Coulter.   On a cold winter's night, two art collectors are settled before a fire in the Senior Common Room of a college in Oxford, discussing the unusual pieces one has recently added to his collection. What the two men don't know is that the portrait of a striking young woman and the bronze sculpture of a fearsome monkey are connected in mysterious ways. How could they imagine that they are about to be caught in the cross-fire of a story which has traveled time . . . and worlds.   Published in 50 countries with over 22 million copies sold, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are renowned for their engrossing storytelling and epic scope. This new short tale will delight the many fans eager for any new glimpse into the world of His Dark Materials.

    All of these queer marvels and more can be found at the Nightmare Carnival!Hugo and Bram Stoker award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound, Supernatural Noir) presents a new anthology of insidious and shocking tales in the horrific and irresistible Nightmare Carnival! Dark Horse is proud to bring you this masterwork of terror from such incredible creative talents as Terry Dowling, Joel Lane, Priya Sharma, Dennis Danvers, and Nick Mamatas!

    Four monsters collected in paperback for the first time. 'Did You Forget About Me?'"He had written to me a month or so before he died. I'd ignored the letter the same way I'd ignored all the others." When Cam Miller returns to the town he grew up in he's heading to clear his estranged father's farmhouse. He's also returning to the house he fled 23 years before. There, among the nicotine stained keepsakes and remnants of a broken life, he'll come face to face with a horror that has waited all those years for his return."It's you he wants."'Hope and Walker'"We were both 10. But he was dead. And I sat drawing him."Em Walker is just like any other 10-year-old girl growing up in the small, outback town of Hope. That is, except for the fact that her Dad runs one of the town's two funeral parlours, and the dead have just started speaking to her...When Hope is rocked by a terrible crime, Em, stubborn, scared of spiders, and with a temper that's likely to get her into trouble, will find herself thrust into the middle of a dangerous hunt for the truth."Being scared's good," Grandpa Walker had told me once. "Stops us from doing stupid things." It hadn't stopped me.'The Trade'That summer should have been filled with laughter, with slip n' slides in the yard, lazy afternoons lying watching ice cream clouds swirling through the blue sky, melting in slow motion. I watched a plane rising high above our house. From the ground it looked completely still, as if it hung suspended in the air, a model on a string. I wished I was on it, I wished I could escape. I was seven and that was the summer death stalked our home.It began with the offerings...'Knock and You Will See Me'"We buried Dad in the winter. It wasn't until the spring that we heard from him again." When grieving Ellie Ray finds a crumpled, handwritten note from her recently deceased father, hidden behind the couch, she assumes that her middle boy, Max, left it there. It has a single word written on it: WHY. But, as more and more letters begin to appear throughout the house, Ellie and her three boys will find themselves dragged into a deeply sinister mystery surrounding her father's death."Dad? I looked down at the scribbled note in my hand, at the words torn into the paper. What had started as a whisper had grown louder, more desperate. The words had been screamed onto the page. Dad? Please. What's going on?"'Bones' Four Stories. Four Monsters.

    "Straub at his spellbinding best".--Publishers Weekly.

    While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.The husband stitch --Inventory --Mothers --Especially heinous --Real women have bodies --Eight bites --The resident --Difficult at parties

    Each tale offers glimpses into familiar, shadowy worlds that push the boundaries of the spirit and leave the mind haunted with the knowledge that black juice runs through us all.Contents:Earthly Uses (2004)House of the Many (2004)My Lord's Man (2004)Perpetual Light (2004)Red Nose Day (2004)Rite of Spring (2004)Singing My Sister Down (2004)Sweet Pippit (2004)Wooden Bride (2004)Yowlinin (2004)

