Dark Thriller

It’s not every day that you’re summoned to the Italian countryside on business, so when archaeologist Angelo Morelli asks for Ruth Galloway’s help identifying bones found in the tiny hilltop town of Fontana Liri, she jumps at the chance to go, bringing her daughter along with her for a working vacation. Upon arriving, she begins to hear murmurs of Fontana Liri’s strong resistance movement during World War II and senses the townspeople are dancing around a deeply buried secret. But how could that be connected to the ancient remains she’s been studying?

The snick of a lock. The squeak of door hinges. The creak of a floorboard... Nothing is more mysterious than footsteps in the dark. Are those approaching steps that of friend or enemy? Lover or killer?

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.

Sussex, England, 1929. Mydworth is a sleepy English market town just 50 miles from London. But things are about to liven up there, when young and handsome Sir Harry Mortimer returns home from his diplomatic posting in Cairo, with his beautiful and unconventional American wife, Kat. No sooner have the two arrived, when a jewel robbery occurs at Harry's aunt's home - Mydworth Manor. The police are baffled and overwhelmed with the case. But Harry and Kat have an edge in the hunt for the dangerous culprit.

One, two, I'm coming for you. She's my obsession. Three, four, kneel on the floor. I want to possess her in every way. Five, six, I'm up to my old tricks. She knows me as The Portland Serial K!ll3r. Seven, eight, lay in wait. Little does she know I'm watching her. Nine, ten, never to be seen again. Welcome to your worst nightmare, Little Lamb. Who am I? Let me introduce myself. I'm Death. And I have found my Queen.

Marla Lindberg’s memories are crystal clear: of the strange message that lured her years ago to a disused maternity clinic. Of the figure who tried to kill her. The strange whistling cough of the psychopath during the fight to the death. After years of psychotherapy, the highly intelligent young woman has learned that these are all false memories. And on top of that, Marla suffers from face blindness. Her brain plays tricks on her in extreme situations when it tries in vain to recognize people by their faces.

Pamela Paterson and Bettina Fraser call their crafting group Knit and Nibble, in honor of its two main activities. But on a stormy Halloween night, their peaceful chat over spiced cider and cookies is interrupted by homicide . . . With the houses of Arborville, New Jersey, decked out in festively frightening decorations, it's easy to mistake a real dead body for a fake. But Pamela and Bettina are alerted by the screams of teenage trick-or-treaters to the corpse next door. Their neighbor Adrienne's sister, visiting from New York City, is slumped on the porch, fatally stabbed.

May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter streams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa; she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmo. Only she is not the Santa Rosa, she is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter that sails for the Intelligence Division of the British Royal Navy....

Jax Carter believed in very little, especially God, the suspicious deaths of his parents & the years under the harsh scrutiny of the local church saw to that. Channeling his past traumas, Jax seeks vengeance on any man in town with a tally of sins against his name. Jax is exactly what everyone suspects……an unhinged psycho with a twisted Robin Hood complex. But maybe for her….he could be different.

FBI Agent Ella Dark has studied serial killers from the time she could read, devastated by the murder of her own father, and has gained an encyclopedic knowledge of murderers. When a body mysteriously turns up in a body bag, Ella immediately realizes a new serial killer is on the loose—and that he may already be one step ahead of her….

Bishop Rider Lives! And for a dead man, he’s been busy. His story and the parts of it yet to be told being what populates Brand New Dark.

A small white plane hurtles from the sky, vanishing into the wilderness. Hiker Maggie Roby watches its final descent, certain that no one could have survived. But to her shock, a fifteen-year-old girl emerges from the wreckage, wounded but miraculously, impossibly alive. Maggie approaches with trepidation; she has secrets of her own, a past she can’t escape. Saving the girl means risking her future, but she can’t just abandon her, can she?

Almost everyone in prison will tell you they’re in there for a crime they didn’t commit, but Anthony Rourke really means it. That’s because he’s actually Bunny McGarry, who has got himself into one of Nevada’s finest penitentiaries under false pretenses. He is there to bust someone else out.

After the Underwater Investigation Unit’s disbandment, public outcry ushers Sloan McPherson and her partner, former navy diver Scott Hughes, back into the depths of crime solving. But Sloan’s return comes with a personal case. Longtime family friend Fred Stafford has disappeared. Left behind: his abandoned truck in the vicinity of an unmarked sinkhole and new findings that have Sloan second-guessing everything she thought she knew about the man.

The Five Falls survivors lost nearly everything in the Chicom and SAA assaults, but they haven’t lost their will to live, their determination to take their country back or the fighting spirit needed to do both. The war won’t unfold the way you think. Hardened warriors like Logan, Skylar, and Riker have endured the worst, and now they’re putting everything on the line to take their country back. But they can’t do it alone. They’ll need help.

It was his first big murder case - and one of the bloodiest and most violent crimes LAPD detective Danny McGuire would ever encounter. Andrew Jakes, an elderly multimillionaire art dealer, had been brutally murdered in his Hollywood home, his lifeless body tied to his naked young wife. Raped and beaten, the lovely Angela Jakes had barely survived the attack herself. Gazing into her deep, soulful eyes, Danny swore that he'd find the psychopath behind this barbarous act.

No one knows death like Tea. A bone witch who can resurrect the dead, she has the power to take life...and return it. And she is done with her self-imposed exile. Her heart is set on vengeance, and she now possesses all she needs to command the mighty daeva. With the help of these terrifying beasts, she can finally enact revenge against the royals who wronged her - and took the life of her one true love. But there are those who plot against her, those who would use Tea's dark power for their own nefarious ends.

November, 1967, Iceland. Fourteen-year-old Marsi has a secret penpal – a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister's name. Now she is excited to meet him for the first time. But when the date arrives, Marsi is prevented from going, and during the night her sister Stína goes missing – her bloodstained anorak later found at the place where Marsibil and her penpal had agreed to meet. November, 1977. Stína's disappearance remains unsolved.

Nearly six months after Kate and August were first thrown together, the war between the monsters and the humans is a terrifying reality. In Verity, August has become the leader he never wished to be, and in Prosperity, Kate has become the ruthless hunter she knew she could be. When a new monster emerges from the shadows—one who feeds on chaos and brings out its victim’s inner demons—it lures Kate home, where she finds more than she bargained for. She’ll face a monster she thought she killed, a boy she thought she knew, and a demon all her own.

Gemma Robinson comes into Elliot’s life like a whirlwind, and they marry and settle into his home. When she asks him if her parents can come to stay for a couple of weeks, he is keen to oblige - he just doesn’t quite know what he’s signing up for. The Robinsons arrive with Gemma’s sister, Chloe, a mysterious young woman who refuses to speak or leave her room.