Summary
The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition.
Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow , John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.
A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.
In My Heart Struck Sorrow , a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South--which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself.
Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, animal death, antiblack racism, arson, child death, confinement, demolition, diseases, eye trauma, fires, genocide, gore, gun violence, homophobia, infidelity, injuries, kidnapping, mass murder, military, minstrels, murder, racism, self harm, sexual content, slavery, stis, torture, vomit | animal cruelty, animal death, antiblack racism, death, drowning scenarios, drug use weed, infidelity, mental illness, murder, racial slurs, racism, unsanitary, wars, whorephobia | alcohol, alcoholism, arson, black slavery, burns, cancer, child death, death, domestic abuse, drugs cocaine, gore, infidelity, Jim crow, lynching, medical content, murder, prisons, sexual content, snakes, suicide, torture, unsanitary, violence, whorephobic language |
Summary
A grave could be visited. Ashes could be scattered. But vanishing? That ripped a hole in the world the size of a life, and through that hole sighed a terrible wind repeating a single note:
Gone.
For years, Aggie had forgotten the real Joanne, the way her sister had laughed, fought, been.
But now that the videotape made her real again-no matter how many times the recording changed, no matter how terrifying the flickering images-it was all Aggie wanted. To trade the Gone for the One. She owed Joanne that much. To say she was sorry. That it had been her fault.
It had been all their faults.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| amputation, arm trauma, asphyxiation, bone fractures, bullying, child abuse, child death, gore, grief, injuries, kidnapping, violence | blood, dogs, injuries | n/a |
Summary
The debut short story collection from acclaimed U.K. writer Priya Sharma, “All the Fabulous Beasts," collects 16 stunning and monstrous tales of love, rebirth, nature, and sexuality. A heady mix of myth and ontology, horror and the modern macabre.
Contents
- The Crow Palace
- Rag and Bone
- The Anatomist's Mnemonic
- Egg
- The Sunflower Seed Man
- The Ballad of Boomtown
- The Show
- Pearls
- The Absent Shade
- Small Town Stories
- Fish Skins
- The Rising Tide
- The Englishman
- The Nature of Bees
- A Son of the Sea
- Fabulous Beasts
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| amputation, animal death, arm trauma, blood, body horror, bullying, car crashes, child abuse, child death, classism, confinement, csa, death, dogs, domestic violence, drowning, gore, grief, hanging, heights, incest, infidelity, insects, medical content, mice, misogyny, murder, parent death, pedophilia, physical abuse, poisoning, pregnancy, prison abuse, prisons, rape, religion catholic, sexual abuse, sexual content, snakes, suicide, violence, vomit | animal death, bullying, car crashes, child death, gore, misogyny, murder, pregnancy, sexual content, stillbirths, suicide ideation, vomit | burns, femicide, fire death, menstruation, murder |
Summary
Welcome to Anoka, Minnesota, a small city just outside of the Twin Cities dubbed "The Halloween Capital of the World" since 1937.
Here before you lie several tales involving bone collectors, pagan witches, werewolves, skeletal bison, and cloned children. It is up to you to decipher between fact and fiction as the author has woven historical facts into his narratives. With his debut horror collection, Cheyenne and Arapaho author Shane Hawk explores themes of family, grief, loneliness, and identity through the lens of indigenous life.
Table of Contents
- Soilborne
- Wounded
- Orange
- Imitate
- Dead America
- Transfigured
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, alcoholism, animal death, anti indigenous racism, body horror, cannibalism, car crashes, child death, colonization, death, gore, gun violence, insect horror, murder, spiders, underage drinking, unreality, vomit | blood, body horror, car crashes, child death, csa, death, drug abuse, gore, grief, kidnapping, pedophilia, pregnancy, rape, religion, sexual abuse, suicide attempts, unsanitary | child death, drug use, infidelity, suicide |
Summary
Don't just fear what you're hiding from, fear what you're hiding with.
Cassie's night of babysitting goes to hell when bombs explode in the distance, planes fly overhead at low altitudes, and alerts on her phone tell her to seek shelter. Luckily, the boy she babysits tells her his father has a bunker in the yard.
When they make their way to this underground shelter, they soon discover they aren't alone. Something is living in the bunker, lurking in the walls, and it's hungry.
