The red flag was that he said he was Satan. But the deal was good: Listen to Satan’s story in exchange for some donuts. And Doug only half-fulfilled his part of the bargain. But maybe he should have listened better, because during his friend Bryce’s next scheme (theft with light to moderate treason—the usual), Doug and the rest of his friends—Lulu (the fun one) and Charlene (the not fun one)—end up with a powerful artifact, a small metal cube with world-ending power that Lulu decorated with bunnies. And now everyone wants the bunny cube, which means Doug, Bryce, Lulu, and Charlene are being pursued by an insane supermodel general, an army of sadists, a vast criminal organization, a smaller, more-in-startup-mode criminal organization, and an unstoppable killing machine—the worst kind of killing machine. Doug and his friends may be a bunch of losers who aren’t particularly smart or good at anything, but they have one thing going for them: a really cool name for their mercenary group. And now it’s up to Hellbender to save the world—well, what’s left of it. It’s pretty ruined and war-torn already. But, you know, they live there, so they kind of need it. It’s a mess, but that’s what you get for listening to Satan. Or half-listening.

    Hidden deep beneath Manhattan lies a warren of tunnels, sewers, and galleries, mostly forgotten by those who walk the streets above. There lies the ultimate secret of the Museum Beat.Relic — Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...Reliquary —When two grotesquely deformed skeletons are found deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid the investigation. Margo must once again team up with police lieutenant D'Agosta and FBI agent Pendergast, as well as the brilliant Dr. Frock, to try and solve the puzzle. Books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child The Pendergast Series Relic Reliquary Other books Mount Dragon Books by Douglas Preston The Kraken Project Impact Blasphemy The Monster of Florence The Codex Jennie At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    When she's asked to host seven guests for a week-long stay to research Carrow's phenomena, she hopes to finally experience some of the sightings that made the house famous. At first, it's everything they hoped for. Then a storm moves in, cutting off their contact with the outside world, and things quickly become twisted. Doors open on their own. Seances go disastrously wrong. Red liquid seeps from behind the wallpaper. Their spirit medium wanders through the house during the night, seemingly in a trance. Then one of the guests dies under strange circumstances, and Remy is forced to consider the possibility that the ghost of the house's original owner, a twisted serial killer, still walks the halls. But by then it's too late to escape.

    He is aserial killer that only kills bad guys--his own clients. Shanehas spent his life hunting one very bad killer called the StoneCutter. The StoneCutter buries his victims alive and leaves them for dead. One year ago, he was captured and charged with murder. Shane defended him and got him acquitted.Then he killed the StoneCutter. Or so he thought, because his murders have started over again. Now, Shane must find this cold, sadistic killer before it'stoo late.

    But when his ex-partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker embarks on an odyssey that leads him to the heart of organized crime; to an old black woman who dwells by a Louisiana swamp and hears the voices of the dead; to cellars of torture and murder; and to a serial killer unlike any other, an artist who uses the human body as his canvas and takes faces as his prize, the killer known only as the Traveling Man.DARK HOLLOWHaunted by the murder of his wife and daughter, former New York police detective Charlie Parker retreats home to Scarborough, Maine, to rebuild his shattered life. But his return awakens old ghosts, drawing him into the manhunt for the killer of yet another mother and child. The obvious suspect is the young woman's violent ex-husband. But there is another possibility—a mythical figure who lurks deep in the dark hollow of Parker's own past, a figure that has haunted his family for generations: the monster known as Caleb Kyle.... THE KILLING KINDWhen the discovery of a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the grim truth behind the disappearance of a religious community, Charlie Parker is drawn into vicious conflict with a group of zealots intent on tracking down a relic that could link them to the slaughter. Haunted by the ghost of a small boy and tormented by the demonic killer known as Mr. Pudd, Parker is forced to fight for his lover, his friends...and his very soul.

