Book picks similar to
Suspended In Dusk by Simon DewarRayne Hall
horror
short-stories
anthologies
anthology
Ominous Realities: The Anthology of Dark Speculative Horrors
Anthony RiveraBracken MacLeod - 2013
But with dire consequences.ANGIE by John F.D. Taff - A divorced couple tries to ensure their survival after society collapses. Navigating the treacherous back roads of America, they realize the horror of true devotion.ON THE THRESHOLD by William Meikle - How far is science willing to go to prove we're not alone and possibly find the terrifying dangers that exist beyond the threshold?DOYOSHOTA by Ken Altabef - One by one the residents of a Nevada town are succumbing to the debilitating effects of a strange hum. Many believe it’s a black ops program others are convinced of its far darker origins.THIRD OFFENSE by Gregory L. Norris - In an oppressive society where creativity is banned and advertising is all-pervasive, a factory worker attempts to escape enslavement with horrifying results.METAMORPHOSIS by J. Daniel Stone - Together, a brother and sister discover the unique bond has the ability to affect humanity in the darkest of ways.WE ARE HALE, WE ARE WHOLE by Eric Del Carlo - Global climate change has reshaped the world, and multi-national corporations control every aspect of life. To what horrifying lengths will they go in the struggle to maintain profit?PURE BLOOD AND EVERGREEN by Bracken MacLeod - Victims of ethnic cleansing, two boys share a painful struggle for survival. Their actions start events that leave the lives of everyone they know hanging in a dangerous balance.JOHN, PAUL, XAVIER, IRONSIDE AND GEORGE (BUT NOT VINCENT) by Hugh A.D. Spencer - Earth is under attack by mysterious biomechanical entities. With the end near, one man spends his last days with an enigmatic client who is of great import to those in charge.AND THE HUNTER, HOME FROM THE HILL by Edward Morris - Could it be that accounts of superheroes are actually based in reality? It could be that the old man living down the street is hiding his own dark secrets.BORN BAD by Jonathan Balog - Raised by the church, Lucien harbors a frightening secret that may prove to have dire circumstances for mankind.THE LAST BASTION OF SPACE by Ewan C. Forbes - Privatization has run amok and simple pleasures come at a premium price. For one young couple there is no choice but to turn their minds over to insidious corporate control.EVERY SOUL IS A GRIMOIRE by Allen Griffin - Harvey works for a shadowy government and is responsible for a man with dangerous knowledge. Being near him is blurring his reality and opening the door to terrifying evil.FROM THE EAST by Alice Goldfuss - After global cataclysm, a scientist struggles to determine the cause. Driven by professional convictions, she finds herself in a struggle for the existence of humanity.DECIDING IDENTITY by Paul Williams - Faced with the collision of two worlds, the citizens of each are given the choice to decide who shall live and who shall die.THE LAST ELF by T. Fox Dunham - The fate of humanity rests with a sociopathic concentration camp commander. Having spent a lifetime chasing the enemies of Germany, he finds himself on the verge of his crowning achievement—ultimate extermination.
The Vines
Christopher Rice - 2014
But something sinister lurks beneath the soil of the old estate.After heiress and current owner Caitlin Chaisson is witness to her husband’s stunning betrayal at her birthday party, she tries to take her own life in the mansion’s cherished gazebo. Instead, the blood she spills awakens dark forces in the ground below. Chaos ensues and by morning her husband has vanished without a trace and his mistress has gone mad.Nova, daughter to Spring House’s groundskeeper, has always suspected that something malevolent haunts the old place, and in the aftermath of the birthday party she enlists Caitlin’s estranged best friend, Blake, to help her get to the bottom of it. The pair soon realizes that the vengeance enacted by this sinister and otherworldly force comes at a terrible price.
Love Is Hell
Melissa Marr - 2008
But it,s totally worth it.In these supernatural stories by five of today's hottest writers—Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely), Scott Westerfeld (Specials), Justine Larbalestier (Magic or Madness), Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere), and Laurie Faria Stolarz (Blue is for Nightmares)—love may be twisted and turned around, but it's more potent than ever on its quest to conquer all.From two students who let the power of attraction guide them to break the hard-and-fast rules of their world to the girl who falls hard for a good-looking ghost with a score to settle, the clever, quirky characters in this exciting collection will break your heart, then leave you believing in love more than ever.
Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite
Zoraida CórdovaRebecca Roanhorse - 2020
Parker, Tessa Gratton, Heidi Heilig, Julie Murphy, Mark Oshiro, Rebecca Roanhorse, Laura Ruby, Victoria “V. E.” Schwab, and Kayla Whaley.
His Hideous Heart
Dahlia AdlerMarieke Nijkamp - 2019
Whether the stories are familiar to readers or discovered for the first time, readers will revel in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales, and how they’ve been brought to life in 13 unique and unforgettable ways.Contributors include Kendare Blake (reimagining “Metzengerstein”), Rin Chupeco (“The Murders in the Rue Morge”), Lamar Giles (“The Oval Portrait”), Tessa Gratton (“Annabel Lee”), Tiffany D. Jackson (“The Cask of Amontillado”), Stephanie Kuehn (“The Tell-Tale Heart”), Emily Lloyd-Jones (“The Purloined Letter”), Hillary Monahan (“The Masque of the Red Death”), Marieke Nijkamp (“Hop-Frog”), Caleb Roehrig (“The Pit and the Pendulum”), and Fran Wilde (“The Fall of the House of Usher”).
The Mammoth Book of Monsters
Stephen JonesRobert Silverberg - 2007
Bounds, and a reclusive islander shares his world with shape-changing selkies in Robert Holdstock's haunting tale The Silvering.Late-night office workers are menaced by hungry horrors in Ramsey Cambell's claustrophobic Down There, while the monsters of both Brian Lumley's The Thin People and Basil Copper's The Flabby Men share only a semblance of humanity. The King of the Monsters himself turns up in Godzilla's Twelve Step Program by Joe R. Lansdale, R. Chetwynd-Hayes' The Shadmock and Clive Barker's Rawhead Rex are genuinely new monsters, and the last monster-fighter and the last classic monster confront each other in Kim Newman's The Chill Clutch of the Unseen.If you like monsters, then there are plenty to choose from in this creature-filled collection boasting some of the biggest names in horror, fantasy and science fiction.Contents:Introduction: How to Make a Monster by Stephen JonesVisitation by David J. SchowDown There by Ramsey CampbellThe Man He Had Been Before by Scott EdelmanCalling All Monsters by Dennis EtchisonThe Shadmock by R. Chetwynd-HayesThe Spider Kiss by Christopher FowlerCafé Endless: Spring Rain by Nancy HolderThe Medusa by Thomas LigottiIn the Poor Girl Taken by Surprise by Gemma Files Downmarket by Sydney J. BoundsFat Man by Jay LakeThe Thin People by Brian LumleyThe Hill by Tanith LeeGodzilla's Twelve Step Program by Joe R. Lansdale.220 Swift by Karl Edward WagnerOur Lady of the Sauropods by Robert SilverbergThe Flabby Man by Basil CopperThe Silvering by Robert HoldstockSomeone Else's Problem by Michael Marshall SmithRawhead Rex by Clive BarkerThe Chill Clutch of the Unseen by Kim Newman
The Book of Accidents
Chuck Wendig - 2021
And now what happened long ago is happening again . . . and it is happening to Oliver. He meets a strange boy who becomes his best friend, a boy with secrets of his own and a taste for dark magic.This dark magic puts them at the heart of a battle of good versus evil and a fight for the soul of the family—and perhaps for all of the world. But the Graves family has a secret weapon in this battle: their love for one another.
Sour Candy
Kealan Patrick Burke - 2015
They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat together overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.
