Book picks similar to
Seeing Red by David J. Schow
horror
short-stories
paperbacks-from-hell
splatterpunk
Cursed Bunny
Bora Chung - 2021
Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.
A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers
Victor LaValleTananarive Due - 2019
K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, and more.
For many Americans, imagining a bright future has always been an act of resistance. A People's Future of the United States presents twenty never-before-published stories by a diverse group of writers, featuring voices both new and well-established. These stories imagine their characters fighting everything from government surveillance, to corporate cities, to climate change disasters, to nuclear wars. But fear not: A People's Future also invites readers into visionary futures in which the country is shaped by justice, equity, and joy.Edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, this collection features a glittering landscape of moving, visionary stories written from the perspective of people of color, indigenous writers, women, queer & trans people, Muslims and other people whose lives are often at risk.Contributors include: Violet Allen, Charlie Jane Anders, Ashok K. Banker, Tobias S. Buckell, Tananarive Due, Omar El Akkad, Jamie Ford, Maria Dahvana Headley, Hugh Howey, Lizz Huerta, Justina Ireland, N. K. Jemisin, Alice Sola Kim, Seanan McGuire, Sam J. Miller, Daniel José Older, Malka Older, Gabby Rivera, A. Merc Rustad, Kai Cheng Thom, Catherynne M. Valente, Daniel H. Wilson, G. Willow Wilson, and Charles Yu.
Welcome to the Show
Doug MuranoJeff Strand - 2018
One legendary music venue. We all know the old cliché: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now, add demons, other dimensions, monsters, revenge, human sacrifice, and a dash of the truly inexplicable. This is the story of the (fictional) San Francisco music venue, The Shantyman.In Welcome to the Show, seventeen of today's hottest writers of horror and dark fiction come together in devilish harmony to trace The Shantyman's history from its disturbing birth through its apocalyptic encore.Featuring stories by Brian Keene, John Skipp, Mary SanGiovanni, Robert Ford, Max Booth III, Glenn Rolfe, Matt Hayward, Bryan Smith, Matt Serafini, Kelli Owen, Jonathan Janz, Patrick Lacey, Adam Cesare, Alan M Clark, Somer Canon, Rachel Autumn Deering and Jeff Strand.Compiled by Matt Hayward. Edited by Doug Murano.Bring your curiosity, but leave your inhibitions at the door. The show is about to begin…TOC:
Alan M Clark – What Sort of Rube
Jonathan Janz – Night and Day and in Between
John Skipp – In the Winter of No Love
Patrick Lacey – Wolf with Diamond Eyes
Bryan Smith – Pilgrimage
Rachel Autumn Deering – A Tongue like Fire
Glenn Rolfe – Master of Beyond
Matt Hayward – Dark Stage
Kelli Owen – Open Mic Night
Matt Serafini – Beat on the Past
Max Booth III – True Starmen
Somer Canon – Just to be Seen
Jeff Strand – Parody
Robert Ford – Ascending
Adam Cesare – The Southern Thing
Brian Keene – Running Free
Mary SanGiovanni – We Sang in Darkness
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
Kiss Kiss
Roald Dahl - 1959
William and Mary was later adapted for Roald's American television series 'Way Out and several of the stories appeared in British television adaptations for the series Tales of the Unexpected in the 1980s. Also included here is The Champion of the World - the first time Roald wrote about the man who would go on to become Danny's dad in Danny the Champion of the World.The stories featured in Kiss Kiss are: The LandladyWilliam and MaryThe Way up to HeavenParson's PleasureMrs Bixby and the Colonel's CoatRoyal JellyGeorgy PorgyGenesis and CatastropheEdward the ConquerorPigThe Champion of the World--roalddahl.com
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - 2009
Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.
Just A Little Terrible
Vincent V. Cava - 2015
They’ve been known to burrow themselves into a reader’s imagination and are capable of warping dreams into twisted, unspeakable nightmares.Just a little…Unique – These aren’t your standard horror stories. Don’t think this collection will include tales of haunted mansions, or blood sucking vampires. Expect one-of-a-kind takes on every gothic ghoul and hideous monster you read about in this book.Just a little…Frightening – Prepare yourself for some of the most chilling flash fiction ever penned. The mad genius, Vincent V. Cava, has done it again with the latest entry in his creepy catalogue. Do yourself a favor and leave the lights on when you read it.Just A Little…Terrible
Grimm's Fairy Stories
Jacob Grimm - 1812
Contains stories such as "The Goose Girl", "Hansel and Grethel", "Cinderella", "The Golden Goose", "The Frog Prince" and many more.
