We've ranked the best horror anthologies books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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1
Night Shift
Stephen King
5.0
NIGHT SHIFT -- Stephen King's first collection of stories -- is an early showcase of the depths that King's wicked imagination could plumb. In these 20 tales, we see mutated rates gone bad ("Graveyard Shift"); a cataclysmic virus that threatens humanity ("Night Surf," the basis for The Stand); a smoker who will try anything to stop ("Quitters, Inc."); a reclusive alcoholic who begins a gruesome transformation ("Gray Matter"); and many more. This is Stephen King at his horrifying best. --back cover
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Kelly Link, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.
In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.
Yes. Angela Carter played a very important role in my life because I was born in 1937, a few years before she was born, and although we didn’t grow up together, we both grew up in a world where sexism was out in the open. There was no critique of the type of sexism that I experienced when I grew up, and I think the same is true for her. And we both experienced what a lot of people called the second wave of feminism in the 20th century. [source]
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The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
Stephen King
4.6
A master storyteller at his best—the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.
Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it.
There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. “Afterlife” is about a man who died of colon cancer and keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Other stories address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers—the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, the names of people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.
Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King’s finest gifts to his constant reader—“I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”
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Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Stephen King
4.6
From the Flap:
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. Flies settle and die on an old pair of sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile the legend of Castle Rock returns . . . and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection of stories--a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading every which way to hell . . . and a few to glory.
The long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling have never been so richly demonstrated. There's something here for readers of every stripe and predilection--classic tales of the macabre and the monstrous, cutting-edge explorations of the borderlands between good and evil, brilliant pastiches of Chandler and Conan Doyle, even a teleplay and a non-fiction bonus, a heartfelt piece of Little League baseball that first appeared in The New Yorker.
In story after story, several published here for the first time, he will take you to places you've never been before, places that are both dark and vividly illuminated. Fair warning: You will lose a good deal of sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you.
Can you believe? Then come . . .
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The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
4.5
The Illustrated Man, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury’s career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time. A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. In these eighteen startling visions of humankind’s destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth—as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.
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Recommended by Brian Moran.
Brian Moran
@BrittMichaelian One of my favorite authors! Have you read the Illustrated Man recently? The first story in the book is titled "The Veldt." It was written in 1950 but is ALL ABOUT technology we are talking about today (#AI, #VR). Every story in the book is great. [source]
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The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2019 Edition
Paula Guran
4.5
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Skeleton Crew
Stephen King
4.5
In this brilliant collection of stories, Stephen King takes readers down paths that only he could imagine. A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driver finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil. And a desert island is the scene of the most terrifying struggle for survival ever waged.
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Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three (Books of Blood, #1-3)
Clive Barker
4.5
"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes:
I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.
Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago.
These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster
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Scary Stories Paperback Box Set
Alvin Schwartz
4.4
The three Scary Stories books come together in this paperback box set to form a timeless collection of chillingly scary tales and legends.
Folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time.
The paperback books in this box set feature Stephen Gammell's artwork from the original Scary Stories books. Read if you dare!
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The October Country
Ray Bradbury, Joe Mugnaini
4.4
Ray Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss. This edition features a new introduction by Bradbury, an invaluable essay on writing, wherein the author tells of his "Theater of Morning Voices," and, by inference, encourages you to listen to the same murmurings in yourself. And has any writer anywhere ever made such good use of exclamation marks!? (Illustrated by Joe Mugnaini.)
Contents:
· The Dwarf · ss Fantastic Jan/Feb ’54 · The Next in Line · nv Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse · ss Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar ’54 · Skeleton · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45 · The Jar · ss Weird Tales Nov ’44 · The Lake · ss Weird Tales May ’44 · The Emissary · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · Touched with Fire [“Shopping for Death”] · ss Maclean’s Jun 1 ’54 · The Small Assassin · ss Dime Mystery Magazine Nov ’46 · The Crowd · ss Weird Tales May ’43 · Jack-in-the-Box · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Scythe · ss Weird Tales Jul ’43 · Uncle Einar · ss Dark Carnival, Arkham House: Sauk City, WI, 1947 · The Wind · ss Weird Tales Mar ’43 · The Man Upstairs · ss Harper’s Mar ’47 · There Was an Old Woman · ss Weird Tales Jul ’44 · The Cistern · ss Mademoiselle May ’47 · Homecoming · ss Mademoiselle Oct ’46 · The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone · ss Charm Jul ’54
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Four Past Midnight
Stephen King
4.4
At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instang of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and swithc you into a new and terrifying world.
Four Past Midnight: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity... (back cover)
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Books of Blood: Volume One (Books of Blood #1)
Clive Barker
4.4
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Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Phyllis Cerf Wagner, Herbert Wise
4.4
When this longtime Modern Library favorite--filled with fifty-two stories of heart-stopping suspense--was first published in 1944, one of its biggest fans was critic Edmund Wilson, who in The New Yorker applauded what he termed a sudden revival of the appetite for tales of horror. Represented in the anthology are such distinguished spell weavers as Edgar Allen Poe ("The Black Cat"), Wilkie Collins ("A Terribly Strange Bed"), Henry James ("Sir Edmund Orme"), Guy de Maupassant ("Was It a Dream?"), O. Henry ("The Furnished Room"), Rudyard Kipling ("They"), and H.G. Wells ("Pollock and the Porroh Man"). Included as well are such modern masters as Algernon Blackwood ("Ancient Sorceries"), Walter de la Mare ("Out of the Deep"), E.M. Forster ("The Celestial Omnibus"), Isak Dinesen ("The Sailor-Boys Tale"), H.P. Lovecraft ("The Dunwich Horror"), Dorothy L. Sayers ("Suspicion"), and Ernest Hemingway ("The Killers").
"There is not a story in this collection that does not have the breath of life, achieve the full suspension of disbelief that is so particularly important in [this] type of fiction," wrote the Saturday Review. With an introduction and notes by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert Wise.
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20th Century Ghosts
Joe Hill, Christopher Golden
4.4
A collection of short stories.
Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945....
Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town....
Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....
John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...
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The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Jeff (eds.) Vandermeer, Ann; Vandermeer
4.4
From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.
Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.
The Weird is the winner of the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology
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Different Seasons
Stephen King
4.3
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.
Apt Pupil--a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism.
The Body--four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.
The Breathing Method--a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what. source: stephenking.com
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Creepshow
Stephen King, Berni Wrightson, Michele Wrightson
4.3
Stories in comic strip form tell of a murdered man returning from the grave, a bizarre meteor, a monster that devours people, a husband's terrible revenge, and a plague of cockroaches. Graphic adaptation art by Bernie Wrightson.
Contents:
· Father’s Day · gs • · The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill [adapted from “Weeds”, Cavalier May ’76] · gs • · The Crate [Gallery, Jul ’79] · gs • · Something to Tide You Over · gs • · They’re Creeping Up On You · gs *
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Unhinged (Blood Bond Saga #4-6)
Helen Hardt
4.3
Vampires are real. That fact has Erin Hamilton thinking she’s headed for crazy town. Still, she can’t deny the intense emotion she experiences when Dante Gabriel sinks his teeth into her neck to take her blood. She’s in love, and her body responds to his bite in a way she never could have imagined.
Once Dante tastes Erin’s blood, he’s addicted forever and cannot live without it. He’s heartbroken when she demands that he leave and never return. But neither can live without the other now, which puts them both at risk.
As they struggle to understand the mysterious bond between them and decipher the secrets of the ancient Vampyre Texts, more patients disappear from the hospital. To complicate matters, a gang of vampire thugs chasing Erin, flashbacks increasing in number and clarity, and an ominous dark energy leave Dante on the brink of becoming unhinged.
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The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraf
4.3
The weird fiction short stories of H.P. Lovecraft from 1917-1935. Excludes collaborations.
