Dark Fantasy Short Stories

This audiobook collects Wellman’s John Thunstone and Lee Corbet stories, written between 1943 and 1979. These stories combine the mystical and horrific with traditional Southern folk tales and legends. These stories also reveal a post-World War II modernism that make them much more then pulp romanticism. The paranoia and cynicism of modern weird icons, such as The X-files, may well have had their genesis in the pulp musings of Manly Wade Wellman.

Written in the dark days of World War I, join Lord Dunsany as he spreads the dreams that we cannot leave to die. Dunsany was the most influential writer in the genre that came to be known as fantasy, which his stories set trends for that continue to this day.

Food. We use it to celebrate, to provide both comfort and energy, and to show our love. There’s something about mixing a pinch of this and a dash of that to create something new. And when you pair it with the perfect drink...'chef’s kiss'. Stories can do the same thing. They can be a celebration, bring us comfort and energy, and help us express our love. And when the perfect character is paired with the perfect plot...well, then you have something worth devouring. So take a place at the table, and let’s see what’s on the menu.

A beer run becomes an interdimensional excursion. Two men settle their differences after discovering an extraordinary secret in the wilderness. A woman faces the bureaucracy of a digital afterlife. A grieving man seeks to know where his wife was reincarnated. Strange lights in the sky transform the lives of a small town. God and the devil play billiards for people's souls. A teenage deity's science project sprouts a startling discovery. These and more dream-like detours into the surreal, interstitial, and inexplicable await within. Chock full of gooey, mind-bending goodness.

The duty had fallen to Cor to take his nephew Daron to the top of the Pinnacle, for no one else dared. The hard part was making a game out of it so that the boy would not suspect. Some lies were necessary for the greater good, after all. Weren't they?

Operative Jena Morane is the kind of Justice Keeper who can't resist the urge to poke her nose where it doesn't belong. Bored with her current assignment, she flies off to investigate strange readings from a neighboring star system. But something is lurking in deep space, and what she finds there will haunt her until the day she dies.

Getrude Bennet has been called the "most important woman writer of fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1759-1797) and C.L. Moore (1911-1987)". This is a complete collection of short stories by the woman who first explored the dark fantasy worlds of the modern era. This book contains tales that were originally published in Weird Tales, Argosy, and All-Story Weekly between 1918-1923.

Since the dawn of modern man, Erebus was Hades' secret weapon in the war between the immortal realms. Until Hades lost the minor god in a bet to his older brother Zeus. For the last 100 years, Erebus has trained Zeus's Siren warriors in warfare and the sexual arts. But he's never stopped longing for freedom. For a life filled with choice. And lately, he also longs for one Siren who entranced him during their steamy seduction sessions. A nymph he quickly became obsessed with and who was ripped from his grasp when her seduction training was complete.

Talisha is shocked when she finds mechdream pills in the bottom of her husband's underwear drawer. Designed to create a unique virtual reality based on his wildest fantasies, they will allow him to plumb the depths of his pleasure centers. The only problem is, he's spending the rent money building his virtual paradise. Just what are her husband's deepest desires? Talisha isn't sure she wants to know.

A woman finds a head in her mother's garden. Things get weirder when the head talks to her....

This lesser-known character isn't so much a typical Lumley hero as an innocent bystander, who all too often seems to be standing by in the wrong place at the wrong time - a man in collision with various weird horrors, who can never state definitely that the things he experiences are real. So here he is - the neither hero nor anti-hero narrator of these stories - though, in The Nonesuch and Others, he's at least seen to be brave, if not actually heroic.

Hidden deep within the sewers of our world roosts a vile creature known only as the Dark Goblin. He holds in his possession the Spellmaster’s Book, a text with the power to make him practically immortal. He fears no one and turns all those who dare cross him into brainless goblins who obey his every command.

Clock the Chaos Mage. A stranger out of time, hidden in the folds of shadow. He is the guardian of Coney Island's supernatural borderlands, and the only thing standing between our reality and the demons that thirst to destroy it. Clock's Watch. An anthology of heroic dark fantasy and terror.

Sergeant Jacob Knox leads the Head Knockers, a unit of scout-saboteurs in the war against the Dread Duke and his armies. They are the favorite squad among Captain Brighton's Stormwalkers, until an ambush by shapeshifters kills the Captain, half the company, and Knox's best men. Now the new Captain has new orders: he's sending the Head Knockers to investigate an abandoned village, the possible source of the attack.

The mind of Roland Yeomans is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the mysterious forests found bordering civilization to the coldest reaches of alien dimensions. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast sea of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species. Roland Yeomans' characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the 19th century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. Carmilla is Le Fanu's famous classic vampire story which has been filmed numerous times, including Vampyre (1932), Blood and Roses (1960), Crypt of Horror (1964), The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Carmilla (1999).

When you need a memory to be wiped, call me. Transferring unwanted memories to my own mind is the only form of magic I've ever mastered. But now, I'm holding so many memories I'm not always sure which ones are actually mine, any more. Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And...

From the dark and decadent mind of Em Dehaney come eight tales of sea foam secrets and sweet treats. Nothing is quite what it seems, but everything is delicious. This is Food of the Gods.

Stories of the Silver Tower and of Sir Bryan's youth. With more and more foes placing themselves in Sir Bryan's way, the old knight is more determined than ever to reach the Starlight Monastery.

Drei unheimliche Geschichten mit Anklängen an die "Schwarze Romantik" von Linda Budinger ("Cotton Reloaded", "Das Schwarze Auge"). Einfühlsam gelesen von Karen Schulz-Vobach. Stefan erfährt durch Zufall von einem bronzezeitlichen Urnenfeld, das bei archäologischen Grabungen freigelegt wurde. Nachts macht er sich auf, um die Schätze die er dort vermutet, zu heben. Doch er rechnet nicht mit dem Fluch des Geisterkessels!