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A View from the Lake


Greg F. Gifune - 2006
    Tourists rented cabins, swam, relaxed, and enjoyed the miles of surrounding forest in a peaceful and safe environment. Katherine lived there for years with her husband James, a poet, and their cat Barney. They ran the small resort during the hectic spring and summer months, then hunkered down and endured the often brutal and desolate winters in relative isolation. Their lives were uncomplicated, happy and quiet - or so Katherine thought - until one summer morning when the dead body of a young boy is found floating in the lake. From the moment the child accidentally drowns, Katherine watches as her husband slowly begins to lose his grip on reality, spiraling down helplessly into insanity. And then he's gone, vanished from their home without a trace. The authorities drag the lake and search parties comb the woods, but to no avail. James is gone. Months later, as a blizzard descends over Blissful Point, Katherine, alone at the resort, faces her final winter on the lake. But things are no longer what they seem. Perhaps they never were. Are there others out there, in the woods, in the snow, in the lake, waiting and watching and luring her toward the same madness that claimed James? Is there a lingering and primordial evil haunting the lake, bringing with it the truth behind its existence, the answer to the mystery surrounding her husband's disappearance, and the life she thought she knew, or is her own grip on reality beginning to loosen? A View from the Lake is a haunting novel of dark literature that will not soon be forgotten.

We Need to Do Something


Max Booth III - 2020
    An alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM IFC MIDNIGHT, STARRING SIERRA MCCORMICK, VINESSA SHAW, AND PAT HEALY.A family on the verge of self-destruction finds themselves isolated in their bathroom during a tornado warning.Includes an introduction from Sean King O'Grady (director of the film adaptation) and a brand-new afterword from Max Booth III.

Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone


Stefan Kiesbye - 2012
    This is where four young friends come of age—in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village's darkest secrets in this eerily dispassionate, astonishingly assured novel, evocative of Stephen King's classic short story "Children of the Corn" and infused with the spirit of the Brothers Grimm.

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.

We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone


Ronald Malfi - 2017
    A misguided youth learns the dark secrets of the world from an elderly neighbor on Halloween night. A housewarming party where the guests never leave. A caretaker tends to his rusted relic of a god deep in the desert... In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi's debut collection is not to be missed.

Some Possible Solutions


Helen Phillips - 2016
    In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers--and we see that no one is quite who they appear.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery


Christopher Golden - 2019
    stories of evil and cunning, written by today's women you should fear. Includes tales from Kelley Armstong, Rachel Caine and Sherrilyn Kenyon, writing in their own bestselling universes.Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery will take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns--even if they're set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman's gotta eat.Bring out your dread.From TI 9781789090345 HC.

99 Stories of God


Joy Williams - 2013
    In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being.This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.

Unnatural Creatures


Neil GaimanGahan Wilson - 2013
    Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries. Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Salt Slow


Julia Armfield - 2019
    Throughout the collection, women become insects, men turn to stone, a city becomes insomniac and bodies are picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sea side towns are invaded and transformed by the physical, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to the bodies of its inhabitants. Blending the mythic and the fantastic, the collection considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new.From the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, salt slow is an extraordinary collection of short stories that are sure to dazzle and shock.

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.

A Feast of Sorrows


Angela Slatter - 2016
    collection—features twelve of the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award-winning Australian author’s finest, darkest fairy tales, and adds two new novellas to her marvelous cauldron of fiction. Stories peopled by women and girls—fearless, frightened, brave, bold, frail, and fantastical—who take the paths less traveled by, accept (and offer) poisoned apples, and embrace transformation in all its forms. Reminiscent of Angela Carter at her best, Slatter’s work is both timeless and fresh: fascinating new reflections from the enchanted mirrors of fairy tales and folklore.

Escape!


Iain Rob Wright - 2019
    Can you figure out the secrets of "the room" and escape before it's too late? Cheryl is about to learn that the people she works with are keeping a secret. One they are willing to kill for. Cheryl is the new girl at work, which is why she feels like she doesn't have a choice when she's asked to go on a "company outing." She and six of her colleagues are to be locked inside a room with only their wits to aid them. If they escape in time, there'll be prize money. Fail, and the repercussions could be deadly. Brand new chiller novel from Iain Rob Wright. Grab your copy of Escape! today, because everyone loves trying to figure out a mystery before the time runs out. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING An absolute wonderful read. Had me guessing from the beginning. Excellent fast paced story with an unseen twist at the end. WOW!!!... what another brilliant book which is truly horrifying and twisted, this put's another twist to the meaning of "TEAM BUILDING" at work. Makes you wonder about the people you work with. Escape! is one of the most unique, gruesome, and horrifying books I’ve ever read, and I loved every minute of it! Great thriller with a lot of twists and turns. Kept me on the edge of my seat. So intense I couldn't stop until I reached the end. If you enjoy Stephen King or James Herbert, then you'll enjoy this book too. Escape! Is scary because something like this could really happen and people are really that sick! Escape! is so thrilling that I stayed up late and just kept on reading until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. You just can't put this book down, a real page turner. Iain takes the latest popular entertainment experience "the escape room" and twists it turning it into another page turner, keeping you trapped in the pages until you escape at the end. An intense joyride filled with a solid shock and awe factor that will keep you turning pages. Spine tingling from the first line to the mind-blowing conclusion! A must read for thrill seekers. Will never, ever, do an escape room after this! A great read - excellent plot and another one to keep me up well past my bedtime!

Odd Man Out


James Newman - 2016
    Summer of ’89. It is a time for splashing in the lake and exploring the wilderness, for nine teenagers to bond together and create friendships that could last the rest of their lives.But among this group there is a young man with a secret — a secret that, in this time and place, is unthinkable to his peers.When the others discover the truth, it will change each of them forever. They will all have blood on their hands.ODD MAN OUT is a heart-wrenching tale of bullies and bigotry, a story that explores what happens when good people don’t stand up for what’s right. It is a tale of how far we have come … and how far we still have left to go.

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”).