Dark Horror

Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers… Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong.

Josh Malerman is a master weaver of stories—and in this spine-chilling collection he spins five twisted tales from the shadows of the human soul.

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.

In I Am Not a Serial Killer, John Wayne Cleaver saved his town from a murderer even more appalling than the serial killers he obsessively studies, using his own repressed homicidal proclivities to even the odds. But it turns out even demons have friends, and the disappearance of one has brought another to Clayton County. Soon there are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary, and a new mystery to solve. But this time something's different. John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon might now be using him.

Grandpappy is on hospice. Charles is going mad. Vile happenings are abound. You, listener, are not prepared. This is your lesson in depravity. Warning! This is an extreme horror novella. Very few triggers are left unpulled.

Having been abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as an infant, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony assumed all his life that his mother had simply given him up. But when he receives an anonymous note suggesting that foul play may have led to his mother's disappearance, he sees only one option: to return to the rural Irish village where he was born and find out what really happened 26 years ago.

Girls are dying in mysterious circumstances.... They are found dead in their beds, covered in blood, with a look of pure horror on their faces. Worse still, their ghosts are left to walk the Earth, just waiting for someone to hear the terror that has befallen them. Thomas Ward is the local spook - it’s his job to protect the county from things that go bump in the night. But this is no ordinary haunting, and he finds himself on the path of a dangerous beast that is looking to kill again.

The city of Elendhaven sulks on the edge of the ocean. Wracked by plague, abandoned by the South, stripped of industry and left to die. But not everything dies so easily. A thing without a name stalks the city, a thing shaped like a man, with a dark heart and long pale fingers yearning to wrap around throats. A monster who cannot die.

1647: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England. Their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood...unwise though that may seem. For Moresby Wood is known to be an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight. Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will...and of something else.

In his job as the county's spook, 17-year-old Thomas Ward is used to battling boggarts, witches, and other creatures of the dark. But now he and his apprentice, Jenny, must team up with former rivals and enemies to fight the evil Kobalos warriors intent on destroying the county. The fight has cost the life of a strong ally, Grimalkin, the witch assassin. Determined to end the war with the demons, Tom leads Jenny and Alice to Pendle for one last epic clash. Loyalties will be tested, alliances will be broken, and not everyone will survive.

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child. Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother.

Who are the Sawkill Girls? Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Val: The queen bee. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight…until now.

On the wind-battered isle of Altnaharra, off the wildest coast of Scotland, a clan prepares to bring about the end of the world and its imminent rebirth. The Adder is coming and one of their number will inherit its powers. They all want the honor, but young Eve is willing to do anything for the distinction. A reckoning beyond Eve’s imagination begins when Chief Inspector Black arrives to investigate a brutal murder and their sacred ceremony goes terribly wrong. And soon all the secrets of Altnaharra will be uncovered.

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.

Danger lurks in the Ruins. Three survivors travel the ruins of a collapsed society, sifting through the rusted relics of the ancients' civilization as they search for a better future, hoping to escape the horrors of the past. But among those treasures lurks danger. And what they discover might be worse than what they left behind.

Ever since Edgar Allan Poe looted a family's ignoble secret history for his classic story "The Fall of the House of Usher", living in the shadow of that sick dynasty has been an inescapable scourge for generations of Usher descendants. But not for horror novelist Rix Usher. Years ago he fled the isolated family estate of Usherland in the menacing North Carolina hills to pursue his writing career. He promised never to return. But his father's impending death has brought Rix back home to assume the role of Usher patriarch - and face his worst fears.

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.

The Titan Oberon and his fierce ally, Alessa, have returned to wreak havoc upon the mortal realm once more. As they launch their assault, the people of Igerox find themselves faced with impossible choices, forced to make decisions that challenge their very morals and beliefs. With the fate of all life hanging in the balance, the lordships of Igerox must push past their limits and embrace their darkest instincts if they hope to survive. But even as they struggle to defend themselves, Oberon and Alessa prove to be formidable foes, wielding dark powers that threaten to overwhelm all.

Alone in a strange world and torn by grief, a vampire accepts the hospitality of the local lord. But can the vampire trust him once he discovers the land’s dark connection to his own quest for revenge?