A short story written for Halloween

    Elrod's picked 15 of her favorite short works for this multi-genre collection spanning 15 years of publication.Also included is a never before published VAMPIRE FILES story, featuring her urban fantasy vampire PI, Jack Fleming!Each story has been polished afresh for this anthology, with pages of new material added.More information -- and previews of the stories! -- may be found at her website vampwriter-dot-com.Titles:1. A Night at the (Horse) Opera (Vampire Files, Fleming)2. The Breath of Bast (Vampire Files), Ecsott)3. Bossman (Original mystery, no vamps)4. Slaughter (Vampire Files, Fleming & Gordy)5. The Devil's Mark (Original historical vampire)6. You'll Catch Your Death (Vampire Files)7. Izzy's Shoe-In (Historical mystery introducing Izzy DeLeon, fearless girl reporter)8. The Quick Way Down (Vampire Files, Fleming and Gordy)9. The Scottish Ploy (Original romance/mystery)10. Grave-Robbed (Vampire Files, Fleming)11. The Company You Keep (Vampire Files, Gabriel Kroun)12. Death in Dover (Jonathan Barrett before he got vamped, historical mystery)13. Drawing Dead (ALL NEW VAMPIRE FILES, Fleming)14. King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet from a different point of view, mystery)15. Fugitive (Science fiction/space opera)16. BONUS STORY! The Wind Breathes Cold (Quincey Morris: Vampire)

    May of these stories are from the pages of Weird Tales and other classic magazines which brought the work of masters like H.P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, and many others to the public. Includes an active table of contents.

    But whatever you do, don’t pray for hope.”– Season 1 of Dying Hope, Zombie Apocalypse Kindle book description:Brody had always wanted to live like the rich kids did, with their hot meals and shiny cell phones. Unfortunately, life had other plans for him and his sister Pippa. Struggling to pick up the pieces after their father’s mysterious death and coping with their mother’s drug use and her abominable new boyfriend, the children felt even more removed from hope. In this thrilling debut novella, Brody and Pippa are about to learn to rely on a completely different set of survival mechanisms — a set that would keep them alive while horror, a virus that slowly poisons the human brain, tears apart their small town. Amid the outbreak, tales of fright breed and people begin using the word zombie — something Brody, even though young, thinks is foolish.The horror and fun begins here, Episode 1

    In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.Sympathy for the bones --The briar and the rose --The light and the fury --The last dignity of man --Where the heart lives --After the blood --Tangleroot palace

    There are tales of murder, death, loss, revenge, greed, and hate. There are also tales of hope, survival, and love.For the sea was a fair master.

    By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world.

    Thanks to the efforts of a multitude of Internet users, however, this tiny curse evolved and is modified into several versions—each more advanced that the last. To what bizarre sort of end of days will Curse 5.0 lead us? The fabled apocalypse could come in many guises. Could one of them be an online butterfly effect, chocked full of the darkest humor imaginable?

    It was written in a hurry. It is riddled with inconsistencies. And it never quite arrives at whatever point it sought to make. But remember: The $25 you donated to charity in exchange for this steaming mess of prose will help our species shuffle along, and I hope you’ll feel warmed by your good deed as you read. Thank you for decreasing the overall worldwide level of suck, and as they say in my hometown: Don’t forget to be awesome.Best wishes!John Green* The book has been made available under creative commons license, so it can be acquired legally here: http://effyeahnerdfighters.com/post/2... :)

     A suspicious husband sets out to discover what his wife really does late at night in her shop. A man starts a new job guarding the entrance to a pier at night. An abandoned house hides a sinister – and disgusting – secret in its basement. A young girl waits for a message from her dead mother, and then she finds something stranger in the freezer. The Butcher's Husband and Other Stories features the new short stories The Butcher's Husband, Tongue, The Pier and The Butcher's Husband II, as well as revised versions of The Seagull and A Perfect Death, and a new novella titled Larry.

