Horror Urban Fiction

When horror-obsessed Riley Lawrence and his group of college friends arrive in the small town of Carousel for their Centennial Celebration, the few decrepit cars parked in the street don’t scare them. But when they enter a locked building, an animatronic usher hands them each a ticket, and the lights dim, Riley realizes they’ve entered the inescapable patchwork of a horror movie set. And they’ve each been assigned an archetype—Scholar, Athlete, Eye Candy, Final Girl—to play out as the curtains rise.

In the house on Violin Road he found the bodies of his brother, his mother, and the man who killed them both-his father. From the house on Violin Road, in Missing Mile, North Carolina, Trevor McGee ran for his sanity and his soul, after his famous cartoonist father had exploded inexplicably into murder and suicide. Now Trevor is back. In the company of a New Orleans computer hacker on the run from the law, Trevor has returned to face the ghosts that still live on Violin Road, to find the demons that drove his father to murder his family-and worse, to spare one of his sons. But as Trevor begins to draw his own cartoon strip, he loses himself in a haze of lines and art and thoughts of the past, the haunting begins. Trevor and his lover plunge into a cyber-maze of cartoons, ghosts, and terror that will lead either to understanding-true understanding-or to a blood-raining repetition of the past.

Douglas Kirk is having a bad week. Not only are humans hunting him, but whole packs of werewolves have been commanded to kill him on sight, forcing him to flee Halifax without identification, money, weapons, even his phone.

Ramses the Great, former pharaoh of Egypt, is reawakened by the elixir of life in Edwardian England. Now immortal with his bride-to-be, he is swept up in a fierce and deadly battle of wills and psyches against the once-great Queen Cleopatra. Ramses has reawakened Cleopatra with the same perilous elixir whose unworldly force brings the dead back to life.

A war is brewing - the first battle has been waged and Savannah Levine is left standing, albeit battered and bruised. She has rescued her half-brother from supernatural medical testing, but he's fighting to stay alive. The Supernatural Liberation Movement took him hostage, and they have a maniacal plan to expose the supernatural world to the unknowing. Savannah has called upon her inner energy to summon spells with frightening strength - a strength she never knew she had - as she fights to keep her world from shattering.

For more than 30 years, 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 fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

He was Ramses the Damned in ancient Egypt, but awoke in opulent Edwardian London as Dr. Ramsey, expert in Egyptology. He mixes with the aristocrats and samples their voluptuous lifestyle, but it is for his beloved, Cleopatra, that he longs, and will do anything to be with....

Anita Blake is a vampire hunter. But when someone else sets his sights on her prey, she must save them both from the inferno.

The three Beauchamp women—Joanna and her daughters Freya and Ingrid—live in North Hampton, out on the tip of Long Island. Their beautiful, mist-shrouded town seems almost stuck in time, and all three women lead seemingly quiet, uneventful existences. But they are harboring a mighty secret—they are powerful witches banned from using their magic. Joanna can resurrect people from the dead and heal the most serious of injuries....

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it's unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn't been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while. Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don't, when they're vampires.

Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. The Mighty Dragon. They were heroes. Vigilantes. Crusaders for justice, using their superhuman abilites to make Los Angeles a better place. Then the plague of living death spread around the globe. Despite the best efforts of the superheroes, the police, and the military, the hungry corpses rose up and overwhelmed the country. The population was decimated, heroes fell, and the city of angels was left a desolate zombie wasteland like so many others.

Jon Hudson, lead investigator for the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion Center-P, thinks his job is a joke. While other Fusion Centers focus on thwarting terrorist activity, Hudson's division is tasked with handling paranormal threats to national security, of which there have been zero during his years at the DHS. When yet another Sasquatch sighting leads to a research facility in the backwoods of Maine, disguised as an abandoned Nike missile site, Hudson's job becomes deadly serious.

Dr. Renee Caisson knows there are worse things than an attractive man in uniform drafting her into a secret government project—especially when Major Jackson makes it clear that he isn’t bothered by her questionable past. But when her labs come back with decidedly odd results, the Major is forced to come clean over who the government is actually studying. Renee is shocked to learn her subjects are demonic-looking beings who call themselves “Neighbors”—refugees from a dying world, who arrived during the nation-wide solar eclipse.

Last week they invaded Manhattan. This week they will destroy the world. The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading and soon will envelop the globe. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather - head of the Centers for Disease Control's team - leads a band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late.

Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season. Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attacked by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London's vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.

The world of man was brought to its knees with the zombie apocalypse. A hundred and fifty years have passed since man clawed and climbed his way back from the brink of extinction. Civilization has rebooted, man has begun to rebuild, creating new communities and society. It is on this fragile new shaky ground that a threat worse than the scourge of the dead has sprung... Once again, one man finds himself once thrust into the forefront of a war he wants nothing to do with and seemingly cannot win.

All Essie ever wanted was to have a normal life but in the end she found herself drawn back to Beldam House because she just can’t stop her witchiness. Into this coven of chaos stumbles gorgeous, clueless Josh, their new landlord—and he’s just discovered his tenants haven’t paid rent since the 1700s! As Josh is drawn further into the lives of the inhabitants of Beldam House, Essie is determined to keep him at broomstick’s length. That is, until a family secret, lying hidden for centuries, puts Josh firmly under her spell.

With a thriving parahuman accounting practice, a steady relationship, and a circle of trusted friends, Fred's undead life has become more enjoyable than his normal one ever was. Unfortunately it also seems that he's no longer the only vampire to appreciate the up-and-coming city of Winslow, Colorado. A new clan of vampires is moving in, and they aren't well known for tolerating outsiders in their territory.

There's a maniacal murderer on the loose, brutally slaughtering young women with a ferocity that rivals that of vampires Harry Koegh has spent his life combatting. The Necroscope's been asked to solve the crimes...asked by the dead spirits of the madman's victims. Harry cannot turn down a request from the dead...even if it costs him his soul. In the climactic battle with the vampires, mankind prevailed and purged the vampires from earth - thanks to Harry, his team of psychically-gifted spies, and Faethor Ferenczy, long-dead "father" of the world's vampires, who betrayed his own kind.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year AD 12,090, vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world. But what happens when those rules no longer apply?