Fiction Horror Thriller

Featuring North America's foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are 32 of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous, to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.

In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village.

An infertile couple escape to Italy for a short break but soon understand they are not alone, and that an ancient evil has awoken.

Ancient evils lurk in the Western New York town of Oneka Falls, and they are hungry. Only three children have encountered them and lived. Psyches fractured, each child has survived as best they could - wrapped in fantasy, the comfort of amnesia, or the silence of isolation. When those evils intrude on their lives a second time, it sets a chain of events in action that can only end in destruction. But who will be destroyed, the children or the ancient evils that plague the town?

Kinsey Thorne, the first female US Navy SEAL candidate has hit rock bottom. Having washed out of the Navy, she turned to every drink and drug she could get her hands on. Until her father and cousins, all ex-Navy SEALS themselves, offer her a way back into the life: as part of a private, elite combat team being put together to find and hunt down an impossible monster in the Indian Ocean. Kinsey has a second chance, but can she live through it?

In an all-new novella in E.J. Copperman’s “funny, charming, and thoroughly enjoyable” ( Spinetingler Magazine) series, the storm of the century bears down on the haunted guesthouse, and stirs up a gale of memories for a troubled ghost. Haunted guesthouse owner Alison Kerby may have only recently discovered her ability to communicate with ghosts, but for her mother Loretta, it’s been a lifelong gift.

Eight years ago, Brynn Donovan watched her father kill her mother. He’s supposed to be in prison—but he’s escaped. And he’s coming for her. What should be an ordinary evening after work turns deadly when Brynn’s estranged father, Alan, ambushes her and forces her into his car. It’s the start of the road trip from hell: a cross-country trek to the Rocky Mountains and the remote shelter Alan built years ago to protect his family from the monsters living in his head—the ones he swears will erupt from the earth at any moment.

Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where "Fun is Guaranteed!" But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares.

They didn't know it was the last day of normal. Liam - husband, father - the rock who anchored them in a comfortable life in sunny Miami had been gunned down by a hit man. The wounds of losing him are raw when Lydia and her two children are snatched for their own protection. The FBI scoop the family into the Witness Protection Program. Their safety from the drug cartel is assured.

Suffering from writer's block, novelist Rachel Ames escapes to a lake cabin to calm her mind and regain a sense of herself. The location is perfect. Isolated. Beautiful. Inspiring. It even comes with a good-looking landlord who shows an interest in her. But she can't shake the sense that something terrible has followed her to the lake, something just beyond her consciousness, something out on the edge where the sounds of a raging fire and sirens linger whenever she slows down to listen.

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

Eli Gac has been ten moves ahead of Doc since beginning his deadly game of cat and mouse, with Tucker’s life as the prize. Doc is willing to go as far as is needed to save his friend, including sacrificing his own life. But as the battle of wits leaves Doc with no other options, will he be ready to do the unthinkable?

On the brink of a breakdown, two years after the death of his fiancée, Jim Hawkes quits his high-powered job in the city to rent a cottage in the Devonshire countryside seeking some well-needed rest. But Slyford St. James is far from the peaceful haven Jim was hoping for. Almost immediately, he is plagued by strange occurrences: a combination lock that won’t open, loud noises in the attic, the figure of a little girl always just out of sight. His new village friends, Jed and Emma, are convinced Jim has found his way to the village for a reason.

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret. For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker - an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: Occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

Christine is certain that the Institute is trying to get rid of her. Why else would they send her to investigate a hundred-year-old cold case about some illusive “phantom” lurking in the depths of a crumbling old Opera House? It turns out she’s probably right, but as unlikely as it seems, there might be something to it. There’s definitely more in the shadows than a few rats and some pieces of forgotten scenery—especially now that she’s woken it up. The phantom is real. And now he's set his sights on her.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.

This was the most popular novel of Radcliffe's time; Radcliffe's portrayal of her heroine's inner life raised the Gothic romance to a new level. The atmosphere of fear and the gripping plot continue to thrill today. This is the story of the orphaned Emily St Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the Castle of Udolpho by her aunt's new husband Montoni. Here she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors which threaten to overwhelm her.

Joe works at a facility that performs human experimentation. His work just followed him home. The government wanted to unlock hidden abilities in the human mind. They put subjects in extreme sensory deprivation. All the test subjects went violently insane. But the research continued. Today it has been perfected. Almost perfected.

X is trapped living in the slums of the last remaining city on Earth. He can only venture out beyond the towering walls to scavenge relics of the old world when the sun is up. At night, like everybody else, he hides inside from the monsters of the shadows...until an unexpected death occurs a little too close to home. With the blame on his shoulders, and trigger-happy guards on his trail, X has no choice but to run. But the city was never a safe place to begin with, not really, and his only slim chance of survival lies outside the walls, in a landscape empty of humanity.