It’s a nice, quiet, peaceful life. Apart from the kidnappings. And the aliens. Michael Marshall Smith is the winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, the August Delerth Award, the International Horror Guild Award, six British Fantasy Awards and the Prix Bob Morane, nominated for five World Fantasy Awards and CWA Silver Dagger — and the only author ever to win the BFS Award for Best Short Story four times. Now, for the first time, his internationally-revered short fiction is finally becoming available in ebook format...

    She knew it would happen―but no one believed her.Almost a year after tragedy shattered her family, sixteen-year-old Paige Thomas can’t break free from her guilt. Her mother ignores her, doting on her annoying little sister, while her father is a barely-functioning shell. He hopes a move to the quiet little town of Shadesboro PA will help them heal, but Paige doesn’t believe in happiness anymore.On her first day at school, a chance encounter with a bullied eighth grader reawakens a gift Paige had forgotten, and ingratiates her into a pack of local outcasts. For weeks, they’ve been trying to cast a ritual to fulfill their innermost desires, but all they’ve done is waste time. After witnessing Paige touch the Ouija board and trigger a paranormal event, the girls are convinced another try with their new fifth member will finally work.Once the darkness is unleashed, it’s not long before they learn it will give them exactly what they asked for―whether they want it or not.

    Things, not people, not animals. Things. Until he gets in trouble and must work for the alien Gyonnese. They want a person to answer for her crimes, and they want to use Yu to get her. He reluctantly agrees, and sets off events that will change his life and the lives around him forever. A companion piece to Recovery Man, The Recovery Man’s Bargain explores the motivations of one of the stranger characters in the Retrieval Artist universe.

    Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror classic, "The Crawling Hand." Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to the desolation of Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet's first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues.Only a lonely human arm (missing its middle finger) returns to earth, crash-landing in the vast Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The arm may hold the secret to reanimation or it may simply be an infectious killing machine. In the ensuing days, it crawls through the heartbroken wasteland of a civilization at its breaking point, economically and culturally--a dystopia of lowlife, emigration from America, and laughable lifestyle alternatives. The Four Fingers of Death is a stunningly inventive, sometimes hilarious, monumental novel. It will delight admirers of comic masterpieces like Slaughterhouse-Five, The Crying of Lot 49, and Catch-22.

    The mysterious blues man’s dark, driving music–broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station–is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur’s trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he’ll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell...In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

    financial system.From the sweltering streets of Seoul to the sex-and-drug-driven underbelly of Greenwich Village, attempts at silencing a leak in an international counterfeiting operation leave a trail of butchery that leads inevitably to Wall Street, pitting a counter-culture heroine against a ruthless state-sponsored assassination team that will stop at nothing to achieve its lethal ends.As the body count climbs, Tess is assisted by Detective Ron Stanford, a NYPD homicide specialist tracking a brutal serial killer whose ritualistic cycle of murder and mutilation targeting bike messengers is escalating to fever pitch.Tess's battle to survive propels her into a deadly underworld where she must become judge and executioner, challenging her core beliefs about morality, justice and love.

     These are some of the stories you will encounter in Chimerascope, the first full collection of short fiction from multi-award-winning Canadian author, Douglas Smith. Sixteen engaging stories of fantasy and science fiction that take you from love in fourteenth-century Japan to humanity's last stand, from virtual reality to the end of reality, from alien drug addictions to a dinner where a man loses everything.

    The much-anticipated full-length poetry collection by the critically acclaimed author of Black Cloud, Witch Hunt delves into the terror and beauty that occurs when love, madness, and addiction collide.

    Dave. So, we're pretty much doomed.The Chronicles of Dave collects two great Dave Hooper adventures in one volume. In A PROTOCOL FOR MONSTERS we get the real story of Super Dave's embiggening, not the drunken, drug addled lies he told us in EMERGENCE. And in A SOUL FULL OF GUNS we learn the origin story of the only human being capable of kicking Dave's ass – the super-powered Colonel Karin Varatchevksy. Sent by the Russian military to spy on the US, she might he only thing that saves it from the worst superhero ever.If you love your fantasy action ludicrously violent, and your heroes hilariously flawed, this collection is for you.

