Dark Horror

Do you dare step through the red door? Spencer Grant had no idea what drew him to the bar with the red door. He thought he would just sit down, have a slow beer or two, and talk to a stranger. He couldn’t know that it would lead to a narrow escape from a bungalow targeted by a SWAT team. Or that it would leave him a wanted man. But now Spencer is on the run from mysterious and ruthless men. He is in love with a woman he knows next to nothing about. And he is hiding from a past he can’t fully remember.

Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siecle wonders...and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she's sent to London to chaperone her younger sister, aspiring art critic Dorina. Unfortunately for Evadne, she soon learns too much about all of it when Dorina meets their uncle's friend, Lady Henrietta "Henry" Wotton. A semi-respectable aristocrat in public, in private she is secretly in the thrall of a demon.

Shortly after moving into their new home, the Snedeker family is assaulted by a sinister presence that preys one-by-one on their family. Exhausting all other resources, they call up the world-renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have never encountered a case as frightening as this.

Harry Keogh is the man who can talk to the dead, the man for whom every grave willingly gives up its secrets, the one man who knows how to travel effortlessly through time and space to destroy the vampires that threaten all of humanity.

Just before summer begins, 13-year-old Ali finds an old photograph. She recognizes the two children in it; one’s her mother, the other her aunt Dulcie - but who is the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture? Ali will have two months to figure it out, since she’s spending the summer with her aunt and her cousin in the same house her mom and aunt used to visit when they were kids. Then Ali meets Sissy. Sissy is mean, spiteful, and determined to ruin Ali’s summer. Sissy also has a secret. Could it have something to do with the old photo? Ali is dying to find out - though, if she’s not careful, that may be exactly what happens to her.

You either build your world or you burn in someone else's. With every fleeting moment, the whole world draws closer to being overcome by the deadliest virus known to man. Steele's family home lies in burnt ruins on the shore of Lake Michigan. His group hunts for his missing mother in the apocalyptic wilderness filled with the dead. Instead he finds a group of refugees badly in need of his skills learned in the shadow war on terror, for they are persecuted at every step by the Chosen, a group of fanatics hell-bent on creating God's Kingdom in the rubble of society.

Ford Atticus Ford, former lead ghost hunter on the hit paranormal reality show Graveyard: Classified, has more than a few regrets - especially after young Chelsea Hopper was attacked by a demon . . . on live television. Assisting police departments by conducting paranormal investigations and uncovering buried clues now provides him with an ounce of redemption, but it will never be enough. With the show cancelled and his reputation destroyed, Ford sets out to avenge little Chelsea, and save his own soul - if he can.

Seabury Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales' original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. Collected for the first time, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all 93 published works featuring the supernatural detective.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course - before the time she calls "adoption day", when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.

Once every year, in the city of Sunja, gladiators Baylus, Goll, and Halm meet in the arena known as Sunja’s Pit. Their battles are epic, but deadlier still are the shadowy forces that conspire against them outside the Pit. Only by applying their brutally honed survival instincts can these brave warriors hope to win their freedom and exact grisly revenge upon their enemies.

At the heart of Dark Romanticism is its brooding, pessimistic tone, its emphasis on the supernatural and the sins of humanity, and its use of iconic symbols and horrifying imagery. The classic Dark Romantic authors (Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville) are represented in the stories and poems in this volume, as well as some authors who are not commonly included in this genre.

When a high roller dies in his Vegas penthouse suite, that's a problem. When his ghost refuses to leave, that's a bigger problem. Daniel Faust is the solution. Called in to clean up the casino's mess, the modern-day sorcerer soon learns that the restless spirit isn't going down without a fight. To set things right, he'll have to delve someplace even seedier, even more treacherous, than the Vegas Strip: the Los Angeles music industry.

Do you believe that fear only haunts the distant bhoot bangla, crumbling fort or empty village streets? Surely, it can’t touch you now. You’ve distanced yourself from the darkness by living in the glare of city lights, hiding inside secure houses, comforted by a regular job. But what if fear has accompanied you into the modern world? What if it lives inside you, eating away at your heart and mind? After all, fear is just a ticking time bomb that explodes when you least expect it, leaving your reality...twisted.

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

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.

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were 12, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister's deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts.

Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Once he was a hero of the Great War, and then a member of the dreaded Black House. Now he is the criminal linchpin of Low Town. His name is Warden. He thought he had left the war behind him, but a summons from up above brings the past sharply, uncomfortably, back into focus. General Montgomery's daughter is missing somewhere in Low Town, searching for clues about her brother's murder. The General wants her found, before the stinking streets can lay claim to her, too.