This edition brings together some of the best horror writers from the last few decades. Featuring stories from Ray Garton, Kelley Armstrong, Simon Clark, Gord Rollo, Chad Lutzke, Mike Duke, Christina Bergling, David Owain Hughes, P. Mattern & Kevin J. Kennedy.

    Here is a riveting collection of novellas exploring the fascinating relationship between eroticism and horror. In his most ambitious work ever, Simmons reveals the exquisite conjunction of love and death that will keep readers awake and reading all night.

    1933. The winds of the Dust Bowl have reduced what had been the nation's breadbasket to a desert full of broken dreams and desperate prayers. The water is gone, the crops are ruined and, for the people of Hawley, Kansas, there's little left to struggle for except the chance for another day in hell. There's a storm coming, one that will rip the roofs from farms and scatter the wretched crops far and wide. One little girl will find a treasure trove in a ruined field and converse with a nightmare. One man will find salvation in the dirt and damnation close on its heels. One woman will suffer the sins of her husband and seek hope in the actions of her only child. Dying faith will be tested, because that isn't rain wetting the crops; it's blood. Those aren't trinkets and toys that are lying hidden in the fields; they're nightmares wrapped in false promises. And while the darkest storms bring the brightest rainbows, that isn't a pot of gold waiting at the far end; it's an emerald that gleams and flickers with its own infernal light. Join bestselling authors Christopher Golden and James A. Moore as they show you there's no hell like home...

    My sister was not most little girls.Inside you'll experience intimate first hand accounts of modern day murders, kidnappings, and violent revenge. Other stories are heart-warming with whimsical mysteries, gothic fairy tales, and supernatural monstrosities.

    Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it.There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. “Afterlife” is about a man who died of colon cancer and keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Other stories address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers—the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, the names of people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King’s finest gifts to his constant reader—“I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”

    Unbearable pain. A night of passion becomes a nightmare for corporate headhunter Adam Walters. In Prague for a few days to do business, he makes the most of his time away from home and commitments, indulging his lustful desires. But when he wakes up hog tied naked on an operating table in a filthy tiled room, he can’t begin to imagine the pain that is about to come his way… WARNING * This is an extreme horror book. It may contain scenes of gratuitous sex, and violence against humans, animals, and inanimate objects that didn’t deserve their fate.

    Recently, there had been some strange goings on at Styles St Mary. Evelyn, constant companion to old Mrs Inglethorp, had stormed out of the house muttering something about 'a lot of sharks'. And with her, something indefinable had gone from the atmosphere. Her presence had spelt security; now the air seemed rife with suspicion and impending evil. A shattered coffee cup, a splash of candle grease, a bed of begonias are all Poirot requires to display his now legendary powers of detection. TEN LITTLE NIGGERS (later renamed to And Then There Were None and/or Ten Little Indians): Agatha Christie's world-famous mystery thriller. Ten strangers, apparently with little in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon by the mysterious U.N.Owen. Over dinner, a record begins to play, and the voice of an unseen host accuses each person of hiding a guilty secret. That evening, former reckless driver Tony Marston is found murdered by a deadly dose of cyanide. The tension escalates as the survivors realise the killer is not only among them but is preparing to strike again! and again! DUMB WITNESS: Everyone blamed Miss Emily's accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn't receive the letter until June 28th ... by which time Miss Emily was dead ...

    Everyone is someone else when the world isn't looking. Sometimes that person is good, sometimes that person is not. In Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke's latest terrifying collection of short stories, you'll meet thirteen people who discover the horror of what happens when those secret faces are removed and the true darkness that dwells within us all is unleashed.Table of Contents:HomeStalledThe End of UsThe Red Light is BlinkingMother/NatureI’m Not ThereMemory LaneTerminalForced EntryThe QuietThe One Night of the YearPigHoarder With an introduction and story notes by the author.

    Within these pages you will encounter a train to the underworld, a feral bicycle, a thief with peculiar eating habits, an amnesiac superhero, a haunted zoot suit, star-crossed monsters, fallen angels on vacation and other wonders. From fast-paced sorcerer-punk to weird Westerns, from the loss of childhood innocence to the heat death of the universe, these stories will delight, surprise and move you.

    Theirs had been a brief and tumultuous relationship that ended badly, so when Lenny is notified that Sheena has died in a freak accident and has left her entire estate to him, he feels compelled to investigate the last days leading to her untimely death. As Lenny arrives in town to settle her affairs, he begins to dig deeper into Sheena’s life and learns her final days were cast in shadows of loneliness, depression and experiments in black magic. Soon, Lenny will discover that Sheena’s death has awakened something insatiably demonic and old as mankind, something lying in wait and growing stronger in a quiet little town where the horrors of the past never truly die, pain is eternal, and nothing is as it seems.Look closer…sometimes evil hides in plain sight.

