Showing results by author "Kevin Candela" in All Categories

The wild and weird action continues nonstop in Chalcedony and the Truth, the third installment in the Piper Gods series. This time around we jump back in time to 1967, when revolution–and music–was in the air. April Corrigan and an ever-expanding group of friends become enmeshed in a bizarre mystery surrounding a vanished friend and pieces of chalcedony that seem to appear like breadcrumbs along a mysterious path to...well, they don't even know where they're going, but April and her friends can't resist the ride anyway.

Just like their new home of Sunder Creek, set in the shadow of Blood Ridge, young Ronnie Carpenter and her shy ward Essa Hale harbor strange secrets. In fact, their arrival seems to bring the town’s dark and unspoken terror to light, as it affects Essa in mysterious ways. Soon, inexplicable events all point to an ancient legend being all too real. What does the dreaded ilé nagí, the fiery spirit of the woods, want with the girl? Ronnie must find out before it’s too late. 

It’s that time of year again. In the shadows, otherworldly creatures lurk, under the gravestones, the dead begin to rise, and in that old house down the lane, ghosts rattle their chains. For once more, Trick or Treat Thrillers brings you our pick of the best Indie-paranormal short stories for 2020! Before you begin listening to our selection of 13 stories, however, we recommend you first check under your bed, in your closet, and outside of your window. You never know what may be coming your way. 

Months have passed, the trail has grown cold, and ZC has all but given up when out of the blue, a back road diversion leads him to the mystical, but apparently not mythical Bizarre - a place where all kinds of beings want all kinds of things...and barter and gamble to get them. He's about to meet some utterly strange new friends, including a dogman named Ekos, a human-like woman with a nest of serpents for a head, and a gigantic bat-dragon that doesn't like being referred to as either.

On far distant Gavelin, Leks and Quinara - scrappy human survivors of a demonic plague that has all but wiped out their civilization - race against time in a perilous journey to the perceived safety of the cradle of their society: the great coastal city of Amaline on the Sandarine Sea. Along the way, they meet horrifying carnivorous mud monsters, sentient human-hunting thunderstorms and an outcast bio-alchemist with a warped sense of humor whose bizarre menagerie features a panther-like beast made of living metal.

The sixth "drive-in double feature" in the Super SF Double Feature series spotlights alien invasion in both directions - coming and going - with two thrilling tales of science-fiction culture shock.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

The big squidheaded guy who's not Cthulhu is back - and this time, it's really, really personal, because the monster who's out to destroy him is his own brother! Twenty years after Krakenstein and Magenti saved humanity from itself, the giant monster battles are still going on. Towering "bug lady" Magenti may have disappeared of late, but Krakey is still patrolling the world. Tailed by the Moray 2 stealth sub, which is captained by none other than longtime Krakenstein "human friend" Shea Sanders, the titan isn't able to stop the latest problem by himself.

In Ghost in the Sky, the first installment in the Bob the Interdimensional Trucker series, Sam Gage has picked up an enigmatic motorist whose mere presence, it seems, is making Gage hear the sound of a small propeller-driven passenger airplane...or maybe even a crop duster. But whatever is really making the sound, which his rider can't hear, is not only keeping pace with Gage's truck at an impossibly slow speed for airplane flight - it's also invisible. 

Grayson Lone Feather loves to wander the woods behind his stepdad's property. He finds all kinds of things out there, chief among them typically being peace of mind. But when Gray comes upon a barrel-sized egg exposed by the collapse of a short limestone bluff, and what's inside it turns out to be alive and more than kicking, he finds himself at the center of action far beyond his wildest imaginings. Soon a gigantic "something" is roaming the Illinois skies, and Gray and his friend Jaleen are off to find it.

Rada Dunn is used to the solitary life of the arid valley north of the little town of Peace. Nothing much happens there, and her bean and wheat crops provide her with just enough to keep her away from the rest of her kind...which is how she's come to like it. But when she comes upon human remains that have recently been burned so intensely that they are merely sticky black bones, her serenity is shattered.

One thing a sneak thief needs is ambition, and Sal and Gazel certainly don't come up short there. Sure, they're mainly just ripping off low profile places like out of the way frontier museums...but they have big plans.  

Something ancient has awakened in the depths. So terrifying is this newly freed entity that sea slugs are driven onto resort beaches to climb hotel walls...and die. Yet the threat posed by the primal sentience is far less obvious to the world's dominant species, seemingly manifesting in the trance states of a couple rescued by Ben Miles and his celeb wife, Morna Belchek...and subsequently communicated to Morna as well. 

The creator of The Krakenstein Chronicles follows up his first two SF/fantasy/horror/comedy short story collections, A Year in the Borderlands and Playing with Reality, with a third heaping helping of generally freakish tales from the other side of existence. Wild narratives of mystery, horror, awe - and even some laughs - are assembled here together for the first time. Lost Radio brings you the timelessly eerie and thrilling stories of things that very well could be - whether you want them to exist or not.

Here collected for the first time are the thrilling and hopefully hilarious tales of the world's most embarrassed superhero. "Everyman" Race Harleson just wanted to do his guard shift and pick up his check - so the cosmos decided he'd get to be special, giving him Superman-like powers including strength, flight, and virtual invulnerability...so long as he's completely naked while he fights crime and saves the world. 

Nakedman Race Harleson runs for US president - and runs interference between scoffing, scared humanity and an intervening alien race of contractor/mercenaries who have clamped down on the plutocratic pharaohs of the modern age. In the thrilling conclusion of Volume One of Nakedman: Uncomfortable Tales of Epic Adventure, Race and Ellen both end up having to risk everything for a mere outside chance to save the world...and not just from alien invaders.  

Take a freakishly harrowing journey with an ordinary person who comes to realize that his nightmares have manifested as a power of sorts...though his "gift" is anything but welcome as it stalks and murders at will. The powers of the mind and the campfire scare stories of childhood merge in Tickles: A Little Bedtime Horror Story, creating a monstrous darkness

Time Weathers didn’t so much mind the car breakdown...just another hassle, albeit at an extremely inconvenient locale. But now reality itself is threatening to do the same, and she’s not quite as adaptable to that. Time was just minding her own business, ambling along on an old road under the blistering Nevada sun, hoping for the kind of road rescue help you aren’t typically going to find in the middle of the desert anyway, when the disconnected phone in the dusty booth outside the dilapidated gas station she was passing began to ring.

Just two utterly bizarre days ago, Hylas Bond wouldn't have believed the famous-infamous "Men in Black" even existed. Yet there he is, dodging killer drones on a ridiculously long shot cross-country scramble with a quite possibly crazed girl who's got two dead ones in the trunk of her car. Coby Forge is on a mission, not that she knows where she's going, and once Hylas rear-ends her car and pops that lid open in the middle of a slushy highway with morning traffic zipping past - well, she's got no choice, does she?

Erno the vole is on a mission to beat the Gardener's brilliant series of tomato garden defenses. He may be the greatest vole thief and acrobat in...well...at least the neighborhood - but that doesn't mean he's up for the challenges ahead. He'll need all his wits, wisdom, strength, and stamina if he wants to take a bite out of those luscious pink-orange tomatoes tonight.