Dark Horror

Elizabeth Lavenza hasn't had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her "caregiver", and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets...until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything - except a friend. Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable - and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk.

In the dark underbelly of our world, there's a black market in arcane things - living and dead. Angela Gough has been pulled into this world, making her a criminal on the run. In London she encountered the Kin-satyrs and centaurs, Nephilim and wraiths, hunted and slaughtered for their body parts. Fleeing back to the United States, Angela discovers that the Kin are everywhere, and they are tired of being prey. When her niece Sammi is struck by lightning, she is drawn toward the mysterious Folded Land and its powerful and deadly ruler.

Not all monsters are fantasy. Some are very real, and they walk among us. They're our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. They're the people we're supposed to trust...and they know it. Contained within this anthology are 35 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors and best-selling novelists. Brace yourself for the unexpected and unimaginable horror of...human monsters.

Nita doesn't murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet - her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they've been "acquired". Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far. But when she decides to save her mother's victim, she ends up sold in his place - because Nita herself isn't exactly "human". She has the ability to alter her biology, a talent that is priceless on the black market.

Will Burgess is used to hard knocks. Abandoned by his father, son of a drug-addicted mother, and charged with raising his six-year-old sister, Will has far more to worry about than most high school freshmen. To make matters worse, Mia Samuels, the girl of Will’s dreams, is dating his worst enemy, the most sadistic upperclassman at Shadeland High. Will’s troubles, however, are just beginning. Because one of the nation’s most notorious criminals - the Moonlight Killer - has escaped from prison and is headed straight toward Will’s hometown.

Christmas needn't only be about good cheer. The audiobook includes four festive tales of the supernatural, apocalyptic, and blood-sucking variety - an antidote for anyone who occasionally finds Christmas overly sentimental or commercialized and likes to escape to somewhere darker.

A small town is ruined by black rain, and two police officers find themselves face to face with the creatures lurking in the flooded streets. In the wild west, an aging gunslinger returns to his favorite brothel, only to encounter a fathomless black tar that's devouring everyone within. Paramedics find a remedy for a zombie virus outbreak - but can the survivors come to terms with their cannibalism? These stories and more fill Growing Dark, a collection of Kristopher Triana’s darkest short stories.

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.

A girl stumbles across the moors, death hard on her heels. To her saviours, she speaks of Calignius – a smog-shrouded mining town deep in the mountains that has been gripped by a strange epidemic. Now, Runar Skoldolfr and Tiberius Grim must lead a small expedition into the haunted vales of the Blood-Rock Peaks to answer the girl’s pleas for aid. There, the hunter and the veteran priest of Sigmar will uncover the enigma of a forlorn-looking statue and its curious sway over the town – a place ruled by ancient fear and phobia, zealotry and madness.

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.

Stranded on a desert island, a young man yearns for objects from his past. A local from a small coastal town in England is found dead as the tide goes out. A Norwegian whaling ship is stranded in the Arctic, its crew threatened by mysterious forces. In the nineteenth century, a ship drifts in becalmed waters in the Indian Ocean, those on it haunted by their evil deeds. A surfer turned diver discovers there are things worse than drowning under the sea. Something from the sea is creating monsters on land.

A Hasidic gunslinger tracks the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the demon-haunted American Southwest of 1879. In this acclaimed first volume, four sequential novellas and one bonus short story chronicle the weird adventures of the Merkabah Rider. Featuring The Blood Libel, The Dust Devils, Hell's Hired Gun, The Nightjar Women, and "The Shomer Express."

Nate Temple has an appointment in Hell. One he can’t reschedule… After recent events, Nate took some much-deserved time off for a little rest and relaxation. But when he finally returns home to attend what should have been a celebration of love, he finds insidious fear infecting the streets of St. Louis. Paranoia. Chaos. Anarchy. It seems every supernatural family in town is sick and tired of Nate and wants to put him in his place. The worst part… all his friends seem to agree.

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone’s Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers. Over dinner that night, the guests entertain one another with ghost stories inspired by local legends and superstitions. But it would appear that the curse of Tyrone’s Castle has struck for real when one of their number disappears into thin air. And then another....

Sixteen-year-old Sayers Wayte has everything. Popularity, good looks, perfect grades—there's nothing Sayers' family money can't buy. Until he's kidnapped by a man who tells him the privileged life he's been living is based on a lie. Trapped in a windowless room, without knowing why he's been taken or how long the man plans to keep him shut away, Sayers faces a terrifying new reality. To survive, he must forget the world he once knew, and play the part his abductor has created for him.

They say that confession is necessary to purify the soul. However, there are some deeds that are so sinister, so wicked, that even the most remorseful admission of guilt is not enough to atone for them. From the mind of Vincent V. Cava comes his most twisted book to date: Nine frightening stories told through the voices of those who witnessed them.

When dissolute fisherman Abel Davenport discovers an ancient temple in the deep ocean, he under the influence of a long dead god. In his attempts to restore the god's cult, Abel unleashes a plague of twisted doppelgangers on Arkham. Horrified by the consequences, Davenport realizes that he alone cannot stop the monsters from resurrecting the Ancient One. Sometimes the only way to end one cult is to start another.

A young girl’s life is about to change. By her father’s arrangement, Gabriella is to marry a local merchant twice her age in the spring of 1693. Though she fears leaving her family, the fifteen-year-old understands she must do her duty. As she prepares to become a wife and mother, another change soon finds her. When Gabriella is discovered by a nobleman and hears his voice telepathically, a door to another life opens—one that promises forever. In the secret world of immortal beings, Gabriella finds she only has so long to discover her powers before she must use them to save her life.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds...and remembers.

Scholar of Decay is the story of a man driven by love into the darkest corners of the world. When Aurek Nuiken's wife is attacked and made prisoner by an evil mage, he must search the Domains of Dread for the spell that will allow him to free her. But ultimately his wife's freedom - and his own - lies in the hands of a clan of wererats who are not inclined to assist him. Faced with both his own torment and the monsters of the Ravenloft world, Aurek is pushed to the edge of madness and to a choice that no man should ever have to make.