    Driving from Philadelphia to San Francisco, to join his fiancee, Courtney, Alex is followed by someone who also wants to see Courtney, who knows Alex's exact route, and who wants Alex deadTitle: ShatteredAuthor: Koontz, Dean R.Publisher: Berkley Pub GroupPublication Date: 1993/02/01Number of Pages: Binding Type: PAPERBACKLibrary of Congress: bl2006028446

    In New York, she meets resistance to a woman doctor and feels she is no more than a midwife. When the opportunity arises for her to go to Montana and be the only doctor in the town of Mistletoe, she grabs the chance. Riley McCallister is sheriff of Mistletoe. When he learns the new doctor is a woman, he is shocked and vows never to let her treat him—no matter how beautiful she is. Slowly, Shannon’s skill wins his respect—and more. Shannon’s expertise and dedication during a measles epidemic convinces the town she is a good doctor—but does their acceptance come too late? Mistletoe Scandal by Sylvia McDaniel Everleigh Walsh’s uncle insists she come to Mistletoe, Montana to celebrate Christmas after a devastating tragedy. Trying to deal with the horrible events she has just left behind, she is stunned to discover her uncle's neighbor, Seth Ketchum, waiting for her at the train station. Just when Everleigh decides life can't get any more complicated, an unexpected blizzard forces her and Seth to seek shelter in the most unlikely place - his home! Seth moved to Mistletoe, Montana to escape after he was left at the altar. His plans to avoid women are waylaid when an unexpected accident forces him to make a promise to help his friend and neighbor, James Walsh. He quickly curses his chivalrous offer to escort Walsh's niece back to his ranch when they are caught in a wintry storm.  The weather quickly seals them together in Seth’s warm, cozy cabin, causing sparks to fly between him and the lovely Everleigh. Two broken lives are thrust together, caught in a winter wonderland where they must decide if they can build a new future together or choose a different path. Can the magic of a mistletoe kiss change their minds? Find out in Mistletoe. Mistletoe and Moonbeams by Merry Farmer Miranda Clarke is a respectable, proper woman. So when she inherits The Holey Bucket Saloon in Mistletoe, Montana from her Uncle Buford, she is livid. She feels she has no other choice than to travel to Mistletoe and keep the place open, since that’s what her uncle wanted, but it is certainly not the life she wants to lead. Randall Sinclair is a traveling brush salesman with dreams of bigger things. That is, his father has dreams of bigger things for him. And drives him relentlessly to achieve them. Randall himself would be more than happy to live a quiet life in a quiet town with a loving wife. Especially when he finds himself faced with beautiful and inimitable saloonkeeper, Miranda. Their acquaintance seems doomed to be a brief one, two ships passing in the night…until a blizzard traps them alone in the saloon together. With nothing to do but clean up the saloon and sort through their immediate and intense attraction, the final days approaching Christmas end up being anything but cold, but with so many expectations heaped on top of them, can “Randy” and “Randi” find a way to be together after the storm? Mail-Order Merry by Kirsten Osbourne Merry Winters wants something more out of life, but she feels beholden to her sister and brother-in-law, who have given her a home for the past four years. When a fire takes their lives, and leaves her with their two young children to raise, she agrees to move to Montana to be a mail order bride as long as she can keep running her business. Clyde Bellman has a plan for his life, and he’s at the point where that plan calls for a wife. He sends a letter to a matchmaker in Massachusetts hoping for a strong, independent bride. When Merry arrives with two young children in tow, he knows he needs to be the best uncle the two children have ever seen.

    from "The House on the Hill" . . . from out of the fog, a large, welcoming house would emerge made out of invention and surprise. No things without ideas! you'd shout, and the doors would open, and the echoes would cascade down to the valleys and the faraway towns.

    The stranger begging to be let in is being hunted--not by a man or animal, but by something that cannot be seen or heard. It is a relentless, pounding force that has existed for centuries and is now unleashed to terrify, to ravage, and to kill.

    A student plagiarizes a paper and holds fast to her alibi until she finds herself complicit in the resurrection of one professor's shadowy past. A dinner party becomes the occasion for the dissolution of more than one marriage. A woman is hired to find a wife for the one true soulmate she's ever found. In all, Rebecca Lee traverses the terrain of infidelity, obligation, sacrifice, jealousy, and yet finally, optimism. Showing people at their most vulnerable, Lee creates characters so wonderfully flawed, so driven by their desire, so compelled to make sense of their human condition, that it's impossible not to feel for them when their fragile belief in romantic love, domestic bliss, or academic seclusion fails to provide them with the sort of force field they'd expected.