What started as a simple night of babysitting, will descend into a psychological and claustrophobic nightmare Cassie couldn't have prepared for.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| child death, death, diseases, fires, gun violence, injuries, leg trauma, medical content, self harm, suicide, suicide ideation, vomit | n/a | n/a |
Summary
What's been happening at Cranberry Cove? It's unspeakable. It's unspoken. Emberly Hale is about to take a dark journey inside the derelict hotel--and inside her own past--to find out the horrible truth.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| death, guns, male on male rape, rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, tcc, violence | n/a | date rape, drugging |
Summary
Five hundred feet above safety and 1,000 feet below it, can climbers Greg and Quinn survive a harrowing supernatural encounter long enough for help to arrive, or will they become two more mysterious disappearances on the high mountain peaks of Washington State?
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal attacks, animal death, body horror, gore, head trauma, heights, injuries, violence | death, drowning, vomit | stalking |
Summary
Maverick Hall has spent years trying to forget the chilling events of his thirteenth birthday in the summer of 1999. That fateful night, he and his best friends ventured through a seemingly innocuous tunnel on their bikes -- a journey from which not all of them returned.
Now, as an adult, Maverick is haunted by a sinister force that compels him to return to his old neighborhood, a place shadowed by secrets, deceit, and an unsettling sense of death. Drawn back against his better judgment, he must face the dark forces that have lurked in waiting, eager for his return. As Maverick confronts the shadows of his past, he finds himself entangled in a web of mystery that threatens not only his sanity but his very survival.
This harrowing tale of memory, fear, and the power of the unseen delves deep into the heart of a nightmare that refuses to be forgotten, beckoning Maverick to resolve the terrifying mystery that has haunted him for decades.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcoholism, body horror, car crashes, child abuse, child death, face trauma, gore, grief, gun violence, infidelity, injuries, kidnapping, murder, suicide, violence | parent death, suicide | n/a |
Summary
Scott King's podcast investigates the 1995 cold case of a demon possession in a rural Yorkshire village, where a 12-year-old boy was murdered in cold blood by two children. Book six in the chilling, award-winning Six Stories series.
In 1995, the picture-perfect village of Ussalthwaite was the site of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, in a case that shocked the world. Twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the 'Demonic Duo' who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity.
Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark and fanciful stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.
And, as episodes of his Six Stories podcast begin to air, King himself becomes a target, with dreadful secrets from his own past dredged up and threats escalating to a terrifying level. It becomes clear that whatever drove those two boys to kill is still there, lurking, and the campaign of horror has just begun.
Note from The Tower: major but vague series spoilers:
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| ableism, ableist language, animal cruelty, animal death, bullying, child abuse, child death, confinement, dog attacks, gore, injuries, insects, religion catholic, religion christianity, suicide, unsanitary | ableism towards addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, animal cruelty, animal death, car crashes, child abuse, domestic violence, drug abuse, excrement, gore, homophobia, medical content, misogyny, parent death, religious bigotry, stalking, suicide | antiblack racism, confinement, drug abuse, excrement, infertility, male infertility, racism |
Summary
Fans of John Carpenter's "The Thing" can rejoice -- here is the original, previously-unpublished, 45-pages-longer version of John W. Campbell's classic story, "Who Goes There?" (filmed as "The Thing" and "The Thing from Another World"). Recently discovered at Harvard by scholar Alec Nevala-Lee, long buried in John W. Campbell's papers, here is the original version of "Who Goes There?" It adds an astonishing 45 pages of extra material to the classic story.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| blood, body horror, dogs, gore, violence | animal death, murder | n/a |
Summary
A story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.
Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.
One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn't there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks--and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol, animal death, drug use, drugs smoking tobacco, kidnapping, medical abuse, rats, torture, violence | animal death, gore, rats, unsanitary | asphyxiation |
Summary
It's 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband from Manhattan to the upstate orchard estate where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from a mysterious affliction acquired in a strange encounter: but Louise soon realizes that her husband's worsening condition may not be a disease at all, but a transformative phase of existence that will draw her in as much more than a witness.
