Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

    A year after the auto accident that killed his wife, Vince Walters is finally beginning to move forward with his life. With the support of friends, he's digging back into his career and even beginning to date again. When his estranged mother, Maggie Walters, is murdered, Vince is stunned by the hideous nature of the crime. Maggie lived a quiet life in a small, rural, Pennsylvania town, attending church, reading the Bible, and subscribing to an increasingly paranoid view of the End Times as prophesized in The Book of Revelations. Her brutal killing, which bears all the signs of being related to a sinister satanic cult, is inexplicable given her life of faith. However, a visit from a childhood playmate confirms what Vince is beginning to uncover about his mother's past: that she was involved with a cult during his early childhood, but later defected and went into hiding with him. As hard as Maggie worked to bury her dark past, it seems that they found her. Now they've found Vince. And this time, they are not going to give him up. They have plans for him.Black Voltage Series #10

    From bestselling author of Little Birds, Hannah Lee Kidder's Starlight touches your heart before taking a bite with twelve pitch-dark fantasy, horror, and contemporary short stories.

    Also here is Scott's manifesto, "Dogme 2011 for Weird Fiction."

    Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.

    Kiernan's The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Finch) writes, Kiernan creates her own light in this remarkable collection, and shines it on dark places. In doing so, she gives us gritty, lyrical, horrible, beautiful truths. In The Ammonite Violin & Others, the author rises to meet the high expectations she set with such collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated To Charles Fort, With Love. Within these pages, you ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakbale and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime. Here are stories of dream and metamorphosis, strange lands and beings existing beyond the veil of death and beyond this earth. Here is a selkie who's lost her sealskin, a woman with a blackhole in her heart, a fairie girl fallen to the Queen of Decay, the descent of a modern-day Orpheus, and a killer who has fashioned the most exquisite musical instrument from the remains of one of his victims. Here are dreams, nightmares, and worse things yet.The Ammonite Violin & Others is comprised of stories first published in the subscription only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the stories' first availability to the general public.

    As anyone knows who has been touched by the storytelling magic of Anne McCaffrey, to read of the exotic world of Pern is to inhabit it—and to experience its extraordinary dragons is to soar aloft with them and share their dazzling adventures.Now, A Gift of Dragons brings together three beloved stories and a thrilling new tale of Pern in a single volume illustrated with beautiful artwork by Tom Kidd.In “The Smallest Dragonboy,” -Pern (Publication Order) #4.5- Keevan is the youngest dragonrider candidate, determined to impress a dragon when the next clutch of eggs hatches. But what transpires will surprise everyone—Keevan most of all.In “The Girl Who Heard Dragons,” -Pern (Publication Order) #8.5- a young girl’s rare ability to communicate with dragons puts her family in danger and will bring her face to face with her greatest fears—and with her most secret desire.The “Runner of Pern” -Pern (Publication Order) #15.5- is a girl named Tenna, who follows family tradition by delivering messages—and who will find her destiny on the mossy traces that runners have used for centuries under the dragon-filled sky.And finally, a very special gift: an exciting new Pern adventure, published here for the first time, fresh from the imagination of Anne McCaffrey. “Ever the Twain” -Pern (Publication Order) #16.5-

    A detective caught in a war between two worlds... A man whose terrible appetites hide an even darker secret . . .Dark Horse once again teams up with Hugo and Bram Stoker award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) to bring you this masterful marriage of the darkness without and the darkness within. Supernatural Noir is an anthology of original tales of the dark fantastic from twenty modern masters of suspense, including Brian Evenson, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Gregory Frost, Jeffrey Ford, and many more.

    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.