    These stories are enthralling, expertly constructed, and very very powerful. Some will put a lump in your throat. Some will have you squirming. Some might be so intense and disturbing that they leave you no choice but to put it aside for awhile, catch your breath, and finish when you've worked up the guts.This is fiction that does far more than "entertain," and it goes far beyond what we expect when we read "horror." No haunted houses here, no pitchfork-wielding devils with horns on their heads. The only monsters are the very worst kind: humans.Table of Contents:Introduction by Edward LeeGorilla in My RoomThe Western DeadBullyListenPolaroidsSquirrely Shirley (with Lucky McKee)Group of ThirtyWinter ChildCow (with Lucky McKee)The Transformed MouseThe Right ThingAwakeThat MomentOldiesSeconds

    Contents:1 · Nasty 2 · Abominable 5 · Rebound [“The Power”] 7 · Nightmare in Gray 8 · Nightmare in Green 9 · Nightmare in White 10 · Nightmare in Blue 12 · Nightmare in Yellow 14 · Nightmare in Red 15 · Unfortunately 16 Granny’s Birthday 18 · Cat Burglar 20 · The House 22 · Second Chance 24 · Great Lost Discoveries I - Invisibility 26 · Great Lost Discoveries II - Invulnerability 27 · Great Lost Discoveries III - Immortality28 · Dead Letter [“The Letter”] 30 · Recessional 31 · Hobbyist 33 · The Ring of Hans Carvel 34 · Vengeance Fleet [“Vengeance, Unlimited”]36 · Rope Trick 37 · Fatal Error [“The Perfect Crime”] 39 · The Short Happy Lives of Eustace Weaver I, II, & III [“Of Time and Eustace Weaver”] 43 · Expedition 45 · Bright Beard 46 · Jaycee 47 · Contact [“Earthmen Bearing Gifts”] 49 · Horse Race 51 · Death on the Mountain 54 · Bear Possibility56 · Not Yet the End 58 · Fish Story 60 · Three Little Owls (A Fable)62 · Runaround [“Starvation”]660 · Murder in Ten Easy Lessons [“Ten Tickets to Hades”] 740 · Dark Interlude · Fredric Brown & Mack Reynolds 810 · Entity Trap [“From These Ashes”]950 · The Little Lamb 106 · Me and Flapjack and the Martians113 · The Joke [“If Looks Could Kill”]121 · Cartoonist [“Garrigan’s Bems”]128 · The Geezenstacks137 · The End [“Nightmare in Time”]

    A mysterious chill only he experienced. Then frightening rumors from his new found friends about 'kidnapped' kids? That all sets the ball rolling for a reign of terror they would never forget. Ouija Boards and inquisitive kids, equal a horror they could never imagine. Would anyone be safe? And from WHAT?

    Kevin Brockmeier's fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive--or, as it happens, not to be.

    Lovecraft, the most-fevered mind of 20th century horror and weirdness! These weird tales blend horror, science-fiction and fantasy to weave stories of darkness and terror that will alternately leave you checking dark spaces for hidden horrors and wondering at the nature of reality itself. From the horror/mystery of The Altar in the Hills to the private confessions and revelations of one of mankind's most brilliant minds in Through the Ether, these seven stories bring with them Old Gods, strange twists and interesting characters that will both surprise and delight fans of horror fiction.

    P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. AROUND THE CORNER - A man whose parents raised him in a cult suspects the new tenants in his apartment complex belong to a similar cult, and are summoning up powers that will change the world...and not for the betterment of humankind. AFTER THE FALL - Around the world, after a great storm the sky becomes filled with the fossilized remains of vast monsters locked in an ancient conflict, leaving humans to interpret this vision and to consider their own humble existence. SCRIMSHAW - In this alternate history story set in 1851, men in seafaring ships do not harvest whale blubber, but seek strange treasures in the bodies of immense alien creatures. From Jeffrey Thomas -- the author of Punktown.

    This volume assembles some of Clifton's very best work -- including THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT:STAR BRIGHT (1952)THE KENZIE REPORT (1953)WE'RE CIVILIZED!SENSE FROM THOUGHT DIVIDE (1955)A WOMAN'S PLACE (1955)DO UNTO OTHERS (1958)THEY'D RATHER BE RIGHT (1958)WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN? (1959)EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN (1960)And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more entries in this great series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!

    Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.