Picking a druid, he charges forward into an unknown land as he tries to master an odd combat system. Luckily for him, the crafting system is ripe to make money and the game’s currency is tied to the real-world market.But a strange dungeon forces him to reevaluate everything he thought he knew. Is the company behind this game truly what it seems to be, or is there a nefarious purpose hidden below the surface?

    

    Old R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin' junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he'll have an ending for his book?

    Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gamers. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history—written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread—remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it. In the early twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction—bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters—eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

    Originally published with Current 93's 1997 album of the same name.

    You’re on your own in a way that few have ever experienced. Would you really want the chance to face evolution? To survive if you’re fit, perish if you’re not?A select few have found themselves transplanted to a world where there are no native humans, where they have that ultimate freedom; now what?Surviving won’t be easy. There are predators, huge ones. They’re better adapted to Darwin’s World than humans are. Predators such as existed in Earth’s Pleistocene, saber-tooth cats, short-faced bears, and dire wolves. Plus the other predators that survived the Pleistocene extinction, lions, wolves, jaguars, things like that.And some of the predators are human…

    These stories include: The Secret of Kralitz, The Eater of Souls, The Salem Horror, The Just of Droom-avista, Spawn of Dagon, The Invaders, The Frog, Hydra, Bells of Horror and The Hunt.

    His sequel to H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Hound' is especially delicious. This is a wonderful book, highly recommended!” —W. H. Pugmire “Richard Gavin is one of the bright new stars in contemporary weird fiction. His richly textured style, deft character portrayal, and powerful horrific conceptions make every one of his tales a pleasure to read.” —S. T. Joshi “If you hear some in Kadath saying, ‘Numinous,’ ‘Terrifying,’ or ‘Beautiful,’ they are either talking about the Northern Lights or the work of Richard Gavin. Canada? They’re calling it Canada now? Whatever.” —Don Webb Canadian author Richard Gavin has established himself as a leading contemporary writer of weird fiction. His richly nuanced prose style, his imaginative range, and his shrewdness in the portrayal of character and domestic conflict make his tales far more than mere shudder-coining. In this fourth collection of short stories and novelettes, Gavin again casts a wide imaginative net, from haunted Canadian woodlands to the carnivorous mesas of the American frontier, from Lovecraft’s New England to the spirit traditions of Japan. Of the dozen stories included in this book, eight are previously unpublished—a rich new feast of terror for devotees of a writer who works in the tradition of Poe, Machen, Blackwood, and Ligotti. Richard Gavin is the author of three previous short story collections, Charnel Wine (2004), Omens (2007), and The Darkly Splendid Realm (2009). Gavin lives in Ontario, Canada, with his beloved wife and their brood.

    Regrettably, the police and FBI see his actions in a wholly different light, and while they have yet to determine whom the mysterious killer is, they continue their search and are building up both a profile and a backlog of unsolved cases. They are perplexed at his actions and how he has had the advanced knowledge to perform his surgical removals.Jake, ex-military and a survivor of the war in Afghanistan, tries to pursue his own destiny as a freelance programmer who writes computer games and consults with NASA on special projects. He is blessed or cursed with a special skill, depending on your perspective, one which makes him aware of events that no one else is. As a result, he sometimes feels it necessary to take action on his own. Those he removes have been planning numerous horrific deaths, and he does not feel bad by his actions. He also suspects the police will one day stumble upon his identity or catch him in the middle of one of his missions. Then he will have to rely on his ability to elude them.For the most part, Jake is an average guy. Except for his ability to back-track, of course. That makes him different from everyone else and has not only saved his own future, but has often provided him the means to help others. Unfortunately, he's learned that providing that help came at a large personal cost and not a little risk. For the most part, he feels the results are worth it.Jake's own life has become more complex of late. He has become seriously interested in a young woman, Karin Wolter, who he hopes to bring closer to him. For their relationship to progress, Jake feels it will be necessary to reveal what he can do, and what he has done in the past. He is concerned how she might react once he reveals his past to her. She has never understood violence, and has expressed some concerns over what he had been forced to do in the military.After her mother is killed, Jack's close friend Cheryl comes to him for help in ensuring the death doesn't happen. When his attempt to help doesn't go as expected, Jake learns of another event that forces his hand. It becomes necessary to reveal himself to the FBI in the hopes he can gain their trust and help to prevent the impending disaster from taking place. Even if he is able to turn aside the catastrophe, he is uncertain what his own future will become once the FBI has their hands on the man they have been seeking for so long.