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917) Dagon (1917) Polaris (1918) Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919) Memory (1919) Old Bugs (1919) The Transition of Juan Romero (1919) The White Ship (1919) The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919) The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919) The Terrible Old Man (1920) The Tree (1920) The Cats of Ulthar (1920) The Temple (1920) Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920) The Street (1920) Celephaïs (1920) From Beyond (1920) Nyarlathotep (1920) The Picture in the House (1920) Ex Oblivione (1921) The Nameless City (1921) The Quest of Iranon (1921) The Moon-Bog (1921) The Outsider (1921) The Other Gods (1921) The Music of Erich Zann (1921) Herbert West — Reanimator (1922) Hypnos (1922) What the Moon Brings (1922) Azathoth (1922) The Hound (1922) The Lurking Fear (1922) The Rats in the Walls (1923) The Unnamable (1923) The Festival (1923) The Shunned House (1924) The Horror at Red Hook (1925) He (1925) In the Vault (1925) The Descendant (1926) Cool Air (1926) The Call of Cthulhu (1926) Pickman’s Model (1926) The Silver Key (1926) The Strange High House in the Mist (1926) The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927) The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927) The Colour Out of Space (1927) The Very Old Folk (1927) The Thing in the Moonlight (1927) The History of the Necronomicon (1927) Ibid (1928) The Dunwich Horror (1928) The Whisperer in Darkness (1930) At the Mountains of Madness (1931) The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931) The Dreams in the Witch House (1932) The Thing on the Doorstep (1933) The Evil Clergyman (1933) The Book (1933) The Shadow out of Time (1934) The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
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Greatest Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Deluxe Hardbound Edition)
Edgar Allan Poe
4.3
Dark tales. Disturbed minds. Deathless prose.Enter the spellbinding world of Edgar Allan Poe, the master of Gothic fiction and psychological horror. This essential collection features some of his most unforgettable works; each a glimpse into the shadows of the human soul.From the chilling descent into guilt in The Tell-Tale Heart, to the melancholic beauty of The Raven, and the genre-defining mystery of Murders in the Rue Morgue, these stories showcase Poe’s unmatched ability to stir fear, awe, and wonder in equal measure.ThemesMadness & Obsession – Dive into the tormented minds of Poe’s characters.Guilt & Conscience – Explore how buried guilt can surface in terrifying ways.Death & Decay – Evocative imagery that explores the fragile line between life and death.Atmosphere & Dread – Every setting pulses with eerie tension and psychological unease.Perfect For:Fans of horror, thrillers, and classic literature.Readers drawn to the strange, the dark, and the poetic.Collectors of timeless fiction with literary value.Anyone ready to confront the shadows within.
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The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
4.3
Here are Howard’s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions. Some of Howard’s best-known characters–Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them–roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.
The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.
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Castle of Horror Anthology Volume One: A Collection of Stories from the Minds behind the Castle of Horror Podcast
Jason Henderson, Kevin J Anderson, et al.
4.3
We've reached out to the finest minds in horror, from best-selling authors to fresh new voices, to bring you a collection of stories to chill the blood. Join us as we explore Hawaiian myth and intrigue from Jessica Lee Anderson, sexy, contemporary vampire horror from Dark Shadows star and author Lara Parker, zombie mystery horror from New York Times Best Seller Kevin J Anderson, Mexican mythology horror from David Bowles, grim sci-fi horror from PJ Hoover, home invasion terror from Jason Henderson (that's me), Gothic horror from Leanna Renee Hieber, spooky American ghost horror from Michael Aronovitz, survivalist horror from Tom Waltz, demonic family horror from Tony Bloodworth, Central American folklore horror from Julia Guzman, hilariously dark genie horror from Mario Acevedo, strange, mind-blowing mythology horror from Guadalupe Garcia McCall, demonic desert family horror from Barry Barclay, and genre-bending science fiction horror from In Churl Yo.
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Shadows over Innsmouth (Shadows Over Innsmouth #1)
Stephen Jones
4.2
Librarian Note: Please do not confuse this anthology with the original novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft. Although "Shadows Over Innsmouth" includes the said novella, the book is a collection of Innsmouth-related stories by a number of later authors and not a single story or novel. You might also consider moving your personal rating and/or review to the appropriate page if you have read only the novella.
SEVENTEEN CHILLING STORIES, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL MASTERPIECE OF HORROR:
“THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH” by H. P. Lovecraft
Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s classic, today’s masters of horror take up their pens and turn once more to that decayed, forsaken New England fishing village with its sparkling treasure, loathsome denizens, and unspeakable evil.
“ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD AGAIN” by Neil Gaiman: The community of Innsmouth performs a blood sacrifice–with shocking, terrifying results.
“THE CHURCH IN HIGH STREET” by Ramsey Campbell: In the crypt of a derelict church, a sensible young man meets a bestial, unthinkable fate.
“INNSMOUTH GOLD” by David Sutton: An adventurer searches for buried treasure–and discovers a slithering hell on earth.
“THE BIG FISH” by Jack Yeovil: A few months after Pearl Harbor, a mobster and his floating casino lie under water, teeming with the stuff of nightmares.
AND THIRTEEN MORE TERRIFYING TALES!
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The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
Chris Baldick
4.2
Brimming with tales of terror, suspense, and the uncanny, this work offers a collection devoted to the best of the Gothic genre. Each story contains the common elements of the gothic talea warped sense of time, a claustrophobic setting, a link to archaic modes of thought, and the impression of a descent into disintegration. Yet taken together, they reveal the progression of the genre from stories of feudal villains amid crumbling ruins to a greater level of sophistication in which writers brought the gothic tale out of its medieval setting, and placed it in the contemporary world. Bringing together the work of such writers as Eudora Welty, Thomas Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jorge Luis Borges, The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales presents a wide array of the sinister and unsettling for all lovers of ghost stories, fantasy, and horror.
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The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories
Rod Serling, T. E. D. Klein
4.2
Submitted for your approval...
These nineteen classic stories confirm Rod Serling as one of the finest fantasy writers of our time. Serling's legendary television series The Twilight Zone consistently demonstrated his remarkable gift for storytelling. In the years that have followed, millions have experienced and remembered these timeless scenarios, now airing regularly on the Sci-Fi Channel.
These haunting stories by the fabled creator, producer, and series host were the basis for some of the most celebrated, eerie programs ever seen on the home screen. In this collector's edition, compiled from three previously published volumes, we rediscover the brilliance of these beautifully turned, inspired stories by a uniquely American writer.
Rod Serling continues to leave us spellbound with his imaginative and unsettling tales.
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WHAT MONSTERS DO FOR LOVE - VOLUME TWO: A HORROR ANTHOLOGY SERIES
SOTEIRA PRESS
4.2
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The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl and Jeremy Treglown
4.2
Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0140158073 (ISBN13: 9780140158076)
Containing all the stories from Roald Dahl's world-famous books – Over to You, Someone Like you, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch – plus eight further tales of the unexpected, this is the definitive collection by one of the great masters of the short story. Macabre, unsettling and deliciously enjoyable, these stories make the perfect bedtime read – but be warned, once you've started reading you won't be able to stop . .
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Legend of the Star Runner: A Timmi Tobbson Adventure
J. I. Wagner, Tracy Phua, et al.
4.2
Think fast to unravel each mystery and uncover the Legend of the Star Runner.
Following the clues concealed within a centuries-old family legacy, Timmi Tobbson and his friends hope to save a dear friend. But only twenty-four hoursremain to unravel the legend of a long-lost pirate ship, buriedsomewhere deep beneath the city streets. Unbeknownst to them, theirsearch awakens a mystical dark power, sworn to protect what is hidden on board the once famous Star Runner.
Mysteries to Solve
The adventure is divided into 31 concise chapters, each of which ends with a puzzle to be solved by finding and interpreting visual clues concealedwithin a beautiful color illustration. Suited for explorers and sleuths young and old. Children under 8 years may need assistance in solving some of the puzzles.
Beautiful Color Illustrations
Legend of the Star Runner gives readers the best of both worlds, merging thevisual appeal of a graphic novel with text-based storytelling's power to spark imagination.
Fun Facts
The illustrations of most Timmi Tobbson characters were inspired by actorsand/or their fictional characters from well-known movies.
- Marvin was inspired by Gaten Matarazzo's performance as Dustin in Stranger Things. - Sir London was inspired by Christopher Lloyd's interpretation of Dr. Emmet Brown in Back to the Future. - Lotterlulu was inspired by Johnny Depp's character Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean as well as Dustin Hoffman's performance in Hook. - The Guardian was inspired by the looks of American actor, director and producer Danny DeVito. - Lilli's Grandpa was inspired by Sir Sean Connery's portrayal of the father of Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade.
Psst: This book contains a puzzle which is unrelated to the story and involves all thirty-one main illustrations.
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Midnight Graffiti
James (editors) (Stephen King; Harlan Ellison; Dan Horsting, Jessica; Van Hise and Martin Cannon;
4.2
With stories by Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, David J. Schow, Nancy Collins, Neil Gaiman, and others.
