It has lain in the cold and dark of the bog, waiting patiently for a host to set it free. Now, for John Cluer and his family, nothing will ever be the same again.A novelette of approximately 10,000 words.

    But as an alcoholic ravaged with senility, his grandfather’s stories were dismissed as delusions.When years later, murder comes to Derrick’s small hometown, he and his best friend Caleb—both teenage outcasts—discover that the killer is a hobo dressed in rags who rides the rails in and out of town when committing his crimes. They dub him “The Ragman” unaware of just how accurate that nickname may be, but the murders are never solved.As time passes, Derrick weds and settles into a troubled marriage while Caleb moves to New York City and spirals into drug addiction and madness. Thirty years later, in a dying seaside resort town, the killings have begun again. Has The Ragman returned, or is something even more sinister taking place?As Derrick and Caleb meet at the scene of the latest grisly murders, they soon find themselves confronted with an unsolved mystery that has haunted them for decades and an eternal evil they may never be able to escape. The rain falls, darkness descends, a train’s whistle blows, and the Ragman begins to dream…

     Recently bereaved detective Nadine Meyers is assigned to investigate a brutal massacre, with eight-year-old Mary the sole survivor. Nadine suspects the parents were responsible for murdering all six of their adopted children in a single horrendous act. As she befriends Mary, she discovers a secret that takes the case in a whole new direction, one she could never have imagined.

    He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    His father, Joseph Stanyer, has been struggling to cope with his wife Evie, whose dementia is rapidly worsening. When their bodies are found close to Blackwater Lake, a local beauty spot, the inquest rules the deaths as a murder-suicide. A conclusion that's supported by the note Joseph leaves for his son. Grief-stricken, Matthew begins to clear his parents' house of decades of compulsive hoarding, only to discover the dark enigmas hidden within its walls. Ones that lead Matthew to ask: why did his father choose Blackwater Lake to end his life? What other secrets do its waters conceal?A short (25,000-words) novella, Blackwater Lake examines one man's determination to uncover his family's troubled past.

    something that might answer?Dave Burns has asked.Now he, and his friends, might not live long enough to understand the reply.

    Her father, FBI Special Agent Phil Preston of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, devotes his life to finding her and discovers a pattern in a recent string of abductions. Dr. Les Grant leads a group of graduate students into the Wyoming wilderness in search of an unidentified Native American medicine wheel photographed by an anonymous hiker. Instead, they stumble upon a macabre tableau of suffering. Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge finds himself right at the heart of the mystery when twenty-seven bodies are disinterred in the Wind River Range at the westernmost edge of his jurisdiction, with the promise of more to come. All the while, an unknown evil is summoning the men to its killing grounds, where the remains of the lost innocents are left to rot...and a fate far worse than death awaits them.

    A world unto itself, in which they must stay alert to stay alive. A world from which the only escape is death.But for an English occultist known only as Mr. No One, Nowhere is much more...and much less: the perfect place in which to perform a ritual to unleash the grandest of eldritch deities, the God of Nothingness, the Great Dark Mouth.

    Subject to bizarre and inexplicable visions, Cait is desperate to learn whether her biological mother can provide any insight as to the origin of her unusual ability.When a local investigator learns Cait was born in a Boston suburb, the Tampa lawyer wastes no time booking a flight to the East Coast.In Boston, with the city under siege by a killer known as "Mr. Midnight," Cait's visions intensify, morphing from merely annoying to graphic and terrifying. Worse, Cait begins to realize she shares a strange psychic connection with the depraved sociopath. A connection that may just get her killed.As Cait and the murderer are drawn inexorably toward a violent confrontation, unraveling a decades-old mystery might be the only thing that prevents her from becoming the next victim...of Mr. Midnight.

