Book picks similar to
Free Five: Flash Fiction by Paul D. Dail
horror
short-stories
fiction
reviewed
Younger
Suzanne Munshower - 2015
Desperate to prove she is still relevant, the fiftysomething accepts a shady job offer from Pierre Barton, secretive billionaire owner of Barton Pharmaceuticals. Isolated in a facility outside London, she agrees to test a new top-secret product guaranteed to make her look thirty years younger. Anna is starting to look on the outside the way she feels on the inside: ageless. But she soon discovers that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, leading her to research just who stands to gain—and lose—with this miraculous product. When Pierre drops dead in front of her, she takes off on a dangerous journey across Europe hoping to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth.With the hard-won knowledge that younger isn’t always better, Anna is determined to escape and reclaim her life before it’s too late.
Kellie's Diary #1
Thomas Jenner - 2013
When the world crumbles and the dead walk, Kellie struggles to survive and find her way home, all the while sharing her tale with her diary.This is an account of our hypothetical past, present and future.
Resisting Madness
Wesley Southard - 2019
You’ll discover how far a prisoner will go to be with his dying wife, and what lurks between the walls of that Louisiana jailhouse to keep him there. You’ll find out how deep a man can cut himself to dig out the past. You’ll meet a college professor whose fear of flying might be the least of his worries. And you’ll learn how a sister’s love for sweet treats can reunite a broken family…whether they want it or not. Aliens and lot lizards…disembodied lips…the voice of God Himself… Thirteen stories and a brand new novella from horror author Wesley Southard. Within these pages, we all go a little mad…
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
Ellen DatlowGahan Wilson - 1995
Now, in their third critically acclaimed collection of original fairy tales for adults, World Fantasy Award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling bring us twenty-one new stories by some of the top names in literature today. Joyce Carol Oates, Gahan Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman -- these are but a few of the accomplished literary sorcerers who have gathered here to remold our timeless myths into more sensuous and disturbing forms. Like the fabled ruby slippers, there is powerful magic here. Rich witches in trendy resorts cast evil spells ... beautiful princesses age and wither in sleeping worlds ... terrible beasts reside beneath flawless skin.Dark, disturbing, delightful, each story was written expressly for this superb collection of distinctly grown-up fantasy -- a brilliant companion volume to Datlow and Windling's acclaimed anthologies, "Snow White, Blood Red and "Black Thorn, White Rose.
The "Snow White, Blood Red" Collection
#1.
Snow White, Blood Red
#2.
Black Thorn, White Rose
#3.
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
#4.
Black Swan, White Raven
#5.
Silver Birch, Blood Moon
#6.
Black Heart, Ivory Bones
The Hour of the Time
Vincent Hobbes - 2011
This story was first published in The Endlands, in January 2011. Charlie is a man who follows the rules. He is a man who is never late. He is a man who always obeys.This is the most important day of Charlie's life, and he is running late. The short story is FREE for download on Barnes and Noble NOOK!
DRT (A Ghost Story)
Eric Thomas - 2012
It turns out Greg has no idea what it really means to be afraid. After witnessing a horrifying fatal crash, a crash Greg believes he had a hand in causing, he begins to see the ghost of the dead driver. The strain becomes unbearable as Greg attempts to determine why the ghost has sought him out, what it wants from him, and whether any of what is happening is even real.DRT is the second novel from author Eric Thomas. It's an alternating look at the absurd and the shocking as he tells the story of one man's struggle to maintain his sanity.
Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
Kelly LinkNalo Hopkinson - 2014
Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.Moriabe's Children / Paolo Bacigalupi --Old souls / Cassandra Clare --Ten rules for being an intergalactic smuggler (the successful kind) / Holly Black --Quick hill / M.T. Anderson --The diabolist / Nathan Ballingrud --This whole demoning thing / Patrick Ness --Wings in the morning / Sarah Rees Brennan --Left foot, right / Nalo Hopkinson --The Mercurials / G. Carl Purcell --Kitty Capulet and the invention of underwater photography / Dylan Horrocks --Son of abyss / Nik Houser --A small wild magic / Kathleen Jennings --The new boyfriend / Kelly Link --The woods hide in plain sight / Joshua Lewis --Mothers, lock up your daughters because they are terrifying / Alice Sola Kim
Viriconium
M. John Harrison - 2000
This landmark collection gathers four groundbreaking fantasy classics from the acclaimed author of Light.Set in the imagined city of Viriconium, here are the masterworks that revolutionized a genre and enthralled a generation of readers: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Knights.Contents:The Pastel City, 1971 (novel)A Storm of Wings, 1980 (novel)In Viriconium, 1982 (novel)The Lamia & Lord Cromis, 1971 (short story)Viriconium Knights, 1981 (short story)The Luck in the Head, 1984 (novelette)Strange Great Sins, 1983 (short story)The Lords of Misrule, 1984 (short story)The Dancer from the Dance, 1985 (short story)A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium, 1985 (short story)
Bad People: Four terrifying short novels of suspense
Jeremy Bates - 2018
After a night out with his girlfriend in one of the country's remote provinces, he wakes to find himself in a pitch-black coffin—and quickly running out of oxygen. With only his cell phone and his own wits to rely on, it's a race against time to escape the claustrophobic death trap. SIX BULLETS The end of civilization arrived in the form of a giant asteroid thirteen months ago. For Burt James, a survivalist, it was not a complete surprise. He'd spent much of his adult life prepping for such a catastrophe. Consequently, while the majority of the population scoured the post-apocalyptic landscape for water and food, regressing into primitive killers, he bunkered down in his fortified hilltop home in a small town in the middle of the Australian Outback. But now he's out of food and down to his last six bullets, and he will have to make the most difficult choice of his life. THE MAILMAN Los Angeles, 1985. Never was the motto sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll more apt than the scene on the legendary Sunset Strip with the arrival of the underground Hollywood glam bands. While Mick Freeman, a record executive with a major label, works tirelessly to sign five toxic rockers whom he believes might flip the entire music world on its head, his wife, Jade, spends her days bored and alone at home, struggling with a midlife crisis that threatens to topple their twenty-year marriage. And then she meets the new mailman. Young and handsome, he sweeps her off her feet—straight into a nightmare the likes of which she could never have imagined. RE-ROLL In the near future, breathtakingly humanoid robots called Mechs are for sale, and they're designed to fulfill whatever role you want: husband, wife, best friend, slave. Manufacturers allow new owners one free "roll" to randomly determine their Mech's three leading characteristics. But as everybody knows, scoring your ideal traits is a crapshoot, though you can always re-roll—at a price.
A Deep Horror That Was Very Nearly Awe
J.R. Hamantaschen - 2018
Hamantaschen’s third collection of short stories delivers more inimitable dark fiction. These are eleven tales of macabre horror, filled with estrangement, honor, wonder, terror, delusion, pity, desperation and perseverance.
Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
Ben Loory - 2011
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
How To Exit Your Body: and Other Strange Tales
Christopher Maxim - 2018
This book is guaranteed to horrify you in the best way possible. Open it up, turn the page, and take a journey to a world consumed with mystery in madness.
The Wine-Dark Sea
Robert Aickman - 1988
Unlike much of the current form, full of blood, monsters and melodrama, Aickman's stories achieve a quieter, more subtle and, in several ways, more lasting sense of disquiet. His lucid, finely tuned prose moves imperceptibly from the small crises and celebrations of ordinary life into another sphere. In these 11 stories, the occasion may be a walking tour of Northern England, a birthday present of a Victorian dollhouse or a stay at a Swedish sanatorium for insomniacs, but it simultaneously traps the characters with dread and opens them up to a new awareness of a greater, deeper and more dangerous world. A remarkable collection by an author who deserves to be better known.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
M.R. James - 1904
"Number Thirteen," "The Mezzotint," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," and more. Renowned for their wit, erudition and suspense, these stories are each masterfully constructed and represent a high achievement in the ghost genre. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.
Beautiful Illusions
Annie Jocoby - 2013
VERY contemporary.Beautiful Illusions is a Cinderella Romance With a Twist - and what a twist it is!Attorney Iris Snowe drinks too much, eats too much, and spends too much. Her sex life has been as spectacularly unsuccessful as her law practice, so she spends her evenings in her tiny apartment watching bad TV, talking to her cat, and rescuing pit bulls.And her name might be Iris, but it should be Jade. As in jaded, which is how she feels about romance and men in general. So, when a gorgeous and sexy stranger appears in her law office on Monday morning, after a one-night stand the previous Saturday, she doesn't think that he is coming to see her because he is interested. She just figures that she left something behind in the room and he is enough of a gentleman to deliver it to her.How wrong she is. As it turns out, Ryan Gallagher not only looks like a Ralph Lauren model come to life, but is also fabulously wealthy, as he is the son of a prominent billionaire.In other words, light years out of Iris' league. And completely into her, in more ways than one.And so begins the erotic Cinderella romance of her life, with a man who truly loves her. And oh, if it could just be that simple. But, of course, it's not -the fairy tale is fractured, as it is marred by obsession, jealousy, and dark secrets that Ryan has desperately sought to conceal and repress. It turns out that, behind those magnificent green eyes, lies the memories of a past that nobody should ever have to experience. Nobody. But when his past becomes his present, his secrets come to light.And one of those secrets just might be deadly...This is a full-length novel, approximately 100,000 words. Story continues in Deeper Illusions.Don't miss the exciting conclusion to the trilogy! Estimated publication date is September 23!