Humor Mystery Paranormal

Paraffin, Vermont, is home to the Grosholtz Candle Factory. There, 17-year-old Poppy finds something dark and unsettling: a room filled with dozens of startlingly lifelike wax sculptures. Later, she's shocked when one of the figures - a teenage boy who doesn't seem to know what he is - jumps naked and screaming out of the trunk of her car. Poppy wants to return him to the factory, but before she can, a fire destroys the mysterious workshop.

In this collection of 19 short stories, Craig Nybo invites you to visit the lives of mostly unfortunate souls as they face the most terrifying moments of their existences. With everything from vampire hunting to zombie bashing, from steampunk death devices to shifty soul brokers, Nybo brings his own sense of perspective and, of course, his sense of humor to this collection of departures from reality. Terrifying Lies contains Nybo's acclaimed story, "The Mechanic", along with 18 other tales of the macabre.

When Cynthia Rothchild's best friend, Annie, falls head over heels for the new high-school librarian, Cyn can totally understand why - he’s really young and seriously hot and apparently thinks Annie would make an excellent library monitor.

James Salley is turning 16, and it's not going well. His family's too busy to care, the local bully creates new tortures daily, someone appears to be following him, and he's just learned that he's the Antichrist. All James ever wanted out of life was for Dorian Delaney - the operatically trained and suicidal girl of his dreams - to fall as in love with him as he is with her. But once he's told of his bloody destiny, he finds himself fighting between who he thought he was and who he's supposed to be.

Sixteen-year-old Prudence Perry is a legacy Ladybird Scout, born to a family of hunters sworn to protect humans from mulligrubs—interdimensional parasites who feast on human emotions like sadness and anger. Masquerading as a prim and proper ladies' social organization, the Ladybirds brew poisons masked as teas and use knitting needles as daggers, at least until they graduate to axes and swords.

To prevent the chaos and destruction they could impose upon the world, an age-old system has been in existence forcing beings of darkness and power to use humanity's legal systems. Snug safely under a "blanket of ignorance", most humans remain unaware of the existence of supernatural beings and the legal disputes which involve them. A select few professionals are required to participate and assist in the resolution of paranormal conflicts. Martin Sandberg is one of those professionals. This is his story.

Dilbert Pinkerton's not the greatest private detective, but he's good at sniffing out clues. Of course, it's hard to take a five-foot-nothing mutant armadillo in a trench coat and fedora seriously. He sticks his snout where it doesn't belong far too often while digging for the truth. So when some rich dame asks him to steal - ahem, retrieve - a pearl necklace from her ex-husband, Dill almost reconsiders. Until, that is, she offers him so much money that he can't refuse.

When there are half-masticated bodies popping up on the radar, any hunter worth their salt will sit up and take notice. So, when they started showing up in Oklahoma, Noah and I beat cheeks back down there to try to recover what we lost. But Fate isn’t exactly a grandma holding out a piece of hard candy. More often, it’s a playground bully dangling loogies over your face. So, after a little flamingo-necktie-assisted arson, a near-luxury car full of demons, some car trouble, and a game of human whack-a-mole, we were once again out of leads.

The truck should have turned Libbi Piper into a Libbi Pancake - and it would have, too, if Aaron hadn't shown up and saved her life. The problem? Aaron's the local Grim Reaper - and he only saved Libbi's life because he needs someone to take over his job. Now, Libbi has two days to choose between dying like she was supposed to, or living a lonely life as Death Incarnate. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby is a teenage grim reaper with the bizarre ability to Damn souls. That makes her pretty scary, even to fellow Grims. But after inadvertently transferring her ability to Zara, a murderous outlaw, Lex is a pariah in Croak, the little town she calls home. To escape the townspeople’s wrath, she and her friends embark on a wild road trip to DeMyse. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, it feels like a prison to Lex.

Tempest Michaels is back! His office burned down, his love life is a joke, and he is convinced he is getting fat. It's the perfect time for a new case, then. The client is the son of a man who was killed in freak accident - struck by lightning. That doesn't sound very paranormal until you learn that he was inside his house when it happened and his heart exploded out of his chest. There are eldritch runes drawn on the victim’s house and his wife has been seen colluding with a mysterious old crone. Is there witchcraft being practiced in the nearby village of East Malling? The client certainly thinks so.

Harvey Boyd is a small-town radio newsman who thinks the biggest story of his career is the murder trial of Angel Whaley, accused of offing her husband - rising country star Jared Whaley - in his dressing room before a show at a local nightclub. He has no idea. Following a field trip to the station by a group of sixth-graders, Harvey finds a suspicious document uploaded to his laptop. It had to have been put there by that quiet kid who'd slipped away from the tour and been caught at the computer....

Just because Mel lives in New Whitby, a city founded by vampires, doesn't mean she knows any of the blood-drinking undead personally. They stay in their part of town; she says in hers. Until the day a vampire shows up at her high school. Worse yet, her best friend, Cathy, seems to be falling in love with him. It's up to Mel to save Cathy from a mistake she might regret for all eternity! On top of trying to help Cathy (whether she wants it or not), Mel is investigating a mysterious disappearance for another friend and discovering the attractions of a certain vampire wannabe.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Chester Watkins is not an ordinary person. He's a student of the old school with the tenacity of a bulldog. This cagey senior citizen funds himself plunged into an underground world where only the strong survive. Ravaged to death by a rogue vampire, this determined grandpa set out on a quest to apprehend his killer, and turn an immortal organization upside down. Unable to regenerate any teeth and looked upon with contempt by his enemies, his opposition makes the foolish mistake of underestimating his most powerful ability of all...his incredible mind.

"It's okay to love me, Joey. But don't be in love with me." New York, 1941. Joey El Bueno is just a smart-aleck kid, confounding the nuns and bullies at St. Stephen's School on East 28th Street, when he first meets Jane Bent, a freckle-faced girl with red pigtails and yellow smiley-face barrettes, who seems to know him better than he knows himself. A magical afternoon at the movies, watching Carey Grant in Gunga Din, is the beginning of a puzzling friendship that soon leaves Joey baffled and bewildered.

I am Harry Balls, renowned paranormal investigator with a difference. I investigate those cases too complex or too vague (mainly the latter) that other paranormal investigators simply won't touch with a barge pole. Join me and my Office of Paranormal Studies licensed team on an epic adventure as we travel the country uncovering the mysteries you've definitely never heard about before. Together we will lift the lid on the supernatural, and then quickly close the lid again before weird things start coming out.

When a wizard tasks Colin McCool with saving his world from a post-apocalyptic future, he’ll stop at nothing to complete his mission. With the clock ticking down to oblivion, Colin must face an army of vampires and a power-crazed magician, who could end the young druid and his world.

Jon Gilligan is the only man with a pulse in a city of the undead. It's his job to maintain order between the factions of walking corpses and disembodied spirits. The workload has been driving him a little insane, leading him to take on the persona of a noir detective. He narrates his adventures, casting himself as a hero to all those under his watch.

Penniless, homeless, and virtually lifeless, the vagrant “Doughface” Jack is about to discover that where medical marvels meet the mysteries of the human mind, amazing things happen. The Tramp acquires a capability beyond his imagination and without equal on Earth. Riding the rails, Jack runs afoul of a local sheriff and ends up with a crushed skull. He’s as good as dead until a savvy country doctor performs a bit of medical magic.