Occult Horror Fiction

Daxas' trials continue. He has defeated those with the temerity to face him and claimed the dark elf Dungeon Mistress Jen'Zadeer Shadestar for his own. His guild, the Dark Moon Rising, continues to flourish despite its figurehead Chief Simeon Reedwhistle's reservations.

Doc and Jury have been pulled deeper into Bosch's web than they ever could have imagined, revealing a plot that threatens the entire Hidden. Always five steps ahead, Bosch is in complete control of the game, but Doc is proving to be a more formidable opponent than expected. Unfortunately, Doc is playing catch-up and missing too many details to solve the mystery before it's too late. Never one to back down from a fight, Doc will stop at nothing to win. It may be suicide, but even immortals have to die sometime...

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.

The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby's son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place. Convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.

There’s a hit list circulating the prison, offering up large sums of cash for our deaths—me and all of my men. Assassins, serial killers, and murderers...They’re all coming out of the woodwork to collect their prize. Even a queen and her kings can't fight off an entire army. Escape is our only option if we want to survive.

My name is Medley Bell, and if you had told me this time last week that I was demon, then I’d have said you were nuttier than a squirrel turd. Of course, that was before I started seeing the strangest things. I’ve always been a little off, but it took stumbling into a backwater bar to understand how different I really am. So when two drool-worthy guys stop by to tell me that I’m Hell spawn just like them, I’m more relieved than shocked. I mean, it sure does explain a lot.

I’ve spent my whole life seeing monsters, but they could never see me back...until now. Turns out, I’m not crazy like I’ve spent my whole life believing. Too bad it took being locked in a cage and tortured almost to the point of insanity to realize that. But I’m not alone. In a cage to my left, there’s a monster who’s given up hope. He stays in the shadows and moves with chains wrapped around him, but his golden eyes watch. To my right, there’s a girl with purple wings and familiar gray eyes.

For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history’s darkest waters - and now it is heading in our direction.It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts - or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore.

Set against the stark background of the Southwestern desert, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights glows with the promise—and fear—of the world we know and the worlds we don’t, following women and girls as they navigate dangers both supernatural and existential. From the all-too-real horror of a sexual predator on a college campus to a lost sister transformed by cave-dwelling creatures, Mystery Lights grapples with terrors both familiar and fantastic.

No train has run on this railroad since the end of the Civil War—a railroad built by the servitude to perfect evil—and its trusted tracks run right behind the house. Justin Collier expects his respite in Gast, Tennessee, to be relaxing if not a bit dull, but he will find out soon enough that those same train tracks once led to a place worse than Hell.

For many years, during the "far out" 1960s, Long John Nebel interviewed hundreds of "way out" people on his free-wheeling radio/TV show in New York City. This fascinating, provocative book is the culmination of at least 10,000 hours of radio interviews, in which Nebel and his guests explore topics such as ESP, UFOs, strange Earth creatures, time travel, reincarnation, and unusual inventions, healing methods, and approaches to life.

When Cassie's twin sister, Lissa, commits suicide, Cassie discovers she can travel to Hell to retrieve her sister's soul. Cassie thought she knew all about the Hell of legend, but finds Hell has evolved over the millennia into a bustling city full of the damned with looming skyscrapers, crowded streets, systemized evil, and atrocity as the status quo.

In Ghostly Japan collects 12 ghostly stories from Lafcadio Hearn, deathless images of ghosts and goblins, touches of folklore and superstition, salted with traditions of the nation. While some of these stories contain nightmare imagery worthy of a midnight creature feature, others are not ghostly or ghastly at all. "Bits of Poetry" offers an engaging study on verse, and "Japanese Buddhist Proverbs" explains the meaning of several aphorisms based on Japanese cultural references.

Once a legendary police inspector, Nicolas Lenoir is now a disillusioned and broken man who spends his days going through the motions and his evenings drinking away the nightmares of his past. Ten years ago, Lenoir barely escaped the grasp of the Darkwalker, a vengeful spirit who demands a terrible toll on those who have offended the dead. But the Darkwalker does not give up on his prey so easily, and Lenoir has always known his debt would come due one day. When Lenoir is assigned to a disturbing new case, he treats the job with his usual apathy- until his best informant, a street savvy orphan, is kidnapped.

Edgar Allen Poe's masterful poem, The Raven, is a strange and haunting story of lost love. It tells of a distraught young man who, while lamenting the loss of his lover, Lenore, is visited by a talking raven, adding a supernatural element to an already mysterious experience. The story traces the man's slow, sorrowful descent into madness. This edition of The Raven includes historical information about the author and the story.

I never expected my life to go up in literal hellfire. The dark moon should be the best night of my life as a shifter. Instead, my sweet little house cat just combusted into flames in the middle of my bedroom, my tormenting alpha says he’s my mate, and three hellish men just blazed into my life like sinful gods. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. No big deal. Except rejecting the alpha who’s determined to make me his whore ends worse than I ever could have imagined…. With nowhere left to run, I’m forced to acknowledge the gorgeous existence of the three dark stalkers hunting me.

Anatole France (1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist who wrote several best sellers. The Revolt of the Angels is a mischievous take on the theology of modern society; it chronicles the thoughts of Arcade, a lowly guardian angel, as he discovers the ugly truths of his divine master in the library of his human charge As Maurice, the young man abandoned by Arcade, struggles to get his guardian back, one gets a view of a wide variety of the author’s artistic personalities, most of whom are fallen angels.

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny have been summoned to remote Cardavan House, home of the world’s largest private collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts, for the unveiling of George Cardavan’s latest acquisition: a bone fide Egyptian mummy. When a bloodstained body is discovered beside the empty sarcophagus, Ishmael is dismissive of the theory that the mummy’s curse is to blame.

Gemma Turner once dreamed of stardom. Now the actress is on the cusp of obscurity. When she’s offered the lead in a radical new horror film, Gemma believes her luck has changed—but her dream is about to turn into a nightmare. One night, between the shadows of an alleyway, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. Yet, Gemma is alive. She’s been pulled into the film. And the script—and the monsters within it—are coming to life. Gemma must play her role perfectly if she hopes to survive.

At the end of our days we will most likely lie for eternity in the cemetery or graveyard. Many of these, now wreathed in time, have a romance and overgrown beauty as nature keeps and shelters the dead. For our varied and talented authors, a major theme, or indeed character of the stories in this volume is that very location, and how they weave it into their narratives is both fascinating, enlightening and a wonderfully distinct way of telling classic short stories.