A short story of the Dresden Files which introduced Harry Dresden and his world for the very first time.(Also included in Side Jobs)

    Each writer will explore a different facet of the post-apocalyptic world, so readers will be treated to a wide and variety of action-adventure short stories.

    Here, a cat's curious behaviour comes between a husband and his wife . . .Edward the Conqueror is taken from the short story collection Kiss Kiss, which includes ten other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who pawns the mink coat from her lover with unexpected results; the priceless piece of furniture that is the subject of a deceitful bargain; a wronged woman taking revenge on her dead husband, and others.'Unnerving bedtime stories, subtle, proficient, hair-raising and done to a turn.' (San Francisco Chronicle )This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Juliet Stevenson.Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

    “One day I was feeding chickens and listening to Hank Williams and the next day I was expected to know what wines went with what,” she tells her husband, Jack. Yet no matter where she travels, her rural southern heritage is never far from her thoughts, her habits, and her heart.Nancy is on a lifelong quest to understand her place in the world. Returning home to the family farm, she searches for photographic evidence of an ancestor bearing her own name. Still in her jeans, she brings home strange ideas and an assertiveness she learned up north. Always adventurous, Nancy travels far and wide–searching, seeking. The narrative sweep of her life traverses the turbulent sixties, the Vietnam War, the eighties and the foreboding death of John Lennon, and finally the new millennium–when a self-assured Nancy finally emerges. These humorous and often touching stories recount her courtship and marriage to Jack, her relationship with her precocious son, and the deep, loving bond between her parents, Spence and Lila Culpepper. Eventually Nancy’s marriage is threatened by a cultural divide that plagued her and Jack from the start. But when she inherits the Culpepper family farm and discovers more pieces of her ancestral puzzle, she realizes that her life is assuming its proper shape. Later, standing on a lonely mountain in England, she sees the world from a surprising perspective. Bestselling author Bobbie Ann Mason’s prizewinning Nancy Culpepper chronicles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Southern Review, and other distinguished literary anthologies. She has compiled these stories into one definitive collection, which includes the novella Spence + Lila, two new, never-before-published stories, and one Pushcart Prize winner. Heartfelt and thought-provoking, Nancy Culpepper is a poignant depiction of change and growth in a modern-day heroine.From the Hardcover edition.

    Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

    And she's suffered from night terrors where a shadowy man pursues her. The Shadow Man found her once before when she was sixteen years old and slaughtered her parents. And now, nine years later, he's found her again.The Shadow Man is killing people as he works his way closer to Tara. She can see the murders through his eyes, the clues left behind, and he wants it that way. He takes things from each victim: blood, skin, and other items he needs for his bizarre ritual. But it's all leading up to the most important and central piece of the ritual - Tara.Tara wants to run. She wants to hide - it's what she's always done. But she makes a decision to fight back, to stop the Shadow Man before he kills again.

    That's what Harriet and Arthur Bloomsbury think, but that comforting feeling is a fiction. Hiding among the stone walls, picturesque barns, and hay bales is a horror they can't imagine. It's deadly, impossible -- maybe even paranormal. This short story isn’t your average murder mystery, because this time, the threat isn’t quite so clear. Is it the serial killers hunting you? Your own paranoia? Or the very laws of nature? The suspense is free.

    It is a story of of redemption, as she overcomes the challenges of living with her fragile mother in Rotney, a brutal, East End slum where she attends the notorious comprehensive school, Rotney High, with all its perils and ugliness. Antonia’s life changes when she meets an American war hero and performance magician, who restores her confidence and gives her a stone with magical properties to protect her at the cost of his own safety. The Sunshine Stone looks at how, despite the worst circumstances, there is always hope if you are prepared to fight for your future and to accept help from any quarter it might present itself, however unlikely.

    Ward, a tier-one operator turned mercenary, has just flung himself off the cargo deck of a doomed C-130. Now he’s out of the Drop Zone and evading the undead as a terrible new breed of hunter enters the Wyrd. But these new, faster predators might not be the only thing to fear in an apocalypse beset by zombies, nukes and killer A.I.’s. One of the last warriors of a collapsed government is planning on putting up some big numbers in this final, ultimate game of Survivor, until he finds a mysterious new companion... a stranger dressed in black.

    BowmanA GOOD TRICKA Haunted Library StoryBy Dori Hillestad ButlerHALLOWEENINGA Tales of the Spooky Folk StoryBy J.K. CampbellSTICKY FINGERSFeaturing characters from The Boy Who Cried GhostBy Richard ClarkA KANDY BRAINZ HALLOWEENFeaturing characters from Books Make Brainz Taste BadBy Eli CranorSIDE QUESTA Magic Eaters StoryBy Connor GraysonA TRICKSTER HALLOWEENA Prentiss Twins StoryBy Deb LoganTHE MYSTERY OF THE HAUNTED EGYPTIAN KITCHENA Kid Detective Zet StoryBy Scott PetersFLYING SOLOBy D.M. PotterAuthor of the You Say Which Way SeriesTRICKING THE TREAT WITCHA Zombie Reconstruction Squad StoryBy M.K. Radican

    Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss is a dark fantasy about a kitchen girl obsessed with fairy tales, who upon discovering a ragged woman outside the castle during a storm, takes her in--certain she’s a princess in disguise.

    The first story in this collection has been adapted to film (Dark Water, Walter Salles), and another, "Adrift" is currently in production with Dimension Films.

    Eavesdropping and exploring; savaging our bodies, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends. Some have called them genies: these are the Djinn. And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places. There is no part of the world that does not know them.They are the Djinn. They are among us.With stories from: Nnedi Okorafor, Neil Gaiman, Helene Wecker, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherine King, Claire North,  E.J. Swift, Hermes (trans. Robin Moger), Jamal Mahjoub, James Smythe, J.Y. Yang, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Logan, K.J. Parker, Kuzhali Manickavel, Maria Dahvana Headley, Monica Byrne, Saad Hossein, Sami Shah, Sophia Al-Maria and Usman Malik.

    Ranging from the Caribbean to Vietnam to the American Midwest and spanning decades of tumultuous history, these books are both unforgettable narratives and indelible portraits of people in extremis, struggling to survive in a world marked by grief, loss, pain, trauma, and homicidal madness. The four stories gathered here are offshoots of that larger fictional universe. Each one stands entirely on its own. Together, they shine a revelatory light on the mysteries and hidden corners of the novels that inspired them."Blue Rose" recounts a defining moment in the childhood of Koko's Harry Beevers, the moment when the ten-year-old Harry discovers his capacity for violence and brutality. "The Juniper Tree" describes, with almost unbearable clarity, a lonely young boy's encounter with adult betrayal, and with the darker aspects of human sexuality. "The Ghost Village" takes us to the phantasmagoric landscape of Vietnam, where the barriers between the living and the dead begin to dissolve, to mesmerizing effect. "Bunny is Good Bread" is arguably Straub's single most harrowing story. With relentless attention to detail, it anatomizes the creation of a human monster through abuse, cruelty, and neglect.These disturbing, beautifully written stories have a moral weight and emotional resonance that only the finest fiction achieves. They are the clear product of a master storyteller at the very top of his game. No one who reads them is likely to forget them, or come away unchanged.