Small Horrors

Mayhem explodes when monsters mix with guns, rednecks and beer. Craig Nybo's second novel, Small Town Monsters, visits the town of DePalma Beach, Montana, a peaceful lake community with a five-star rating in any tour travel guide. Monster hunter isn't in the job description when Kurt McCammus, a Los Angeles homicide detective, leaves the big city and all its violence behind to take a job as chief of police in DePalma Beach. He falls in love with the clean air and peaceful community. That is until a local rancher finds 50 head of sheep mutilated on his spread.

A carefully crafted collection of short stories derived from the urban legends of small-town America. Each fictional supernatural thriller inside was made to get your heart racing and question whether they were in fact stories or something far more sinister.

There can be no light without darkness.The sun cannot rise without night preceding it, and the setting sun of the day must inevitably fade to black. If life were all sunshine and roses, there would be no contrast. Perpetual sunshine would be both blinding and devastating. We need the darkness. It is an integral part of the whole. Part of us. Horror stories are a reflection of our darker side.

Small Bites is a collection of 14 short stories of the paranormal, horror, science fiction and fantasy. Each a tale of curiosity, hunger, longing, fear and love.

Things still linger in the creeks, swamps, and low places of our childhoods. They never venture into the road, nor rise to stand in open fields. They crawl about in the spider corners of aging barns, moan from mist-choked river banks, and stand hunched and patient in the shadows as we age and die. These beings neither heaven nor hell can claim.

October, 1982. Forced to move to the quiet seaside town of Tasker Bay by her mother, the only thing on high schooler Andi’s mind is saving up enough money to return to her old stomping grounds in Silicon Valley. Her self-taught skills with all things electronic make her a perfect fit for a job at the dingy local arcade. When Polybius—a new game of unknown origin arrives—the shop is suddenly overwhelmed with players fighting for time on the machine. Seemingly overnight, a virus-like epidemic grips Tasker Bay while a violent coastal storm rolls in, isolating it from the outside world.

In this short story, Zeke had enough of big city life, but something has followed him to the backwoods. Every predator, natural or unnatural, gets only one chance to learn how dangerous it is to push a country boy in the corner.

After losing her young son in an accident, Rachel Kennan throws herself into her career as police chief of a small Virginia town to avoid focusing on her grief. Meanwhile, her husband, Finn, a washed-up writer whose alcoholism led to the devastating tragedy that changed everything, struggles to redeem himself before his family completely falls apart. Their two daughters are the only things keeping Rachel and Finn together, but the girls have demons of their own. At the same time, a disturbing crime rocks their tightknit religious community.

Strange and terrible things are happening in the town of Park Heights. Unseen, sinister powers have been drawn here and work in secret to change the fate of the world. For Tess Bellamy, who grew up in the town but could never get away, a new friendship with a billionaire's mysterious daughter will challenge everything she knows about her family and herself. For Gabriel Majeaux, a world-weary drifter just passing through, all paths lead back to the war in the shadows he thought he had left behind.

Due to an error made by Li, the Guild is split while on a monster hunt. Jonathan and Sam wind up at the Guild's cemetery, while Asadi and John make their way back to the library. Here they learn the true identity of the monsters and what they need to trap them. Unfortunately for John, the materials can only be found at the bait shop owned by his estranged wife, Gladys.

They say it’s always beautiful in Bethlam, Nevada. No place you’d rather live. The people are friendly, if a little nosy, and there’s no crime to speak of. Life is pretty perfect. But postal worker Hank Davies has started to suspect something is off in this idyllic little town. And he’s certain of that when he realizes the letters he’s been delivering are just blank pages. Hank isn’t the only one who’s noticed the oddities in Bethlam. One such person knocks on his window in the middle of the night, urging him to investigate his bedroom wall.

Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky's beautifully written and powerful take on the age-old question: "What would happen if you received exactly what you wanted?"

Ken and Bennett Johnson own Fearless Brewery, a place where you can come in for a bite to eat and sample their newest beers in a relaxing atmosphere...until the undead rose and began to destroy humanity. The big cities are falling—or have fallen—and Ken decides to spearhead an operation that will help keep not just a handful of survivors alive, but as many of the town's citizens as possible. It will be no small feat as he faces not only the walking dead, but also small town squabbles and worse...outsiders.

You feed your fish daily. You love them, one and all, and met most first as eggs. You provide dutifully for their care, minding the water temperature, the pH, the pump. Some fish are destined to remain small, whereas others grow naturally larger. These larger ones need their own space - more room to swim, spawn, grow - because their pond is small and thick with other, comparatively diminutive fish.

A horrific car crash leads to problems for the people who scavenged the remnants of the accident scene. A small and peaceful town becomes a nightmare for those involved. This 19,000 word short story makes for a nice afternoon or evening listen!

Haunted by the loss of his wife and his best hunting dog, hunter Jari tries to stem the flow of alcohol and grief that threatens to destroy his life. As the darkness and isolation of winter settles around his small hunting community in remote Finland, it brings with it another threat. The encroachment and growing boldness of a pack of wolves endangers the villagers’ way of life. The presence of the wolves opens old feuds and cracks within the community’s makeup. As Jari tries to lead the villagers through their toughest season, it soon becomes clear that not everyone will survive the winter.

In 1944, Oakwood's town council is desperate to save their young men from being lost to the devastation of the far-reaching effects of WWII, and as such make the unconscionable decision to make an evil deal with an agent of the devil in order to protect their own children, town's citizens and peaceful way of life. Little does journalism student Jim Norton know that his decision to write an article on the town, that seems to have been able to have escaped the pitfalls of progress for his school paper in 1984, will lead him down the treacherous rabbit hole that might end with his demise.

Un condannato trascorre i suoi ultimi minuti narrando le terribili vicende che hanno sconvolto la sua esistenza e quella degli umili abitanti di Caresana...

Welcome to Pearl, a town obsessed with Halloween: the spooky decorations, the costumes, the candy. No one seems to notice that every October 31st, a kid goes missing. Mason Miller does, though. Somehow he’s the only one who has any memory the person existed at all. When Mason’s sister, Meg, vanishes while they’re trick-or-treating, Mason and his friends are pulled into an underworld where monsters roam the streets. They need to fight the evil taking over Pearl, but none of them know the true danger they're facing.

On the brink of a breakdown, two years after the death of his fiancée, Jim Hawkes quits his high-powered job in the city to rent a cottage in the Devonshire countryside seeking some well-needed rest. But Slyford St. James is far from the peaceful haven Jim was hoping for. Almost immediately, he is plagued by strange occurrences: a combination lock that won’t open, loud noises in the attic, the figure of a little girl always just out of sight. His new village friends, Jed and Emma, are convinced Jim has found his way to the village for a reason.