American Horror

Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Osira is considered blessed, but her luck changes when her children flee, she comes second to last in the Running of the Widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony.

The Dark Side is a narrative account of the decisions the U.S. made after September 11, decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, Jane Mayer relates specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of Washington, looking at the intelligence gained and the price paid. In all cases, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself.

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

Marisol vanished during the Cuban Revolution, disappearing with hardly a trace. Now, shaped by atrocities long-forgotten, her foul-mouthed spirit visits her nephew, Ramon, in modern-day New Jersey. Her hope: That her presence will prompt him to unearth their painful family history. Ramon launches a haphazard investigation into the story of his ancestor, unaware of the forces driving him on his search. Along the way, he falls in love, faces a run-in with a murderous gangster, and uncovers the lives of the lost saints who helped Marisol during her imprisonment.

Another terrifying, classic horror novel from best-selling author John Saul. An insidious madman haunts the peaceful town of Borrego, New Mexico. His goal is singular, as is the focus of his hate and rage. The teenagers of the town seem to have gone too far, and now he will strike back - while they sleep and even during their waking hours - and silence them forever.

Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawai'i seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho's Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.

The tattooed plus sign on Finnegan's hand marks him as a Positive. At any time the zombie virus could explode in his body, turning him from a rational human into a ravenous monster. His only chance of a normal life is to survive the last two years of the potential incubation period. If he reaches his 21st birthday without an incident, he'll be cleared.

There is a vampire war brewing in the underworld and at the center of it all is Damali Richards, spoken word artist and Vampire Huntress. But she is not just any Vampire Huntress, she is the millenium Neteru: a woman so potentially powerful that the vampire world is about to invoke a bloody battle that threatens to spill over onto her streets in order to possess her. It's just a matter of who will get to her first.

In Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death. It will be an expansive journey that will first send him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash.

Seventeen-year-old Farrah Turner is one of two Black girls in her country club community, and the only one with Black parents. Her best friend, Cherish Whitman, adopted by a white, wealthy family, is something Farrah likes to call WGS—White Girl Spoiled. With Brianne and Jerry Whitman as parents, Cherish is given the kind of adoration and coddling that even upper-class Black parents can’t seem to afford—and it creates a dissonance in her best friend that Farrah can exploit.

Best friends Anita and Rainie find refuge by an old sycamore tree with its neighboring lot of stray dogs who have a mysterious ability to communicate with humans. The girls learn that they are preceded by generations of dog-headed women and woman-headed dogs whose bloodlines bind them together. Anita convinces Rainie to become a dog with her, tying a collar of red string around each of their necks to preserve their kinship forever. But when the two girls are separated, Anita sinks into a dreamworld that only Rainie knows how to rescue her from.

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.

Known throughout Tennessee as "Old Kate", the Bell Witch took up residence with John Bell's family in 1818. It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to knocking and gnawing sounds before finding its own voices. With these voices and supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family. The extraordinary tale recounts the only documented case in U.S. History when a spirit "actually caused a man's death".

The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation's influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie.

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

The Conjure Woman is a collection of short stories by noted African American author Charles Waddell Chesnutt. It is considered to be one the seminal collections of African American literature.

It is 1659 and Mary Newbury, theyoung granddaughter of a witch, sees her wise and beloved grandmother tortured and hanged as a servant of the Devil. Then a stranger with hauntingly familiar eyes approaches her with an opportunity - safe passage to America. But the difficult ocean voyage only leads her to a community of inflexible, fearful grownups who try to decide for her who and what she will be. Mary must disguise herself as a pious Puritan girl, hiding her true nature, or else face terrible danger once again.

From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national - and even global - infamy. Here, writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother "40 whacks", where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation.

Carmen Sanchez is back in her home country of Mexico, overseeing the renovation of an ancient cathedral into a boutique hotel. Her teen daughters, Izel and Luna, are with her for the summer, and left to fill their afternoons unsupervised in a foreign city. The locals treat the Sanchez women like outsiders, while Carmen's contractors openly defy and sabotage her work. After a disastrous accident at the construction site nearly injures Luna, Carmen's had enough. They're leaving. Back home in New York, malevolent and unexplainable happenings seem to swarm the Sanchez family.