    Erdelac. A mysterious man posing as a Union soldier risks everything to enter the Civil War’s deadliest prison—only to find a horror beyond human reckoning.   Georgia, 1864. Camp Sumter, aka Andersonville, has earned a reputation as an open sewer of sadistic cruelty and terror where death may come at any minute. But as the Union prisoners of war pray for escape, cursing the fate that spared them a quicker end, one man makes his way into the camp purposefully.   Barclay Lourdes has a mission—and a secret. But right now his objective is merely to survive the hellish camp. The slightest misstep summons the full fury of the autocratic commander, Captain Wirz, and the brutal Sergeant Turner. Meanwhile, a band of shiftless thieves and criminals known as the “Raiders” preys upon their fellow prisoners. Barclay soon finds that Andersonville is even less welcoming to a black man—especially when that man is not who he claims to be. Little does he imagine that he’s about to encounter supernatural terrors beyond his wildest dreams . . . or nightmares.Praise for Andersonville   “Erdelac makes a heady brew out of dreadful true events, angel and demon lore, secret societies, and the trappings of Southern gothic novels. This is thoughtful horror at its best, and not at all for the faint of heart.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)“The true story of Andersonville is one of unimaginable horror and human misery. It’s a testament to his unmatched skill as a storyteller that Edward M. Erdelac is not only able to capture that horror but to add another level of supernatural terror and reveal that the darkest evil of all resides in the human soul. Highly recommended to fans of horror and history alike.”—Brett J. Talley, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of That Which Should Not Be and He Who Walks in Shadow   “Andersonville is a raw, groundbreaking supernatural knuckle-punch. Erdelac absolutely owns Civil War and Wild West horror fiction.”—Weston Ochse, bestselling author of SEAL Team 666“Edward M. Erdelac is a master of historical reinvention. In Andersonville, he peels away the façade of history to reveal the horror and sacrifices that led to the end of the Civil War. Clandestine operations, mystical battles waged unseen, and unlikely heroes combine to save a nation, not only from itself but from the demonic forces threatening to tear the whole of existence asunder. Forget what you know about the War Between the States, this is the story we should have been taught.”—Tim Marquitz, author of the Demon Squad series“If you took a tale of atmospheric horror by Ambrose Bierce and infused it with the energy of Elmore Leonard, you would come close to what Edward Erdelac has accomplished with Andersonville. But even that combination would sell the novel short. What Erdelac has done is not just splice genres together but create his own voice in telling of the horrors, real and supernatural, inhabiting the most infamous prison camp of the Civil War. This is U.S. history seen through the eyes of the tortured dead, told with amazing skill by an author who knows how to create genre literature with a purpose.”—C.

    Poseidon Tech tracks the wreckage to an uncharted island and dispatches a curious salvage team—two paleontologists, a biologist specializing in animal behavior, a botanist, and a nefarious big game hunter. Escorted by a heavily-armed security team, they cut through the jungle and quickly find themselves in a terrifying fight for survival, running a deadly gauntlet of prehistoric predators. In their quest for the flight recorder, they uncover the mystery of the island’s existence and discover an arcane force that will tip the balance of power on the primordial island. Things are not as they seem as they race against time to survive the island’s man-eating dinosaurs and make it back home in one piece.

    Bizarre monsters of blended flesh shamble in the streets. The world has shifted. Guns don't always work anymore, and the dead don't always die. Corpses lie everywhere--and many of them are still dangerous...Gannon is one of the last living humans in Redmoor. Most of the other residents have shifted into something else. "They are coming, Gannon. The flying ones."Do you want to have nightmares? Z-WORLD is a novel of Fantasy and Horror by bestselling author B. V. Larson.