At the bitter end of the 19th century, a loyal wife cares tenderly for her dissolute husband as he nears his death from a mysterious, gruesomely corrosive disease. Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum is a sumptuous excursion into surreal body horror and an unsparing exploration of the extreme frontiers of connubial devotion. Ruthnum delivers a uniquely unsettling Gothic love story-and it is first and foremost a love story.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| n/a | n/a | n/a |
Summary
There is no plague in Enfaire. Dead things have been found in the fields of Enfaire, a God-fearing town north of Reams. Not just dead things but twisted forms… unholy shapes. And there are rumours, too--of a blasphemous union and of fell creatures that haunt the night. Yet, even as plague and witch pyres blacken the sky, the town remains untouched by the malady that has already claimed thousands and will claim thousands more.
It is here, in Enfaire, that an old Franciscan friar and his ward take shelter from a storm. It is here, in a little town on the edge of civilization, that they will have their faith truly tested.
His Black Tongue is a tale of medieval horror, plunging the reader into the plague-torn land of 14th century France, when pestilence and death walked hand-in-hand, and life was little more than a sputtering candle, waiting to be put out. But there are worse things than death, than sickness and decay… and it comes upon leathery black wings.
TOC
His Black Tongue
The Bone Fields
The Knights of the Non-Euclidian Table
Necropolis
The Breeding Mound
The Blessed Tomb
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, body horror, child birth, child death, death, gore, mass death, military, murder, violence, vomit, wars | arson, childbirth, medical content, stillbirth | n/a |
Summary
A series of strange cattle deaths forever change the lives of a private investigator, a married paranormal podcast duo, and a struggling father on a path to redemption. Hunting Snipe uses news articles, podcast transcripts, text message threads, a private investigator's burned journal, and more to tell the story of true events that occurred across multiple East Texas counties in 2023. But don't go hunting for the truth if you ain't ready to find it.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, arson, body horror, demolition, drug use, drugs smoking cannabis, gore, gun violence, head trauma, house fires, kidnapping, medical abuse, murder, police, sexism, sexual assault, tcc, torture, vomit | addiction, alcoholism, parent death | genital trauma, homophobic f slur |
Summary
When Nona Conklin brings him a painting by the great-grandfather she never knew, gallery owner Timothy Randolph knows he's found the project of a lifetime: curating a spectacular cache of folk art hidden for decades in the mountains of her home. "God never made a lazier man than Cecil Conklin. Never put a more slothful soul in a fella big enough to wrestle an ox to the ground." The Conklin Collection is haunted and haunting, powerful in its brutal simplicity. What looks like the work of a fevered imagination begins to appear more and more like the desperate attempts of a man toiling at the edge of his limits to depict what cannot be depicted... An underlying order as old as the hills, its thousand throats concealed beneath the roots and rocks, between the streams and trees, deep in the besieged mountains of Appalachia. "My momma said it was their eighteenth summer when Cecil started shooting up like a weed again. That ain't normal." But the most crucial painting of all is missing. And the only place it could be is the last place that should be searched. "The rest, I think they always knew deep down Cecil was the one in trouble, that something was after him already. He never should've gone over the mountain." I'll Bring You the Birds From Out of the Sky is a tale of art and obsession, of a dying heritage and cosmic horror, brought to rustic life with full-color paintings by artist Kim Parkhurst.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, body horror, eye horror, xenophobia | suicide | ableist language, car crashes, death, grief, prisons, whorephobic language |
Summary
Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) has earned a reputation as one of the finest horror writers of the modern era, but his work has been out of print and nearly unobtainable for many years. His seminal volume In a Lonely Place collects eight of his best tales, including "In the Pines," a classic ghost story evocatively set in the Tennessee woods, "Beyond Any Measure," an original take on the vampire story, "River of Night's Dreaming," a surreal and nightmarish masterpiece inspired by The King in Yellow, and the author's most famous tale, "Sticks," a disturbing story thought by many to have been the basis for The Blair Witch Project.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| ableism, alcohol use, animal death, anti indigenous racism, blood, car crashes, child death, classism, claustrophobia, colonization, dogs, drug abuse, drug use cocaine, ecofascism, genocide, gore, hypo needles, infidelity, injuries, medical abuse, misogyny, murder, nazism, psych abuse, rape, rats, sexual abuse, sexual content, suicide, throat trauma, violence | antiblack racism, arson, demolition, domestic abuse, drug abuse, drug use cocaine, drugs, guns, murder, trafficking, violence | beastiality, incest, racial slurs, rape, vomit |