CONTENTS Introduction by Jessica Horsting Rainy Season by Stephen King Say Hello, Mister Quigley by J. Michael Straczynski Sinus Fiction by Gil Lamont Emerald City Blues by Steven R. Boyett Cattletruck by Cliff Burns Bad Guy Hats by David J. Schow 'I Want to Get Married!' Says the World's Smallest Man by John Shirley Spike Jones and the Reverend Sister Claudine by Rex Miller Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland by Joe R. Lansdale Salvation by Lawrence Person Rant by Nancy A. Collins Blue on One End, Yellow on the Other by K. W. Jeter The Domino Man by Phil Tiso The New Order: 3 Moral Fictions by R. V. Branham Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman Heaven, Heaven Is a Place by R. V. Branham Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World by Harlan Ellison The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons Dark Embrace by James Van Hise
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A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories
Ray Bradbury
4.2
A spaceship captain determined to gather a cupful of the sun. . .a nubile young witch who yearns to taste human love. . .an expedition that hunts dinosaurs across the fragile and dangerous chasm of time. . . These strange and wonderful tales of beauty and terror will transport you from the begininng of time to the outermost limits of the future. Selected from his best-selling collections "The Golden Apples Of The Sun" and "R Is For Rocket," here are thirty-two superb stories from one of the master fantastics of our age--the inimitable Ray Bradbury.
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Full Throttle
Joe Hill
4.2
A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.
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Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s
Greg Sadowski, John Benson, et al.
4.2
Of the myriad genres comic books ventured into during its golden age, none was as controversial as or came at a greater cost than horror; the public outrage it incited almost destroyed the entire industry. Yet before the watchdog groups and Congress could intercede, horror books were flying off the newsstands. During its peak period (1951-54) over fifty titles appeared each month. Apparently there was something perversely irresistible about these graphic excursions into our dark side, and Four Color Fear collects the finest of these into a single robust and affordable volume.
EC is the comic book company most fans associate with horror; its complete line has been reprinted numerous times, and deservedly so. But to the average reader there remain unseen quite a batch of genuinely disturbing, compulsive, imaginative, at times even touching, horror stories presented from a variety of visions and perspectives, many of which at their best can stand toe to toe with EC.
All of the better horror companies are represented: Ajax-Farrell, Atlas, Avon, Charlton, Comic Media, Fawcett, Fiction House, Gilmor, Harvey, Quality, Standard, St. John, Story, Superior, Trojan, and Youthful. Artist perennials Jack Cole, Steve Ditko, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Wallace Wood con- tribute both stories and covers, with many of the forty full-sized covers created by specialists Bernard Baily, L.B. Cole, William Eckgren, and Matt Fox.
Editors Benson and Sadowski have sifted through hundreds of rare books to cherry-pick the most compelling scripts and art, and they provide extensive background notes on the artists, writers, and companies involved in their creation. Digital restoration has been performed with subtlety and restraint, mainly to correct registration and printing errors, with every effort made to retain the flavor of the original comics, and to provide the reader the experience of finding in the attic a bound volume of the finest non-EC horror covers and stories of the pre-code era.
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33
Books of Blood: Volume Three (Books of Blood #3)
Clive Barker
4.2
Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN 9780425093474
To a mortician, the preparation of a corpse is an art. The smooth, silent exchange of blood and embalming fluid is like a symphony to be orchestrated. The presentation of the deceased -- lying in a shining casket framed by flowers -- is an exquisitely composed tableau. And the burial itself is the magnificent climax to his craftsmanship. — Clive Barker also knows how to prepare a body for the grave.
He knows how to plunge his readers into unearthly depths, spiraling from dark horror to dizzying madness. He knows how to lower the body temperature to an icy chill -- and make the heart pound faster and faster.
Until it stops...
To a mortician, the preparation of a corpse is an art. The smooth, silent exchange of blood and embalming fluid is like a symphony to be orchestrated. The presentation of the deceased - lying in a shining casket framed by flowers - is an exquisitely composed tableau. And the burial itself is the magnificent climax to his craftsmanship.
Clive Barker also knows how to prepare a body for the grave.
He knows how to plunge his readers into the unearthly depths, spiraling from dark horror to dizzying madness. He knows how to lower the body temperature to an icy chill - and make the heart pound faster and faster.
This books includes the following stories:
(1) Son of Celluloid;
(2) Rawhead Rex;
(3) Confessions of a Pornographer's Shroud;
(4) Scape-Goats;
(5) Human Remains
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34
Dark Masques
J N Williamson
4.2
LOOK BEHIND THE MASQUES—IF YOU DARE…
Enter a shadowy realm where nothing—and no one—is as it appears. A place hidden from view, nestled in the darkest recesses of your mind, awaiting the perfect moment to reveal itself—only to scare you blind. In this collection of unforgettable horror stories, discover the terrifying truth as told by today’s greatest masters of the macabre—classic twisted tales that will reach out from the past and draw you into the depths of their darkness.
Prepare to enter a nightmarish reality in which seeing is disbelieving, your eyes can deceive you…and DARK MASQUES conceal the ultimate in terror….
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35
Books of Horror Community Anthology Vol. 1
RJ Roles, Justin M. Woodward, et al.
4.2
What flavor is your nightmare? Forty nine authors have come together to tell us theirs. Each story is unique in its horror but all should be read with the lights on and the shadows kept at bay, because some stories tend to stay with you even after the book is closed. From established authors, to people putting pen to paper for the first time. Books of Horror presents its inaugural Community Anthology.
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36
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
H.P. Lovecraft
4.2
This collection spans Lovecraft’s literary career, and charts the development of his ‘cosmicist’ philosophy; the belief that behind the veil of our blinkered everyday lives lies another reality, too terrible for the human mind to comprehend. In stories written in the gothic tradition, narrators recount their descent into madness and despair. Through their investigations into the unexplained, they tug at the thin threads that separate our world from another of indescribable horror. ‘“ Great God! I never dreamed of THIS!”’ screams occultist Harley Warren in ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter’, as he begs his companion to bury him alive. Another early piece, ‘The Outsider’ – a tragic and emotive evocation of loneliness and desolation – follows a man’s escape from his castle in a desperate search for human contact, but the loathsome truth he discovers destroys his mind.
In later tales, such as the iconic ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ and ‘The Whisperer in Darkness’, Lovecraft reaches into the cosmos, bridging the divide between horror and science fiction. The extra-terrestrial ‘gods’ and cursed histories that would emerge from these stories now form the cornerstones of Lovecraft’s unique mythology: the Cthulhu Mythos. This fictional universe, built in large part by his friend and most ardent supporter August Derleth, has in the years since been reimagined in myriad forms, and continues to act as a haunted playground for countless illustrators, fans and authors.
This edition, based on its sister limited edition, marries Lovecraft’s best-known fiction with two modern masters of the macabre, the acclaimed artist Dan Hillier and author Alan Moore. In his beautifully crafted new preface, Moore finds Lovecraft at once at odds with and integral to the time in which he lived: ‘the improbable embodiment of an estranged world in transition’. Yet, despite his prejudices and parochialisms, he ‘possessed a voice and a perspective both unique in modern literature’.
Hillier’s six mesmerising, portal-like illustrations embrace the alien realities that lurk among the gambrel roofs of Lovecraft’s landscapes. By splicing Victorian portraits and lithographs with cosmic and Lovecraftian symbolism, each piece – like the stories themselves – pulls apart the familiar to reveal what lies beneath.
The edition itself shimmers with Lovecraft’s ‘unknown colours’, bound in purple and greens akin to both the ocean depths and mysteries from outer space. The cover is embossed with a mystical design by Hillier, while a monstrous eye stares blankly from the slipcase.
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The Reluctant Vampire (Argeneau, #15)
Lynsay Sands
4.2
Has this immortal finally met her match?
Rogue hunter Drina Argenis (from the Spanish side of the Argeneau family) has been many things in her years as an immortal, but bodyguard/babysitter to a teenage vampire is something new. There's an incentive, however: the other vampsitter, Harper Stoyan, may be Drina's life mate.
Trouble is, having just lost a life mate, Harper is resigned to being alone. He's completely unprepared when sexy and unpredictable Drina bursts into his life to reignite his passions. Can Drina, with a little matchmaking help from their teen charge, tempt this reluctant vampire to take a chance?
Or will a dangerous, unseen renegade kill Drina and Harper's one chance at happiness?