Red Moon
Benjamin Percy - 2013
They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers.They change.When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is.Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero.Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but he is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far, the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs. But the night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognizable world will emerge...and the battle for humanity will begin.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016
John Joseph AdamsMaria Dahvana Headley - 2016
Valente, Dexter Palmer and others KAREN JOY FOWLER, guest editor, is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and has won numerous Nebula and World Fantasy awards. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the best-selling editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and Wastelands. He is the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare and is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new science fiction/fantasy novel imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Table of Contents:"Meet Me in Iram" by Sofia Samatar"The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link"Interesting Facts" by Adam Johnson"Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente"The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary" by Kij Johnson"By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang"The Mushroom Queen" by Liz Ziemska"The Daydreamer by Proxy" by Dexter Palmer"Tea Time" by Rachel Swirsky"Headshot" by Julian Mortimer Smith"The Duniazát" by Salman Rushdie"No Placeholder for You, My Love" by Nick Wolven"The Thirteen Mercies" by Maria Dahvana Headley"Lightning Jack’s Last Ride" by Dale Bailey"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman"Rat Catcher’s Yellows" by Charlie Jane Anders"The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History" by Sam J. Miller"Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson"Ambiguity Machines: an Examination" by Vandana Singh"The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang
Draculas
Blake Crouch - 2010
With weeks to live, a package arrives at the door of his hillside mansion—an artifact he paid millions for…a hominoid skull with elongated teeth, discovered in a farmer’s field in the Romanian countryside. With Shanna, his beautiful research assistant looking on, he sinks the skull’s razor sharp fangs into his neck, and immediately goes into convulsions. OPENS THE DOOR TO AN ANCIENT EVIL...A rural hospital. A slow night in the ER. Until Moorecook arrives strapped to a gurney, where he promptly codes and dies.WHERE DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING.Four well-known horror authors pool their penchants for scares and thrills, and tackle one of the greatest of all legends, with each writer creating a unique character and following them through a vampire outbreak in a secluded hospital.The goal was simple: write the most intense novel they possibly could.Which they did.A Word of Warning:Within these pages, you will find no black capes, no satin-lined coffins, no brooding heartthrobs who want to talk about your feelings. Forget sunlight and stakes. Throw out your garlic and your crosses. This is the Anti-TWILIGHT.NOTE: DRACULAS is a full length novel, 80,000 words long. But this ebook is also brimming with an additional 80,000 words of extras and bonuses:- a clickable table of contents- a round-robin interview with Strand, Wilson, Crouch, and Kilborn about writing DRACULAS- deleted scenes- two alternate endings- four excerpts from the authors’ other works- the short story “Serial” by Crouch and Kilborn- the short story “Cub Scout Gore Feast” by Kilborn and Strand- the short story “A Sound of Blunder” by Kilborn and Wilson- author biographies- comprehensive clickable bibliographies- an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the writing of DRACULAS, delivered through a collection of over seven hundred emails between the writers as they were brainstorming and writing the book
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology
Christopher GoldenRick Hautala - 2010
They hide in back yards, car lots, shopping malls. They devour neighbors, dogs and police officers. And they are here to stay. The real question is, what are you going to do about it? How will you survive?How will the world change when the dead begin to rise? Stoker-award-winning author Christopher Golden has assembled an original anthology of never-before-published zombie stories from an eclectic array of today's hottest writers. Inside there are stories about military might in the wake of an outbreak, survival in a wasted wasteland, the ardor of falling in love with a zombie, and a family outing at the circus. Here is a collection of new views on death and resurrection.With stories from Joe Hill, John Connolly, Max Brooks, Kelley Armstrong, Tad Williams, David Wellington, David Liss, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Maberry, and many others, this is a wildly diverse and entertaining collection... the last word on The New Dead.
Poe's Children: The New Horror
Peter StraubM. Rickert - 2008
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.
Burntown
Jennifer McMahon - 2017
But the most important invention of all was the one that Miles claimed came from the mind of Thomas Edison himself--a machine that allowed one to speak with loved ones long passed. Smuggled out of Edison's laboratory, the blueprints were passed down to Miles, and he's been using them to protect Eva, her mother, Lily, and her brother, Errol, ever since.Then, one night when a storm is raging and the river is threatening to flood, the machine whirrs to life on its own. Danger, it says. You're in terrible danger. The next thing Eva knows is waking up on the side of the river and seeing her mother's grim face. Eva's father and brother are dead, their house has been washed away and an evil man is searching for them both. They need to hide.Eva changes her name to Necco--a candy she always loved--and tries to put everything in her past behind her as she adapts to her new life off the grid. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her mother disappears, she knows that the past is starting to catch up to her.What really happened the night of the flood? As Necco searches for the truth, her journey unites her with two women who are on desperate quests of their own. And as the trio follows the clues to solving the mystery of Necco's past, they discover that sometimes it's the smallest towns that hold the strangest secrets.
Flowers for the Sea
Zin E. Rocklyn - 2021
Butler.We are a people who do not forget.Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she’s pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a lush, gothic fantasy about the prices we pay and the vengeance we seek.