Dark Horror

Thirty-four years ago, on October 31, poor Hannah Talbott took part in a scavenger hunt gone violently wrong. The mean girls made sure of it. To this day, for a haunted local mother, the most unsettling Halloween costume of all is an urban legend they call Hannah-Beast. It’s a reminder of the past she can’t forget. Especially tonight when it’s come back, so close to home.

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.

There are many secrets in the dark places of the Old World. From the cities of the Empire, where men huddle together in defiance of the darkness that sweeps across the land, to the vast, savage forests that house all manner of terrible beasts, everywhere you look there is a dark tale or ancient legend waiting to be unearthed. For the vampire Genevieve Dieudonné, several of these ancient horrors and blood-soaked nightmares are about to come to light, as she is plunged into battles for her life and her very soul across three linked novellas.

Something unholy is hunting the streets of Burlington, Vermont, stalking the campus of the local university. Chris Gordon and his contingent of demon hunters is drawn to the northern Vermont city by a brutal murder of hellish proportions, ready to banish it from Earth. But this Hellion is direct from the Abyss, incarnate and fully possessed of all the powers of high Hell royalty - female royalty at that. It’s been said that the female of the species is deadlier than the male, and this one might be the deadliest of all.

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.

I've lived in the shadows. Now I have the chance to escape from them and start over. My cousin and best friend sent me to Alaska to get away from my family. A fresh start. I should have known my past wouldn't let me go that easily. As I fight to overcome it, deadly secrets are revealed. I may not survive. Can I manage to be happy? Three infuriating men seem to think I can, even though I've rejected them. Will the shadows finally consume me?

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.

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.

In the world of crime fighting, Raven has learned that formal affairs are a necessary evil. So when Keystone receives an invitation to a winter ball, she tries to make the best of it. The most powerful elites in Cognito are attending—a perfect opportunity to network and have a few drinks. But when a guest hijacks the party in a violent display of dark power, chaos ensues. It's a race against time as Raven searches for a way to thwart his diabolical plan. Will Keystone find the fortitude to prevent the downfall of civilization? Or will they bow to a new king to save their souls?

A series of bizarre assaults is mystifying Boston police: an unknown attacker is viciously beating random strangers and leaving a note quoting an old warning about witchcraft. History professor Alex Maple was one of the victims, and now he's gone missing. Vickie Preston is certain that someone has taken her friend for malicious purposes. She's having blood-drenched visions that seem to be staining her waking life, and the escalating attacks suggest that a dangerous cult is at work behind the scenes.

The Dark Legion have been beaten back, and for the first time, the brothers are allied against the savagery that the UnderVerse has thrown at them, but the storm clouds of war are gathering, and not everyone will see the sun rise again. Jax has one chance to keep his people safe from the storm and the war that's building on the horizon, but it'll take balls of steel, brains of mince—and he's really going to need to be lucky as hell to pull this one off.

When an early snow ravages the small town of Plainfield, the residents are stripped of heat, power, and mobility. They'll soon wish they had protection. Somewhere outside, something else is lurking. Waiting for the chance to strike...

Faust has been caged, buried, cut off from his allies and his magic. His enemies think they've won. They're about to learn, the hard way, that this is one sorcerer who always has a trick up his sleeve. Nobody has ever escaped from the Iceberg. But the Iceberg has never had a prisoner like Daniel Faust.

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.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers and listeners of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run.

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.

How far would you go to save a child in need? Jadyn is a promising inner-city student. But his community is terrorized by gangs and a series of grisly unsolved murders. When the boy stops coming to school. his teacher, Annelise, determines to find out why. Now she is trapped on the wrong side of town, and something evil is stalking her.

Robert Nash is unlucky in love. He is so unlucky in love, in fact, that he has never been with another living person. And that's not about to change any time soon when his latest date is far from living.

Nobody likes getting bullied, and Donny has had enough. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, he solicits the help of the old Asian man at the end of his street to teach him Karate. During a grueling two days of training, Donny earns belt after belt, until he finally becomes a Karate Master.

When rock guitarist Ash Hudson suffers a career-ending hand injury, she seeks out the only thing that can heal it - her hometown's darkest secret. For decades the residents of Hollow Hills, Pennsylvania, have offered their diseased and injured body parts to a creek demon named Snare. In return, Snare rewards its Traders with healthy replacement parts. There's only one catch: if Traders leave town, their new parts vanish forever. Ash wants a new hand, but living in Hollow Hills isn't an option. Not when her band is one gig away from hitting the big time.