Short Horror

Few authors can claim to have marked a genre so thoroughly and personally that their words have leaked into every aspect of modern pop culture. Clive Barker is such an author, and the Books of Blood marked his debut - his coming out to the world - in brilliant, unforgettable fashion. Crossroad Press is proud to present Clive Barker's Books of Blood in digital for the first time.

The trap has been set. What terror awaits those who stumble across it? "The Cabin" by Brian Evenson is one of 9 short horror stories in Nightfire's audio anthology. Come Join Us by the Fire S2: Originals is the second installment of Nightfire's audio-first horror anthology, featuring a wide...

Demons, vengeful spirits, insanity, premature burials, and lesbian vampires. In a Glass Darkly contains five diabolical tales of horror and mystery that will get the heart racing. Each story, including the famous "Green Tea" and "Carmilla", is presented as a case from the posthumous papers of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a metaphysical physician who has no doubt as to the existence of supernatural phenomena - unlike our anxious protagonists....

A collection of thrilling tales from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos by one of horror's biggest legends, this volume contains the very best of Brian Lumley's Mythos short stories.

Nine ghost stories that capture the spirit of Christmas. The Christmas tree lights, the carol singers, and the shadows that wait out in the snow. Traditional ghost stories written in the true spirit of Christmas. Chilling tales with a twist that will kindle the true spirit of Christmas in your hearts. Ghosts that emerge from the snow, doors that eat you, spirits that beg you to do them a service. Perfect to listen to on a dark winter's night. This book will convince you that the dead do return, and they do so on Christmas Eve!

Push past the curtains of your rational, safe world and explore the unnameable horrors living in the darkest corners of our conscience. This is the realm of monsters and shifting shadows, where a single wrong step can plunge you into a terrifying fight for your life

'Outstandingly weird and memorable' GUARDIAN 'Deliciously creepy' NEW SCIENTIST Fear never dies… Featuring stories from Susan Barker, J K Chukwu, Bridget Collins, Mariana Enríquez, Michel Faber, Lewis Hancox, Emilia Hart, Ainslie Hogarth, Robert Lautner, Adorah Nworah, Irenosen Okojie, Lucy...

First published in the US in 1988 and in the UK in 1990, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight unsettling stories that explore protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, and culminate in a disturbing and enigmatic ending. Aickman's "strange stories" (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia; his characters ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds. For fans of the horror genre, Robert Aickman is a must read.

This statement was true when H. P. Lovecraft first wrote it at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it remains true at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The only thing that has changed is what is unknown. 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. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow, chronicles these shifting shadows.

Something monstrous has come to Arkham, Massachusetts. There have always been shadows here, but now a new hunger has risen from the depths and threatens those who dwell here. But there are heroes too—people who stand up and fight to stem the tide, even when it costs them everything. Explore eight shocking new tales of occult horror, captivating mystery, and existential fear—from a zealous new heroine to conniving cultists, bootleg whiskey to night terrors, and fiends that crawl from open graves. A nightmare has fallen across Arkham, and it will devour all.

The Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist.

Doppelgängers, werewolves, and little tiny diamond grubs that eat their way through your shirt. They're all here and not always looking like you'd expect them to. Fifteen horror stories for Halloween guaranteed to make you look over your shoulder and avoid dark alleys.

Like the tanning of a leathered corpse, the inaugural release of Grimoire seeks to stretch the fleshy bounds of dark fiction and horror. Included within these unhallowed book are tales of medieval horror and cacophony, Lovecraftian delights and wretched Kaiju, accursed djinn and pestilential priests, all brought together for the very first time in one horrific collection. Engaging and provocative, these tales of the damned stalk the graveyards at night, crawl up from the empty and wet places of this world, and haunt the dreams of all who hear them.

The Ultimate Gothic Horror Collection is a fully indexed collection of classic gothic stories, read by four Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.

Welcome to the Nightside. It's the secret heart of London, beating to its own rhythm, pumping lifeblood through the veins of its streets and alleys hidden in eternal darkness, where creatures of the night congregate, and where the sun is afraid to shine. Tales from the Nightside presents ten macabre mysteries that shine a dim beam into the neighborhood's darkest corners to reveal things that should never come to light. Take a walk with such deadly and dangerous denizens as Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, and Larry Oblivion as they encounter things far more inhuman and inhumane than them.

Fifteen nautical nightmares: from the discovery and subsequent investigation of a mysterious vessel in The Derelict, to the terrifying ordeal of a lighthouse keeper stationed at the remote Three Skeleton Key...

Set in the world of Wrought of Amber and Weeping Cedars, these eighteen short stories add to Alex's version of events by uncovering secrets she could never know and staring into darkness she could never imagine. Shards of Amber includes the tales of a killer who poses his victims, a model train set that appears mysteriously in an office lobby, an actor who must endure dreams of drowning, and the tale of an aspiring young writer who finds something unexpected in the West Virginia woods.

Pleasant Dreams (1960), published just a year after his more famous Psycho, finds Robert Bloch leaving behind his earlier Lovecraftian influences to find his own style and voice in this collection of masterful tales, in which the horror is often laced with an undercurrent of pitch-black humor.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

A provocative collection of literary horror stories by one of America’s most acclaimed and inventive writers whose unique prose “can be soul-shaking” (New Yorker).