Short Horror

This year brings 22 more in-your-face stories that break boundaries and trash taboos, transgressive tales you can't "unread" (as Chuck Palahniuk says). Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex, and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect. Some of these quieter tales offer the listener some time to recover from the more disturbing ones preceding.

At sixteen, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now twenty-five and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot."

Scare Street is proud to present a collection of best-selling horror author Ron Ripley’s most blood-curdling ghost stories. Four delightfully diabolical tales have been summoned from beyond the grave, and are certain to make your skin crawl. Haunted houses, vengeful spirits, ancient curses - everything you crave in a classic ghost story lurks within this ghastly collection. And as you devour one terrifying story after another, pay no attention to the chill in the air.

Welcome to Leeds, Massachusetts, where the drowned walk, where winged leeches blast angry static, where black magic casts a shadow over a cringing populace. You've tuned in to WXXT. The fracture in the stanchion. The drop of blood in your morning milk. The viper in the veins of the Pioneer Valley.

After the publication of her short story “The Lottery” in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller. This collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides listeners with more of her unsettling, dark tales, including the “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Summer People”.

The most revered detective in Paris puts his skills to the test in three thrilling cases from the creator of Alex Cross and Detective Michael Bennett.

Terror never sleeps.... A young girl's emotional abuse transforms her into a horrific spirit. Hellfire and damnation await a woman whose psychiatrist may be more than he seems. And devastating secrets from the past are unleashed when an old man revisits his childhood bedroom.... Scare Street is proud to present the best in bone-chilling supernatural horror. This volume contains three terrifying tales for your listening pleasure. Each story will keep you up long past the midnight hour, eager to turn the next chapter.

Voracious monsters threaten to consume a helpful priest. A gamer girl finds herself trapped in a digital realm of death. One widow’s worst nightmare reaches out from beyond the grave. Scare Street is proud to present the best in bone-chilling supernatural horror. This volume contains three macabre morsels for your listening pleasure. These fast-paced tales of terror are guaranteed to keep you listening well past your bedtime.

The Green Book is a precious artefact procured from the possessions of a dead woman, and carefully kept in secret by the aged and studious Ambrose. Cotgrave is loaned the Green Book to further his understanding of the occult secrets that Ambrose is so reluctant to talk about. FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of this supernatural classic that's often cited as an inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft.

In 1968 the world experienced a brand-new kind of terror with the debut of George A. Romero's landmark film Night of the Living Dead. This was something new...and terrifying. Since then, zombies have invaded every aspect of popular culture. But it all started on that dreadful night in a remote farmhouse. Nights of the Living Dead returns to that night, to the outbreak, to where it all began.

Everyone’s favorite snarky, dangerous, idealistic, relentless covert operative is back, and this time he’s brought friends. Joe Ledger: Unstoppable presents original short stories about Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences by some of New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry’s "friends in the industry." Buckle up for powerful, exciting, and nail-biting adventures.

"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 shipwrecked man comes upon an apartment building located in the middle of the ocean. Inside, he finds the skulls of 12 residents, each one eager to tell their story.

The King in Yellow is a collection of 10 short stories on supernatural subjects first published 1895. The title refers to a mysterious play which causes derangement in the minds of those who read or see it, and which is mentioned in the first four stories.

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he has made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.

It is said that dreams are harmless, that they are nothing more than the meaningless fancies of an unconscious mind. It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream. This, of course, is something we tell ourselves when we wake up screaming in the dead of night. We repeat the mantra in order to bring ourselves back to reality, in order to remind ourselves that there is nothing to fear.

Something monstrous has come to Arkham, Massachusetts. There have always been shadows here, but now a new hunger has risen from the depths and threatens those who dwell here. But there are heroes too—people who stand up and fight to stem the tide, even when it costs them everything. Explore eight shocking new tales of occult horror, captivating mystery, and existential fear—from a zealous new heroine to conniving cultists, bootleg whiskey to night terrors, and fiends that crawl from open graves. A nightmare has fallen across Arkham, and it will devour all.

A collection of thrilling tales from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos by one of horror's biggest legends, this volume contains the very best of Brian Lumley's Mythos short stories.

"The Crystal Cup" reveals the struggle a young artist faces when he is taken from his family and forced to work for the king. He is promised freedom in return for his hard work making a perfect crystal vase. But the story takes a tragic twist when he dies immediately following his completion of the vase. The king jeopardizes his reign after displaying the artist's remains alongside the vase during a feast at the castle.

Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) has earned a reputation as one of the finest horror writers of the modern era, but his work has been out of print and nearly unobtainable for many years. His seminal volume In a Lonely Place collects eight of his best tales, including "In the Pines," a classic ghost story evocatively set in the Tennessee woods, "Beyond Any Measure," an original take on the vampire story.