Dark Horror

Teenage delinquent Angel Crawford lives with her redneck father in the swamps of southern Louisiana. She's a high school dropout, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and has a police record a mile long. But when she's made into a zombie after a car crash, her addictions disappear, except for her all-consuming need to stay "alive".

The series takes place in a world similar to our own, but one where vampires, witches, werewolves, and shape-shifters live among humans without their knowledge. These supernatural races make up a secret society known as the Night World, which enforces two fundamental laws to prevent discovery: (1) Never allow humans to gain knowledge of the Night World's existence, and (2) Never fall in love with one of them.

On December 21, 2012, according to the Mayan Calendar, the world was supposed to end. It didn't. But on that day, 113 mysterious manuscripts were discovered around the world, each one written in blood by an unknown author. After several dozen unexplained deaths befell the finders of said manuscripts, a decision was made to lock them up for good in a secret vault beneath the Vatican. It is said that anyone who reads the stories will die, and as such they are now referred to as "The Cursed Manuscripts."

Amityville baywoman Ellie West fishes by day and bootlegs moonshine by night. It's dangerous work under Prohibition, but Ellie's desperate to see her brother go to college. So desperate that when wealthy strangers ask her to procure libations for an extravagant party, Ellie sells them everything she has, including some booze she acquired under unusual circumstances. What Ellie doesn't know is that this booze is special. Distilled from foul mushrooms by a cult of diabolists, those who drink it see terrible things - like the destruction of Long Island in fire and flood.

Occult investigator Quincey Morris and his "consultant", white witch Libby Chastain, are hired to free a family from a deadly curse that appears to date back to the Salem witch trials. Fraught with danger, the trail finds them stalking the mysterious occult underworlds of Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, searching out the root of the curse. After surviving a series of terrifying attempts on their lives, the two find themselves drawn inexorably towards Salem itself - and the very heart of darkness.

As a child, Henry Cadmus lived on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry's experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood... and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals... and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

What William Gibson did for science fiction, China Miéville has done for fantasy, shattering old paradigms with fiercely imaginative works of startling, often shocking, intensity. Now from this brilliant writer comes a groundbreaking collection of stories, many of them previously unavailable in the United States, and including four never-before-published tales - one set in Miéville’s signature fantasy world of New Crobuzon.

Elsabet or Elizabeth Bathory's life is notorious and, for the most part, known to history. What she's done since is another story altogether. Haunted by the crimes of her life and by her bloodfather, Vlad Dracula, Elsa seeks a life of her own in the New World. But her past will always catch up to her and she must face her demon.

Grumpy single dad seeks nanny...Her father tells me she’s mute. Except I catch her humming a lullaby. He’s a liar. Or she has everyone deceived. What possibly could a four-year-old be hiding? I really should have done a background check on him. Imagine my surprise when I discover my grumpy boss works for the mafia. I want to leave but he won’t let me. I’m his captive, forced to follow his rules and do as he demands.

After the initial series of summer blizzards, the snowfall has decreased, but the temperatures continue to drop, the icy wind still blows, and with each passing day, the darkness lasts longer and longer. It is in the darkness the monsters thrive. Confined to the lake house and having no communication with the outside world, Grady and the others live every day in fear, questioning what the future holds. Will the snow melt? Will the sun ever rise? Can the wraiths be defeated? But as the days turn to weeks, no answers come.

When Magpie discovers her own dead body one misty morning in Bristol, it prompts her to uncover the truth of her untimely demise. Her investigations take her on a terrifying journey through multiple realities, experimental treatments, technological innovations, and half-memories in a race against time and sanity. Accompanied by a new friend who is both familiar and strange, and constantly on the run from the terrifying relentless presence of the mysterious predator known only as Silhouette, Magpie must piece together the parts of her life previously hidden.

The Labyrinth - an interdimensional construct that binds all of reality together. Now, the Labyrinth is threatened. A group of malevolent cosmic entities, known as The Thirteen, have been loosed upon the universe. Ob, Leviathan, Behemoth, Nodens, Meeble, Shtar, Kandara and the rest of their kind have one goal: The complete destruction of all Creation. Seven unlikely warriors from across time and space have been called upon to stop them. If they fail, reality itself will crumble. And the collapse has already begun.

"Dancers in the Dark" is set in the Sookieverse and features Sean and Layla. Dancer Layla Rue Le May's childhood prepared her to handle just about anything, including her aloof partner, Sean McClendon, a 300-year-old, redheaded vampire. Even so, when she somehow acquires a stalker, Layla Rue is surprised to find that Sean is the only one she can trust.

Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales is the third volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume is made up of eight novella length stories. It includes Wellman's "Judge Pursivant" and "Sergeant Jaeger" stories, as well as a lost classic from Strange Stories (1939).

Feeling the weight of sustained injuries, Halm decides upon his future with the Ten, prompting a crippled Pig Knot to contemplate his own remaining days. And an act of vengeance drives Borchus into hiding. Within the underbelly of the Pit, arrangements are made to introduce Sunja’s most despised and dangerous criminals into the games, including a captured group of Nordish Jackals. Meanwhile, the House of Ten prepares for a day of blood matches—when the gladiator known as Junger is sure to become a legend.

Dorian Lake spent years cornering the Baltimore hex-crafting market, using his skills at the hermetic arts to exact karmic justice for those whom the system has failed. He keeps his magic clean and free of soul-corrupting Netherwork, thus avoiding both the karmic blow-back of his practice and the notice of the Presidium, a powerful cabal of practitioners that polices the esoteric arts in America.

The sequel to the best-selling Zombie, Ohio, this explosive supernatural thriller from Scott Kenemore tells the story of three Chicagoans who have been thrown together by a bizarre, interconnected series of events during the first 24 hours of a zombie outbreak in the Midwest's largest city. A partnership is crafted between a pastor from Chicago's rough South Side, an intrepid newspaper reporter, and a young female musician, all of whom are fighting for survival as they struggle to protect themselves and their communities in a city overrun with the walking dead.

Wellman’s work will be remembered, and should be preserved because it combines the dark gothic tradition of the American pulps with a detailed snapshot of regional history and culture. This mixture is shown through the lens of the American modernist tradition, revealing something that is larger than the sum of its parts.

Darkness, both literal and psychological, holds its own unique fascination. Despite our fears, or perhaps because of them, listeners have always been drawn to tales of death, terror, madness, and the supernatural, and no more so than today when a wildly imaginative new generation of dark dreamers is carrying on in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft and King, crafting exquisitely disturbing literary nightmares that gaze without flinching into the abyss - and linger in the mind long after.

The new ghost in Nathalie's head remembers who he was in life, providing Andrew and her with indisputable proof that he is real and not a figment of her imagination. Convinced that she is a Dormant, Andrew decides to go forward with his transition immediately after the rescue mission at the Doomers' HQ. Fearing for his life, Nathalie pleads with him to reconsider. She'd rather spend the rest of her mortal days with Andrew than risk what they have for the fickle promise of immortality.