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38
Vampire Chronicles: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned (Anne Rice)
Anne Rice, F. Murray Abraham, Michael York, Kate Nelligan, David Purdham
4.2
The ornate, casket-like packaging and neogothic graphic design of this immortal trilogy is eerily enticing on its own. But just lift the lid, slide the first tape from its ghostly sleeve, and you'll soon embrace the hypnotic realm of the undead.
Book 1, Interview with the Vampire, opens with the seductive purr of F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) stating, "I was a 25-year-old man when I became a vampire, and the year was 1791." And so our ultimate antihero, Louis, begins the elaborate retelling of his long, tortured life as a vampire. Winding through the ages, from New Orleans to Paris, we follow Louis and his undying mentor, Lestat, as they feed on humans, whet their carnal appetites, and uncover an underworld of vampire brethren.
Interview with the Vampire, read by F.Murray Abraham Running time: 3 hours on 2 Audio Cassettes
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Book 2, The Vampire Lestat, brings us up to date, with Lestat waking from his earthen slumber to join the ranks of rock superstardom before sitting down to share the tale of his own haunting initiation into the vampire world. Michael York (Cabaret) puts his wonderfully fluid, cosmopolitan voice to good use, adding a dash of sly humor to this fast-paced, satisfying blend of sex and blood and rock and roll.
The Vampire Lestat, read by Michael York Running time: 3 hours on 2 Audio Cassettes
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Book 3, The Queen of the Damned, takes us back, all the way back to ancient Egypt, exposing the origins of the vampire way. Narrating in eerily serene and gracious tones, Kate Nelligan (The Prince of Tides) leads us gently down this bloody path of immortal desires. David Purdham gives the voice of Lestat a wistful quality, tinged with an evil relish that exposes the master vampire's sanguine tastes.
Queen of the Damned, read by Kate Nelligan and David Purdham Running time: 3 hours on 2 Audio Cassettes
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Anne Rice has continued her Vampire Chronicles beyond these three novels, but that shouldn't make this collection any less tempting to either the undead initiate or certified vampire junkie. --George Laney
Total: 6 Audio Cassettes / 9 hours
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39
Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
Ray Bradbury
4.2
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40
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
4.2
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.
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41
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural
Saralee Kaye, Marvin Kaye
4.1
A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.
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42
MONOGATARI Series Box Set, Season 2
NISIOISIN
4.1
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43
Borderlands 1
Thomas F. Monteleone
4.1
Borderlands is a horror anthology series not concerned with traditional elements of horror fiction. Borderlands is about breaking the mold and pushing the genre and its finest writers to the edge. Hailed as the anthology series of the 90s, Borderlands will remind you that horror can indeed be horrific. Read about a farmer who disdains his wife for a giant potato...women's clothing made from fetal tissue..an executive who slowly slips into the reality he sells...and more.
CONTENTS 'Introduction' -- Thomas F. Monteleone "The Calling" -- David B. Silva "Scartaris, June 28th" -- Harlan Ellison "Glass Eyes" -- Nancy Holder "The Grass of Remembrance" -- John DeChancie "On the Nightmare Express" -- Francis J. Malozzo "The Pounding Room" -- Bentley Little "Peeling It Off" -- Darrell Schweitzer "The Raw and the Cooked" -- Michael Green "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" -- Poppy Z. Brite "Oh What a Swell Guy Am I" -- Jeffrey Osier "Delia and the Dinner Party" -- John Shirley "Suicide Note" -- Lee Moler "Stillborn" -- Nina Kiriki Hoffman "Ladder" -- T.E.D. Klein "Muscae Volitantes" -- Chet Williamson "The Man in the Long Black Sedan" -- Ed Gorman "His Frozen Heart" -- Jack Hunter Daves Jr. "Evelyn Grace" -- Thomas Tessier "By The Light of the Silvery Moon" -- Les Daniels "A Younger Woman" -- John Maclay "But You'll Never Follow Me" -- Karl Edward Wagner "Stephen" -- Elizabeth Massie "Alexandra" -- Charles L. Grant "The Good Book" -- G. Wayne Miller "By Bizarre Hands" -- Joe R. Lansdale
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44
Strange Highways
Dean Koontz
4.1
Back by popular demand is the hardcover edition of this classic collection of novels, novellas, and short stories, now specially priced. This is Koontz's spellbinding collection of takes interconnected by the strange highways of human experience: adventures, terrors, failures and triumphs.
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45
Hellboy Omnibus Volume 1: Seed of Destruction
Mike Mignola
4.1
The story jumps from Hellboy's mysterious World War II origin to his 1994 confrontation with the man who summoned him to earth, and the earliest signs of the plague of frogs. Avoiding his supposed fate as the herald of the end of the world, Hellboy continues with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, fighting alongside Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and drafting Roger Homunculus into his own ill-fated service with the B.P.R.D. This 368-page volume covers Hellboy’s adventures from 1994 to 1997, reprinting Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil, and “Wolves of St August,” “The Chained Coffin,” and “Almost Colossus,” from The Chained Coffin and The Right Hand of Doom.
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The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
4.1
Explore the marvelous complexity of Lovecraft's writing—including his use of literary allusions, biographical details, and obscure references in this rich, in-depth exploration of great horror fiction from the acknowledged master of the weird, including the stories "Herbert West—Reanimator", "Pickman's Model", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Thing on the Doorstep", "The Horror at Red Hook" and more.
Did Lovecraft believe in ghosts or paranormal phenomena? In what story does the narrator fear riding the Boston T?
A pathfinder in the literary territory of the macabre, H.P. Lovecraft is one of America's giants of the horror genre. Now, in this second volume of annotated tales, Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon provide another rare opportunity to look into the mind of a genius. Their extensive notes lift the veil between real events in the writer's life—such as the death of his father—and the words that spill out onto the page in magnificent grotesquerie. Mansions, universities, laboratories, and dank New England boneyards appear also as the haunts where Lovecraft's characters confront the fabulous and fantastic, or—like the narrator in "Herbert West—Reanimator"—dig up fresh corpses.
Richly illustrated and scrupulously researched, this extraordinary work adds exciting levels of meaning to Lovecraft's chilling tales . . . and increases our wonder at the magic that transforms life into a great writer's art.
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47
Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2)
Laini Taylor
4.1
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.
This is not that world.
Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.
In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.
While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.
But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?
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48
Welcome to the Show
Brian Keene, John Skipp, et al.
4.1
17 horror Stories. One legendary music venue.
We all know the old cliché: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now, add demons, other dimensions, monsters, revenge, human sacrifice, and a dash of the truly inexplicable. This is the story of the (fictional) San Francisco music venue, The Shantyman.
In Welcome to the Show, seventeen of today's hottest writers of horror and dark fiction come together in devilish harmony to trace The Shantyman's history from its disturbing birth through its apocalyptic encore.
Featuring stories by Brian Keene, John Skipp, Mary SanGiovanni, Robert Ford, Max Booth III, Glenn Rolfe, Matt Hayward, Bryan Smith, Matt Serafini, Kelli Owen, Jonathan Janz, Patrick Lacey, Adam Cesare, Alan M Clark, Somer Canon, Rachel Autumn Deering and Jeff Strand.
Compiled by Matt Hayward. Edited by Doug Murano.
Bring your curiosity, but leave your inhibitions at the door. The show is about to begin…
TOC:
Alan M Clark – What Sort of Rube Jonathan Janz – Night and Day and in Between John Skipp – In the Winter of No Love Patrick Lacey – Wolf with Diamond Eyes Bryan Smith – Pilgrimage Rachel Autumn Deering – A Tongue like Fire Glenn Rolfe – Master of Beyond Matt Hayward – Dark Stage Kelli Owen – Open Mic Night Matt Serafini – Beat on the Past Max Booth III – True Starmen Somer Canon – Just to be Seen Jeff Strand – Parody Robert Ford – Ascending Adam Cesare – The Southern Thing Brian Keene – Running Free Mary SanGiovanni – We Sang in Darkness
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
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49
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
Paula Guran
4.1
For more than eighty years H.P. 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.
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50
I Shudder at Your Touch
Michele Slung
4.1
There is no sexual act that is not dangerous...
And every caress, no matter how innocent, has the power to open our lives to the dark mysteries of desire, the places where outrageous fantasies and fears are held in check.
Held in check, that is, until it occurs to such supremely talented manipulators of the macabre as Stephen King, Ruth Rendell, Clive Barker, or Patrick McGrath, to let them loose, turning our erotic anxieties into art. Here are gathered the best of their chilling, thrilling, upsetting, and unsettling experiments with our sexual psyches. And rest assured, flesh will tingle--but whether from horror or pleasure or a bit of both, we'll leave you to judge.
