Fantasy Thriller

For over three decades, 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 listeners crave. Now, with the eighth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the audio of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman; Kelley Armstrong; Stephen King; Linda Nagata; Laird Barron; Margo Lanagan; and many others.

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret. For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker - an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: Occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

Fifteen-year-old Maya and Arjun find their placid world suddenly overturned, when their favourite history teacher is found brutally murdered. The death shocks the students at the school and baffles the police. Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger’s reappearance after 5000 years strikes fear into the hearts of powerful members of a secret society, called the Sangha. Who is he and what is he after? What secrets are Arjun’s uncle and mother hiding, and why do they inexplicably decide to leave town for an unknown destination?

The discovery of lost letters between Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, describing historical events that never happened, sends shockwaves through the academic world. Meanwhile, a citywide surveillance program is coming to New York, on a groundswell of dirty money and dead bodies. To hard-nosed Brooklyn reporter Nell Bluth, the two mysteries couldn't be more different - until she finds the missing link. A secret war is raging on the streets of New York. It's a battle to control the narrative of history itself, and the winner rewrites the world.

The year is 1992. Over twenty years have passed since Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev was assassinated by a crazed gunman. Since that time, the Soviet Union has been put on a course toward economic success—and war. In the Balkans, Yugoslavia's collapse into ethnic violence draws NATO and the Warsaw Pact to the brink of Armageddon. Armies deploy and fleets maneuver. Political intrigue engulfs Moscow and Washington, and paranoia radiates from the Iron Curtain. In the zero-sum game of Cold War, neither side can afford to blink or back down.

In the high mountains of Tibet, rumors are spreading. People whisper of an outbreak, of thousands of dead, of bodies pushed into mass graves. It is some strange new disease...a disease, they say, that can kill in minutes. The Chinese government says the rumors aren't true, but no one is allowed in or out of Tibet. At the Pentagon, admiral James Curtiss learns that satellite images prove that a massive genocide is underway. This is no disease. It's a weapons test. Chinese scientists have developed a way to kill based on a person's genetic traits.

When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you're squatting in your parents' old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can't afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It's not my real name, but it's the only one you're getting.

An ordinary boy encounters the paranormal when a photo of the same girl starts inexplicably showing up in every book he opens. One day, the girl reaches out and pulls him into the photo to her location: a cell in a top-secret facility belonging to the SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to the research and containment of people, objects and phenomena that defy reality!

Emma Hooper thought coming home to small-town life and the family farm would give her a chance to rest and recover from a traumatic accident. But that was before she started seeing ghosts. It was before Grandma Hooper started singing on the roof, and it was way, way before anybody spotted a ghost in a 19th-century cavalry uniform coming out of an outhouse. Can Emma learn to handle her newfound ability to see spirits, while figuring out a confusing relationship with the handsome local doctor? All while solving the ghastly murder of Preacher Jacob?

Grey never expected his best friend, Finn, to end up trapped in Battle Royale as well, but now they both have to fight to get out. And there are only a few more weeks to do it. If Ben and Tristan hadn't left Grey's squad, he would have been a lot closer to the top five. But with the help of his new squad members, Grey is determined to climb back to the top. It won't be easy when Grey's old squad mates use his own tactics against him. He must use his creativity to find new ways to lead his squad back to the top 20.

My name is Winter Wayne, and I'm a Bone witch - minus the magic. There's a price on my head, and my own coworkers are hunting me down. My mad fighting skills alone aren't going to be enough to keep me alive. Looks like the time has come to dig out my mother's bones and complete the ritual that will finally ignite the magic in my bones - if I even make it that far. She never wanted me to be part of the paranormal world, but she made sure I was prepared for it anyway. I'm finally about to find out why.

Three months after saving the world, Ezri is still finding the balance between being the savior and being a cop. When young girls in the magical community go missing, she doesn’t hesitate to take the case. Not when one of the victims is her partner’s niece. The investigation leads her back into the orbit of her greatest enemy. With leads drying up, Ezri needs all the allies she can get. Will the rapidly shrinking window to bring the girls home alive close before Ezri can summon enough power to counteract the dark magic at play?

In Saturn's Children, Freya is an obsolete android concubine in a society where humans haven't existed for hundreds of years. A rigid caste system keeps the Aristos, a vindictive group of humanoids, well in control of the lower, slave-chipped classes. So when Freya offends one particularly nasty Aristo, she's forced to take a dangerous courier job off-planet.

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies, and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people canprevent global chaos.

Ian Dex is a genetically engineered man who has abilities from all classes in the supernatural spectrum. He's also the chief of the Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department (PPD). His job is to monitor all supers and their involvement in the world of normals. A group of ubernaturals has recently descended on the city, forcing Ian and his crew have to put everything on the line to control the ensuing chaos. While the crew of the Las Vegas PPD aren't exactly strangers when it comes to dealing with death, destruction, and mayhem, fighting these new powerful beasts is admittedly taking its toll.

Located on the Long Island Sound, random attacks by unknown creatures are terrorizing local residents. The question: Who is going to do something about it? Marine biologist Katie DiNardo and ichthyologist Nick Tanner have seen the damage caused by their mystery creatures, but are at a complete loss as to the attacking species. All they know is that they need to get to the bottom of this - and fast.

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it's a title Eric Carter is stuck with. He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He's turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. When he left LA fifteen years ago, he thought he'd never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him. But now his sister's been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why.

On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods. That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a dog of alarming intelligence that soon leads him into a relentless storm of mankind’s darkest creation....