Horror Fiction Short Stories

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.

Right Behind You is a collection of 13 horror stories of different genres. The thing that connects these stories is the emotion of our inner fears that resides in all of us. We might mask these fears, we might even deny them, but they emerge when least expected, and then they begin to encroach upon every aspect of our lives. In this collection of assorted horror stories, you will find noir horror, urban myths, fantasies, campfire tales, stories of phobias, gore, and even a story that takes place entirely on chat.

Nitya, a single child ignored by her parents, makes an unlikely friend - a boy with a strange power who has mysteriously manifested in her room. Nikhil creates a replacement for his dead mother - a clay doll that has her likeness. Things take a bizarre turn when his clay mother starts communicating with him. Nihar, a teenage orphan, has walked a long way to seek shelter in an orphanage he has heard a lot about, unaware that it is the house of a terrifying secret.

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.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft: a brand new anthology that collects the 12 principal deities of the Lovecraftian Mythos and sets them loose. Featuring the biggest names in horror and dark fantasy, including many New York Times best sellers; full of original fiction; and individual commentary on each of the deities by Donald Tyson.

Voracious monsters threaten to consume a helpful priest. A gamer girl finds herself trapped in a digital realm of death. One widow’s worst nightmare reaches out from beyond the grave. Scare Street is proud to present the best in bone-chilling supernatural horror. This volume contains three macabre morsels for your listening pleasure. These fast-paced tales of terror are guaranteed to keep you listening well past your bedtime.

A woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and hair starts sprouting from the walls. These stories slip and slide between genres - from video games to fan fiction, body horror to choose-your-own-adventure - as characters cycle through giddying changes in gender, physiology, species, and identity. Collapsing boundaries between bodies and forms, these fictions interrogate the visceral, gross, and absurd.

The second immortal volume in this dark and fantastic series, Fangs is a scintillating and sinister collection of vampire stories and part of the now legendary vampire archives. Including Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many, many, more...Featuring: Bloody fangs, dark and foreboding crypts, mysterious nighttime apparitions, and languid ladies.

The Lurking Fear includes examples of Lovecraft's earliest weird fiction including "Hypnos", "What the Moon Brings", "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", and "Memory" (inspiration for the 2014 film of the same name), as well as the title story, "The Lurking Fear", a traditional horror study commissioned by George Julian Houtain to be run as a serial in Home Brew magazine in 1923 that has served as the source material for multiple films and been adapted into a comic book.

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.

Even if you think you don't know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp, and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana. Perhaps the purest expression of Wood's théma - pink angora sweaters, over-the-top violence, and the fraught relationships between the sexes - can be found in his unadulterated short stories.

A wonderfully atmospheric collection of stories from one of our most captivating writers, inspired by ghost stories, traditional folk tales and country legends from England and France. These tales are richly populated by spirits and ghosts seeking revenge; by grief-stricken women and haunted men coming to terms with their destiny - all rooted deep in the elemental landscapes of Sussex, Brittany and the Languedoc.

The 15 stories in After the People Lights Have Gone Off, by Stephen Graham Jones, explore the horrors and fears of the supernatural and the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out-of-print narratives, as well as a few "best of the year" inclusions.

How lucky do you feel? Matthew Sellers revealed the truth of Limbus, Inc. to the world, and in his tales of time travelers, intergalactic beings, and human sacrifice, he thought he had told it all. But the story of the shadowy employment agency that operates on the edge of the abyss, always finding the perfect person for the perfect job - no matter what the cost - had only begun. This shared-world anthology continues the story of Limbus, Inc., as told by five masters of horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

This cross-genre anthology written by superstar YA authors from across the Latin American diaspora offers bold new thrills for every monster fan. In these fifteen original short stories, bloodthirsty vampires are hunted by a quick-witted slayer; children are taken from their beds by “el Viejo de la Bolsa” while a military dictator steals their parents; and anyone you love might be a monster waiting to strike. The sinister worlds of these narratives are also magical ones, where supernatural beings can be avatars for justice, vengeance, sisterhood, and empowerment.

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.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is the darkest, the living-deadliest, scariest - and dare we say most tasteful - collection of zombie stories ever assembled. It's so good, it's a no-brainer. There is never a dull moment in the world of zombies. They are superstars of horror, and they are everywhere, storming the world of print and visual media. Their endless march will never be stopped. It's the Zombie Zeitgeist! Now, with his wide sweep of knowledge and keen eye for great storytelling, Otto Penzler offers a remarkable catalog of zombie literature.

In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they?In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.