From its opening pages, with King's blackly humorous portrait of a very, very mad housewife to its conclusion, where we find Barker's wholly shocking tale of a deadly quest into the heart of passion, I Shudder at Your Touch brings you a host of kinky, perverse, bizarre and creepy figures. You'll find a cricket-playing vampire, a sleek sea creature likely to give mermaids a bad name, a strangely seductive handyman who's equally adept at knocking down apartment walls and female inhibitions, and a plastic religious statue offering X-rated enlightenment from its perch atop the family TV.
I Shudder at Your Touch features 22 daring writers who prefer to go too far, writers whose every tale will have you fighting back a scream...and a cry of delight.
Contents: The revelations of 'Becka Paulson / Stephen King -- Sea lovers / Valerie Martin -- Psychopomp / Haydn Middleton -- A glowing future / Ruth Rendell -- The tiger returns to the mountain / T.L. Parkinson -- Consanguinity / Ronald Duncan -- Keeping house / Michael Blumlein -- The Villa Desiree / May Sinclair -- Cleave the vampire, or, a gothic pastorale / Patrick McGrath -- The swords / Robert Aickman -- Salon Satin / Carolyn Banks -- How love came to Professor Guildea / Robert Hichens -- Wings / Harriet Zinnes -- The Basilisk / R. Murray Gilchrist -- A quarter past you / Jonathan Carroll -- The master builder / Christopher Fowler -- Festival / Eric McCormack -- Ladies in waiting / Huch B. Cave -- Death and the single girl / Thomas M. Disch -- Master / Angela Carter -- The conqueror worm / Stephen R. Donaldson -- Jacqueline Ess: her will and testament / Clive Barker
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51
The Dark at the End of the Tunnel
Taylor Grant, Gene O'Neill
4.1
This Bram Stoker Award nominated collection features ten gripping and darkly imaginative stories by Bestselling author Taylor Grant, a rising star in the suspense and horror genres.
Discover what happens when:
- A wealthy industrialist awakens after ten years in suspended animation, and finds out that the horrors of the past can never be left behind.
- A lonely man realizes that he’s gradually vanishing from existence, into a nightmarish limbo of his own making.
- An author stumbles upon an incomplete manuscript by his deceased father, and makes the grave mistake of trying to complete the story.
- A woman learns that the imaginary voices that haunt the delusional and criminally insane are, in fact, real.
This remarkable collection of short fiction exposes the terrors that hide beneath the surface of our ordinary world, behind people’s masks of normalcy, and lurking in the shadows at the farthest reaches of the universe.
“A master class in storytelling…one of the best collections of the last ten years." – Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award Winner, Dead City, The Dead Won't Die
“… so full of talent and commitment, that it is an inspiration.” – Dennis Etchison, Two-time World Fantasy Award Winner, The Dark Country
“A bold and unsettling new voice in suspense and horror.” – Scott Nicholson, Bestselling thriller author, The Red Church
"… a cornucopia of horror from a master of the genre!" – Tim Waggoner, Eat The Night, The Way of All Flesh
“…written with the precise-concise language of a poet. Each story has an almost perfect closure….” – Gene O’Neill, Bram Stoker Award Winner, The Cal Wild Chronicles, The Hitchhiking Effect
"Grant is a writer who never fails to engage. Frankly, his stories frighten me…” – Christopher Ransom, International Bestselling Author, The Birthing House, The Fading
“…beautifully crafted tales… a depth and humanity of which we all can relate.” – John Claude Smith, Riding the Centipede, Autumn in the Abyss
“As classic, elegant, deadly effective and efficient as a switchblade.” – John Palisano, Bram Stoker Award Finalist, Dust of the Dead, Nerves
“A master at balancing pure dread, raw untethered emotion, and brilliant characters.” – Robert S. Wilson, Bram Stoker Award nominated editor, author of Empire of Blood series.
“Grant picks away at your worst fears…the bogeyman finally has a name...” – David Owain Hughes, Walled In, White Walls and Straightjackets
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52
HELL HOUR: A Horror Anthology
Mike Salt, Tyler Derber, et al.
4.1
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53
The Collection
Bentley Little
4.1
Called the Master of the Macabre by Stephen King, the Bram Stoker Award winner presents his first collection of short stories. Features 32 of his best horror stories, including four brand-new stories. (June)
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54
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
Neil Gaiman
4.1
In the deft hands of Neil Gaiman, magic is no mere illusion... and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders -- a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under "Pest Control," and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks. Explore a new reality -- obscured by smoke and darkness, yet brilliantly tangible -- in this extraordinary collection of short works by a master prestidigitator. It will dazzle your senses, touch your heart, and haunt your dreams.
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55
Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
Richard Matheson
4.1
Remember that monster on the wing of the airplane? William Shatner saw it on The Twilight Zone, John Lithgow saw it in the movie-even Bart Simpson saw it. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination.
Here are more than twenty of Matheson's most memorable tales of fear and paranoia, including:
"Duel," the nail-biting tale of man versus machines that inspired Steven Spielberg's first film;
"Prey," in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent Tiki doll, as chillingly captured in yet another legendary TV moment;
"Blood Son," a disturbing portrait of a strange little boy who dreams of being a vampire;
"Dress of White Silk," a seductively sinister tale of evil and innocence.
Personally selected by Richard Matheson, the bestselling author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come, these and many other stories, more than demonstrate why he is rightfully regarded as one of the finest and most influential horror writers of our generation.
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56
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
4.1
“Wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty….A Valentine from hell.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times
The publication of Joe Hill’s beautifully textured, deliciously scary debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was greeted with the sort of overwhelming critical acclaim that is rare for a work of skin-crawling supernatural terror. It was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Atlanta magazine, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Village Voice, to name but a few. Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Neil Gaiman of The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and Anansi Boys fame calls Joe Hill’s story of a jaded rock star haunted by a ghost he purchased on the internet, “relentless, gripping, powerful.” Open this Heart-Shaped Box from two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Hill if you dare and see what all the well-deserved hoopla is about.
Aging death-metal rock legend Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals...a used hangman's noose...a snuff film. But nothing he possesses is as unique or as dreadful as his latest purchase off the Internet: a one-of-a-kind curiosity that arrives at his door in a black heart-shaped box...a musty dead man's suit still inhabited by the spirit of its late owner. And now everywhere Judas Coyne goes, the old man is there—watching, waiting, dangling a razor blade on a chain from his bony hand.
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57
Strange Weather
Joe Hill
4.1
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58
Joyland
Stephen King
4.1
Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.
Joyland is a brand-new novel and has never previously been published.
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59
Worst Laid Plans: an Anthology of Vacation Horror
Samantha Kolesnik
4.1
A fateful family trip to an amusement park. An island movie theater that takes more than the patrons' cash. A cross-country drive with an unexpected encounter. A family man hellbent on making great time, no matter the cost.
Fourteen horror authors share terrifying and twisted tales of summer vacation gone wrong in Worst Laid Plans: an Anthology of Vacation Horror.
This anthology includes stories by V. Castro, Hailey Piper, Patrick Lacey, Scott Cole, Laura Keating, Malcolm Mills, Jeremy Herbert, S. E. Howard, Chad Stroup, Kenzie Jennings, Waylon Jordan, Greg Sisco, Asher Ellis, and Mark Wheaton, as well as a special introduction by Sadie Hartmann.
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60
Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories
Ray Russell and Guillermo del Toro
4.1
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story 'Sardonicus', considered by Stephen King to be 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written', to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. These stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.
Haunted Castles
Haunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of 'Sardonicus', 'Sanguinarius', and 'Sagittarius'. The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, perverted, and completely entrancing, Russell's Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful. RAY RUSSELL was born in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, and served in the United States Air Force during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and eventually joined the editorial staff at Playboy, where he published such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Robert Bloch, and Charles Beaumont. His best-known work, 'Sardonicus', was called by Stephen King 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written'. He died in Los Angeles in 1999.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer, most famous for his Academy Award-winning film,Pan's Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received the Nebula, Hugo, and Bram Stoker awards and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.
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61
Perchance to Dream
Charles Beaumont, William Shatner, Ray Bradbury
4.1
The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner
It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone—for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.
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Fallen Angels
Walter Dean Myers
4.1
An exciting, eye-catching repackage of acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers' bestselling paperbacks, to coincide with the publication of SUNRISE OVER FALLUJA in hardcover.
