)Introduction by Stephen King.Contents:Diary of a Werewolf The Corpse of Charlie Rull Canavan’s Back Yard The Pavilion House of Memory The Willow Platform Who Was He?DisappearanceThe Horror at Chilton CastleThe Impulse to KillThe House on Hazel StreetSlime