Summary
Nahanni National Park is one of last truly wild places on earth. Accessible only by plane, and only when the weather cooperates, it's the perfect place for estranged brothers Joseph and Oscar to have an adventure following the death of their mother. Gillian, Joseph's first love, invites herself along in the spirit of friendship.The park is much more than beautiful. It's mysterious, with legends of giants and hidden, prehistoric animals. And among its few visitors, an outsized number of violent deaths inspire its second, more seductive name.While dreaming of the future, the group finds themselves confronted by the past. Far from home and far from help
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, body horror, child abuse, grief, parent death, physical abuse, pregnancy, stillbirths, vomit | animal death | n/a |
Summary
Every year, Six Mile Island has a seasonal shutdown for serious weather. This year, the forecast is calling for the storm of a century, so most of the population has agreed to an evacuation in order to more safely ride out the storm on the mainland. When a child goes missing on the cusp of the oceanic storm, a select few inhabitants are left behind to perform a frantic search. Little do they know that the ocean is bringing more than a storm to Six Mile... An ancient species hungers from the sea.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| body horror, child death, death, gore, guns, kidnapping, misogyny, police, suicide attempts, violence | n/a | n/a |
Summary
Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.
The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, body horror, dogs, police, unreality | drug use smoking tobacco, parent death | gun violence, vomit |
Summary
From Kill Creek's Kansas--four gothic novellas.
In The Door in the Field, a construction worker's bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books bar send him down an unforeseeably bloody path.
In The Boy in the Woods, something evil has infected the counselors at a summer camp, and a young boy will have to do anything he can to survive the night.
In One Half of a Child's Face, a woman spying on her daughter and ex-husband notices an odd painting hanging in an empty apartment . . . one that seems to call to the building's children.
In Wear Your Secret Like a Stone, a big-box clerk discovers that her book pick for a Halloween display echoes a dark secret hidden beneath the idyllic facade of her hometown.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal attacks, arm trauma, asphyxiation, blood, bone fractures, bullying, child abuse, child death, confinement, corpse desecration, dogs, drugging, electrocution, emotional abuse, gore, grief, head trauma, homophobia, injuries, kidnapping, murder, parent death, police, pregnancy, torture, violence | n/a | animal cruelty, animal death, black slavery, car crashes, death, gun violence, head trauma, infertility, injuries, rats, sexual content, suicide |
Summary
“Am I dead?" Mebuyen sighs. She was hoping the girl would not ask. Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap's debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new novella, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts" to the terrifying tension of the urban legend “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez."
Good Girls
A Cup of Salt Tears
Milagroso
A Spell for Foolish Hearts
Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?
Syringe
Asphalt, River, Mother, Child
Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing)
Only Unclench Your Hand
How to Swallow the Moon
All the Best of Dark and Bright
Misty
A Canticle for Lost Girls
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| asphyxiation, body horror, bullying, child abuse, child death, childbirth, confinement, copaganda, csa, death, demolition, gore, gun violence, hate crimes, misgendering, murder, parent death, pedophilia, police, police brutality, pregnancy, prisons, rape, religion catholic, revenge porn, sexual abuse, sexual content, sexual harassment, slavery, stalking, suicide, teacher student relationships, toxic relationships, trafficking, transmisogyny, unsanitary, violence, vomit | animal death, arranged marriage, blood, body horror, bullying, cannibalism, child abuse, child death, csa, death, drowning, fires, gore, homophobia, lesbophobia, lesbophobic slurs, medical content, menstruation, misogyny, murder, paranoia, pedophilia, rape, religion catholic, sexual content, slut shaming, suicide, suicide ideation, unsanitary, violence, vomit | alcohol, arson, body horror, child abuse, death, domestic abuse, domestic violence, drug overdose, drugs, fatphobia, homophobic q slur, lesbophobia, medical content, menstruation, pregnancy, racism, stalking, teacher student relationships, vomit |
Summary
Here there be gods and monsters – forged from flesh and stone and vengeance – emerging from the icy abyss of deep space, ascending from dark oceans, and prowling strange cities to enter worlds of chaos and wonder, where scientific rigor and human endeavour is tested to the limits. These are cosmic realms and watery domains where old offerings no longer appease the ancient Gods or the new and hungry idols. Deities and beasts. Life and death. Love and hate. Science and magic. And smiling monsters in human skin.
