Horror Fiction Short Stories

Explore the world of Maynard Wills, PhD, professor of folklore and fan of the podcast, Video Palace. The podcast followed a man named Mark Cambria, who along with his girlfriend Tamra Wulff, investigated the origins of a series of esoteric white video tapes. Cambria went missing in pursuit of these tapes, but not before hearing whispers of an ominous figure called the Eyeless Man.

In this new collection, Richard Thomas has crafted 14 stories that push the boundaries of dark fiction in an intoxicating, piercing blend of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Equally provocative and profound, each story is masterfully woven with transgressive themes that burrow beneath the skin.

Imagine a future in which human boxing has been replaced by heavyweight bouts between massive robots. Richard Matheson’s classic short story, “Steel", is the inspiration for Real Steel, a new movie starring Hugh Jackman.

The war is tearing our world apart. Instead of big armies with tanks in the field, the Vampire War is fought in the streets, neighbor against neighbor, family against family. Anyone can turn at any time. The blood hunger can suddenly appear in the middle of a kiss. The person who sleeps next to you every night could wake up in the dead of night... hungry. So hungry.

A chilling anthology in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and listeners. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

Join Cora Hargrove as she uncovers a hidden attic, revealing a SINISTER PLAYROOM filled with toys that have a life of their own! Feel your heart race as you follow Cora and her daughter Lily, into a realm where laughter turns to chilling whispers, and every doll hides a DARK SECRET! As you listen, you’ll be transported to a place where the line between reality and fantasy blurs, and the dangers of ETERNAL PLAYTIME AWAIT!

Doppelgängers, werewolves, and little tiny diamond grubs that eat their way through your shirt. They're all here and not always looking like you'd expect them to. Fifteen horror stories for Halloween guaranteed to make you look over your shoulder and avoid dark alleys.

Chizmar assembles 35 stories, including a previously unpublished novella, and presents us with A Long December. This massive new collection features more than 150,000 words of Chizmar's very best short fiction and includes 8,000 words of autobiographical story notes. Eerie, suspenseful, poignant, the stories in A Long December range from horror to suspense, crime to dark fantasy, mainstream to mystery.

Before Twilight and True Blood, even before Buffy and Anne Rice and Bela Lugosi, vampires haunted the 19th century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker's legendary 1897 novel, Dracula. Michael Sims brings together the very best vampire stories of the Victorian era - from England, America, France, Germany, Transylvania, and even Japan - into a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety.

A deadly black widow has eliminated three husbands and counting. But Nameless knows her one weakness. To bring truth and its consequences to her crimes, the vigilante must spin a web of his own in part three of the Nameless series. Lucia - current last name, Rickenbah - has made a fortune by marrying rich men who tend to drop dead. But the superstitious blonde believes in more than money and murder. Nameless’s job is to scare a confession out of Lucia, and as the psychological warfare escalates, even he may be in for a shock.

No One Is Safe! presents fourteen stories of macabre, pulpy terror; a book filled with futuristic noir mysteries, science fiction thrillers, alien invasions, and old-school horror tales that will keep you up late into the night. You’ll discover haunted dream journals and evil houses, birthday wishes gone wrong, a neighborhood cat that cures any disease, a flesh-eating beach, and mysterious skeletons on a hidden moon base. You’ll meet wise-cracking detectives, suburban vampires, murdered movie stars, and monsters of the deep.

Leedswick Castle has housed the Alnwick family in the English countryside for generations, despite a family curse determined to destroy their legacy and erase them from history. Three beloved authors share stories of the Alnwick family through the generations, revealing how love and war can change a place—but only its people can unshackle it from the misdeeds of the past.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat. In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. The Gothic short story is one of the most enduring of genres. In this volume we explore works by classic authors from all corners of Europe as they explore and exploit narratives with their undeniable talents.

Fifty of the greatest classic horror stories ever written: 1. "The Beast with Five Fingers" by W. F. Harvey 2. "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs 3. "The Nightmare Room" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 4. "The End of a Show" by Barry Pain 5. "Bagnell Terrace" by E. F. Benson 6. "Fingers of a Hand" by H. D. Everett 7. "The Interruption" by W. W. Jacobs 8. "Gavon’s Eve" by E. F. Benson 9. "The Ring of Thoth" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 10. "Moon’s Gibbet" by Egerton Castle 11. "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Venture inside Midnight Under the Big Top, where your wide eyes and pounding heart will discover: the world's grandest tales of murder, madness, and magic set in and around the circus by storytellers such as Stephen King, Joe Hill, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Neil Gaiman, Kelley Armstrong, Robert McCammon, Tananarive Due, Lisa Morton, Heather Graham, Richard Chizmar, Billy Chizmar, Amanda C. Davis, Nayad Monroe, Jeff Strand, Amanda Downum, Robert Brouhard, and Dominick Cancilla!

"The Crystal Cup" reveals the struggle a young artist faces when he is taken from his family and forced to work for the king. He is promised freedom in return for his hard work making a perfect crystal vase. But the story takes a tragic twist when he dies immediately following his completion of the vase. The king jeopardizes his reign after displaying the artist's remains alongside the vase during a feast at the castle.

This newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young woman’s rebellion against convention and forceful taking of control of her own life.

After the publication of her short story “The Lottery” in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller. This collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides listeners with more of her unsettling, dark tales, including the “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Summer People”.