But as the stories unfold, a newer and more surprising narrative emerges, one that is perhaps the most frightening of all.

    In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work. Gradually, this gentle, persistent man's work comes to fruition: the region is transformed; life and hope return; the world is renewed.

    Prepare to have your blood chilled by six tales of fear and phantasmagoria…The Silent Bell: A doctor’s invention to prevent people being accidentally buried alive backfires on him with horrific results.The Stonegate Manor Collection: Lord Feltham’s paintings are worth a fortune, but also conceal a gruesome tragedy that has yet more lives to claim.The Haunting of Reverend Carson: The charlatan Musgrave makes a living pretending to talk to the dead, until he discovers his new client’s demons are more than merely spiritual.The Last Waltz: Through that miracle of technology, the Zoopraxiscope, a lonely man’s long-lost love is brought back to life before his very eyes.The Speaking Tube: John Barker is consumed with hatred for his malicious father and torments him with voices from hell, unaware of how close to the abyss he is himself.The Ghost Train: Alone aboard an empty train running along a dead track, Godfrey witnesses the grotesque secret that is entombed beneath Paddington Station.Go deeper into David Haynes’s world of the macabre…

    ' "Of course, no one would want to say anything about a girl like this that's missing..." 'Malice, paranoia and creeping dread lie beneath the surface of ordinary American life in these chilling miniature masterworks of unease.Contains:- The Missing Girl- Journey with a Lady- Nightmare

    Parties, booze, boys--you name it, she does it. Her parents don't care what she does, and when she is home they ignore her. Their attitude started over a year ago when Megan's older brother was tragically killed in a car accident. Then, when her parents die on the same road that took her brother, Megan decides to start over and move far away. She auctions off her parents' property, a country home in northwestern Minnesota, and heads down to the Twin Cities. Megan knows hitchhiking is dangerous, but lately has become a way of life. And this time is no different. She gets picked up by Bart Simms, an attorney from Minneapolis, who agrees to take her where she needs to go. But only after he conducts a bit of estate planning business. The Engels are a farming family who live not far from Megan's old place. They revel peacefully in their secluded backwoods sanctuary, and have a strong desire to keep as much of the government away from their family's farming legacy. Hence the reason they sought the impecable skills of Bart Simms, who has a deep reputation for saving many family farms from unwanted death and estate taxes. But Megan has a problem with the Engels. She has never heard of them, and she's lived in the area all of her life. When she explores their home, she finds more that is out of sorts. She discovers a picture of a teenage girl. A girl who resembles that of a recent murder victim from Minneapolis. Is there more to this backwoods family than meets the eye? This suspenseful story was inspired by the gruesome real-life tales of Ed Gein and the Master of Horror himself Stephen King. Also included in this are two bonus materials: a serial killer short story titled "Hatchet Harry" and an excerpt of Mark S. R. Peterson's thriller novel (published August 2013) titled BEHOLDER'S EYE.

    Only half believing that it even exists beyond schoolboy gossip, the four boys nevertheless feel an odd tension and unease. And when they do find the shelter, and go down inside it, the strange and horrifying events that follow will test their adolescent friendships to breaking point, and affect the rest of their lives...A horror novella of 15.5k words, plus an author’s afterword.