A coming-of-age tale for young adults set in the trenches of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, this is the story of Perry, a Harlem teenager who volunteers for the service when his dream of attending college falls through. Sent to the front lines, Perry and his platoon come face-to-face with the Vietcong and the real horror of warfare. But violence and death aren't the only hardships. As Perry struggles to find virtue in himself and his comrades, he questions why black troops are given the most dangerous assignments, and why the U.S. is there at all.
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63
Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
Brian Lumley
4.1
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64
The Vampire Archives 1-3: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published
Otto Penzler (editor)
4.1
The Vampire Archives is the biggest, hungriest, undeadliest collection of vampire stories, as well as the most comprehensive bibliography of vampire fiction ever assembled. Dark, stormy, and delicious, once it sinks its teeth into you there’s no escape.
Vampires! Whether imagined by Bram Stoker or Anne Rice, they are part of the human lexicon and as old as blood itself. They are your neighbors, your friends, and they are always lurking. Now Otto Penzler—editor of the bestselling Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps—has compiled the darkest, the scariest, and by far the most evil collection of vampire stories ever. With over eighty stories, including the works of Stephen King and D. H. Lawrence, alongside Lord Byron and Tanith Lee, not to mention Edgar Allan Poe and Harlan Ellison, The Vampire Archives will drive a stake through the heart of any other collection out there.
Other contributors include: Arthur Conan Doyle • Ray Bradbury • Ambrose Bierce • H. P. Lovecraft • Harlan Ellison • Roger Zelazny • Robert Bloch • Clive Barker
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Hellbound Hearts
Paul Kane, Marie O'Regan, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Mike Mignola, Kelley Armstrong, Barbie Wilde
4.1
Clive Barker's iconic masterpiece The Hellbound Heart, the novella adapted into the film Hellraiser, unleashed a new mythology of horror, brilliantly conceived and born of the darkest imagination. Now, enter this visionary world - the merciless realm of the demonic Cenobites - in this collection of stories inspired by The Hellbound Heart.
Featured here is the graphic work "Wordsworth," from bestselling author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean, who unlock an explicit way to violate innocence - one torturous puzzle at a time.... New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong logs on to a disturbing website for gamers, where the challenge is agonizing, and the solution beyond painful. When his father disappears, an Oxford student returns to his family's mansion, where a strange mechanism in the cellar holds a curious power, in a haunting illustrated work by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola.
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66
Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales
Stephen King
4.1
The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet," King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade.
"Riding the Bullet," published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In "Lunch at the Gotham Café," a sparring couple's contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d' gets out of sorts. "1408," the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards" or "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn't kill him, he won't be writing about ghosts anymore. And in "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French," terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.
Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything's Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.
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67
Shallow Waters Vol.1: A Flash Fiction Anthology
CrystalLake Publishing, Mercedes M. Yardley, et al.
4.1
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68
Unholy Trinity: The Complete Series
Crystal Ash
4.1
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69
The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #4)
Laurell K. Hamilton
4.1
Anita has fallen for the leader of a local pack of werewolves. She's survived a lot, but this love thing may kill her yet.
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70
Lingering Things and Other Dark Tales: A Horror Anthology
Dana Noraas and Dave Dick
4.1
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71
Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror
Jeff Gelb, Lonn Friend
4.1
Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell and other masters of the macabre take readers into their private world of fear, fantasy, and fatal attraction--in 24 tales of dread and debauchery, riveting stories of sex and terror . . . the fresh fusion that is fast becoming America's obsession.
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72
Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Volume 1
Mike Mignola
4.1
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73
Full Dark, No Stars
Stephen King
4.0
"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922." the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.
In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.
"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.
When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitely ends a good marriage.
Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form. (front flap)
Contains: 1922 Big Driver A Fair Extension A Good Marriage
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74
Tales of the Lost, Volume 1: We all Lose Something!
Stephen Graham Jones, Tim Waggoner, et al.
4.0
We all lose something… We lose many things during our time in this universe. From the moment we are born we start losing time, and loss becomes a part of our life from the beginning. We lose friends (both imaginary and real), loved ones, pets, and family. We gain stuff and lose stuff, from our socks to our money. We can lose our hope, sanity, passions, our mind, and perhaps even our soul! In the end when death finds us, we end up losing everything... Don’t we?
Tales of the Lost takes a dark look at the things we lose and the ghosts we struggle with. Featuring haunting stories from critically acclaimed masters of horror F. Paul Wilson, Tim Waggoner, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, David Wellington, Lee Murray, Stephen Graham Jones, Jess Landry, John Palisano, Chris Mason, Paul Moore, Eric J. Guignard, Jeff Strand, Ben Monroe, Christina Sng, and Kevin J. Anderson. With an introduction by S.G. Browne and a specially commissioned cover by Francois Vaillancourt. Also featuring interior artwork from horror master Luke Spooner!
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75
Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell
Nathan Ballingrud
4.0
A gripping collection of six stories of terror—including the novella “The Visible Filth,” the basis for the upcoming major motion picture—by Shirley Jackson Award–winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado—“one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there” (The Verge).
In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.
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76
By Bizarre Hands
Joe R. Lansdale, Joe R. Landsdale
4.0
WARNING: THIS BOOK MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. But if you've got a taste for bone-chilling, gut-wrenching terror that brilliantly tests the limits of human endurance, then Joe R. Lansdale is your man. In his first collection of short stories, the gruseome and outrageous cult classic "The Drive-In" pilots a wildly thrilling, violent and vivid roller coaster ride to Hell and beyond...plumbing the eerie depths of his remarkable imagination to create horrors unique and unsettling - dark products of twisted genius that weave the grisly fabric of nightmares. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! (back cover copy)
CONTENTS Fish Night The Pit Duck Hunt By Bizarre Hands The Steel Valentine I Tell You It's Love Letters From The SOuth, Two Moons South Of Nacogdoches Boys Will Be Boys The Fat Man And The Elephant Hell Through A Windshield Down By The Sea Near The Great Big Rock Trains Not Taken Tight Little Stitches In A Dead Man's Back The Windstorm Passes Night They Missed The Horror Show On The Far Side Of The Cadillac Desert With Dead Folk
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77
Terror in the Shadows: Volumes 1-3 (Terror in the Shadows, #1-3)
Scare Street, Ron Ripley, et al.
4.0
Too much terror to contain…
Shadows reach out with darkened claws. The floorboards creek as your greatest fears stalk the halls. And no matter how much you tell yourself it is just a dream, you know the truth. Evil hides in the darkness. And now, it has finally been unleashed…
Scare Street gathers volumes 1 to 3 of Terror in the Shadows in a single edition. Over thirty tales stalk the pages of this macabre collection. And just when you think you’ve experienced the most chilling horror of all, a new story unfolds within this massive tome of fear.
A shiver runs down your spine. You break out in a cold sweat, as the wind whispers outside. You know you should shut the window and lock the doors. But you’re frozen by fear.You’re trapped within a nightmare, as a new tale begins… and there’s no escape in sight.
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78
Novels & Stories: The Lottery / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle / Other Stories and Sketches
Shirley Jackson
4.0
“The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable,” writes A. 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 twentieth 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.
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79
The Best Horror of the Year Volume One
Ellen Datlow
4.0
An Air Force Loadmaster is menaced by strange sounds within his cargo; a man is asked to track down a childhood friend... who died years earlier; doomed pioneers forge a path westward as a young mother discovers her true nature; an alcoholic strikes a dangerous bargain with a gregarious stranger; urban explorers delve into a ruined book depository, finding more than they anticipated; residents of a rural Wisconsin town defend against a legendary monster; a woman wracked by survivor's guilt is haunted by the ghosts of a tragic crash; a detective strives to solve the mystery of a dismembered girl; an orphan returns to a wicked witch's candy house; a group of smugglers find themselves buried to the necks in sand; an unanticipated guest brings doom to a high-class party; a teacher attempts to lead his students to safety as the world comes to an end around them...
What frightens us, what unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw is tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the twenty-one stories and poems included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year.
Legendary editor Ellen Datlow (Poe: New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe), winner of multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, joins Night Shade Books in presenting The Best Horror of the Year, Volume One.