Premee Mohamed's debut collection of contemporary cosmic horror and dark fantasy heralds the arrival of a new and vibrant voice on the cutting edge of modern speculative fiction.
Below the Kirk, Below the Hill
Instructions
The Evaluator
At the Hand of Every Beast
The Adventurer's Wife
The General's Turn
Sixteen Minutes
Fortunato
The Honeymakers
Four Hours of a Revolution
For Each of These Miseries
Everything as Part of Its Infinite Place
No One Will Come Back For Us
Willing
Us and Ours
The Redoubtables
Quietus
Story Notes
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal attacks, animal death, body horror, bullying, cannibalism, car crashes, child abuse, child death, colonization, death, demolition, diseases, dogs, drowning, gore, gun violence, hand trauma, heights, injuries, insects, kidnapping, leg trauma, medical abuse, medical content, murder, police, pregnancy, racism, rats, religion catholic, sharps, stillbirths, suicide, thalassophobia, torture, unsanitary, violence, vomit, wars | ableism, animal death, body horror, child death, death, dogs, incest, murder, poisoning, psych abuse, sexual content, torture | concentration camps, live burial |
Summary
In the pitch dark, witty fantasy novella Prosper's Demon, K. J. Parker deftly creates a world with vivid, unbending rules, seething with demons, broken faith, and worse men.
In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don't die, and we do. Equilibrium.
The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren't delicate but they're undeniably effective: he'll get the demon out--he just doesn't particularly care what happens to the person.
Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world's first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he's demonically possessed.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| blood, death, possession, religion christianity, murder, | anti evolution sentiment, body horror, bone fractures, death, explosions, injuries, murder, slavery, torture, trafficking, whorephobia | suicide ideation, unsanitary |
Summary
A dark shape now stood in those choppy dark waters. A horse. A black one, large as she'd ever seen, with a mane that poured down its neck.
Genevieve hoped a trip to the Scottish village of Fonniskie would help her reconnect. But her vacation turns out to be less than relaxing: the nearby loch holds a dark secret, and Genevieve finds herself haunted by a relentless pursuer whose obsession means he will do anything to possess her--even kill.
Blending ancient folklore with modern alienation, Anthony Engebretson's eerie debut novella will make you question what it really means to be human.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| body horror, death, dogs, drowning, open waters | animal cruelty, drowning scenarios, overdoses, parent death, suicide, vomit | child death, demolition, house fires |
Summary
In 1987, Congressman Benjamin Hardy III died by suicide on live television amidst accusations of political corruption. Years later, rumors of a recording surfaced among VHS trading groups and urban legend chat rooms. Dubbed the "Duncan Tape," after the deceased cameraman who attempted to sell the video, the rumors allege that anyone who watches the tape is driven to suicide.
Or so the story goes. In truth, no one has ever seen the supposed Duncan Tape, presumably because it doesn't exist. It's a ghost story perpetuated on the forums and chat rooms of the internet, another handful of bytes scattered across the Information Superhighway at blistering 56K modem speeds.
For Robby and his friends, an urban legend is the last thing on their minds when a boring Friday night presents a chance to download porn. But the short clip they watch turns out to be something far more graphic and disturbing, and in the coming days, they'll learn even the most outlandish urban legends possess a shred of truth...
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| addiction, asphyxiation, child death, gore, gun violence, psychosis, suicide | alcoholism, cancer, classism, drug abuse prescription drugs | addiction, car crashes, drug use marijuana, gore, parent death, religion christianity, religious bigotry, sexism, sexual content, vomit |
Summary
Lonely, broke and depressed with a serious case of OCD, Gia finds herself at a crossroads when her financial troubles lead her to Nathan, a mysterious and affluent man she encounters on a sugar daddy website.
