Dark Horror

Mr. Hood's Holiday House has stood for 1,000 years, welcoming countless children into its embrace. It is a place of miracles and blissful rounds of treats and seasons, where every childhood whim may be satisfied.… There is a price to be paid, of course, but young Harvey Swick, bored with his life and beguiled by Mr. Hood's wonders, does not stop to consider the consequences. It is only when the House shows it's darker face - when Harvey discovers the pitiful creatures that dwell in its shadows - that he comes to doubt Mr. Hood's philanthropy.

On a snowy New Year's Eve, Fennrick negotiates one last hurrah in a seedy internet cafe, but at the stroke of midnight, he receives a tantalizing invitation: "You have been invited to join the Tutorial." And when presented with the available difficulty levels, he makes the obvious choice: Hell. Soon, Fennrick finds himself in frenzied, violent combat, and it's a toss-up as to which he'll lose first: his life or what little sanity he has left. With his criminal record, estranged family, and nonexistent future, he's ready to accept death.

Ruby Chen has always played the part of the dutiful eldest daughter: excelling in school; excelling in piano lessons; excelling at keeping her younger sister, Tina, focused on extracurriculars meant to impress college admissions officers. But when a ghost from the spirit world attacks Ruby in the middle of Vancouver’s Chinatown neighborhood, her life is plunged into a darkness that no amount of duty can free her from. Overnight, Ruby’s sister seems to change.

Growing up in Slater, Isadora Chang never felt at ease in the repressive small town, even before she realized she was bisexual—but after the deaths of two childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. So, Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too. Even though it meant leaving everything she knew behind, including her last surviving friend, Mason. When Isa’s abusive father dies, however, she agrees to come back from art school just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea.

The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows.

I played all those cool video games. I watched all those movies. I even read the books. In most of 'em, the hero shoots the bad guys, drives a sweet car, never gets hungry, and always seems to get laid by the end. Yeah. Whatever. I gotta be straight with you about why I wrote this journal, and it comes down to one thing, the apocalypse kinda sucks. It doesn’t meet my expectations at all.

For more than ten years, Diablo has been one of PC gaming’s iconic and blockbuster franchises, with millions of players experiencing to this day all the adventure and terror in the world of Sanctuary. Now, to tie-in with the long-awaited release of Blizzard Entertainment’s all-new game, Diablo III, the original novel Deckard Cain will bridge the untold story of one of Diablo’s most popular characters.

Suffer the Children presents a terrifying tale of apocalyptic fiction, as listeners are introduced to Herod's Syndrome, a devastating illness that suddenly and swiftly kills all young children across the globe. Soon, they return from the grave, and ask for blood. And with blood, they stop being dead. They continue to remain the children they once were, but only for a short time, as they need more blood to live. The average human body holds 10 pints of blood, so the inevitable question for parents everywhere becomes: How far would you go to bring your child back?

In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, H.P. Lovecraft famously noted, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. Dark Hall Press is proud to present our Cosmic Horror Anthology, 10 tales of nameless terror from some of the most exciting voices in the field. From stories of subtle, invasive menace to tales of full-fledged cyclopean horrors; from alien worlds to the yawning holes in perception where strange forces lurk; where nature takes on a terrifying sentience and one is not safe even in dreams.

“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories — she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family.

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out 30-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s trying to establish herself as a major psychic operative in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top. Desperate to break the dead-end grind, Julie summons a guardian angel for a quick career boost. But when her power grab accidentally releases an elder god hell-bent on the annihilation of our galaxy, the body count rises rapidly.

Phil Hastings was a lucky man - he had money, a growing reputation as a screenwriter, a happy, loving family with three kids, and he'd just moved into the house of his dreams in rural of magic - and about to be altered irrevocably by a magic more real than any he dared imagine. For with the Magic came the Bad Thing, and the Faerie, and then the Fool...and the resurrection of a primordial war with a forgotten People - a war that not only the Hastings but the whole human race could lose.

As the battle between warring angels continues, James Stark is focused on seemingly simpler matters now that he's resurfaced on earth: an invasion of ghosts. L.A.'s Little Cairo neighborhood has suddenly been overrun by violent spirits, and Thomas Abbott knows if anyone can figure out why they've appeared—and how to get rid of them—it's Stark. Armed with the Room of Thirteen Doors, Stark quickly learns that the answer may reach back to the 1970s and the unsolved murder of small-time actor, Chris Stein.

A student’s investigation into a secret cult leads to madness.

Žaneta, an extraordinarily unique Khajiit living on the island of Vvardenfell, has her peaceful world turned upside down when her family - the most important part of her life - is violently attacked. With her husband murdered and her children missing, Žaneta makes the courageous decision to go after them herself. Traversing across a country full of political turmoil and on the brink of an unknown epidemic, Žaneta presses on to discover where her loved ones have been taken.

The house sits stoic and slightly askew off the coast of Raven's Head. Its off-kilter windows are both charming and disorienting, its walls of overstuffed bookshelves both comforting and claustrophobic. When Leo and Lark Parrish arrive at their vacation home with their parents, their mother's idea of a quintessential Maine getaway seems like both a blessing and a curse.

In the wake of a massacre, Ella, Bray, and William flee into the wild, hoping to escape the brutal vengeance of an unforgiving leader. In Brighton, political and economic tensions boil. Famine is approaching. The monsters are amassing. And a costly decision must be made, one that will threaten the lives of humanity's last survivors...

To many thousands of listeners world-wide, Titus Crow is the psychic sleuth - the cosmic voyager and investigator - of Brian Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos novels, from The Burrowers Beneath to Elysia. But before The Burrowers and Crow's transition, his exploits were chronicled in a series of short stories and novellas uncollected in the USA, except in limited editions.

Imagine a Depression-era town where it hasn't rained for years. A pale rainmaker with other-worldly eyes brings rain to the countryside and mesmerizes the townspeople, but the children begin to disappear one by one. Only young Robert Steelgate is able to resist the rainmaker's spell and begin the struggle to discover what has happened to his missing brother and the other children.

Dream-Hunter Lydia has been charged with the most sacred and dangerous of missions: To descend into the Nether Realm and find the missing god of dreams before he betrays the secrets that could kill her and her kind. What she never expects is to be taken prisoner by the Realm's most vicious guardian.