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The White People and Other Weird Stories
Arthur Machen, S. T. Joshi, Guillermo del Toro
4.0
Machen's weird tales of the creepy and fantastic finally come to Penguin Classics. With an introduction from S.T. Joshi, editor of American Supernatural Tales, The White People and Other Weird Stories isthe perfect introduction to the father of weird fiction. The title story "The White People" is an exercise in the bizarre leaving the reader disoriented and on edge. From the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside-down, as his character Ambrose explains, "there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an 'ill deed'" setting the stage for a tale entirely without logic.
Machen was one of the first great British writers of supernatural horror fiction. He was Welsh, and wrote in the 1890s and early 20th century. He conveyed a sense of spiritual dread in a way that nobody had before. I think his greatest story is “The White People”, which is mostly in the form of an adolescent girl’s diary. Nothing is directly shown. The surface of this story is absolutely innocent, and yet the implications are quite terrifying. [source]
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81
Shudder Again: 22 Tales of Sex and Horror
Michele Slung
4.0
The follow-up to the nationwide bestseller I Shudder at Your Touch. Here are 22 sensually scary stories from authors such as Ramsey Campbell, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and more. Follow their unflinching imaginations deep into the heart of darkness . . . if you dare.
1 • Aphra • (1993) • short story by Nancy A. Collins [as by Nancy Collins] 18 • Eye of the Lynx • [The Nyctalops Trilogy • 3] • (1983) • short story by Thomas Ligotti 29 • Heavy Set • (1964) • short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of Heavy-Set) 40 • Mr. Wrong • (1975) • novelette by Elizabeth Jane Howard 77 • The Runaway Lovers • (1967) • short story by Ray Russell 90 • The First Time • (1993) • short story by David Kuehls 105 • The Ceremony • (1897) • short story by Arthur Machen 110 • The Nature of the Evidence • (1923) • short story by May Sinclair 123 • The Face of Helene Bournouw • (1960) • short story by Harlan Ellison 134 • A Host of Furious Fancies • (1980) • short story by J. G. Ballard 149 • When the Red Storm Comes: Or, The History of a Young Lady's Awakening to Her Nature • (1993) • short story by Sarah Smith 165 • Ravissante • (1968) • novelette by Robert Aickman 196 • A Birthday (revised) • (1987) • short story by Lisa Tuttle 210 • The Crooked Man • (1955) • short story by Charles Beaumont 221 • On the Lake of Last Wishes • (1993) • short story by Claudia O'Keefe 238 • Again • (1981) • short story by Ramsey Campbell 251 • Kin to Love • (1935) • short story by T. H. White 263 • Same Time, Same Place • (1963) • short story by Mervyn Peake 274 • The Model • (1975) • short story by Robert Bloch 284 • Silver Circus • (1927) • short story by A. E. Coppard 297 • Honeymoon • (1931) • short story by Clement Wood 306 • The Parasite • (1894) • novella by Arthur Conan Doyle 354 • Notes on the Authors • (1993) • essay by Michele Slung
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82
Gleefully Macabre Tales
Jeff Strand and Andy Barke
4.0
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83
The Best of Cemetery Dance. Volume 1 & 2 Omnibus
Richard Chizmar
4.0
11 • Introduction (The Best of Cemetery Dance) • essay by Richard Chizmar 29 • Chattery Teeth • (1992) • novelette by Stephen King 61 • The Box • (1994) • short story by Jack Ketchum 73 • Haceldama • (1993) • novelette by Gary A. Braunbeck 109 • The Pig Man • (1993) • short story by Augustine Funnell 125 • Mobius • (1987) • short story by Richard Christian Matheson 129 • The Rendering Man • (1994) • short story by Douglas Clegg 147 • Weight • (1994) • short story by Dominick Cancilla 159 • Layover • (1991) • short story by Ed Gorman 169 • Johnny Halloween • (1992) • short story by Norman Partridge 181 • Hope • (1993) • short story by Steve Bevan 187 • The Mailman • (1988) • short story by Bentley Little 197 • Silhouette • (1996) • short story by Stephen Mark Rainey 215 • Roadkill • (1991) • short story by Tom Elliott 221 • The Rifle • (1995) • short story by Jack Ketchum 233 • Pieces • (1992) • short story by Ray Garton 237 • Rustle • (1993) • short story by Peter Crowther 255 • When the Silence Gets Too Loud • (1995) • short story by Brian Hodge 269 • The Rabbit • (1990) • short story by Jack Pavey 281 • The Flood • (1986) • short story by John Maclay 287 • The Right Thing • (1994) • short story by Gary L. Raisor [as by Gary Raisor] 305 • Pig's Dinner • (1991) • short story by Graham Masterton 317 • Crash Cart • (1993) • short story by Nancy Holder 329 • Wall of Words • (1994) • short story by Lucy Taylor 337 • Metastasis • (1990) • short story by David B. Silva 349 • Wrapped Up • (1981) • short story by Ramsey Campbell 357 • Depth of Reflection • (1990) • short story by David L. Duggins 369 • The Mole • (1990) • short story by David Niall Wilson 375 • Saviour • (1991) • short story by Gary A. Braunbeck 391 • Great Expectations • (1990) • short story by Kim Antieau 397 • Shell • (1992) • short story by Adam Corbin Fusco 403 • Eater • (1995) • novelette by Peter Crowther 425 • Tyrannosaurus • (1994) • short story by Norman Partridge 429 • Vacation • (1994) • short story by Matthew J. Costello [as by Matthew Costello] 447 • A Taste of Blood and Altars • [Steve and Ghost Universe] • (1988) • short story by Poppy Z. Brite 455 • Mr. God • (1993) • short story by Thomas Tessier 469 • Drive-In Date • (1991) • short story by Joe R. Lansdale 485 • Desert Pickup • (1970) • short story by Richard Laymon 491 • Fyodor's Law • (1994) • short story by William F. Nolan 501 • Five to Get Ready, Two to Go • (1996) • short story by Hugh B. Cave 515 • Secrets • (1991) • short story by Melanie Tem 525 • With the Wound Still Wet • (1991) • short story by Wayne Allen Sallee 529 • Plainclothes • (1991) • short story by Steve Rasnic Tem 541 • The Pattern • (1971) • short story by Bill Pronzini 549 • Seesaw • (1990) • short story by David L. Duggins 553 • Trial by Fire • (1992) • short story by Barry Hoffman 575 • Almost Never • (1991) • short story by Edward Lee 589 • Bloodline • (1990) • short story by Roman A. Ranieri 599 • Four-in-Hand • (1989) • short story by William Relling, Jr. 605 • The Cutty Black Sow • (1984) • short story by Thomas F. Monteleone 619 • The Liar's Mouth • (1993) • short story by Darrell Schweitzer 633 • Shattered Silver • (1990) • short story by James Kisner 651 • YSEX • (1991) • short story by Steven Spruill 675 • Mongrel • (1990) • short story by Steve Vernon 679 • The Winds Within • (1991) • short story by Ronald Kelly 695 • Crying Wolf • (1990) • short story by Rick Hautala 709 • Animal Rites • (1995) • short story by Jay Bonansinga [as by Jay R. Bonansinga] 719 • Easy's Last Stand • (1991) • short story by Nancy A. Collins 737 • A Christmas Story • (1992) • short story by James S. Dorr [as by James Dorr] 741 • Comes the Night Wind, Cold and Hungry • (1991) • novelette by Gene-Michael Higney (variant of Comes the Night Wind, Cold, And Hungry) [as by Gene Michael Higney] 769 • A Conversation with Dean Koontz • (1997) • interview of Dean R. Koontz • interview by Robert Morrish 783 • Afterword (The Best of Cemetery Dance) • essay by David B. Silva
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84
Splatter-Punks: The Definitive Anthology
Paul M. Sammon
4.0
Driven and Reckless, the young writers who lead the splatterpunk movement have one rule: "There are no limits". Editor Paul Sammon--himself a talented writer and moviemaker--has assembled the first and only book to emcompass this dynamic literary movement. Features the works of Edward Bryant, Craig Spector, Rex Miller, Clive Barker and more.
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85
Blue World
Robert McCammon
4.0
From the battlefields of a Vietnam veteran's memory to an old-time movie hero's search for a serial killer, from Halloween in a special town--where the rules of trick-or-treat are written in blood--to a Texas road where a wrong turn leads to a nest of evil, horror master McCammon is at his terrifying best in this collection of stories.
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86
Best New Horror 29
Stephen Jones, Ramsey Campbell, et al.