Desperate for a solution, Gia is intrigued by Nathan's unconventional offer: in exchange for living as his devoted pet, all her debts will be erased. But the longer Gia is in captivity, the more animalistic she becomes.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcoholism, animal death, body horror, cannibalism, child abuse, confinement, fake food, insects, kidnapping, miscarriage, mouth trauma, parasites, police, pregnancy, rape, rats, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, starvation, suicide ideation, violence | n/a | n/a |
Summary
"Taaqtumi" is an Inuktitut word that means "in the dark"--and these spine-tingling horror stories by Northern writers show just how dangerous darkness can be. A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that beckons, waiting to unleash the terror behind it. A post-apocalyptic community in the far North where things aren't quite what they seem. With chilling tales from award-winning authors Richard Van Camp, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Aviaq Johnston, and others, this collection will thrill and entertain even the most seasoned horror fan.
Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston
The Door by Ann R. Loverock
Wheetago War II: Summoners by Richard Van Camp
Revenge by Thomas Anguti Johnston
Lounge by Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley and Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley
Utiqtuq by Gayle Kabloona
Sila by K. C. Carthew
The Wildest Game by Jay Bulckaert
Strays by Repo Kempt
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| ableism, alcohol use, animal death, anti indigenous racism, body horror, cannibalism, death, dogs, gore, grief, gun violence, guns, hunting, medical abuse, medical content, pica, sexual harassment | bullying, child abuse, colonization, parent death, religion catholic | animal death, blood, child death, drug use smoking tobacco, gore, grief, hunting, parent death, police, violence |
Summary
Eddie's parents may be arguing about the disappearance of his infant brother Danny, but Eddie's facing a terror all of his own. There's a strange figure outside that claims it has Danny safe and sound-all Eddie needs to do to get his brother back is open that window.
Eddie's father is filled with guilt over his relationship with his own lost brother. His mother has been abandoned to navigate her grief and terror alone. And his grandmother carries a disturbing, all-too-relevant truth about their shared family history.
As minutes tick by and hope for Danny grows ever smaller, the very fabric of their world disintegrates, welcoming eldritch terrors of unspeakable provenance to their doorstep. The family is losing a decades- long struggle against an entity that is not of this world, and its hunger threatens to swallow them whole.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol abuse, cannibalism, child death, grief, kidnapping, medical content, vomit | n/a | n/a |
Summary
A world-weary woman races against the clock to survive a deadly forest in this dark, otherworldly fairytale from Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Premee Mohamed.
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic.
Veris Thorn--the only one to ever enter the forest and survive--is forced to go back inside to retrieve the tyrant's missing children. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past.
One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, body horror, child death, csa, dogs, drowning scenarios, genocide, gore, grief, parent death, pedophilia, rape, rats, sexual abuse, vomit, wars | animal death, dogs, gore, guns, hunting, injuries | blood |
Summary
In the summer of 1898, Sequoia Owen accepts an invitation from his estranged uncle to visit his family' s summer home on Todeket, a private island off the Connecticut coast. Yet the house, constructed by Sequoia's unstable grandfather and the site of his cousin's mysterious death, is a strange place. None of his odd relatives, who seem to have sinister agendas of their own, can agree upon the origin of the house, nor do they all believe the sightings of a ghost that haunts its halls, said to appear before tragedy strikes. Trapped on the island by a storm, Sequoia must unravel the enigma of Todeket before the next life lost is his own.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| drugging, gun violence, murder | American civil war, arson, classism, death, diseases, drowning scenarios, drug use, drugging, gun violence, head trauma, house fires, hypo needles, medical content, murder, suicide ideation | black slavery, suicide |
Summary
It's 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straight forward loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits theyre replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don't need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
Its a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines growing unease, convinced that its just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war thats no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol abuse, alcohol use, death, dogs, drug use, drugs smoking cannabis, injuries, leg trauma, medical content, military, suicide, unreality, unsanitary, vomit, wars | n/a | animal death |
Summary
Readers are invited to The Pink Agave Motel, where brutality and intimacy ooze across the pages, exploring the depths of the unhinged imagination and how human desire unlocks the impulse to bite. Castro's voice, influenced by Mexican folklore and a feminist perspective, illuminates a deeper view of how unrequited love affects every type of being alike.