    P. Lovecraft, this stylish new collection of adventure stories fizzes with wit and invention. They can be enjoyed separately, but read them in one sitting and the pieces fit horribly together into a larger and more terrible nightmare. †These tales constitute David Hambling’s initial foray into the realm of Lovecraftian fiction. The fertility of imagination, the crisp character delineations, and the smooth-flowing prose that we find in these seven tales leave us wishing for more of the same, and Hambling will no doubt oblige in the coming years. For now, we can sit back and relish a brace of stories that not only evoke the shade of the dreamer from Providence, but which that dreamer himself would have enjoyed to the full. —S. T. Joshi(from his foreword)

     Faced with his parents’s divorce, eleven-year-old Lucas runs away from his house with the hope that his family will get back together to find him. On his way walking through the empty streets, he is picked up by a mysterious woman who offers to take care of him and provide him with a loving family. The boy then wakes up in shackles, confined to a bed in a decrepit house in the middle of nowhere and will have to face his deepest fears in order to survive in his new home. Join Lucas in a desperate attempt to get back to his family in Madhouse, the first published book from horror-thriller author Miguel Estrada.

    Twins born on Halloween. They raised them to the best of their abilities; a typical loving family. Yet something went wrong. Despite the love showered upon them, something changed in the children as they got older and soon they weren't known as Cliff and Jessica's boys... They were known as "The Butchers of Bellingham" and were responsible for numerous deaths; evil acts leaving their parents both devastated and trying to rebuild their own lives as the rest of the town glared at them.'Look, there they go... The Butchers' parents...'Is it possible to turn your back on your children even if they have committed terrible crimes? Can you un-love someone you once loved more than life itself? Is it really that easy to do so?From Matt Shaw - author of Sick B*stards and Porn - comes a new psychological horror.

    Now it’s catching up with her.Wherever Oakland goes, the mystery caller finds her, the one who breathes down the line, who calls her at any time of day or night, who somehow always seems to know where she is.Moving all the way from London, Oakland settled on Liars Island, finally feeling safe enough to put down roots. Running Harborside Books, a quaint little shop by the harbor, she’s content with her quiet life. For the first time since she was seventeen years old, no one has harassed her. Until one day, she picks up the phone and hears that rasping breath one more time. But this time, it’s worse, someone is following her. She finds a threatening note in the bookstore. She’s convinced that there are eyes in the shadows, watching her every move.There is a person out there who hates Oakland O'Neill more than anyone in the world, and that person is on Liars Island, waiting for their opportunity to strike…Welcome to Liars Island… a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella-length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.On this island, families, and friendships are more than meets the eye … secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here … and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar … just how far would you go to get what you want?

    As they reached adolescence, they started to drift apart, taking opposite paths into adulthood. Jason went to college before getting a job at for the local newspaper. Marcus chose a path littered wi...th drugs, violence, and self-destruction.Now adults, Jason has cut Marcus from his life and considers himself an only child.Clean and sober, Marcus finds his true calling when he joins the Arkadium, a secret society dating back millennia. They plan on setting history back ten thousand years by unleashing a world-wide calamity that will destroy modern man's domination of the planet. As the Arkadium set their plan in motion, Marcus reaches out to his brother, wanting him by his side to record the new prehistoric era. Jason is forced to make a choice, join his brother in the time of humanity's descent, or die like so many others.A 16k word novella that introduces the forthcoming Brother's Keeper trilogy of novels. Book 1 is due Winter 2012.

    Alas, life is complicated in mid-1950s USA when you’re child heirs to the throne of Sword Enterprises, a corporation that has enshrined Machiavelli’s The Prince as its operating manual and whose patriarch believes, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, would be a swell company logo. Consider also those long, cruel winters at the Mountain Leopard boarding school for assassins in the Himalayas, or that Dad may be a supervillain, while an uncle occasionally slaughters his nephews and nieces for sport; and the space flight research division of Sword Enterprises “accidentally” sent a probe through a wormhole into outer darkness and contacted an alien god. Now a bloodthirsty cult and an equally vicious rival firm suspect the Tooms boys know something and will spare no expense, nor innocent life, to get their claws on them. Between the machinations of the disciples of black gods and good old corporate skullduggery, it’s winding up to be a hell of a summer vacation for the lads.