Literary Horror

For 30 years, they have avoided the outbreak of walking death that has consumed America's heartland. They have secured a small compound near the ruins of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Isolated from the world, they have remained blissfully unaware of what lies outside in the region known as the Dead Lands. Until now. Led by a military vet who's seen better days, the inexperienced offspring of the original survivors form a small expedition to explore the wastelands around them. Small pockets of humanity hide in the shadows: some scared, some mad, all dangerous. This is the New World.

When Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread, she led the way for the bewildered victims of a twenty-first century Minotaur. Trapped in an endless maze of Internet chat rooms, a group of mystified strangers find themselves assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of Horror, the Minotaur himself.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

After the suicide of his uncle, Lucas Heathfield inherits Stoneborough Manor in Oxfordshire. He imagines it as a place where he and his tight-knit group of friends can spend time away from London. But from the beginning, the house changes everything. It begins to have a strange effect on Lucas and he becomes haunted by the death of his uncle, obsessed by ciné films of his uncle's friends at Stoneborough 30 years earlier. Within the claustrophobic confines of the house over a hot, decadent summer, secrets slide out of the past and sexual tensions escalate, shattering the group's friendship and changing their lives irrevocably.

Whether for entertainment, under the guise of medicine, or to propel consumerism, heinous acts are perpetrated daily on women’s bodies. In Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, award-winning journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore catalogs the global toll of capitalism on our physical autonomy. Weaving together unflinching research and surprising humor, these essays range from investigative—probing the Cambodian garment industry, the history of menstrual products, or the gender biases of patent law—to uncomfortably intimate.

Fourteen years ago, deep in the steamy backwoods of Georgia, a 12-year-old girl is bound and ritually tortured. The details of the crime are bizarre, and the few citizens of Lucerne who know the shocking truth of the crime keep it secret. Now, a young orphan boy arrives in the sleepy town and in the dark woods something inhuman stirs in the "snake well". An ancient hunger has awakened. Soft voices call out from the dark forest, drifting over the bayou, echoing in the crawl spaces. The townsfolks' darkest nightmares stalk the moonlit streets.

Two soldiers wander through a mist, into enemy hands, soon after, taken to an abandoned cabin, to be tortured for information about the whereabouts of a Union gold payroll shipment. The Confederate deserters seem to forget their history with the place and discover that old crimes live on with those that no longer do. The dead sometimes ache for revenge, and might just tear a man into shredded meat or worse.

From the author of the horror classic Night of the Living Dead. Tiffany Blake was a beautiful dancer with a glorious future and the backing of a rich benefactor. Then a monstrous accident severed her leg at the hip. Now, the ballerinas are disappearing without a trace. One by one, they fall victim to a dark and deadly pattern of evil - caught by a psycho that would have them pay with their lovely bodies for the cruel fate of another...victims of a madman whose flashing knife will make them writhe a gruesome new dance.

In a small New York State college, beautiful 18-year-old Laura Clark is blossoming, reaching out for love and trying to escape her controlling mother. But for Laura, there is no escape. Not from her mother, not from the unnameable horror that haunts her dreams, and not from the coven's spell of darkness.

A chilling and deliciously dark novel about an idyllic Midwestern college town that turns out to be a panorama of depravity and a nexus of horror. For years Normandy Falls has been haunted by its strange history and the aggrieved spirits said to roam its graveyards. Despite warnings Edmund Campion is determined to pursue an advanced degree there. But Edmund soon learns he isn't immune to the impersonal trappings of fate.

Why not get two delightfully-frightening horror stories for the price of one? When Marion cut open the tree, all he found of his best friend was a finger, never again, in more than 70 years, any trace of him. Now, that finger is all that he can give to the only other person to ever search for Nunzio Calabrisi.

"The Masquerade of Death": Targar Negary entombs his only surviving child in a sarcophagus, possibly thinking her to be a victim of the Black Plague that is sweeping Europe. Poor Talis must endure agonizing and seemingly-endless hours of torture within her tomb, wondering who emplaced her there and why, if it was her father, seeking some sort of punishment. With Talis' air running out, she does not believe that she can survive this entombment and find out the reason for it.

Why not get two tales of pure terror for the low price of only one? If you are not frightened by the body-snatching of husband and wife by the long-forgotten spirits of the wife's great-great-grandfather and his "beloved" and their plan to wreak havoc and carnage upon mankind, surely, your mind will be twisted and left in shattered awe at the forlorn story of a woman driven mad by her own nightmare and its abrupt thrust into reality, tearing away everything that might have left her whole...or you.

The Sins of the Past: Kevin Kendrick must come to terms with his grandfather not being who he's always been thought to be and that he killed Kevin's real grandfather decades ago. As times wears on, Kevin feels his mind slipping away, with each tick of the clock stealing something from him. Can he learn to forgive and put everything in the past, where it's always been, or can he, a mild-mannered man, bring justice full circle?