and whose gifts are destined to end up in the hands of another. And it is this teen's heart-breaking story that inspired Lev to choose the clapper's path.Pulling elements from Neal Shusterman's critically acclaimed Unwind and giving hints about what is to come in the long-awaited sequel, UnWholly, this short story is a must for fans of the series.

    Sabrina's a bored and disillusioned home-maker, Hal a reverse mortgage salesman with a penchant for ill-timed sports analogies. Their two children, Damien and Michaela, are bright and precocious.At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren't what they seem.Sabrina's hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina's already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine.Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of 4596 James Circle, they're far from its only residents...

    With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest—Dávila’s debut collection in English—you’ll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.

    But he may be surprised by what he finds. This brand-new story and perspective from A.G. Howard's dark, magical world stands alone, but also provides a tantalizing glimpse of what's to come in Unhinged, the sequel to Splintered.

    Check in for the night with New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger.Eve has a fake ID, a .38, and a violent lover receding in the rearview mirror. He’ll never find her at the isolated motel, and its kindly manager is happy to ease her fears. But if Eve is the only guest, whom does she keep hearing on the other side of the wall? Eve won’t get a good night’s rest until she finds out.Lisa Unger’s The Sleep Tight Motel is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.

    In the orderly, pleasant world Barbara inhabited, nice children -- and they were nice children — didn't hold an adult captive.But what Barbara didn't count on was the heady effect their new-found freedom would have on the children. Their wealthy parents were away in Europe, and in this rural area of Maryland, the next house was easily a quarter of a mile away. The power of adults was in their hands, and they were tempted by it. They tasted it and toyed with it -- their only aim was to test its limits. Each child was consumed by his own individual lust and caught up with the others in sadistic manipulation and passion, until finally, step by step, their grim game strips away the layers of childishness to reveal the vicious psyche, conceived in evil and educated in society's sophisticated violence, that lies always within civilized men.More than a terrifying horror story, Let's Go Play at the Adams' is a compelling psychological exercise of brooding insights and deadly implications.

    A. Macalla Whitcomb. By deciding to investigate how Mrs. Whitcomb's obsessions might have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs. Whitcomb's films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband and herself in danger. Experimental Film mixes painful character detail with a creeping aura of dread to produce a fictionalized "memoir" designed to play on its readers' narrative expectations and pack an existentialist punch.

    Palahniuk channels both Stephen King and John Cheever in this singularly sinister and hilarious short story, straight from the passive-aggressive front lines of modern marriage, where a wife's frustration, along with the family cat, become weapons of mass destruction.Rachel married Ted because he was uncomplicated and loyal. But he was also devoted to his wretched house (done up in black granite, black appliances, even black dishware) and his first love, an old, flatulent cat named Belinda Carlisle. Once Rachel becomes pregnant, Ted reluctantly agrees to move and give up the cat. But the house doesn't sell, and Belinda Carlisle still haunts their home: every day the creature becomes fatter and more malodorous. When the house burns to the ground in a freak conflagration and the couple's daughter, April, is born blind soon thereafter, the marriage is never the same again. Only on a business trip three years later does Rachel begin to reckon with the damage.In an Orlando motel room far from Ted and April, Rachel wonders: Is her simple-minded husband more vindictive and manipulative than even Rachel could have imagined? How far will she go to keep the upper hand—a bit of emotional and physical torture, perhaps? Will she win the battle, only to lose so much else?If all is fair in love and war, there are few contemporary writers better equipped than Palahniuk to travel the extremes, right to the chilling intersection of "I do" and "I'm damned."