    But Joe is married to one of the most powerful witches in Pitchfork, and spends almost as much time keeping an eye on her as he does dealing with occult crimes and shadowy horrors in the rest of the county. Even his children, a little girl who plays host to a rogue's gallery of strange spirits and a young man with a demonic secret, keep him on his toes. All Joe really wants is a simple life, a bottle of good whiskey, and a break from the horrors of his job. But nothing in Pitchfork County is ever simple, and the horrors just keep on coming. Someone's hung a mutilated girl on a cross in Pitchfork's most infamous church, dragging Joe into the most challenging case of his career. Joe's investigation into the ritual murder leads him through the dark underbelly of the Ozarks to the doorstep of a twisted cult of meth addicts. As Joe digs deeper into the mystery, he soon finds himself the target of the murderers and must stop them before they can summon their dark god and destroy everything he holds dear.

    Still a man on the outside looking in, Scott Evers is working security onboard the Sea Shepherd, an Island class vessel performing fishery protection patrols in the Mediterranean Sea. No, Scott Evers hasn't become an environmentalist. He's about as far from the pie-in-the-sky happy people he has sworn to protect as any person could ever be. But he's got a job to do. Namely, to keep the yuppies from doing stupid things that will get them killed. With tensions heating up in the Mediterranean Sea and with terrorists afoot, Scott's an instant away from everything going as terribly wrong as he fears. When the dust clears, his world will never be the same again.

    Craven. A psychopath takes Trick or Treating a step too far. And a woman's dream of a quiet life is shattered by a knock on the door.Afraid Of The Shadows is a collection of gripping- sometimes funny, always spooky- short stories from some of the biggest names in crime fiction.From possessed sweaters to creepy wardrobes and disco shape shifters, there’s something for everyone in this Halloween bucket of short story goodies making it the perfect companion to snuggle up with as the nights draw in. Though be warned, you might want to leave the lights on...****************************************************************CONTRIBUTORSAfraid Of The Shadows is brought to you by twenty bestselling crime and thriller writers who between them have topped the Sunday Times and Amazon charts, won the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger Award, Gold Dagger Award and New Blood Dagger Award, the Bath Novel Award, the UK National Book Awards and the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award.Special guests:M.W. CravenPeter JamesT.M. LoganMatt WesolowskiTrevor WoodRachael BlokElle Croft (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Heather CritchlowJames Delargy (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Clare EmpsonJo FurnissT.E. KinseyN.J. MackayS.R. MastersPhoebe MorganDominic Nolan (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Robert Scragg (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Victoria Selman (Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)Kate SimantsAdam Southward (Longlisted for the 2021 CWA Short Story Dagger Award)****************************************************************Profits from the sale of Afraid Of The Shadows will be donated to the Barnardo's Children in Crisis Covid AppealThis delivers practical and emotional support to vulnerable children caught in a downward spiral of deprivation as a result of the coronavirus crisis.Children and families across the UK are increasingly in or on the brink of poverty as a result of coronavirus.The impact of the second wave is pushing a generation of the most vulnerable children into a downward spiral of deprivation. With your support Barnardo’s can deliver the practical and emotional support families in crisis need.

    Hours later teacher Phil Lynch finds himself living a nightmare. Paralyzed and taken prisoner, his body is used as an unwilling host in a bizarre and grisly series of parasitic infections. On board the alien vessel within which he is imprisoned are more than a hundred other humans - and like Phil - just as confused and terrified - their bodies subjected to unfathomable violence for a dark and malevolent purpose. As the terrible truth about the alien visitation unfolds, a small group of captives must first understand - then fight for escape. That struggle will cause them to stretch razor-thin the limits of the human will to survive. 323 pages.

    

    . .But instead she opened the door to HellRomantic novelist Mandy Freeman thinks all her dreams have come true when she becomes the new owner of Summer Cottage, the former home of her idol, bestselling author Ellen Grace. With her new life starting and love on the horizon, Mandy's future is looking bright.But as Mandy begins to learn, all is not as it seems at Summer Cottage. As a series of increasingly disturbing and sinister events forces her to delve into the mysterious past of its former owner Ellen Grace, Mandy finds herself caught up in a horrifying nightmare that threatens to destroy her sanity . . . and perhaps claim her life.

    Now, after twenty years away, Jay has come back to his hometown of Garron, Ohio, to uncover the truth about his brother’s death.