    until something utterly unfamiliar suddenly lands in your back yard.Susan is the epitome of the happy housewife, contentedly conducting her daily ritual of cleaning her home and keeping everything just as it should be. Wrapped up in her own little world within those familiar walls, she hardly notices the altogether different arrival in her own back yard. She may ignore the sudden shaking beneath her slippered feet, she might even neglect to spot the conspicuous sight itself—but she can't evade the stench. Something's wrong. Very wrong. And Susan's incapable of determining just what to do about the uninvited eyesore in her back yard. Turning to her best friend for help with the impromptu emergency threatening to shake up her very existence and happy home, Susan combines efforts with neighbor Trisha to decipher the composition and meaning of the frightfully large and utterly unpleasant new arrival. But are these two women really capable of realizing the gift of new awareness they've just been given by an unseen entity? Or will they continue to fail to see the world that exists out there? What a difference a day makes... unless you choose to ignore it. Start Reading Now...What are you waiting for? Unexpected surprises, urban fantasy, unveiled mysteries, a touch of humor, a dab of "new weird", and so much more await you.

    With snow on the ground, no skills, and not much more than the clothes on their backs, the group is in dire straits, and probably won't last out the coming night. Until, out of the falling snow, a lone figure approaches. Over the next few days their silent benefactor will keep them safe, fed, and warm, while helping them acquire the know how to care for themselves. The thing is, he's just a kid. . . .

    Quarterly 4 contains Issues 34 (Monsters), 35 (Dark Comedy) and 36 (Different), plus exclusive new content!TABLE OF CONTENTSIssue 34: Monsters“The Fire” by Timothy T. Murphy“Inhuman Resources” by William Gerke“Waiting in the Light in the Hungry Months” by Megan Engelhardt“Skin and Scales” by Rachel Bender“Monsters, Monsters Everywhere” by Carrie Cuinn“Raw Materials” by Bernie Mojzes (Exclusive New Fiction)Issue 35: Dark Comedy“Jezebel’s Blouse” by Timothy T. Murphy“Jason’s Shoes” by Richard Bist“The Execution of Zacharius Grubb” by Bethan Claire Price“Chasing Persephone” by Natalie Stachowski“Worse Than a Devil” by Sarina DorieIssue 36: Different“Black Betty” by Nisi Shawl“Portrait of a Courtesan” by Megan Arkenberg“The Last Recall” by Mason Ian Bundschuh“Second Place” by Sarah A. Drew“Zeppelin Follies” by Cat Rambo“The Remote-Controlled Doggirl” by Lara Ek“Beaumains” by Jo ThomasPoem: “Stuck On a Boat With a Soccer Mom” by Helen Estrada“Young Lions” by Zachary Jernigan“My Other Half” by Maria Stanislav“There Was a Little Girl” by Tom Howard (Exclusive New Fiction)ArtCover Art – “The Very Ugly Duckling” by Minna Sundberg

    Odd is a tale of how an ordinary man profited from an extraordinary time paradox when he stops to help a man seemingly lost and confused, and then learns the reasons why.Stitch in Time concerns an elderly lady reflecting on a lost love and, thanks to her sons' experiments with time, finally discovering the reason why her lover abandoned her so many years ago.Oh Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? is a social satire on Hollywood glamour in which a bright, individual young Irish woman becomes part of the celebrity circuit, and loses all that makes her special in the process of becoming a star.Random Quest combines romance and parallel universes.A Long Spoon is the story of how a demon is summoned by mistake and the lengths the couple that invoked him have to go to get rid of him without losing their souls in the bargain.

    A deadly pandemic throttles the globe. Democracy has crumbled. Armed gangs of militant protestors stalk the streets. Amidst this waking nightmare, a new horror develops. The virus is mutating.Dan Lewis's wife is sick. When he receives a call from the hospital, he's prepared for the worst. Or so he thought. Because that call plunges Dan into an unending spiral of insanity and depravity. Now, he must fight his way through the battle-scarred streets of New York City to find his wife, unprepared for what awaits him out there...in the shadows.Grim and terrifying, but laced with gallows humor and surprising heart, THE BLOOD BEAST MUTATIONS is an all-too-relatable story of courage and gruesome horror.