    Who hires a virtual stranger out of a New York City coffee shop to care for their adorable grandson? Apparently Claudia Renaldi does.Widower Matteo Renaldi isn't pleased that his mother found a replacement nanny so soon after he fired the last one. Yet little Matty takes to Paige like no other nanny before. And Matteo can't deny he's quite taken with her as well. She's beautiful, sweet, and far, "far" too young for him.There's something about the gorgeously sexy Matteo that fills Paige with longing to break through his wall of formality and touch his softer side. But no one knows better than she that crushing on her boss is one thing. Acting on those feelings is forbidden. Foolish.InevitableWarning: Sexy, grumpy Italian hero who is determined to keep his walls up. No matter how much his son's sweetly beautiful nanny drives him to distraction

    Step into Grace’s world with this exclusive bonus scene from Embassy Row, New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter’s new series of global proportions. Embassy Row Book 1, All Fall Down, is available now!Grace Blakely is absolutely certain of three things:1. She is not crazy.2. Her mother was murdered.3. Someday she is going to find the killer and make him pay.As certain as Grace is about these facts, nobody else believes her -- so there's no one she can completely trust. Not her grandfather, a powerful ambassador. Not her new friends, who all live on Embassy Row. Not Alexei, the Russian boy next door, who is keeping his eye on Grace for reasons she neither likes nor understands.Everybody wants Grace to put on a pretty dress and a pretty smile, blocking out all her unpretty thoughts. But they can't control Grace -- no more than Grace can control what she knows or what she needs to do. Her past has come back to hunt her . . . and if she doesn't stop it, Grace isn't the only one who will get hurt. Because on Embassy Row, the countries of the world stand like dominoes, and one wrong move can make them all fall down.Don’t miss this never-before-read scene from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter’s brand-new series, Embassy Row.

    But then a dark cloud threatens the bright promise of summer vacation: on the last day of school, their classmate Tubby Cooke vanishes. Soon, the group discovers stories of other children who once disappeared from Elm Haven. And there are other strange things happening in town: unexplained holes in the ground, a stranger dressed as a World War I soldier, and a rendering-plant truck that seems to be following the five boys. The friends realize that there is a terrible evil lurking in Elm Haven...and they must be the ones to stop it.

    He spends his days working a job he hates. He spends his nights tormented by night terrors.He once had goals and dreams. Now he's just trying to get by.Unfortunately for Jessie and his family, while he's given up on his dreams, his nightmares haven't given up on him. And right now one is crossing over into the waking world.

    They live in an underground world filled with lollipop forests and gumdrop goblins. During the day, while you are away at work, they come above ground and prowl our streets for food. Their prey: your children. They lure young boys and girls to them with their sweet scent and bright colorful candy coating, then rip them apart with razor sharp teeth and claws. When he was a child, Franklin Pierce witnessed the death of his siblings at the hands of a candy woman with pink cotton candy hair. Since that day, the candy people have become his obsession. He has spent his entire life trying to prove that they exist. And after discovering the entrance to the underground world of the candy people, Franklin finds himself venturing into their sugary domain. His mission: capture one of them and bring it back, dead or alive. Cannibals of Candyland is an erotic horror story for the bizarro reader. Dark, disturbing, and absurd; this isn't the board game version of candy land you used to play as a kid.

    Her family is about to lose everything, and she has almost no chance of continuing her college education. She can't even seek solace from her high school sweetheart. He's changed. She doesn't recognize the boy she used to know— his violent behavior is escalating and it scares the hell out of her. Her whole world is crumbling, and she has no one to turn to……Sebastian “Bash” McDaniels is an up and comer in the boxing world working nights at the local college bar until he can land the fight of his dreams that will get him the hell out of Boston and away from his family's tragic past. He’s weeks from his goal when Olivia Beckett comes tumbling into his life in a flash of silky dark hair and haunted eyes. When he saves her from a potentially brutal beating, they begin to grow close, but Olivia's ex isn’t ready to let her go so easily. Bash can't bring himself to walk away, but fixing Olivia just might leave him broken…

    Having previously had positive feedback for his numerous horror and ghost stories - Matt Shaw decided to write "Consumed" for the more gore-hungry horror fans...And he delivers by the bucket load!