    Christina Sng’s A Collection of Nightmares is a poetic feast of sleeplessness and shadows, an exquisite exhibition of fear and things better left unsaid. Here are ramblings at the end of the world and a path that leads to a thousand paper cuts at the hands of a skin carver. There are crawlspace whispers, and fresh sheets gently washed with sacrifice and poison, and if you’re careful in this ghost month, these poems will call upon the succubus to tend to your flesh wounds and scars.These nightmares are sweeping fantasies that electrocute the senses as much as they dull the ache of loneliness by showing you what’s hiding under your bed, in the back of your closet, and inside your head. Sng’s poems dissect and flower, her autopsies are delicate blooms dressed with blood and syntax. Her words are charcoal and cotton, safe yet dressed in an executioner’s garb.Dream carefully.You’ve already made your bed.The nightmares you have now will not be kind.And you have no one to blame but yourself.

    The world is different now: ruled by a ruthless and merciless monster.All Evelyn Blackburn wanted was freedom. But how could you escape from the oldest vampire in existence and the King of the most powerful race ever to walk the Earth...?The tables have turned. Vampires had risen from the night to rule the planet that was theirs to control from the beginningThe 25th Century was an era of hierarchy, prejudice, greed, and suffering.She was a rose, stuck between thorns.The tall, dark and handsome King with no soul, no compassion, no capability to love and appreciate; a man who was obsessively possessive.A charming Lord, with captivating green eyes, a kind soul, tousled dark hair, and a dimpled smile shall tug at your heartstrings.The childhood sweetheart, the man whom Evelyn believed was the one for her, the man she shall marry... Until Fate intervened.One Direction fan fiction.

    M has moved north now, from a life of kitchens and trailer parks, to that of Civil War re-enactor at a run-down living history park in the dying blue-collar rustbelt of central Pennsylvania. Though he dies now, in uniform, on a regular basis, M's world, his daily struggles, remain unchanged. Isolation. Loneliness. Other-ness. Shepherded, cared for by the Guptas (the immigrant family who runs the motel where he lives, outsiders in their own right) and tolerated by his neighbors, by most of his coworkers at Old Scald Village, but tormented by a few, M wants only to find love and understanding. The serendipitous arrival of Holly and her damaged brother, halted on their own journey of loss, stirs hope in the Minotaur's life. As their paths overlap we find ourselves rooting for the old bull as he stumbles toward a real live human relationship.Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction, he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch "Neil Gaiman Presents" for Audible.com. A prolific painter and nascent musician, Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona."Sherrill gives his Minotaur a -forlorn Buster Keaton dignity. M has a silent film's starring role in the midst of a -country-and-western talkie. Precisely by limiting the beast to deeds, not speech, the writer eventually creates--against all odds--a living hybridized contradiction. M, if stuck in the quicksand of our -ticky-tack present, somehow still participates in the silent scale of myth." --The New York Times

    Gathered together by Ross E. Lockhart, the editor who brought you The Book of Cthulhu, The Children of Old Leech, and Giallo Fantastique, Cthulhu Fhtagn! features nineteen weird tales inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.

    Neal Stephenson’s science fiction thriller, depicts the end of the Earth through the destruction of the Moon by an unknown Agent and the attempts to preserve humanity through a multi-millennial gap between times when the surface of the planet will be inhabitable. The preservation efforts soon bog down in political entanglements, both from the doomed world and from within the populations who are meant to carry humanity through thousands of years in space to a planned return to Earth. When, at last, humanity makes to return to the surface of Earth, they find that other populations, not entirely friendly, await them, having endured their own privations across the millennia. Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, is a substantial piece of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction. Well-written and compelling, it offers a convincing account of one of the many scenarios in which Earth might end – only to be reborn millennia later from seeds sown by the seven Eves of the novel’s title and others uncontrolled by them. It is an excellent piece of science fiction. This companion also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher the novel • Details of Characters & Key Character Analysis • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Thought Provoking /or Discussion Questions for both Readers & Book Clubs • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis of Seveneves fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

    It assures you that tomorrow will be a better day and encourages you to realise your potential and achieve your aspirations. Petit à Petit is centred on themes like self-love, self-confidence and taking life into your own hands.No matter how far-away and impossible your dreams seem, don't be afraid to reach for them.