Horror Fiction Short Stories

Many say that a composer's tenth symphony is cursed. Few have made it to their tenth, and Ludwig Van Beethoven, Spencer Evans' idol, was not one of them. Spencer Evans, professor of music at a prestigious university, is one of the most well-respected pianists in the world. He is a legend in music, and is obsessed with the work of Beethoven. He has collected rare artifacts and items that belonged to Beethoven himself. To Spencer Evans' amazement, a new treasure arrives under mysterious circumstances. An original copy of Beethoven's tenth symphony.

A couple is stuck in a small town, unable to leave due to a violent storm that seems to have come out of nowhere. The residents seem overly prepared for what, at first, seems like an ordinary thunderstorm. People are fleeing into their homes and shutting them up as if protecting themselves from something far deadlier than thunder and lightning. There's just something about those clouds....

When Crag Minyac is released from prison, his demons return, begging for blood. As deranged as he is, Crag doesn't put up much of a fight. When he's forced to move into a halfway house as part of his probation, he immediately begins looking for his next victim - a tasty treat to satisfy his wicked cravings. But things get complicated when a ghost that haunts the old Astora Hotel discovers his plot. As it turns out, Crag's blood lust may cost him a higher price than he expected to pay.

A man determined to kill a clown. A child's eleventh birthday heralds the arrival of a bizarre new entourage. A suicidal performer just can't seem to die. All of these weird marvels and more can be found at the Nightmare Carnival!

Thomas Malone thought he'd seen it all during his 25 years in the Birmingham homicide division. But then they found the body of a woman suspended above the opening of the mineshaft known as the Vertical, blood dripping into the chasm below. At the bottom of that shaft, two clues - a typed manuscript and a business card, blank but for a name on the front and a single sentence on the back.

Sam has retreated to her late father’s rental house, a safe place to commune with the animals in the greenbelt out back, tend to her garden, and keep her secrets. Her sense of security slowly returns - until an aggressive neighbor from the other side of the ravine fells a tree on her property. How little he regards nature. Or understands its darkness. How little he knows Sam.

Clayton James Felding is a post adolescent teen. New to suburbia, he is concerned about societal deterioration, the implications upon society, and his psyche. Follow him into a home between worlds, and the nightmares in its shadow. Your understanding of reality will be tested…from the top of the stairs.

2019. The year certainly made its mark on the world. It also made for a bounty of good horror stories of the extreme kind, the best of which the tales herein serve to illustrate. 2019 was the year Year's Best Hardcore Horror went global. Not by design but because the stories inside just happened to have been written by authors hailing from various parts of the globe. From Australia by way of South Africa, to Italy, Scotland, Norway, Taiwan, North America and India - the common denominator being that their tales come from darkest regions of imagination.

The Rules have allowed Andrew Phillips to commit the most heinous of crimes for decades. He meticulously plans and executes kidnappings, murders, and other unspeakable acts to children. No one has ever come close to solving the atrocities he perpetrates every few months. Phillips thinks he's successfully committed the perfect crimes. And then he meets Asher Benson.

This long-awaited third collection of short horror stories brings you a showcase of the best new and previously published tales that Blakey-Novis has to offer. With a wide variety of sub-genres, Short Horror Stories Volume 3 includes tales of possession and demons, unseen beasts lurking in the shadows, ghost stories, killers, and cannibals. Setting stories in the modern day, as well as hundreds of years into both the past and future, the listener is taken on a journey in which each story brings new and unexpected events.

Robert Rahula delivers a dazzling collection of contemporary “portilla” short stories—that writing style that interweaves graphic sexual detail, existential philosophy, wry political commentary, and intricate dream-like plots. A large talking bear waxes philosophical on the nature of evil while eating pancakes. Scientists work together mapping the Higgs Boson particle while secretly plotting the seduction of each others’ wives. A man joins the Bad Luck Club and learns the ultimate method for changing his luck. Forbidden pleasures in a crematorium. A duck walks into a bar.

And now, your chance to sample Rusty Wilson’s great storytelling! This collection of six short Bigfoot stories isn’t really so short, it is full of fun and Bigfootness! Great for both the Bigfoot believer and those who just enjoy a good adventurous story! All original and new stories. Flyfishing guide Rusty Wilson spent years collecting these stories from his clients around the campfire, stories guaranteed to scare the pants off you - or make you want to meet the Big Guy!

Dr. Harrison loved his daughter more than anything in the world. His life fell apart when she was taken away from him by reckless and unforgivable actions by her boyfriend. Now Dr. Harrison wants revenge. How will he do this?

No One Is Safe! presents fourteen stories of macabre, pulpy terror; a book filled with futuristic noir mysteries, science fiction thrillers, alien invasions, and old-school horror tales that will keep you up late into the night. You’ll discover haunted dream journals and evil houses, birthday wishes gone wrong, a neighborhood cat that cures any disease, a flesh-eating beach, and mysterious skeletons on a hidden moon base. You’ll meet wise-cracking detectives, suburban vampires, murdered movie stars, and monsters of the deep.

Leash and Other Short Horror Stories is a horror anthology of 13 short, creepy, scary, and sometimes gruesome monster stories. These hair-raising stories will make your mind tingle and your paranoia kick into overdrive. This chilling set of frighteningly strange and weird stories are tales of the unexpected - of deceit and of unspeakable beings that hide in the recesses of the mind and the shadows of dark forests.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is the darkest, the living-deadliest, scariest - and dare we say most tasteful - collection of zombie stories ever assembled. It's so good, it's a no-brainer. There is never a dull moment in the world of zombies. They are superstars of horror, and they are everywhere, storming the world of print and visual media. Their endless march will never be stopped. It's the Zombie Zeitgeist! Now, with his wide sweep of knowledge and keen eye for great storytelling, Otto Penzler offers a remarkable catalog of zombie literature.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Etchison's fiction is justly famous for its creepy ambience, and explores the terrain mapped out by Philip K. Dick, Thomas Harris, and any number of black and white horror movies. This is his legendary first collection, carefully corrected by the author for this new edition. The title story won both the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award in 1982, the first time a single work received both major awards. Contents include 16 groundbreaking stories and an introduction by Ramsey Campbell.

The Call of Cthulhu", written in 1926, is probably Lovecraft's best-known work. Discovering notes left by a deceased relative, the narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the Cthulhu cult. This release also contains the shorter tales "The Festival" and "The Hound", in which gravediggers bring home more than they bargained for!

In Queer Little Nightmares, creatures of myth and folklore seek belonging and intimate connection, cryptids challenge their outcast status, and classic movie monsters explore the experience of coming into queerness. The characters in these stories and poems—the Minotaur camouflaged in a crowd of cosplayers, a pubescent werewolf, a Hindu revenant waiting to reunite with her lover, a tender-hearted kaiju, a lagoon creature aching for the swimmers above him, a ghost of Pride past—relish their new sparkle in the spotlight.