Monster Horror

Vera Martinez wants nothing more than to escape Roaring Creek and her parents' reputation as demonologists. Not to mention she's the family outcast, lacking her parents' innate abilities, and is terrified of the occult things lurking in their basement. Maxwell Oliver is supposed to be enjoying the summer before his senior year. Instead he's taking care of his little sister while his mom slowly becomes someone he doesn't recognize. Soon he suspects that what he thought was grief over his father's death might be something more sinister.

The deadly dimensions over London have been sealed, and the monsters have departed. But word has come to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson of a more terrifying creature still - the great Cthulhu has been sighted off the waters of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Only Holmes can defeat him. And in the muddy village of Innsmouth, surrounded by villagers who are more sea-monster than human, Holmes meets again his nemesis, Moriarty, and yet greater foes: Amelia Scarcliffe and Maria Fitzgerald, harbingers of Dagon, who have called forth Cthulhu.

Amelia Scarcliffe’s monstrous brood, harbingers of Cthulhu, will soon spawn. Her songs spell insanity, death...and illimitable wealth. And Moriarty will do anything to get his hands on gold, even if it means tearing down the walls between this world and a realm of horrors. Meanwhile, after Sherlock Holmes’s last tangle with the Order of Dagon, horrifying monsters haunt the Thames, and madness stalks the streets of Whitechapel. Gang war between Moriarty’s thugs and the powerful cult can only bring more terror - unless Holmes and Dr. Watson can prevent it.

A sailor recalls the monstrous terror that lay at the bottom of the deep in this, Lovecraft’s earliest tale of unspeakable horror from outside our universe.

Lemon Ziegler wants to escape rural Devil’s Elbow, Pennsylvania to attend college—but that’s impossible now that she’s expected to impersonate the town’s lake monster for the rest of her life. Her family has been secretly keeping the tradition of Old Lucy, the famed (and very fake) monster of Lake Lokakoma, alive for generations, all to keep the tourists coming. Without Lemon, the town dies, and she can’t disappoint her grandparents . . . or tell her best friends about any of it.

Beauty is...pain. But for Pamela Rose beauty is everything. She spends every day and almost every dollar fighting a losing battle against nature. When a young coworker comes to the office with a new set of breast implants, Pam's delicate psyche begins to crack. Doctor Joseph DiBiro used to make art from flesh and plastic, but after his release from prison the only thing he's handling is a broom. He knows he has more to give the world; he's not done creating beauty. He just needs the right patient.

Robert "Bubba" Brabham never wanted to hunt monsters. He mostly wanted to drink beer, hunt deer, and chase women, like every other giant redneck in the world. But life interfered, and Bubba found himself holster-deep in the family business: monster hunting. Now he's the Southeastern Regional Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic Church...Bubba has to save the world from the things that go bump in the night! Just as soon as he's done with his beer. And maybe after one more lap dance.

"Perfect deadpan marks the opening of Ali Simpson’s The Monster'" writes Susan Merrell of The Southampton Review in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading.

A fantasy/horror novella, Our Monsters Are Real takes place in the summer of a small, Midwestern town called Edlund. Daryl, the farm boy hero, is soon to graduate high school and uses an unknown source of magic against a morbid family. Teenage adolescence, desire, and rock and roll all play their part in discovering secrets that affect the lives of the Carters as they settle into their new life.

A student’s investigation into a secret cult leads to madness.

With an Introduction by Shirley Jackson Award-winner Gemma Files, this outstanding anthology of all things monstrous includes spine-chilling stories from Bentley Little, Simon Clark, Elizabeth Massie, Tim Waggoner, Sumiko Saulson, plus some of the best emerging horror writers working today.

Noah Turner sees monsters. His father saw them - and built a shrine to them with The Wandering Dark, an immersive horror experience that the whole family operates. His practical mother has caught glimpses of terrors but refuses to believe - too focused on keeping the family from falling apart. And his eldest sister, the dramatic and vulnerable Sydney, won't admit to seeing anything but the beckoning glow of the spotlight...until it swallows her up. Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in....

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out 30-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s trying to establish herself as a major psychic operative in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top. Desperate to break the dead-end grind, Julie summons a guardian angel for a quick career boost. But when her power grab accidentally releases an elder god hell-bent on the annihilation of our galaxy, the body count rises rapidly.

A dreamlike tale of haunting melodies and visions of alternate worlds.

Monster Hunter International may have had its roots in the United States of America, but there are plenty of monsters in the big old world. And wherever there are monsters, humans will need monster hunters. Here then, stories of the things that go bump in the night and the men and women who bump back—focusing on the myths, legends, and folklore of Czechia, by Czech authors. Includes a new short story by Larry Correia.

Five strangers drawn together at a roadside bar on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One rampaging monster, escaped from a secret facility, absorbing victims and accumulating biomass as it moves north from Arizona. The miles between them rapidly dwindling. No, this is not the world’s best math problem, it’s Exponential. The rollicking, brutal, gory, and strangely poignant horror novel from Adam Cesare. Criminals and screw-ups need to face down science run amok in this literary tribute to films like Tremors and The Blob.

Spanning everything from vampires and werewolves to ghosts and wendigos, this collection of supernatural horror stories brings you the finest thrills and chills from the bestselling author of Dead Meat and Cadaver. Dive into the depths of the dark imagination that spawned these highly entertaining and fear-fueled adventures.

Wounds is a confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella from Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in The Visible Filth to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table”, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

An alien invasion comes to one man’s doorstep in the form of a story-creature, followed by death and rebirth in a transformed Earth, in this Tor.com Original science fiction tale from Jeff VanderMeer, the New York Times best-selling author of the Southern Reach trilogy.

It's Peretti's ultimate monster story. And this time, the monster is real. Miles away from the hectic city, Reed and Rebecca hike into the beautiful Northwestern woods. They're surrounded by gorgeous mountains, waterfalls, and hundreds of acres of unspoiled wilderness. But something - or someone - begins closing in on them. Something no human has ever seen. And it's killing everyone in its path without remorse.