Book picks similar to
Shock Totem 1: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted by K. Allen WoodPam L. Wallace
horror
anthologies
short-stories
fiction
Zom-B
Darren Shan - 2012
The series combines classic Shan action with a fiendishly twisting plot and hard-hitting and thought-provoking moral questions dealing with racism, abuse of power and more. This is challenging material, which will captivate existing Shan fans and bring in many new ones. As Darren says, "It's a big, sprawling, vicious tale...a grisly piece of escapism, and a barbed look at the world in which we live. Each book in the series is short, fast-paced and bloody. A high body-count is guaranteed!"
Dark Harvest
Norman Partridge - 2006
They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror - and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy...
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories
Richard DalbyCharles Dickens - 1990
Benson The Shuttered RoomAmbrose Bierce An Inhabitant of CarcosaCharles Birkin Is there Anybody there?Algernon Blackwood The WhisperersL.M. Boston CurfewA.M. Burrage I'm Sure it was No. 31Ramsay Campbell The GuideR. Chetwynd-Hayes The Limping GhostWilkie Collins Mrs Zant and the GhostBasil Copper The House by the TarnRalph A. Cram In Kropfsberg KeepDaniel Defoe The Ghost in all the RoomsCharles Dickens The Bagman's UncleArthur Conan-Doyle The Bully of Brocas CourtAmelia B. Edwards In the ConfessionalShamus Frazer The Tune in Dan's CafJohn S. Glasby Beyond the BourneWilliam Hope Hodgson The Valley of Lost ChildrenFergus Hume The Sand-WalkerHenry James The Real Right ThingM.R. James The Haunted Dolls' HouseRoger Johnson The Wall-PaintingRudyard Kipling TheyD.H. Lawrence The Last LaughMargery Lawrence Robin's RathJ. Sheridan Le Fanu The DreamR.H. Malden The SundialRichard Marsh The Fifteenth ManJohn Metcalfe Brenner's BoyEdith Nesbit Uncle Abraham's RomanceFitz-James O'Brien What was It?Vincent O'Sullivan The Next RoomRoger Pater The Footstep of the AventineEdgar Allan Poe William WilsonForrest Reid CourageMrs J.H. Riddell The Last of Squire EnnismoreL.T.C. Rolte The Garside Fell DisasterDavid G. Rowlands The Tears of St. AgathaSaki The Soul of LaploshkaSapper The Old Dining-RoomMontague Summers The Between-MaidMark Twain A Ghost StoryMark Valentine The FollyH. Russell Wakefield Out of the Wrack I RiseKarl Edward Wagner In the PinesManly Wade Wellman Where Angels FearEdward Lucas White The House of the NightmareOscar Wilde The Canterville GhostWilliam J. Wintle The Spectre Spiders
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.
Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror
Ellen DatlowNicholas Royle - 2016
An antique bookseller and a mob enforcer join forces to retrieve the Atlas of Hell. Postapocalyptic survivors cannot decide which is worse: demon women haunting the skies or maddened extremists patrolling the earth.In this chilling twenty-first-century companion to the cult classic Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, Ellen Datlow again proves herself the most masterful editor of the genre. She has mined the breadth and depth of ten years of terror, collecting superlative works of established masters and scene-stealing newcomers alike.Introduction / Ellen Datlow --Shallaballah / Mark Samuels --Sob in the silence / Gene Wolfe --Our turn too will one day come / Brian Hodge --Dead sea fruit / Kaaron Warren --Closet dreams / Lisa Tuttle --Spectral evidence / Gemma Files --Hushabye / Simon Bestwick --Very low-flying aircraft / Nicholas Royle --The Goosle / Margo Lanagan --The clay party / Steve Duffy --Strappado / Laird Barron --Lonegan's luck / Stephen Graham Jones --Mr. Pigsny / Reggie Oliver --At night, when the demons come / Ray Cluley --Was she wicked? Was she good? / M. Rickert --The shallows / John Langan --Little pig / Anna Taborska --Omphalos / Livia Llewellyn --How we escaped our certain fate / Dan Chaon --That tiny flutter of the heart I used to call love / Robert Shearman --Interstate love song (Murder ballad no. 8) / Caitlín R. Kiernan --Shay Corsham Worsted / Garth Nix --The atlas of Hell / Nathan Ballingrud --Ambitious boys like you / Richard Kadrey
Ghosts: Recent Hauntings
Paula GuranMargo Lanagan - 2012
Ghostly visitations, hauntings, unquiet souls seeking the living, vengeful wraiths, the possibility of life beyond the grave that can somehow reach out and touch us…these are some of literature’s most enduring icons. Now, in the twenty-first century, we are no less fascinated with phantoms than our cave-dwelling ancestors or our Victorian-age forebears. Thirty modern masters of fright and fantasy fill this anthology with shivers, chills, and spooky explorations of both sides of the veil. Be prepared to keep a light on all night!Peter Atkins: “Between the Cold Moon and the Earth”Rick Bowes: “There’s a Hole in the City”Laird Barron: “The Lagerstatte”Steve Duffy: “The Rag-and-Bone Men”Jeffrey Ford: “The Trentino Kid”Karen Joy Fowler: “Booth’s Ghost”Neil Gaiman: “October in the Chair”Stephen Gallagher: “The Box”Elizabeth Hand: “Wonderwall”Glen Hirshberg: “The Muldoon”Alaya Dawn Johnson: “The Score”Stephen Graham Jones: “Uncle” (original)Caitlin R. Kiernan: “Apokatastasis”Marc Laidlaw: “Cell Call”Margo Lanagan: “The Proving of Smollett Standforth”John Langan: “The Third Always Beside You”Joe R. Lansdale: “The Case of the Lighthouse Shambler”Maureen F. McHugh: “Ancestor Money”Sarah Monette: “The Watcher in the Corners”Reggie Oliver: “Mrs Midnight”Richard Parks: “The Plum Blossom Lantern”James van Pelt: “Savannah is Six”Tim Powers: “A Soul in a Bottle”Barbara Roden: “The Palace”Ekaterina Sedia: “Tin Cans”Nisi Shawl: “Cruel Sistah”John Shirley: “Faces in Walls”Peter Straub: “Mr Aikman’s Air Rifle”Melanie Tem: “Dhost”Steve Rasnic Tem: “The Ex”
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.
