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Hekla's Children
by James Brogden
A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned, Olivia, starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she’d been. Questioned by the police but released for lack of evidence, Nathan spent the years trying to forget. When a body is found in the same ancient woodland where they disappeared, it is first believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have horrific visions of the students, alive but trapped. Then Olivia reappears, desperate that the warrior’s body be returned to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay…
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| Meddling Kids by Edgar CanteroIn Meddling Kids, Catalonian author Edgar Cantero portrays a reunion of old friends who decide to complete some unfinished business in the resort town where they spent their summers as kids. While pitting good against evil, Cantero pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, the bumbling but resourceful gang in Scooby-Doo (yes, there are four kids and a dog), and a full range of road trip, haunted house, and reclusive wizard tropes. This gripping escapade (with touches of quirky humor) will have you rooting for the sympathetic, well-drawn kids -- now adults -- as your knuckles all turn white. |
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The Boy on the Bridge
by M.R. Carey
Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy. The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world. To where the monsters lived. A standalone novel set in the same world as "The Girl with All the Gifts" finds a clever boy declared the savior of his land and dispatched outside the gates to the region of monsters.
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| In the Valley of the Sun: A Novel by Andy DavidsonIn this "lyrical modern Western" (Booklist, starred review), author Andy Davidson skillfully works the traditional vampire legend into a cowboy yarn set in West Texas in 1980. Serial murderer Travis Stillwell wakes up pale, weak, and sensitive to sunlight after a one-night stand; he's taken in by a motel owner and her son, who offer him odd jobs. All the while, a Texas Ranger is tracking him, and the vampire who turned Travis is annoyed by his pacific behavior. This suspenseful, complex debut will please not only horror fans but also those who appreciate Cormac McCarthy's dark narratives. |
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Entropy in Bloom : Stories
by Jeremy Robert Johnson
For more than a decade, Jeremy Robert Johnson has been bubbling under the surface of both literary and genre fiction. His short stories present a brilliantly dark and audaciously weird realm where cosmic nightmares collide with all-too-human characters and apocalypses of all shapes and sizes loom ominously. In “Persistence Hunting,” a lonely distance runner is seduced into a brutal life of crime with an ever-narrowing path for escape. In “When Susurrus Stirs,” an unlucky pacifist must stop a horrifying parasite from turning his body into a sentient hive. Running through all of Johnson’s work is a hallucinatory vision and deeply-felt empathy, earning the author a reputation as one of today’s most daring and thrilling writers. Featuring the best of his independently-published short fiction, as well as an exclusive, never-before-published novella “The Sleep of Judges”—where a father’s fight against the denizens of a drug den becomes a mind-bending suburban nightmare—Entropy in Bloom is a perfect compendium for avid fans and an ideal entry point for adventurous readers seeking the humor, heartbreak, and terror of JRJ’s strange new worlds.
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Sleeping Beauties
by Stephen King
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world. Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.
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The End of Temperance Dare
by Wendy Webb
When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists’ retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor’s dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a “waiting room for death.” After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them. But from her first fog-filled moments on the manor’s grounds, Eleanor is seized by a sense of impending doom and realizes there’s more to the institution than its reputation of being a haven for creativity. After the arrival of the new fellows—including the intriguing, handsome photographer Richard Banks—she begins to suspect that her predecessor chose the group with a dangerous purpose in mind. As the chilling mysteries of Cliffside Manor unravel and the eerie sins of the past are exposed, Eleanor must fight to save the fellows—and herself—from sinister forces.
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| Stay Awake: Stories by Dan ChaonStay Awake, a story collection by acclaimed author Dan Chaon, presents unsettling tales that explore the darkness lurking in his characters' lives. In the first story, "The Bees," a five-year-old child's screams wake his parents several times a week, but the cause of the screaming is mysterious -- and more disturbing secrets are yet to be revealed. The title story, "Stay Awake," describes a father's nearly fatal traffic accident just before his infant daughter's surgery to remove an incompletely formed conjoined twin. Other tales focus on grief over a loved one's death and similar intensely emotional events. |
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| High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread by Joyce Carol OatesBram Stoker Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates, who's skilled at literary fiction as well as horror, explores the heights and depths of human character in these disturbing stories. The narrator of "The Home at Craigmillnar" wonders if an elderly nun's death was from her heart condition...or something else. Several tales, including "The Rescuer" and "Demon," portray extremes of family dysfunction, while some (especially the title story "High Crime Area") reveal the risks that come from total strangers. Favoring ambiguous conclusions, Oates ruffles the previously serene seas of our consciousness. |
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| Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters, a genius who was tragically misunderstood in his lifetime. He was a seminal figure in the development of science fiction and the detective story, and exerted a great influence on Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and Charles Baudelaire, who championed him long before Poe was appreciated in his own country. Baudelaire's enthusiasm brought Poe a wide audience in Europe, and his writing came to have enormous importance for modern French literature. This edition includes his most well-known works--"The Raven," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Annabel Lee," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"--as well as less-familiar stories, poems, and essays. |
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| Black Tide Rising by John Ringo and Gary PooleZombie fans have a feast before them in this tense and fast-paced anthology that vividly depicts life after the zombie apocalypse. Acclaimed science fiction writers present stories set in author and editor John Ringo's zombie apocalypse universe, with pieces by Ringo to introduce and conclude the volume. John Scalzi and Dave Klecha team up in "On the Wall;" characters in Sarah Hoyt's "Do No Harm" wonder if that phrase still means anything; and there's even a jewel heist caper at the Louvre in Jason Cordova and Eric S. Brown's "Best Laid Plans." |
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