Things We Say in the Dark
Kirsty Logan - 2019
But we can visit our fears at night, in the dark. We can turn them over and weigh them in our hands and maybe that will protect us from them. But maybe not.The characters in this collection find their aspirations for happy homes, happy families and happy memories dissected and imbued with shimmering menace. Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool. Couples wrestle with a lack of connection to their children; a schoolgirl becomes obsessed with the female anatomical models in a museum; and a cheery account of child’s day out is undercut by chilling footnotes.These dark tales explore women’s fears with electrifying honesty and invention and speak to one another about female bodies, domestic claustrophobia, desire and violence. From a talented writer who has been compared to Angela Carter, Things We Say in the Dark is a powerful contemporary collection of feminist stories, ranging from vicious fairy tales to disturbing horror and tender ghost stories.KIRSTY LOGAN WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF BRITAIN'S TEN MOST OUTSTANDING LGBTQ WRITERS by Val McDermid for the International Literature Showcase in 2019
The Reaping
Bernard Taylor - 1980
But from the moment of his arrival at the secluded country mansion strange and inexplicable events begin to transpire. Soon he is drawn into an impenetrable maze of horror, and by the time he discovers the role he is intended to play in a diabolical design, it will already be too late. For the seeds of evil have been sown, and the time to reap their wicked harvest is nigh!
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
Mariana Enríquez - 2009
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
The Book of Dragons
Jonathan StrahanBeth Cato - 2020
. . From China to Europe, Africa to North America, dragons have long captured our imagination in myth and legend. Whether they are rampaging beasts awaiting a brave hero to slay or benevolent sages who have much to teach humanity, dragons are intrinsically connected to stories of creation, adventure, and struggle beloved for generations.Bringing together nearly thirty stories and poems from some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers working today— Garth Nix, Scott Lynch, R.F. Kuang, Ann Leckie & Rachel Swirsky, Daniel Abraham, Peter S. Beagle, Beth Cato, Zen Cho, C. S. E Cooney, Aliette de Bodard, Kate Elliott, Theodora Goss, Ellen Klages, Ken Liu, Patricia A McKillip, K. J. Parker, Kelly Robson, Michael Swanwick, Jo Walton, Elle Katharine White, Jane Yolen, Kelly Barnhill, Brooke Bolander, Sarah Gailey, and J. Y. Yang—and illustrated by award-nominated artist Rovina Cai with black-and-white line drawings specific to each entry throughout, this extraordinary collection vividly breathes fire and life into one of our most captivating and feared magical creatures as never before and is sure to become a treasured keepsake for fans of fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales.
Homesick for Another World
Ottessa Moshfegh - 2017
Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources, and the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.
Shadows Over Baker Street
Michael ReavesPoppy Z. Brite - 2003
LovecraftNew Tales of Terror!What would happen if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his allies were to find themselves faced with Lovecraftian mysteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but beyond sanity itself. In this collection of original tales, twenty of today's cutting-edge writers provide answers to that burning question.Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Bright, Barbara Hambly, Steve Perry, and Caitlin R. Kierman. These and other masters of horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction spin dark tales within a terrifyingly surreal universe.Includes the Hugo Award-winning story A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman.Cover design: David StevensonCover Illustration: John Jude Palencar
The Strangers
Mort Castle - 1984
He’s everybody’s buddy, has a great sense of humor, works hard at his typical boring job to provide for the wife and kids. And he is a Stranger. Michael seethes with furious impatience for the coming of the Time of the Strangers, when he and millions like him will be able at last to reveal their true selves to a horrified, helpless world.
Fruiting Bodies, and Other Fungi
Brian Lumley - 1993
Brian Lumley's monsters are never commonplace! In the award-winning 'Fruiting Bodies', for example, the terror doesn't stalk the night but moves almost imperceptibly underfoot, or through the woodwork... or in other places! 'The Pit-Yakker' is a tale of industrial decay, of a love that might have been, a hatred stillborn, and a scar to disfigure the landscape of the mind forever.And as for 'The Man Who Felt Pain'... well, don't we all? Yes, but not everyone else's!This Witch's Dozen of fine tales of terror can only add to the acclaim rightly accorded the man who gave you the brilliant Necroscope series, and its direct sequel, Brian Lumley's Vampire World.