Dark Fantasy Short Stories

Fortune hunter Billy Newman is not a man of great strength or physical courage. Like a young Johnny Depp, he gets by on his wit, wiles and good looks. And he’s had quite a good run—striking gold in the Philippines and buying his very own island in the South Seas. . . . But there’s trouble in paradise, and Billy’s in the thick of it. The island’s crops are failing. The island’s people are dying. And the island’s owner—Billy—is taking the heat. Why? Because he’s angered the 75-foot-tall big-boss god of the island.

Dark Stars, edited by John F.D. Taff, is a tribute to horror’s longstanding short fiction legacy, featuring 12 terrifying original stories from today's most noteworthy authors, with an introduction by bestselling author Josh Malerman and an afterword by Ramsey Campbell.

In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like "Precious", in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste", a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus.

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.

This is a collection of the first six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series. It includes "Cave of the Kobolds"; "Zombie Attack"; "Orcs, Bears, and Assholes"; "Shipfaced"; "Dungeon Crawl"; and "The Creep on the Borderlands".

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Graveyard Shift," from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift...

A star-studded cast of readers present unabridged tales of horror and suspense from Stephen King’s classic bestselling short story collection. Stories include: Introduction (Stephen King) Suffer the Little Children (Whoopi Goldberg) Crouch End (Tim Curry) Rainy Season (Yeardley Smith)...

These are stories that explore the scarred outposts of desperation and desire, sickness and death, sex and decay. Within this audiobook, you will also find the acclaimed novella Nearly People (nominated for awards by the International Horror Guild and the British Fantasy Society), in which a woman's search for food in a nightmarish city brings her attention from an enigmatic man known as The Dancer, and a host of terrible epiphanies.

This mesmerizing original short story—a prequel to The Sleepwalker—from Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Sandcastle Girls and The Guest Room, tells the tale of one strange summer when a pair of horses die, an odd boy moves to a small Vermont town, and a woman rises from her...

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

For the first time in one volume, a collection of Shirley Jackson’s scariest stories, with a foreword by PEN/Hemingway Award winner Ottessa Moshfegh After the publication of her short story “The Lottery” in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley...

"Narrator Avi Roque delivers a perfectly paced performance....seamlessly switching between English, Scottish, and American accents to distinguish the variety of characters." —AudioFile on What Moves the Dead, an Earphones Award winner) The follow-up to T. Kingfisher’s bestselling gothic...

An incubus disguised as a high school girl puts a disturbing spin on the teacher/student fantasy. An engineer creates a robot with unexpected consequences during the end of the world. A man becomes the pet of alien invaders. From stories of aliens in other worlds to those living among us, these tales will move you out of your comfort zone and open you up to experiencing something - or someone - completely different.

"The audiobook narrated by Avi Roque is delightful." - Buzzfeed "Narrator Avi Roque delivers a perfectly paced performance in this concise audiobook...holding listeners hostage until the house reveals its terrifying secrets." -AudioFile Magazine From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of...

Moonlit graveyards, ravenous monsters, and deadly reflections in the mirror...some nightmares are so diabolically delicious, you never want them to end. And now they don’t have to. Scare Street brings you volumes one and two of Short Horror Stories in a single edition. Six macabre morsels of fear, brought together for your listening pleasure. And each tale packs enough spine-tingling chills to last a lifetime. The clock chimes midnight. Your heart pounds in your chest as you start to listen. You begin to wonder...can you survive long enough to see the next nightmare begin?

Almost 1,000 pages of lightning-paced action. The next three stories in the series listeners are describing as "The new Harry Dresden," or "Deadpool meets Dumbledore".

Discover six stories sharing one impactful message in this fantasy collection.

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.