The titular story focuses on Valentina, the proclaimed leader of a creature cohort, who manages hotel guests, until she is enlightened to a carnivorous death on the property. To avoid exposure that threatens her existence, she partners with (the hauntingly handsome) grieving friend of the dearly departed to solve the murder. Further within these tales, discover a woman who is a fish out of water drinking at a seaside honky tonk, the trapped guests who undergo sexual liberation, and aliens who find the sexiest of disguises.
These short stories evoke an alluring voice, sure to make the reader shiver in arousal and horror, never quite knowing what could happen next. Castro pushes past the limits of gothic terror and fantasy to carve a dangerous path of lust and violence, all throughout the reader's charming stay at The Pink Agave Motel.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| body horror, child abuse, confinement, death, gore, grooming, murder, sexual content, sexual harassment, suicide, violence | n/a | n/a |
Summary
Return to the world of Renfield County from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Edenville.
"You remember all the stories, right? Monsters and giants and kid-eaters and that guy in the tub? Of course you do…"
There's something wrong in Renfield County. It's in the walls of the county's historic houses, in the water, in the soil. But far worse than that--it's embedded deep within everyone who lives here. From the detective desperate to avoid hurting his own family; to the man so consumed with feeling zen that he will pursue horrific, life-changing surgery to achieve it. From the townspeople taken by ancient, unknowable forces; to those who find themselves lost in the woods, pursued by the beasts who lurk within the trees.
Yes, there's something very wrong in Renfield County--something that has been very wrong for a very long time. Something that is watching.
Something that is hungry.
From the mind of acclaimed author Sam Rebelein, return to the Bram Stoker Award-nominated world of Edenville in this interconnected series of short stories, and discover the true secrets of Renfield County.
TOC
Map
The Stain: December 20, 1927
Hector Brim
Interstitial
My Name Is Ellie
Interstitial
Detour
Interstitial
Wag
Interstitial
Red X
Interstitial
10 PM on the Southbound G
Interstitial
So My Cousin Knew This Guy
Interstitial
Allison's Face
Interstitial
And Every Thursday We Feed the Cats
Interstitial
Glitch
Re: The Stain: September 22, 2018
Note from The Tower: This is set in the same universe as the author's debut novel, Edenville. However, one does not need to read that novel before or after in order to understand or enjoy this anthology. I read this before Edenville, and if anything, it made me read that novel next. If you enjoy this anthology, I do hope you'll read Edenville next.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| addiction, alcoholism, amputation, animal death, arson, body horror, bullying, cannibalism, car crashes, child abuse, child death, confinement, death, demolition, drug use, eye trauma, face trauma, family annihilation, gore, gun violence, hand trauma, house fires, injuries, kidnapping, manipulation, medical content, murder, parent death, police, self harm, smoking tobacco, suicide, torture, violence | arson, body horror, covert incest, demolition, vomit | asphyxiation, child death, death, suicide |
Summary
Margaret Willow has never met an eleven-year-old as dangerous as Natalie Glasgow. Natalie spends her days comatose, but at night she prowls her mother's home, unnaturally strong and insatiably carnivorous. With doctors baffled, Natalie's mother reaches out to Margaret, an expert in the supernatural. But even Margaret is mystified and terrified by Natalie's condition. She's dying, and before she dies, she might kill someone. Has a demon clawed its way inside an eleven-year-old girl? Or does the source of this nightmare lie with Natalie's dead father?
A tight, tense novella, THE POSSESSION OF NATALIE GLASGOW twists the exorcism tale at every turn down to its final grave confrontation.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, drug use smoking tobacco, hunting, medical content, religion catholic | n/a | parent death, pregnancy |
Summary
Someone's been in the house… David Tobias has an ordinary life: a wife and two kids, a teaching job at the local high school, a lovely house with a pretty garden. But when he's up on a step ladder fixing a bird box to a tree, he happens to peer down the other side of the fence that marks his property. That's when he sees something that should not be there, something taken from inside his home. It's a mystery how it got there, and there's no solution forthcoming, but he and his wife Emma manage to convince themselves it's a one off… Then it happens again. And again. Each new discovery more disturbing than the last. Seemingly taunted by an unknown intruder, the lives of the Tobias family begin to unravel…
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, bullying, child death, disordered eating, fatphobia, paranoia, physical abuse, spree killing | sexism, slut shaming | classism |
Summary
Heaster Wharton is dead, and his passing might mean an end to hostilities between the Manders and the Coys. If the the elderly patriarch showed the kindness and foresight to split his land cleanly between his feuding descendants, then a truce could be arranged.
