Horror Fiction

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.

Bela and Lizzy, the dominant megalodon siblings from Angel's brood, have escaped the Tanaka Institute to roam the Salish Sea in British Columbia. While Jonas Taylor and his friend Mac attempt to either recapture or kill the "sisters," Jonas' son, David, embarks on his own adventure, motivated by revenge. Having witnessed his girlfriend's gruesome death, David has joined a Dubai prince's ocean expedition, tracking the 120-foot, hundred-ton Liopleurodon that escaped from the Panthalassa Sea.

Pain, horror, fear - these are the things that have comprised best-selling novelist Lance Metzger's life. His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and abandonment by an apathetic mother. In turn his only refuge became his writing. When Lance loses his ability to write and becomes haunted by a nightmare that he'd thought was buried, he is drawn inexplicably to a house on the shores of Lake Superior, where he finds his muse once again - but something is waiting for him when he arrives.

Suffering from writer's block, novelist Rachel Ames escapes to a lake cabin to calm her mind and regain a sense of herself. The location is perfect. Isolated. Beautiful. Inspiring. It even comes with a good-looking landlord who shows an interest in her. But she can't shake the sense that something terrible has followed her to the lake, something just beyond her consciousness, something out on the edge where the sounds of a raging fire and sirens linger whenever she slows down to listen.

For more than 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 readers crave. Now, with the tenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Included in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as Neil Gaiman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen King, Linda Nagata, Laird Barron, and many others.

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....

Ian has lived across the street from Marlow House for more than a year and has no idea Walt Marlow is his neighbor. All that is about to change. Did I mention Walt Marlow is a ghost?

With his eldest daughter fighting deadly cancer and his youngest determined to get herself into all kinds of trouble, Jake Penshaw is a man on the very edges of a breakdown. A father is supposed to keep his children safe, but no matter what he does, things only ever seem to get worse. He’s sick of being powerless. He’s sick of failing as a man.

Suppose there really were vampires. Dark, stalking, destroying. They’d have to be killed, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. But what kind of fools would try to make a living at it? In best-selling author John Steakley's vampire classic, one tightly knit band of brothers devotes itself to hunting down the monsters that infest the modern world—for a price.

Kenzi Brannon's life was turned upside down when she moved into her family's abandoned home to raise her niece. Problems compound when her aging mother starts to remember things. And clues the police find regarding the knife don't match anything Kenzi knows about her family. Things go from bad to worse when she and her niece discover something horrifying in their house. But not even that compares to the strange ways her mom is acting.

Caitlin Nylo gave up everything to turn her father’s game company into a worldwide success. Along the way, she lost her mother, her marriage, and she barely sees her children. She’s rich, driven, and brilliant. But she’s also alone. After her eccentric father passes away, Caitlin is furious when she learns that instead of leaving the company and its fortunes to her, he has chosen to make his heirs compete in one last game: a scavenger hunt with a multi-billion-dollar inheritance waiting at the end.

Newly appointed as land agent to the youthful Lord Croft, Matthew Rowsley finds plenty to keep him busy as he attends to his lordship's neglected country estate. But he's distracted from his tasks by the disappearance of a young housemaid. Has Maggie really eloped with a young man, as her mother attests - or is the truth rather more sinister? What's been going on behind the scenes at the grand country estate...and where has his lordship disappeared to?

This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break away from her controlling family - a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of 20th-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.

Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of L.A. Times and Heat, has created a haunting thriller full of ghostly images, murder and old family secrets. Part detective story, part ghost story, part Southern gothic - this absorbing novel will fascinate listeners as a small town’s present, past and future converge.

Officer Brian Henderson knows there is something just not right about Walt Marlow, and he's determined to find out what it is. Meanwhile, Beverly's dead husband visits Danielle in a dream hop, telling her about his wife's part in his death. Can Danielle convince Brian to stop worrying about Walt and be a little more concerned about his new girlfriend, Beverly?

A rogue agent has come in from the cold and wants to spill his secrets. The Organization wants Ishmael to find out if Frank Parker is who he says he is, what he really knows, and why he has emerged from the shadows after all this time. Ishmael heads to Ringstone Lodge in Yorkshire, where Parker is being held to find that an atmosphere of fear and suspicion prevails. As he and his fellow residents are menaced by a series of alarming and inexplicable incidents, Ishmael sets out to prove that it's human trickery rather than any supernatural being behind the seemingly ghostly goings-on.

Since half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her undead lover Bones met six years ago, they’ve fought against the rogue undead, battled a vengeful Master vampire, and pledged their devotion with a blood bond. Now it’s time for a vacation. But their hopes for a perfect Paris holiday are dashed when Cat awakes one night in terror. She’s having visions of a vampire named Gregor, who’s more powerful than Bones and has ties to her past that even Cat herself didn’t know about.

Johannes Cabal is a necromancer - and he's slightly infamous. Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day: And Other Tales of the Necromancer features seven of Cabal's most frightening adventures, including "Exeunt Demon King", "The Ereshkigal Working", "Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day", and more. Also included is an original introduction written and read by the author.