    Steven Wrigley is trying to survive his senior year of high school, still reeling from the death of his mother and adjusting to life with his father. Along the way, he meets a girl who becomes another kind of obsession: Elise Devon.Elise’s secrets keep her distanced from everyone. She has a special place she calls the Obscura. She goes there when she is depressed or angry. The Obscura makes her feel like nothing she’s ever felt before. When she loses herself to the Obscura, she fears she also gives herself to something much darker, something much more powerful. Something calling itself the Sorrow King.Who is the Sorrow King?He is carved from wood and bone.He smells like wax, dead leaves, and memories.He travels by moonlight and drinks the sorrow of others.Can love exact vengeance on a monster made from madness, depression, and misery? Or will the Sorrow King bleed the town dry before satiating himself and moving on?

    In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

    Unfortunately, the way home isn't as clear-cut as he'd hoped and he's forced to turn to Aria, his GPS, for an alternate route. However, Aria has something far more sinister in mind...

    Handle with extreme caution. Exposure to its contents can cause severe damage to one’s health. When you’re forty-five, getting divorced, and disillusioned from years of soul-sucking work in corporate America, there isn’t much to look forward to. With his personal life just as deep in the dumps as his professional life, Mike Ashbrook figures a janitorial job would be somehow fitting, but what he finds is a different kind of clean-up service. Now Mike is wrist-deep in human waste. As a crime-scene cleaner, when the police are done, his job is just beginning. His biggest problem now, besides wiping up blood, guts, and other nastiness, is his new co-worker, Sage. She’s young, beautiful, and the only other employee who doesn’t quit after a week. She may also be totally insane. Sage is not just an enigma—she’s toxic. Toxic Love is a darkly comic and erotic nightmare from the master of blood-soaked horror, Kristopher Triana. Throughout this tale of perversion, gore, necrophilia and even some mobsters, Triana pens powerful characters who will move you just as deeply as they’ll repulse you. This Valentine’s Day, get toxic! What have you got to lose? After all, you know what they say: No Guts, No Glory Hole!

    From dark fairytales to alien skies, Monk's stories blend haunting yesterdays, forgotten todays and twisted tomorrows wherein:...A normal little girl in a city made of gears, takes on the world to save a toy.......A normal ancient monster living in Seattle, must decide if love is worth trusting a hero......A normal patchwork woman and her two-headed boyfriend stitch their life and farm together with needle, thread, and time......a normal vampire in a knitting shop must face sun-drenched secrets......a normal snow creature's wish changes a mad man's life......a normal man breaks reality with a hamster......and yes, a normal little robot, defines how extraordinary friendship can be.Poignant, bittersweet, frightening, and funny, these stories pour out worlds that are both lovely and odd, darkly strange and tantalizingly familiar, where no matter how fantastic the setting or situation, love, freedom, and hope find a way to take root and thrive.“Dusi” (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 1999)“Beer with a Hamster Chaser”(Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #14, June 2004)“Probe” (Odyssey #5, 1998)“That Saturday” (Better off Dead, Daw Books, Nov 2008)“The Wishing Time” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Bearing Life” (Maiden, Matron, Crone, Daw Books, May 2005)“A Cup of Normal” (First publication in 2nd edition, 2015)“Stitchery” (Black Gate #2, 2001; Year’s Best Fantasy 2, Eos, 2002)“Last Tour of Duty” (Realms of Fantasy, Dec 2001)“Oldblade” (Talebones #19, Spring 2000)“Skein of Sunlight” (Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, 2009)“Stringing Tomorrow” (Talebones #32, Spring 2006)“X-Day” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Menders” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Leeward to the Sky” (Realms of Fantasy, June 2002)“Fishing the Edge of the World” (Talebones #28, Summer 2004)“Moonlighting” (Fantasy Gone Wrong, Daw Books, Sept 2006)“Christmas Card” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Ducks in a Row” (Realms of Fantasy, April 2006)“Singing Down the Sun” (Fantastic Companions, May 2005)“Here After Life” (Realms of Fantasy, Feb 2003)“Falling with Wings” (Realms of Fantasy, Aug 2004)“When the Train Calls Lonely” (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 2007)

    Four Oxrun Station horror novellas each from a different 20th century decade starting with 1950, keyed to the seasons.