Small Horrors

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

Intruder in the Dust is at once an engrossing murder mystery and an unflinching portrait of racial injustice. Set in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, it is the story of Lucas Beauchamp, a black man wrongly arrested for the murder of Vinson Gowrie, a white man. Confronted by the threat of lynching, Lucas sets out to prove his innocence, aided by a white lawyer, Gavin Stephens, and his young nephew, Chick Mallison.

Natalie and Rose are transported in their imaginations to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, where one of their ancestors survived in a lifeboat for 50 days. Natalie struggles when her daughter, Rose, is diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, but the researching and retelling of Grandad Colin's story provides them both with a way to fight through. Louise Beech has always been haunted by the sea, and regularly writes travel pieces for the Hull Daily Mail, where she was a columnist for ten years.

Penny and Hattie are sisters in a small town, bound tight to the point of knots. They share a secret they cannot escape, even while it pulls them apart. One night, a match is lit, and Penny's terrible husband is killed - a marriage going up in flames and offering the potential of a new life. The sisters retreat into their family home, a house of secrets and memories, and try to live in the shadow of what they put in motion. But Penny's husband is not the only thing they are hiding - both from the outside world and from each other.

Bram Stoker Award finalist Tananarive Due crafts chilling tales of suspense.

In Joplin's Ghost, 24-year-old R&B phenomenon Phoenix Smalls is on the cusp of fame and fortune. But she is haunted by the spirit of Jazz legend Scott Joplin. After a series of sultry, erotic encounters with the ghost, and with the pressures of stardom closing in on her, Phoenix begins to fear for her life and career.

Bertram Stone is a former Texas Ranger running from the changes of an ever-evolving world. Horses were being replaced by cars. Laws were changing how Bertram could deliver justice. Wanting to live out his golden years in peace, Stone flees to the quiet town of Hamilton, Texas, where he becomes the local sheriff. In a small town where the law rarely needs enforcing, everything is going according to his plan—until a great evil plunges Hamilton into horror.

The Grimes sisters aren’t normal—even by witches’ standards. For weeks, Fiona has been having chilling visions of death, and Eleanor sees restless spirits nearly everywhere she goes. It doesn’t help that Mountain Shadow is a strange place to begin with, where rumors of curses fly as fast as saltwater taffy on a warm summer day. When a string of gruesome murders rocks the small town, Fiona and the rest of her coven begin to worry that a fellow witch may be the killer. Even worse? A witch hunter has just moved in next door, and he suspects the coven.

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.

Asadi's world has ended with the murder of his wife, Taqiya. Yet, even as he buries her, a new tragedy occurs in the small town of Still Water. It seems the sheriff has returned and a member of the Guild has fallen at his hand. As the Guild reels from the blow, Asadi meets a strange being who will challenge the way he sees them. Is the creature telling lies? Or will Asadi learn the Guild is not all it seems?

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.

Sheila Tulane is in love with the resort's pool boy, Teague Harmon, and will do anything to please him - even if it means murdering Guild member Sam Carstens. Meanwhile, Asadi doubts his position in the Guild when he is forced to violate his own personal code. Are his days with the Guild numbered?

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning publisher Crystal Lake Publishing comes the fiction series, Still Water Bay. In the first episode, “The Guild”, we meet Asadi and his pregnant wife, Taqiya, a couple who have just moved to the small Georgia town of Still Water, on the edge of Still Water Bay. Asadi has joined a group for those suffering from grief to discuss the violent nightmares associated with his past. What he doesn’t know is that Still Water Bay is a haven for monsters, and they’re about to make his worst nightmare come true.

A horrific monster has robbed Asadi of what he loves most, forcing him to make a decision that will change his life forever. Will he make the right choice? Discover the truth in Still Water Bay's episode two, A Call to Action.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy. When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field—one a horse, one a human—she realizes that there might be a real story here.

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.

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.

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

It's been two weeks since Evie escaped the mines after solving the mystery of Holly's disappearance only to discover that Desmond followed her but never came back. Evie knows he’s alive, lost wherever the Patchwork Girl resides. When Evie tries to reach out to Holly again for help, she realizes that her connection to the Lost Girl has been severed. Desmond is gone, and it’s all her fault. Ravenglass slowly begins to move on from the tragedy of losing Desmond, but as winter creeps closer and the days grow shorter, a sinister being begins to threaten the lives of Ravenglass residents.

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. 

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.