A sort of new and bizarre Tomás Rivera, Rios is able to blend the familiar of the domestic with the all the wilderness of the universe. Her stories will grab you in places you didn’t know you had, take you by those places to where you’ve always wanted to go—though you never knew how to get there. Buy this book and enjoy that journey.” —Brian Allen Carr “In The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert, Rios de la Luz’s writing is electric and alive. It grabs you and pulls you into her universe, one that is both familiar and foreign, a place where Martians find love, bad guys get their ears cut off, and time travel agents save lost children. In this innovative, heartfelt debut, de la Luz takes her place as a young author that demands to be read and watched.” —Juliet Escoria

    A small-town girl flees her domineering mother and falls into an obsessive love affair with an older woman in New York City. A sixteen-year-old envies her cousin's sex appeal while avoiding the attentions of her middle-aged uncle. A brother tries to protect his sister by convincing her never to leave their apartment, but his control is threatened when he takes a new job. And there is more, in this stunning debut by a masterful new voice in American literature.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Adopted by colleges across the country to be used in literature courses, The Dark Descent showcases some of the finest horror fiction ever written.Contents: Pt. 1 - The Color of EvilThe Reach / Stephen KingEvening Primrose / John CollierThe Ash-Tree / M. R. JamesThe New Mother / Lucy CliffordThere's a Long, Long Trail A-winding / Russell KirkThe Call of Cthulhu / H. P. LovecraftThe Summer People / Shirley JacksonThe Whimper of Whipped Dogs / Harlan EllisonYoung Goodman Brown / Nathaniel HawthorneMr. Justice Harbottle / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Crowd / Ray BradburyThe Autopsy / Michael SheaJohn Charrington's Wedding / E. NesbitSticks / Karl Edward WagnerLarger Than Oneself / Robert AickmanBelsen Express / Fritz LeiberYours Truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert BlochIf Damon Comes / Charles L. GrantVandy, Vandy / Manly Wade WellmanPt. 2 - The Medusa in the ShieldThe Swords / Robert AickmanThe Roaches / Thomas M. DischBright Segment / Theodore SturgeonDread / Clive BarkerThe Fall of the House of Usher / Edgar Allan PoeThe Monkey / Stephen KingWithin the Walls of Tyre / Michael BishopThe Rats in the Walls / H. P. LovecraftSchalken the Painter / J. Sheridan Le FanuThe Yellow Wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins GilmanA Rose for Emily / William FaulknerHow Love Came to Professor Guildea / Robert HichensBorn of Man and Woman / Richard MathesonMy Dear Emily / Joanna RussYou Can Go Now / Dennis EtchisonThe Rocking-Horse Winner / D. H. LawrenceThree Days / Tanith LeeGood Country People / Flannery O'ConnorMackintosh Willy / Ramsey CampbellThe Jolly Corner / Henry JamesPt. 3 - A Fabulous Formless Darkness Smoke Ghost / Fritz LeiberSeven American Nights / Gene WolfeThe Signal-Man / Charles DickensCrouch End / Stephen KingNight-Side / Joyce Carol OatesSeaton's Aunt / Walter de la MareClara Militch / Ivan TurgenevThe Repairer of Reputations / Robert W. ChambersThe Beckoning Fair One / Oliver OnionsWhat Was It? / Fitz-James O'BrienThe Beautiful Stranger / Shirley JacksonThe Damned Thing / Ambrose BierceAfterward / Edith WhartonThe Willows / Algernon BlackwoodThe Asian Shore / Thomas M. DischThe Hospice / Robert AickmanA Little Something for Us Tempunauts / Philip K. Dick

    A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.

    Salinger, to name just a few. Now Duncan distills his remarkable powers of observation into this unique collection of short stories and essays. At the heart of Duncan's tales are characters undergoing the complex and violent process of transformation, with results both painful and wondrous. Equally affecting are his nonfiction reminiscences, the "river teeth" of the title. He likens his memories to the remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water. These experiences—shaped by his own river of time—are related with the art and grace of a master storyteller. In River Teeth, a uniquely gifted American writer blends two forms, taking us into the rivers of truth and make-believe, and all that lies in between.

    If I am still alivewhen the events foretold in these pages occur, then I hope that you will find me before it is too late.Roberta Ann SparrowOctober, 1944"

    M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness. In this volume Joyce Carol Oates, our leading practitioner of the contemporary Gothic, presents the essential works of Shirley Jackson, the novels and stories that, from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, wittily remade the genre of psychological horror for an alienated, postwar America. She opens with "The Lottery" (1949), Jackson's only collection of short fiction, whose disquieting title story-one of the most widely anthologized tales of the 20th century-has entered American folklore. Also among these early works are "The Daemon Lover," a story Oates praises as "deeper, more mysterious, and more disturbing than 'The Lottery, ' " and "Charles," the hilarious sketch that launched Jackson's secondary career as a domestic humorist. Here too are Jackson's masterly short novels: "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959), the tale of an achingly empathetic young woman chosen by a haunted house to be its new tenant, and "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (1962), the unrepentant confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness. Rounding out the volume are 21 other stories and sketches that showcase Jackson in all her many modes, and the essay "Biography of a Story," Jackson's acidly funny account of the public reception of "The Lottery," which provoked more mail from readers of "The New Yorker" than any contribution before or since.

    A rebelling angel rewrites the Book of Judgement to protect the woman he loves. A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. A 747 populated by a dying pantheon makes the extraordinary journey to the beginning of the universe. Lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, Helen Marshall’s exceptional debut collection weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human in fifteen modern parables about history, memory, and cost of creating art.