    I had a three-day notice to pay rent or quit. The ad was the answer to my problem. Someone needed a party hostess for 24 hours on a private island. With my catering experience and model looks, I could get the gig. But when I set eyes on the man about to fly me to the island, I realized I might have made a mistake. The tall, older, arrogant stranger didn’t just undress me with his eyes, he used me right there on the pavement. Deviant desires seemed to radiate from him. He pulled a black leather dog collar out of his pocket. “Wait. You have to sign this before we do anything. Read it.” He handed me a contract. The wind swept a bottle down the runway and blew my skirt up. It was hard to read with his dark eyes looking right through my underwear and into my secret places. “This is a mistake. I didn’t know the ad meant —.” “You thought you were going to serve canapes on a tray?” He chuckled. “No, Brittani. You’re the main course.” His eyes worked me over again. “And you’re perfect.” He handed me a pen that probably cost more than my laptop. “Just sign at the bottom of the page. Full disclosure, full consent. That’s the way I do business.” “Can I leave?” “Of course you can leave. If you leave now. But you don’t get paid if you leave. Once we get to the island, you’re ours for 24-hours.” He tapped the contract with his long finger. “When your service is over, I transfer $10,000 to your account and send you home.” “$10,000?” I choked on it. That was more than generous. I scanned the contract again. It had long, dense paragraphs of disclaimers and waivers but not much in the way of details. “I’ll be — okay — when it’s over?” “You’ll be okay.” He smiled. I liked his smile. I needed the money. I signed. He put the collar around my neck and buckled it. If you like dark short erotica, kinky alpha billionaires — and no-entrances-barred hard-and-unprotected group interracial action with a white woman at the center, you'll love Q. Zayne's creamy story about Brittani’s scary-hot visit to The Billionaire’s Club. Click Buy and get the adventure! All characters are 18+ and readers should be, too, due to language and sexual content. If you're over 21, enjoy the dash of interracial BMWW romance sparked amid all the juicy action. :)

    It's a thrilling story of adventure and rescue, of escape and revenge, set in New England in the early days of Prohibition. Written in the great storytelling tradition, 'Warm Moonlight' has all the intensity of a got-to-hear-how-it-ends campfire yarn, but with a decidedly adult sophistication and sensibility. The ending is unique and satisfying, but leaves the audience, like one of the characters in the story, wondering - how much of it was true? How much invented? Can such things be? Maybe it's a ghost story or . . . . maybe it isn't.

    Gary Handler has issues. His boss hates him, his mother hounds him, and his cat thinks he’s an idiot. But that’s okay because Gary’s got the perfect solution to all of life’s troubles: a porn site subscription and his right hand.Sadly, all habits grow old, even the fun ones. Gary soon finds himself at the doorstep of a creepy old pawn shop where he buys a used adult novelty toy to spice up his one-man sex life.Pity for him that it’s cursed by the angry spirits of all the “kids” he’s flushed down the toilet. Needless to say, hairy palms are about to become the least of his worries.----------Jack on, jack off ... with the Jacklight in book 2 of Shingles, the horror comedy series that’s not for those with faint hearts or weak bladders.

    His memory has been slipping, and he worries that soon he won’t remember her at all.When he finds a vintage cigar box hidden in June’s old dresser, he begins to obsess over the odd collection of knick-knacks contained inside it — but his journey to remember the past will take a horrifying turn for the worse.

    Shipp.The stories include:GigglesPrincessDon’t LaughThe Glass Box

    + New literature from South Korea: poetry by Hwang Byeong-seung and Moon Tae-jun, and fiction by Park Min-gyu and Kim Aeran, with an introduction by Jenny Wang Medina.+ Book Reviews: on Francesco Pacifico’s The Story of My Purity, Anne Carson’s Red Doc>, A. G. Porta’s The No World Concerto, Ray Amorisi’s Lazarus, Charles Bernstein’s Recalculating, and Nicolas Hundley’s The Revolver in the Hive.

    Some of the genre's greatest writers contemplate the planet-moving encounters between humans and aliens while pondering the eternal question--what kind of relationship are humans really looking for?

    In A Simple Heart, the poignant story that inspired Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, Felicite, a French housemaid, approaches a lifetime of servitude with human-scaled but angelic aplomb. No other author has imparted so much beauty and integrity to so modest an existence. Flaubert's "great saint" endures loss after loss by embracing the rich, true rhythms of life: the comfort of domesticity, the solace of the Church, and the depth of memory. This novella showcases Flaubert's perfectly honed realism: a delicate counterpoint of daily events with their psychological repercussions.

    This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875 1947). Crowley was a successful critic, editor and author of fiction from 1908 to 1922, and his short stories are long overdue for discovery. Of the forty-nine stories in the present volume, only thirty were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear here for the first time. Like their author, Crowley's stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places he had lived and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the first World War. The title story The Drug stands as one of the first accounts–if not the first–of a psychedelic experience. His Black and Silver is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. Atlantis is a masterpiece of occult fantasy, a dark satire that can stand with Samuel Butler's Erewhon . Frank Harris considered The Testament of Magdalen Blair the most terrifying tale ever written. Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.