Dark Horror

I’ve been dual enrolled in both the Celestial and Infernal Academies for a few weeks. Things are going as you might expect: lots of training, lots of learning, lots of late night sessions in my subspace with my girls. But this brief period of normalcy couldn’t last long.

"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.

When Andrew is forced to retire from active duty, he believes that all he has to look forward to is a boring desk job. His glory days in special ops are over. But as it turns out, his thrill ride has just begun. Andrew discovers not only that immortals exist and have been manipulating global affairs since antiquity, but that he and his sister are rare possessors of the immortal genes. Problem is, Andrew might be too old to attempt the activation process. But fate may force his hand.

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year AD 12,090, vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world. But what happens when those rules no longer apply?

It’s the day of his ex-wife’s wedding when Dan makes the winding mountain journey to a remote cabin for an escape from the life that another man has stepped into. Less than 48 hours into his reprieve, the forest tranquility is shattered when he looks through a telescope and witnesses the violent abduction of a young woman. Dan springs into action, but there’s no evidence of an abduction nor reports of a missing woman. That is, until Dan sees the missing person’s poster for Ivy Trent.

Andrew's acclimation to his post-transition body isn't easy. His senses are sharper, he's bigger, stronger, and hungrier. Nathalie fears that the changes in the man she loves are more than physical. Measuring up to this new version of him is going to be a challenge. Carol and Robert are disillusioned with each other. They are not destined mates, and love is not on the horizon. When Robert's three months are up, he might be left with nothing to show for his sacrifice.

Alex Cole will do anything for money. Murder? Check. Assault? Check. Infanticide? Check. Sexual favors? Double-check. But after getting himself roped into something called Kuman Thong - including its roasted human fetuses - Cole is left fighting unfathomable phenomena beyond his comprehension and rather unexpectedly trying save the world. All for a lousy paycheck.

From professional athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan to philosophers like Confucius, inspirational business books love to suggest that listeners can succeed in business and in life by adopting the traits of their famous subjects. In Z.E.O. by Scott Kenemore, frustrated employees will finally find inspiration in a source they can already relate to: zombies!

Gabriel Delling might call himself a professional con artist, but when walking superstitions start trying to bite his face off, his charm is shockingly unhelpful. It turns out living nightmares almost never appreciate a good joke. Together with a succubus who insists on constantly saving his life, Gabe desperately tries to survive a new reality that suddenly features demons, legends, and a giant locust named Dale - all of whom pretty much hate his guts. And when an ancient horror comes hunting for a spirit locked in his head, Gabe finds himself faced with the excruciating choice between death...or becoming some kind of freaking hero.

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.

After defeating the wild dragons deep beneath the Earth, I’m ordered into the Vetruscan Kingdom. There, the warriors are not bonded to dragons but bears. They are equally formidable, and not all bearmancers are friends. Thankfully, I won’t be by myself. I’ll have my dragonmancer women with me, as well as Noctis the Onyx Dragon...and my three dragon children.

These stories present electric messiahs, identity constructs, the Beatles, and even a nuclear Armageddon, which serve as comic foils for Lain's everyman characters. Here is an America where packets of Sea Monkeys arrive in the mail containing secret messages, and the girl next door can breathe underwater. With Last Week's Apocalypse, Douglas Lain arrives with a punch line and a warning.

When a portal opens in a distant enclave city, Gryff and his monster response team find that the Shadowscape creatures are becoming smarter and more organized. Someone, or something, is leading them. Now Gryff finds that he, and the three women he loves, are all that stands between the hordes of evil monsters and humanity.

In a lonely village in the Peak District, during the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime snow storm, Constable Ellie Cheetham finds a body. The man, a local ne'er-do-well, appears to have died in a tragic accident: he drank too much and froze to death. But the facts don't add up: the dead man is clutching a knife in one hand, and there's evidence he was hiding from someone. Stranger still, an odd mark has been drawn onto a stone beside his body.

Having run into the bank to take out cash for her son's school fair, Angela Hawkins Crow is surprised to find herself in the middle of a hostage situation. The hostage-taker is none other than Billy Mendelson, a young man suffering after a violent armed robbery attack at his home. Angela has read about the crime but is mystified by his behavior, even as he hustles her into a vault with several others. Billy was a stellar student and so much more before the events of that fateful day. How can he subject others to such violence?

A horror anthology featuring the stories "The Hunter", "Shadow People", "The Harvest Moon", and more.

A dead body. A missing daughter. A silver blade. All the clues point to one person: Me. My name is Evangeline, and I’m a retired assassin who wants nothing to do with the underworld. But an edict from a Demonic Lord forces me to return to the man and the life I left behind. I have seven days to prove my innocence. Whoever set me up is going to die.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat. In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world.

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.