    Way back, the women went to Catholic school together and collaborated on racy letters to a soldier in Vietnam who thought they were much older than seventh graders—a ruse that typifies later shenanigans, usually brought on by red-headed Colleen, a self-proclaimed “Celtic warrior.”After ditching Colleen’s car to collect the insurance, they drive from one unexpected event to the next in Big Blue, MK’s Buick clunker with a St. Christopher statue glued to the dash. The glow-in-the-dark icon guides them past the farm debris, mine ruins, and fracking waste of the northern brow of Appalachia. Yet their world is not a dystopia. Rather, MK and Colleen show why, amid all the desperation, there is still a community of hope, filled with people looking out for their neighbors and with survivors who offer joy, laughter, and good will.

    In "The Watcher," a member of the Communist Party is assigned to a polling place in Turin's Hospital for Incurables, where he observes the rejects of humanity and a grotesque parody of the democratic process. "Smog" anticipates a preoccupation with pollution so lunatic that it casts a pall even over the hero's affair with a beautiful woman. "The Argentine Ant" is a piece of sustained horror with farcical undertones, illustrating man's defeat before an enemy too small to be overcome.

    But when the president of the synagogue absconds with a small fortune, far deeper—and more troubling—rifts emerge...In "The Closet," Evelyn's sister flees her family to take up residence in the attic—while the shunned Evelyn finds herself slipping into the waters of her sister's soul....In "Wish List," an expert on terrorism, vacationing at an academic retreat in England,receives a late-night phone call from National Public Radio. Asked for commentary on a hostage situation of which he is ignorant, Ed can whisper only: "It's unspeakable."Total ImmersionIn these and other exquisite stories, Allegra Goodman fills rooms with laughter and voices, captures dinner parties, seaside picnics, academic grudges, shul politics, and the kind of hurts that only families and lovers can know. Featuring two new stories previously published in The New Yorker, Total Immersion is Allegra Goodman's first collection of short fiction—a masterful work from one of the most powerful and eloquent voices on the American literary landscape.

    In the tradition of Defoe, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Coleridge, Poe, and other master writers, these frightful stories conjure the creaks and shadows of the very places where they came to life: haunted St. Andrews, the Isle of Eigg, Kellie Castle, Balcarres House, Durie House ("which has the most persistent of all country-house spectres"), and Kirk's own ancestral spooky house in Mecosta, Michigan.

    Despite their narrative simplicity (similar in style to the work of Hemingway, who was highly influenced by Anderson's technique), these stories explore intriguing psychological depths, redolent with personal epiphanies, erotic undercurrents, and sudden eruptions of passion among seemingly repressed, inarticulate Midwesterners.

    Step into a world that defies all logic. One of Masturbatory headphones, diabolically toppled comb-jars, moustache-filled ejaculations, malfunctioning bookmarks, bricolage scrotums, wank fairies and a poorly conceived theory regarding wall stability. A world where ball popping is the only solution to the scrotum's poor aesthetic qualities and true love can lead a man to transpose menstruation across gender lines. Not to mention a blink so immensely powerful that mild abrasion can ensue. There s also a lime. Truly some of the strangest stories ever told. In his debut collection Matthew Revert has concocted a bizarre vortex of fiction by turns hilarious, disturbing, thought-provoking and just plain odd. A Million Versions of Right will force you to find logic in the illogic and shun anything resembling common sense. Like the faecal scrawl of a madman without the unpleasant smell

     "PAPERCLIP" by Kenneth Hite. "A Spider With Barbed-Wire Legs" by Davide Mana. "Le Pain Maudit" by Jeff C. Carter. "Cracks in the Door" by Jason Mical. "Ganzfeld Gate" by Cody Goodfellow. "Utopia" by David Farnell. "The Perplexing Demise of Stooge Wilson" by David J. Fielding. "Dark" by Daniel Harms."Morning in America" by James Lowder. "Boxes Inside Boxes" and "The Mirror Maze" by Dennis Detwiller. "A Question of Memory" by Greg Stolze. "Pluperfect" by Ray Winninger. "Friendly Advice" by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. "Passing the Torch" by Adam Scott Glancy. "The Lucky Ones" by John Scott Tynes. "Syndemic" and an introduction by Shane Ivey. These stories are recommended for mature readers. Excerpted from the introduction: We know a program called Delta Green really existed. You can find a couple of references to it in documents uncovered by Freedom of Information Act requests. Delta Green was a psychological operations unit in World War II, created to take advantage of the bizarre occult beliefs of Axis leaders. The public documents, which may have been released with the name unredacted by mistake, don’t say whether it had any success. The OSS was shut down after the war. Many of its people helped launch the CIA in 1947. We can only speculate whether the OSS’s lessons from Delta Green informed the CIA’s notorious psychological operations in the coming decades.  Conspiracy theorists have done more than speculate. Delta Green came back as a secret project to track down Nazis after the war, they say. Delta Green brought federal agents, spies, and special forces together for missions too secret even for the CIA. Delta Green was the precursor and rival to Majestic-12, the U.S. government conspiracy that allied itself with aliens after Roswell. Delta Green fights otherworldly monsters and evil sorcerers under the cover of the Global War on Terror. Once you climb into the rabbit hole, the fall never ends. In this book we turn up tales from the rabbit hole: Delta Green case histories rendered as short stories. They begin in the Dust Bowl, with a Naval intelligence unit supposedly called “P4” and memories of the abandoned New England town of Innsmouth (another bottomless well of conspiracy theories). They look at the days after World War II when secret agents pursued Nazis all over Europe, the early CIA attempted its first infamous schemes, and anticommunist witch-hunts seized on American terrors back home. They bring us through the Cold War desperation of the Seventies and Eighties, when America was shocked by its own crimes and Delta Green allegedly went underground again. And they come to the present day, and a Delta Green divided after it rebuilt itself in the secret government—but many old outlaws refused to trust the new order.