The Devil You Know
Mike Carey - 2006
It may seem like a good ghost buster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London - just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off...
The Island: Part One
Michael Stark - 2012
At first, reports trickled across the wire in small segments relegated to the final seconds of the broadcast news. Lost among stories of failing economies and political bickering, few noticed what proved to be the birth pangs of a monster. Within months, the disease dominated the news as thousands died and infection rates soared.William Hill knew his chances of avoiding the virus sat squarely between slim and none. With experts predicting a global pandemic, his choices boiled down to not if, but where he would die. While the rest of the world built barricades and set up distribution points for food, he chose a simpler end. The island had been one of the last and best times with his father. He couldn’t think of a better place to spend his final days.He wanted sun and sand, fresh fish on the grill and cool nights by the campfire. He wanted feel-good days filled with oldies on the radio, days when he could hoist the sails and run before the wind. He didn’t set out to make enemies, but he did. He didn’t plan on becoming humanity’s last hope for survival, or watching over an old woman and an eerie little boy either.To William Hill, the island seemed as good a place as any to die.He just didn’t realize how good.
Stories from the Twilight Zone
Rod Serling - 1960
A dimension of splendor, terror and wonder—a shadow land that lies just between the limits of the imagination. Your host and guide is one of the world's best-known storytellers—a modern master of the fantastic... Rod Serling.Here, together for the first time, are nineteen of Serling's most memorable tales from the legendary series. So sit back and enjoy. There's a signpost up ahead. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.
Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories
Charles Beaumont - 2015
Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies
John Langan - 2013
Gifted with a supple and mellifluous prose style, an imagination that can conjure up clutching terrors with seeming effortlessness, and a thorough knowledge of the rich heritage of weird fiction, Langan has already garnered his share of accolades. This new collection of nine substantial stories includes such masterworks as “Technicolor,” an ingenious riff on Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”; “How the Day Runs Down,” a gripping tale of the undead; and “The Shallows,” a powerful tale of the Cthulhu Mythos. The capstone to the collection is a previously unpublished novella of supernatural terror, “Mother of Stone.” With an introduction by Jeffrey Ford and an afterword by Laird Barron.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reading Langan, by Jeffrey FordKidsHow the Day Runs DownTechnicolor The Wide, Carnivorous SkyCity of the DogThe ShallowsThe Revel June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris. Mother of Stone Story Notes Afterword: Note Found in a Glenfiddich Bottle, by Laird BarronAcknowledgments
Slipping: Stories, Essays, & Other Writing
Lauren Beukes - 2016
Nothing is simple and everything is perilous when humans are involved: corruption, greed, and even love (of a sort).A permanent corporate branding gives a young woman enhanced physical abilities and a nearly-constant highRecruits lifted out of poverty find a far worse fate collecting biohazardous plants on an inhospitable worldThe only adult survivor of the apocalypse decides he will be the savior of teenagers; the teenagers are not amused.From Johannesburg to outer space, these previously uncollected tales are a compelling, dark, and slippery ride.
Let the Old Dreams Die
John Ajvide Lindqvist - 2011
Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair. Fans of Let the Right One In will have to read the story, which is destined to generate much word of mouth both among fans and online.“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In "Final Processing," Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect. Totally transcending genre writing, these are world class stories from possibly the most impressive horror writer writing today.
The Mammoth Book of Zombies
Stephen JonesRobert Blotch - 1993
Crammed with stories new and old by the masters of the macabre, including Clive Barker, Robert Bloch, Graham Masterston, Ramsey Campbell, Hugh B. Cave, and others.INTRODUCTION: THE DEAD THAT WALK Stephen Jones SEX, DEATH AND STARSHINE Clive Barker RISING GENERATION Ramsey Campbell THE SONG OF THE SLAVES Manly Wade Wellman THE GHOULS R. Chetwynd-Hayes THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR Edgar Allan Poe STICKS Karl Edward Wagner QUIETLY NOW Charles L. Grant THE GREY HOUSE Basil Copper A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS M.R. James THE CRUCIAN PIT Nicholas Royle THE DISAPPROVAL OF JEREMY CLEAVE Brian Lumley HERBERT WEST—REANIMATOR H.P. Lovecraft TREADING THE MAZE Lisa Tuttle OUT OF CORRUPTION David Riley THE TAKING OF MR. BILL Graham Masterton SCHALKEN THE PAINTER J. Sheridan Le Fanu CLINICALLY DEAD David Sutton THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU Les Daniels MISSION TO MARGAL Hugh B. Cave LATER Michael Marshall Smith MARBH BHEO Peter Tremayne THE BLOOD KISS Dennis Etchison NIGHT AFTER NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Christopher Fowler THE DEAD DON'T DIE! Robert Bloch PATRICIA'S PROFESSION Kim Newman ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH DEAD FOLKS Joe R. Lansdale