The Ritual


Adam Nevill - 2011
    No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees...

Assassin


Shaun Hutson - 1988
    Into this world of corruption, violence, madness and death came the Assassin. The author also wrote "Death Day", "Spawn" and "Slugs".

Bring Me Children


David Lozell Martin - 1992
    John Lyon, a veteran but emotionally unstable newscaster, is drawn into a sinister web of evil in the heart of Appalachia when he investigates a woman's bizarre story about a West Virginia doctor who has been killing babies.

Dreamer


Daniel Quinn - 1988
    He's got a terrific project, and he's met the woman of his dreams -- literally, his dreams (though they're rather odd ones). But then, one night, he falls asleep and awakes . . . to the beginning of a nightmare he just can't seem to wake up from. . . .

Seeing Red


David J. Schow - 1989
    Schow received the World Fantasy Award for "Red Light" and the Twilight Zone Magazine Dimension award for "Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You", both of which are included in this volume.

The Cartoonist


Sean Costello - 1990
    So you go on a road trip together, have a few drinks, a final fling before the long academic haul ahead. Young and bright, you feel the future surge beneath you like a sleek stallion, under your full control.But a series of small lapses ends in tragedy and now you're faced with a terrible decision: Do you take responsibility for what you've done and risk losing everything? Or flee into the night unseen, with only God and conscience as your jury?Sixteen years ago, Scott Bowman faced this decision...Now a successful psychiatrist with a loving family, Scott endures a judgement far more harrowing than any god or man could conceive. An ancient derelict appears in his practice, an apparently senile old man with a remarkable artistic talent. Otherwise disconnected from the world around him, this strange little man quickly demonstrates an ability to foretell events through his drawings.But before long Scott is left to wonder: is this eldritch prophet predicting events? Or shaping them?PRAISE FOR THE CARTOONIST"In THE CARTOONIST, Sean Costello creates a fast-moving read that mounts in tension while mixing horror with psychological anguish." —J. B. Macabre"Sean Costello's The Cartoonist is a wonderful blend of horror, psychology, and the power of suggestion that leaves you guessing right up to the very end!" —The New Jersey Grapevine

Walkers


Graham Masterton - 1989
    Sixty years ago the house was an asylum, home to crazed psychopaths. One night all of them disappeared, never to be seen again.Jack Reed, the owner of The Oaks, has no idea about the building's terrible history. It is only when Jack's son is dragged into the walls of the mansion that he realizes what happened sixty years ago – and just where the inmates have been living all this time...

I Am Dracula


C. Dean Andersson - 1993
    Learn how he struggled with Satan and how he terrorized in blood and evil for five centuries ... and up to the present day.Told over a series of long winter nights to master horror author C. Dean Andersson, this is the shocking, mesmerizing account of Dracula's history that renders all other versions anemic by comparison. Now is the time of revelation. I AM DRACULA. I bid you welcome to my world...

The Freakshow


Bryan Smith - 2007
    In fact, much of the town won't survive. At first glance, the freakshow looks like so many others - lurid, rundown, decrepit. But this freakshow is definitely one of a kind . . . The townspeople can't resist the lure of the tawdry spectacle, though it isn't mere morbid curiousity that draws them into the freakshow's inescapable web. What waits for them behind this curtain are hardly the usual performers and tricks. The main attractions are living nightmares, the acts center on torture and slaughter . . .and the stars of the show are the unsuspecting customers themselves.

The Talisman


Jonathan Aycliffe - 1999
    Once there, it quickly exerts an evil influence over those with whom it comes into contact; an influence which threatens to spread throughout London and beyond, and which pits the living against the dead in a battle for all mankind.

The Shuddering


Ania Ahlborn - 2013
    A group of close friends gathers at a secluded cabin in the wintry mountains of Colorado for a final holiday hurrah. Instead, it may be their last stand. First a massive blizzard leaves them marooned. Then the more chilling realization: something is lurking in the woods, watching them, waiting... Now a weekend of family, friends, and fun has turned into a test of love and loyalty in the face of inhuman horrors. The only hope for those huddled inside is to fight—tooth and nail, bullet and blade—for their lives. Otherwise, they'll end up like the monsters' other victims: bright pools of blood on glittering snow, screams lost in the vast mountains.

Greely's Cove


John Gideon - 1991
    

Dead Souls


Michael Laimo - 2007
    Following a little black magic - and the crucifiction of his entire family - the Conroys would rise from the dead, united for all of eternity, bringing salvation to the world. Assuming, that is, that the ritual went off with out a hitch. But for the Conroys, things went drastically wrong, and death was just the beginning of their suffering.Seventeen years later, 18-year-old Johnny Petrie receives a letter from a lawyer stating that he is the sole heir to the Conroy estate, a property valued at nearly two million dollars. Seeking to escape the isolation of his overprotective, religious zealot family, Johnny leaves Manhattan on the morning of his father's suicide, seeking a new life.What follows is a roller-coaster ride of chills as Johnny begins to realize that he has inherited far more than an estate.

In a Lonely Place


Karl Edward Wagner - 1983
    Contents:In the PinesWhere the Summer EndsSticksThe Fourth Seal.220 SwiftThe River of Night’s Dreaming Beyond Any Measure

Saurian


William Schoell - 1988
    Something calls Tom back to the ruins of his boyhood home, to the scene of the devastation that almost destroyed him.