Ghost Fiction

For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She gave up on her own career as a concert pianist many years ago, but her husband Bowen, an executive at a car company, has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. As tension in the household rises, it becomes harder for Song Yan to keep her usual placid demeanor.

On a planet where life is cheap, in a city built on corruption, very few things are considered holy. The Landing Site is one of them. The remains of the century-old habitat pod—which delivered the colonists to the only barely habitable place on the cruel world of Croatoan—has become a monument to the hardscrabble people who somehow survived the unsurvivable. So when blood is shed on that sacred ground, it’s seen as an attack against the entire colony.

Was there any particular reason that, near the end of your lives, you suddenly stopped buying Bounty paper towels? So begins the first question from Bounty’s market research representative to Paul and Maggie. In this unique short story, a couple who died suddenly in their 50s recounts their use of Bounty paper towels and their sudden switch to a bargain brand near the end of their lives. What appears to be a run-of-the-mill spat between spouses at the Stop & Shop is revealed to be a defining moment of a marriage years in decline.

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.

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.

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater. So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. Margaret is staying.

It's sink or swim for Jack and Annie when Magic Tree House whisks them off to the middle of the ocean. And that's just the beginning....

In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on 44 acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago.

When growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls, aka Cataract City - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - one of Jake's closest confidants was his uncle Calvin, a sweet but eccentric misfit enamored of occult artifacts and outlandish conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turned 12, Calvin invited him to join the "Saturday Night Ghost Club" - a seemingly lighthearted project to investigate some of Cataract City's more macabre urban myths.

A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor named Meagin March. A married neighbor. An illicit affair stoking rage is a perfect motive. But a “double” in this neighborhood of gated estates isn’t something you see every day. The house is untouched. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. The case has “that feeling,” and when that happens, Milo turns to his friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware.

War rages in the north. As the Varin Knights march to join Tukor in their conflict against Rasalan, Elyon Daecar finds himself embroiled in a world of secrets and lies. Saska has one goal: to assassinate Lord Kastor. Posing as a captured servant girl, she infiltrates the Kastor warcamp to face her demons, but before long finds herself hopelessly out of her depth. Enemies close in, old and new…and history has a habit of repeating itself.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, whom they consider to be less than human.

Sally has recently left an unfulfilling job to volunteer at a living history museum, where she is assigned to the Death House. Every day, she dons Victorian mourning garb and describes traditional funeral services to tourists. It sounds depressing as hell, but for Sally, it’s less depressing than her tepid marriage to her childhood sweetheart. This becomes all too clear when she accidentally travels through time and space to a liminal world where the ghosts of the living history museum haunt its grounds. There, she meets and falls hard for Victorian-era pretty boy Nathaniel.

Ten years ago, Hell Diver Xavier "X" Rodriguez fell to Earth. Those he left behind went on without him aboard the airship he once called home. Michael Everheart - the boy once known as Tin - has grown into a man and the commander of Hell Diver Raptor Team. While Michael dives to help keep the Hive in the air, Captain Leon Jordan rules with an iron fist at the helm of the ship. But unrest stirs under his strict leadership as a prophecy of hope sweeps the lower decks.

A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny, and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges, and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood.

The elite witches are seeking to cut Tetrarch Doc Holliday's reign short as they make a play to seize power. As Doc races the clock to save the victims of Blackwater, the witches' personal prison, it becomes increasingly clear that war is inevitable. But if it's a war the elites want, then a war is exactly what Doc will give them....

I'm a feral omega with one rule: Never get attached; Never let anyone in. But five alphas are about to shatter everything I thought I knew—and this time, I can't blame it on my biology. The Ghosts are killers with fractured souls. Monsters in human skin. But somehow, they've become my monsters. Especially Wraith, the silent, scarred sentinel who sees me like no one else. And as I realize I'm starting to fall for him, I also realize something even more terrifying. I'm falling for them all.

Doc has finally gotten Adrian Gionta’s scent, and he won’t stop until he catches his prey. Gionta is far more than a painter of souls though, and he’s had plenty of time to prepare for the oncoming storm that is Doc Holliday. It will take more than a mere mortal to save the thousands of people trapped in Gionta’s paintings. Thankfully, Doc’s no mere mortal, but will even he be enough....

An entire city lies in ruins in the aftermath of the Black Shamans war with Andrew Rufus, and it falls on Doc Holliday to clean up the mess. A promise is a promise though, so nothing will stop Doc from doing what needs to be done. But somewhere in the wreckage a new nightmare is being unleashed; and with no way to prevent the oncoming storm, Docs luck may have finally run out...