But his final request is a strange one, delivered across the country to the straggling remnants of his tribe. Representatives from both families must visit a cave at the edge of his property in the hills of Kentucky. There, he promised, they would find his last will and testament.
But there's more than paperwork waiting underground, as vindictive old Heaster was well aware.
In 1775, Daniel Boone and a band of axe-wielding frontiersmen struggled to clear a path through the Cumberland Gap into the heart of Bluegrass country, and they did not work unopposed. Hounded and harried by an astonishing monster, the axe-men overcame the beast by sheer numbers and steel. They threw its body into a nearby cave.
It was not dead.
And now, it is not alone.
Disabled and outraged, for 100 years something terrible has huddled underground, dreaming of meat and revenge. But its newest callers are heavily armed, skeptical of their instructions, and predisposed to violence.
With their guns and their savage instincts, Heaster's grandchildren will not make for easy pickings.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, death, excrement, guns, unsanitary | domestic violence, murder | colonization |
Summary
Magdalena, a forty-eight-year-old cloistered nun, has two days to stop the Apocalypse.
After she recruits Ana, a sex shop owner and domestic violence survivor, the duo set out to infiltrate the sex cult that will host the Antichrist's birth.
Magdalena's faith and determination are put to the test as she embraces her more sinful and sexual needs during the infiltration and second-guesses her childhood encounter with an archangel. Meanwhile, atheist Ana's worldview collapses at the realization of God's existence and the fact that an omnipotent being allowed the brutal murder of her eight-year-old daughter.
As they fall for each other, they will face the question: Would the Apocalypse be so bad after all?
J.V. Gachs, author of Epiphany and the forthcoming Spooky Lovers, brings readers her signature brand of Spanish religious horror in Unholy.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| alcohol use, blood, medical content, murder, scars, self harm, sexual assault, sexual content, suicide ideation, torture, vomit | childbirth, domestic violence | n/a |
Summary
For Damien, growing up was all about being an outsider in his own home. His mother and brother shared an unfathomable bond that left him excluded from their lives. Yet his earliest, fragmentary memory of them was so nightmarish, their lives were something he ran from as soon as he could.
Now an astronomy graduate student in Seattle, Damien is happy with his place as a speck in a cosmos vast beyond comprehension. Until his brother turns up after 13 years, to make amends and seek his expertise on a discovery that may not be of this Earth. The more the world expands to admit the possibilities of a universe stranger than even Damien has imagined, the greater is his urgency to resist being reclaimed by a past that never seemed to want him…until now.
Like a collision of galaxies between H.P. Lovecraft and Carl Sagan, Whom the Gods Would Destroy looks to the night skies as the source of our greatest wonder, and finds them swarming with our worst fears.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| ableism towards addiction, blood, body horror, cancer, child abuse, classism, confinement, cults, dogs, emotional abuse, gore, parent death, torture | addiction, alcoholism, Scientology | school shootings, suicide |
Summary
Robert R. McCammon's Boy's Life meets Lovecraftian horror in this foreboding, sensual coming-of-age debut in which the corrosive nature of family secrets and toxic relatives assume eldritch proportions.
An eleven-year-old boy lives an idyllic childhood exploring the remote coastal plains and wetlands of South Carolina alongside his parents and his dog Teach. But when the boy's eerie and estranged grandfather shows up one day with no warning, cracks begin to form as hidden secrets resurface that his parents refuse to explain.
The longer his grandfather outstays his welcome and the greater the tension between the adults grows, the more the boy feels something within him changing --physically--into something his grandfather welcomes and his mother fears. Something abyssal. Something monstrous.
| Major | Medium | Minor |
|---|---|---|
| animal death, body horror, dog attacks, dogs, injuries, medical content, murder, parent death, police, violence | n/a | vomit |