Dark Ages Literature

Give your kids a fright! Haunted houses, prowling monsters, vengeful ghosts, and more are waiting for you. Inside you’ll find 35 original short scary stories for kids, including a room where everything is wrong and you can never leave, a forest guide who leads people on a walk they won’t forget, a monster dining in a graveyard, a ghost ship that hunts down treasure seekers, and a statue that comes to life—for a price. And many more! Just make sure you listen to these stories with the lights on.

The Saint of War spares the life of a servant girl so she can fulfill her destiny as the kingdom’s greatest warrior in this short story of love and loyalty by New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow.

The nomadic sled-city of Riika-Min glides endlessly along the icy tundra of Ghur, its denizens’ existence entwined with the rhythm of the realm. But something is disrupting the balance of the Realm of Beasts, and when a kraken suddenly attacks, Sigmar sends his master tracker, Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear, to hunt it down. In Riika-Min, Yndrasta meets Njda, trying to guide her people to safety. Njda is at once fearful and in awe of the golden-clad warrior from the sky, and soon learns how dangerous it can be to get between a hunter and her quarry.

Mallory is a freshman in college when she meets the woman. She sees her for the first time at the university’s gym, immediately entranced by this elegant, older person, whom she later learns is married and works at the school. Before long, they begin a clandestine affair. Self-possessed, successful, brilliant, and aloof, the woman absolutely consumes Mallory, who is still reeling from her mother’s death a few months earlier.

Tasked by the Eternal King to discover the identity of the killer cutting a bloody swath through the city, Samuel, Shan and mysterious Royal Blood Worker Isaac find themselves growing ever closer to each other. But Shan's plans are treacherous, and as she lures Samuel into her complicated web of desire, treason and vengeance, he must decide if the good of their nation is worth the cost of his soul.

Late one evening, en route to visit a relative, an accident leaves Tory - the attractive, twenty-something daughter of a prominent history professor – stranded near a ring of stones in Britain. Tory resolves to spend the night at the stone circle and seek help in the morning... But across the vortex of time and space, she is taken back to the Dark Age.

A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found.

High school is supposed to be about studying, socializing, and marching-band practice. Not fighting vampires. Then one night flipped my world inside out-now, my life sucks. But it isn't all bad. I'm at a slayer academy, learning things like the real origin of vamps and how to make serious weapons out of thin air. Every last one of them will pay for what they did. I'm doing great. Until I come face-to-face with the actual vampire prince.

Sally O'Malley made a promise to her daddy before he died. She swore she'd look after her sister, Troo. Keep her safe. But like her Granny always said, actions speak louder than words. And Sally would have to agree with her.

The Marchetti Mafia runs this town. My dad has been under their thumb for years as the Boss's personal consigliere. After facing death multiple times, he's now hanging on by a mere thread, and I worry the next injury will be his last. They always say once you join the family you're in it for life. Yet there may be a way out, but it'll cost me more than I ever imagined.

Published in rapid succession in the middle 1930s, these two books shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Celine's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction.

The world has gone to hell and it isn't coming back. It happened in a year: starvation, gangs of kids with guns, and every adult in the world dead from the sickness. Houses are now mausoleums. Civilization lies in the hands of children who've never had to feed themselves or survive a winter without gas or electricity. Most will die. Others - a bare few - will tread a different path.

Paragons of the Stormcast Eternals, the Hammers of Sigmar take stern pride in their motto: first to be forged, never to fail. But when rumours reach Hammerhal of an old foe rising in the wastelands of the Great Parch, three of these warriors will be tested to their limits – and grapple with their roles as members of this warrior elite. Ferant Tidebreaker, a recently forged Liberator, struggles with his sense of unworthiness as he is assigned to the Hammerhands.

Kieran Murphy is an Irish mob boss and one of the most powerful men in Boston. When he walks me home, people step aside out of respect for him. He could have any woman he wants. So why does he have eyes only for me? Is it how he has to lift my chin with his fingers to keep my eyes level with his when he scolds me and how I cover my bottom instinctively when he tells me that I've earned a spanking? Or is it how I quiver at the thought of everything I'm too ashamed to beg him to do to me? Maybe it's all of those, but I'm pretty sure there's something else too.

Niger, West Africa, 2074. When fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In a time of mind-blowing technology and seductive mysticism, Ejii embarks on a journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out—and with her own mystical ability. And then she discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a deeper purpose.

To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous 'Lanie' Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life. To make matters worse, family debt looms—a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor.

A thousand years ago, humanity’s greatest heroes killed God. Now, under the brutal rule of warrior-kings, the land of Helesia has fallen to chaos. Demons stalk the deep forests, monsters roam free of their prisons beneath the World Vein, and ancient terrors rise again. History is written in blood, but the future will be forged in holy fire… Renira Washer lives the dreary life of a laundry girl, dreaming of adventure.

Lace, white, everything frilly and pretty. The theme to Sara’s life used to be that of a princess, one she romanticized. But when her previously perfect world turned upside down, Sara became convinced that she was cursed. She hid herself in the shadows to spare others from the agony she brought along. The only person she could never hide from was her adopted brother.

As the only living child of Erius's dead sister, Prince Tobin is second in line to the Throne of Skala, but he is not what he seems. To protect him from the paranoid assasinations ordered by his uncle, the wizard Iya gave Tobin the appearence of his murdered twin brother at birth. But now, with the onset of puberty, Tobin has discovered his true identity - SHE the rightful heir to the throne.

I offered to do anything to save my father’s life when he was captured by the devil he owed a debt to. A three-million-dollar debt. So, I became the devil’s spy as I entered the lair of the Cartel King to take a job as a live-in nanny for his niece. My orders were simple; all I needed to do was this: get close to the Cartel King and be his...to do anything he wanted me to do. I was to make him trust me enough to tell me the secrets his enemies need. Do that, and I would save my father. I just never expected to fall in love.