Urban Horror

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.

Waking up chained in a dark cellar, Ariane must struggle to survive and escape the strange fortress she finds herself in. All those around her play by rules she does not understand, and there is also this strange thirst that water cannot sate.

When Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are asked to escort a VIP on the late-night train to Bath, it would appear to be a routine case. The Organisation has acquired intelligence that an attempt is to be made on Sir Dennis Gregson’s life as he travels to Bath to take up his new position as Head of the British Psychic Weapons Division. Ishmael’s mission is to ensure that Sir Dennis arrives safely. How could anyone orchestrate a murder in a crowded railway carriage without being noticed and with no obvious means of escape?

This issue of Weird Tales presents a variety of stories, essays, and poems about cryptids and urban legends. Not to dispel, but to reveal.

When a deadly infection spreads across Europe, supermarket manager Howie's ordinary life is thrown into chaos. As the world crumbles around him, he teams up with his autistic best mate, Dave and a ragtag group of misfits to face an enemy unlike any other—the undead. But this isn't just any infection. It evolves. It learns. And it's getting smarter every day. Howie soon learns that nothing is quite what it seems - and neither is he.

The destruction of the Dark Room has locked away the Eldest forever… or so it seems. The Boneyard discovers a bloodthirsty cult desperate to bring back the Old Ones, and Dustin Graves rescues the strangest of sacrifices: a Welsh corgi.

Zoe Lake is heading off to college - and she's excited. It's not a regular college, though. It's a magical college full of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, sphinxes - and pretty much everything else you can imagine. Despite the monsters, it's often human nature that threatens her life most.

The Ghost Finders are investigating a haunting at the long-abandoned Haybarn Theater, which is being renovated. But work has been thrown off-schedule by the some peculiar and unnatural activities. And after the potentially world-altering recent events of their previous assignment, the team thinks that a haunted theater (aren't they all?) will be a walk in the park.

An adrenaline-charged tale of unrelenting suspense that sparks with raw and savage energy... The newspapers scream out headlines that spark terror across the city. Ten murders on the New York City subway. Ten grisly crimes that defy all reason -- no pattern, no m.o., no leads for police to pursue. The press dubs the fiend the “Subway Psycho”; the NYPD desperately seeks their quarry before the city erupts in mass hysteria. But they won't find what they're looking for.

My name’s Bill Ryder and I’m having a hell of a week. Magic is back, my new roommate is a blob of yellow snot, and my friend Sally has been entombed alive in solid rock. Oh, and I’m dead again, or undead anyway. Life’s not quite finished taking a dump on me yet, though, because now something is hunting vampires in New York City. A smarmy-ass wizard has been called in to investigate – one who’s got a closet full of skeletons and eyes for my girlfriend.

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross is renowned for his cutting-edge science fiction. This third entry in his “edgy … spoof of Cold War spy thrillers” ( Booklist) finds covert agent Bob Howard learning about a top-secret dossier that vanishes with his boss. Determined to discover the contents of this memorandum, Howard runs afoul of Russian spies, ancient demons, and apostles of a hideous cult planning to raise the Eater of Souls from the undead.

Chris Gordon has never had an easy relationship with the White House. Now, after rescuing his goddaughter from a secret base in New Hampshire, it’s reached a new low. You drop one little asteroid onto the continental United States and the entire government goes crazy. On top of that Halloween is fast approaching and demons are popping through into our world every which way.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. But Emily's father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily's beloved but foolish and dissolute brother.

The Horde has been raising hell and leveling cities from New York to Los Angeles, keeping Dave and his fellow monster killer, Russian spy Karin Varatschevsky, very busy. But when the legions of hell invade the small seaside town his boys call home, Dave has to make a call. Save the world? Or save his family? Not as easy a choice as you'd think, since Dave's ex-wife expects to be saved, too.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a wholly original story of rage and revenge, of guilt and horror, and of love and loathing from bestselling and acclaimed author Holly Black. Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a...

Jake Cutter is reluctantly learning how to be a Necroscope - how to use the Mobius continuum to travel instantaneously from place to place, how to talk to the dead - but dead humans don't like him much. As far as he's concerned, Jake won't stop until he's satisfied his own bloodlust. He wants revenge against the Italian mobsters who killed the woman he loved and nearly killed him. But it seems vampire hunting is truly Jake's job now. To defeat them, Jake will need every weapon in a Necroscope's arsenal, including the power to pull all the unsleeping dead out of their moldering graves.

Ella Harrow is trying to carve out a normal life for herself. Well, as normal as an art geek with psychic abilities can hope for. As museum docent and gift shop manager, Ella is able to keep her distance from people - and her powers in check - while surrounding herself with the artifacts she loves. But how on earth is she supposed to act normal when a thousand-year-old statue on the museum's terrace suddenly comes to life?

Emily Croy Barker’s riveting debut novel is a must-read for fans of Lev Grossman and Deborah Harkness. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic follows grad student Nora Fischer as she stumbles through a portal into a magical world. Having been transformed from drab to beautiful, Nora finds herself surrounded by glamorous friends. Life seems perfect. But then things take a terrible turn, and Nora must learn magic from a reclusive ally if she is to have any hope of survival...

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing - a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It's not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play.