    An arcane and eldritch horror. For fifty years, it's waited. Fading into myth. Allowing those who fought off its last invasion to succumb to age. Now, with the island all but unprotected, this ancient evil prepares to mount one last attack. The first chilling installment of this serialized story finds Dawn Lesguettes accompanying her father to the island. Though he is reluctant to return to his birthplace, Dawn has always wanted to learn more about her origins and hopes to reconnect with the family her wayward father abandoned before she was born. But Mossley Island is not welcoming to those from away, and investigating her unusual family background will soon lead Dawn to uncover chilling secrets best left buried, even as her arrival heralds the return of a darkness long thought vanquished.  Featuring creepy nuns with mysterious motives, a sinister cabal of strangely robust senior citizens, and a militia of lighthouse keepers watching the ocean in case unspeakable terrors rise from the depths, this eerie seven-part serial will draw readers in with atmospheric tension and surprising twists, and refuse to let go as it hurtles towards a startling cliffhanger conclusion sure to leave everyone desperate for the next gripping chapter.

     He remembered his own excitement as a child, innocent and sweet, and just wanted to give his daughters a present to remember. They certainly won't forget this dollhouse. It's cursed, and he doesn't know how to stop it, and all he wanted to do was be a good father.

    He is a newscaster with a rising career. He has a beautiful wife, Denise, and a new baby on the way. But in just a few short hours Robert's world is turned upside down. And the torment only gets worse when his daughter's body is stolen from the morgue by a strange, disfigured man....Robert is about to begin a journey into a world of nightmare, an unimaginable world of mystery, horror and revelation. He will learn, from both the living and the dead, secrets about this world and things beyond this world. Though his journey will be grotesque, terrifying and heartbreaking, he will not be allowed to stop. But can he survive with his mind intact? Can he survive at all?

    As it turned out, the most dangerous thing they faced wasn't the mission … it was the homecoming. Eight hundred years have passed and Earth is nothing like they thought it would be. As Commander Markus Brentwood scrambles to uncover the mystery of what's happened to Earth in their absence, he also must contend with an increasingly dysfunctional crew and a damaged ship that's flying on borrowed time. What should have been a joyous return home after a long, hard mission has turned into a race to see which nightmare would kill them first. Blueshift is an all new sci-fi adventure from Joshua Dalzelle, author of the bestselling Omega Force Series and Black Fleet Saga.

    Disquiet showcases the best of his short comics work, including: “The Death Of Elijah Lovejoy,” the story of the midwestern abolitionist in the 1830s;“The Lizard Who Laughed,” a painfully dysfunctional reunion; and “Punks V. Lizards,” an anarchic and darkly comic piece of absurdity that blends Quadrophenia with Jurassic Park.

    Jude Altfall’s life, just beginning to coalesce after her divorce, is shattered afresh. Dazed with grief, she’s not sure if the weird things happening around her are hallucinations…or something more. And there’s the mark on her hip—a tattoo she can’t for the life of her remember getting. Preston Marlock left a shadowy government agency two years ago, to hunt a killer. Each time the bastard strikes the trail goes cold, and not even Marlock’s more-than-natural abilities are helping. Now the killer’s taken one of his very few friends, and there’s a surviving witness. The Altfall woman is now that most precious and fragile of targets, newly Marked. All Marlock has to do is dangle her like bait, and the killer will eventually show up. The Skinner knows some people are different. Special. He has a collection of stretched skin and pretty pictures, each harvested with care. The trick is to take them while the victim is still struggling, still alive, otherwise their power is lost. He is careful, methodical, and precise, but chance robs him of a prize. Once he realizes Jude Altfall has what he covets, and has possibly seen his face, her fate is sealed. And just to be cautious, the Skinner might swat at the annoying fly who has buzzed along his trail for two years...