Short Horror

First published in an 1839 edition of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the story of the declining physical and psychological health of the residents of the House of Usher - and the way in which the house itself reflects that. Gothic in theme and style, the story is an exemplar of Poe's philosophy of composition, which dictates that literary works should be short and methodological and have a unity of effect wherein all the elements of the story are related and relevant.

I believe that writing short stories in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, post-apocalyptic, and related genres represents a great way to get into indie publishing and finding your ideal audience. Here's my take on why this is so fun, often rewarding, and really exciting.

Make Pretend is the first book in a series collecting all of Armand Rosamilia's short fiction. Twenty-one tales ranging from horror to crime thriller to science fiction, contemporary fiction to fantasy and more. From stories a few days ago to one 40 years old.

A deadly black widow has eliminated three husbands and counting. But Nameless knows her one weakness. To bring truth and its consequences to her crimes, the vigilante must spin a web of his own in part three of the Nameless series. Lucia - current last name, Rickenbah - has made a fortune by marrying rich men who tend to drop dead. But the superstitious blonde believes in more than money and murder. Nameless’s job is to scare a confession out of Lucia, and as the psychological warfare escalates, even he may be in for a shock.

This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H. P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales.

The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows.

TALES OF NYARLATHOTEP is the fourth book of the Books of Cthulhu series by Crossroad Press (Tales of the Al-Azif, Tales of Yog-Sothoth, The Book of Yig). It is an anthology featuring pulpy tales of horror starring Outer God and his myriad plots as well as games. Nyarlathotep is functionally omnipotent and treats humanity like ants underneath a magnifying glass. He is impossible to kill but perhaps capable of being thwarted. Or maybe that's just what he wants you to think.

The war is tearing our world apart. Instead of big armies with tanks in the field, the Vampire War is fought in the streets, neighbor against neighbor, family against family. Anyone can turn at any time. The blood hunger can suddenly appear in the middle of a kiss. The person who sleeps next to you every night could wake up in the dead of night... hungry. So hungry.

It was a killer year for horror fiction of the harder kind. Authors, editors, and publishers presented readers with some startling works of horrific imagination, stories graphic in the extreme yet with subtleties suggesting larger meanings, tales that explore humanity by plumbing depths of soulless inhumanity and, in some cases, outright depravity. The stories here represent the best of them, disturbing tales that dig deep and take you into the dark heart of horror itself, unrelenting and unapologetic.

Nitya, a single child ignored by her parents, makes an unlikely friend - a boy with a strange power who has mysteriously manifested in her room. Nikhil creates a replacement for his dead mother - a clay doll that has her likeness. Things take a bizarre turn when his clay mother starts communicating with him. Nihar, a teenage orphan, has walked a long way to seek shelter in an orphanage he has heard a lot about, unaware that it is the house of a terrifying secret.

Right Behind You is a collection of 13 horror stories of different genres. The thing that connects these stories is the emotion of our inner fears that resides in all of us. We might mask these fears, we might even deny them, but they emerge when least expected, and then they begin to encroach upon every aspect of our lives. In this collection of assorted horror stories, you will find noir horror, urban myths, fantasies, campfire tales, stories of phobias, gore, and even a story that takes place entirely on chat.

More than a decade after Kelley Armstrong first opened the doors to the Otherworld, fans are still clamoring for more. In response to their demands - and to coincide with the Syfy Network show based on the series - Plume has signed up three Otherworld anthologies, each of which revolves around a different theme. The second in the trilogy, Otherworld Secrets, features fan favorites such as Cassandra, Savannah, and Adam in rare and never-before-published short stories - plus a brand new novella.

CONTENTS: 01. The Nameless City 02. The Festival 03-04. The Colour Out of Space 05-07. The Call of Cthulhu 08-17. The Dunwich Horror 18-25. The Whisperer in Darkness 26 . A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson 27-28.The Haunter of the Dark 29-33. The Shadow Over Innsmouth 34. Discarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" 35-42. The Shadow Out of Time 43-54. At the Mountains of Madness 55-79.The Case of Charles Dexter Ward 80. Azathoth 81. Beyond the Wall of Sleep 82. Celephaïs 83. Cool Air 84. Dagon 85. Ex Oblivione.

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

Blackfoot storyteller Alex Soop plunges us into a shocking well of imagination in this collection of short stories, Midnight Storm Moonless Sky. From hauntings on the Highway of Tears to fearful gatherings of ghosts and the sorrows of racism, Soop combines the social anxieties of Indigenous life with spellbinding flights and frights of speculative fiction. Through these enthralling stories of reality mixed with terror, listeners get a wicked glimpse into the genre of Indigenous horror.

At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.

Terror never sleeps.... A young girl's emotional abuse transforms her into a horrific spirit. Hellfire and damnation await a woman whose psychiatrist may be more than he seems. And devastating secrets from the past are unleashed when an old man revisits his childhood bedroom.... Scare Street is proud to present the best in bone-chilling supernatural horror. This volume contains three terrifying tales for your listening pleasure. Each story will keep you up long past the midnight hour, eager to turn the next chapter.

A newborn’s absent face appears on the back of someone else’s head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he’s after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses—whether we know it or not.

Editors Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax put the call out to horror writers and editors of extreme stories, the hardcore stuff that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos, the transgressive tales you can't "unread" (as Chuck Palahniuk says). Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex, and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect.

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he has made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.