4.0
In this latest edition of the world's longest-running annual showcase of horror and dark fantasy you will find cutting-edge stories by such authors as Helen Marshall, Conrad Williams, Ramsey Campbell, Angela Slatter, Reggie Oliver and Thana Niveau, amongst many others, along with the usual Introduction: Horror in 2017 and Necrology of those who have left us.
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87
Terror in the Shadows (Terror in the Shadows, #1)
Scare Street, Ron Ripley, et al.
4.0
The dark can be a terrible, terrible place…
A young man’s attempts at breaking parole end in a night of horror. A child realizes his Christmas gift might be more sinister than he originally thought. An editor accidentally uncovers his client’s sinister plan to cleanse the world of all evil...
Scare Street’s roster of authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy and A. I. Nasser come together to bring you 10 of the most terrifying tales meant to chill you to your core.
So head over to your favorite reading spot, make yourself comfortable, and dive right in.
We promise that sleep will be the last thing on your mind.
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88
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay
4.0
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.
To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.
Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.
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89
Killers Inside: A Horror Anthology
Nicholas Catron, Brian Scutt, et al.
4.0
Cannibals, cultists, clowns and killers, things that go bump in the night and sacrificial rituals. Whether you like your horror freshly cut-up and still dripping blood, or stalking through the shadows, ready to jump out and grab you, you'll find what you're looking for inside. A macabre collection from some of the greatest up-and-coming horror authors, guaranteed to keep you glancing over your shoulder. If you don't lock your doors at night, you will after reading this. Enjoy, if you dare.
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90
The Best Horror of the Year Volume 11
Ellen Datlow
4.0
For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the tenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night.
Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as:
Neil Gaiman
Kim Stanley Robinson
Stephen King
Linda Nagata
Laird Barron
Margo Lanagan
And many others
With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today's most challenging and exciting writers.
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91
Cthulhu 2000
Various, Jim Turner
4.0
In Cthulhu 2000, a host of horror and fantasy's top authors captures the spirit of supreme supernatural storyteller H. P. Lovecraft--with eighteen chilling contemporary tales that would have made the master proud.
- The Barrens by F. Paul Wilson: In a tangled wilderness, unearthly lights lead the way to a world no human was meant to see. - His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood by Poppy Z. Brite: Two dabblers in black magic encounter a maestro of evil enchantment. - On the Slab by Harlan Ellison: The corpse of a one-eyed giant brings untold fortune--and unspeakable fear--to whoever possesses it. - Pickman's Modem by Lawrence Watt-Evans: Horror is a keystroke away, when an ancient evil lurks in modern technology.
PLUS FOURTEEN MORE BLOOD-CURDLING STORIES
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92
The New Lovecraft Circle
Robert M. Price, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Lin Carter, Brian Lumley
4.0
H. P. Lovecraft was the eerily prescient genius who first electrified readers in Weird Tales magazine. His tales changed the face of horror forever and inspired the bloodcurdling offerings of a new generation. These brilliant dark visionaries forge grisly trails through previously uncharted realms of mortal terror.
THE PLAIN OF SOUND by Ramsey Campbell: In the beginning they could find no source for the throbbing vibrations; in the end they could find no escape. THE HORROR ON THE BEACH by Alan Dean Foster: Along the coast of Santa Barbara, the mighty Pacific Ocean can no longer contain—or conceal—an ancient, insatiable evil stirring in its depths. THE KISS OF BUGG-SHASH by Brian Lumley: It mattered not how innocent the students’ motives seemed; the demon had been summoned, and the price had to be paid—every last red drop of it. THE FISHERS FROM OUTSIDE by Lin Carter: A man obsessed with unlocking the secrets of a race older than time would not be disappointed—doomed perhaps, devoured possibly, but definitely not disappointed.
AND TWENTY-ONE MORE TALES OF FEAR . . . THE STONE ON THE ISLAND by Ramsey Campbell THE STATEMENT OF ONE JOHN GIBSON by Brian Lumley DEMONIACAL by David Sutton THE SLITHERER FROM THE SLIME by H. P. Lowcraft THE DOOM OF YAKTHOOB by Lin Carter THE KEEPER OF THE FLAME by Gary Myers DEAD GIVEAWAY by J. Vernon Shea THOSE WHO WAIT by James Wade THE KEEPER OF DARK POINT by John Glasby THE BLACK MIRROR by John Glasby I’VE COME TO TALK WITH YOU AGAIN by Karl Edward Wagner THE HOWLER IN THE DARK by Richard L. Tierney THE WHISPERERS by Richard A. Lupoff LIGHTS! CAMERA! SHUB-NIGGURATH! by Richard A. Lupoff SAUCERS FROM YADDITH by Robert M. Price VASTARIEN by Thomas Ligotti THE MADNESS OUT OF SPACE by Peter H. Cannon ALIAH WARDEN by Roger Johnson THE LAST SUPPER by Donald R. Burleson THE CHURCH AT GARLOCK’S BEND by David Kaufman THE SPHERES BEYOND SOUND (THRENODY) by Mark Rainey
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93
What Monsters Do For Love - Part I: MONSTERS Volume 4
SOTEIRA PRESS
4.0
Cover unavailable
94
Freak Show (Horror Writers of America)
F. Paul Wilson
4.0
A collection of horror tales features the work of Brad Strickland, Gregory Nicoll, Rex Miller, Nancy Kilpatrick, Scott A. Cupp, Kathryn Ptacek, Douglas Borton, Morgan Fields, Richard Lee Byers, and others.
Cover unavailable
95
Best New Horror 20 (The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, #20)
Stephen Jones
4.0
This annual collection of exceptional horror and dark fantasy fiction stories is the essential must-have for horror buffs. The 20th edition of this showcase of horror includes a comprehensive overview of international selections, an impressively researched necrology, and a list of indispensable contact addresses for the dedicated horror fan and aspiring writer of true horror.
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96
The Bachman Books
Richard Bachman, Stephen King
4.0
Omnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was Bachman"
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97
Brain Cheese Buffet
Edward Jr. Lee
4.0
You've seen Cannibal Holocaust. You've seen Salo. You've seen Nekromantik. You ain't seen shit! Zombie prostitutes, religious rapists, horny werewolves, death by vomit, and sexual fetishes scraped off the sidewalk. From sex prisons to mafia torture chambers, hold on tight because you're about to enter the perverted and twisted mind of Edward Lee. Once you've seen what he has to show you - there's no coming back. Brain Cheese Buffet collects nine of Lee's most sought after tales of violence and body fluids. Featuring the Stoker nominated "Mr. Torso," the legendary gross-out piece "the Dritiphilist," the notorious "The McCrath Model SS40-C, Series S," and six more stories to test your gag reflex.
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98
Screaming for Pleasure: How Horror Makes You Happy And Healthy
S.A. Bradley
4.0
Horror has the gripping ability to captivate...and enthrall. It hooks you with unnerving stories of dread and evil, pushes your limits and pokes every phobia. Audiences love to be scared butbehind every muffled scream is something deeper and even more fascinating.
In Screaming for Pleasure, S.A. Bradley takes you on a wild journey exploring horror, where you'll discover what is so tantalizing about terror, including:
Rare insights about some of the greatest fright directors of all time, like David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro and John Carpenter, culled from hundreds of interviews. An in-depth look at 6 of the most impactful horror films by women directors, plus a list of over 15 women directors you should be watching now. Relive the most terrifying and shocking moments in horror film history with detailed breakdowns of over 100 films. Plus, you'll uncover how horror lets you peek in at what may be lurking within yourself.
Screaming for Pleasure thrills you with the beauty and depth of the horror genre, dissecting films, literature and music, that reveals how horror constantly reinvents itself and reflects the anxieties of each generation.
Whether you're frightened to watch scary movies alone or a horror obsessive, Screaming for Pleasure is the entertaining guide to help cinephiles of all types fall in love with horror again.
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99
Shadows 6
Charles L. Grant
4.0
Cover unavailable
100
Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard, Robert M. Price
4.0
Robert E. Howard is the world-renowned author of the Conan series and the stories that were the basis of the recent Kull movie. He also was one of H.P. Lovecraft's frequent correspondents, and an author of many pivotal Mythos tales. This book collects together all of Howard's Mythos tales, including the tales that originated Gol-Goroth, Unausspreclichen Kulten, and Friedrich Von Junzt. Included in this collections are several fragments left behind by Robert E. Howard which have been completed by a variety of authors.
This book has been long anticipated by readers of H.P. Lovecraft and Call of Cthulhu players alike.
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Recommended by Aaron Nagler.
