“The Show” by Priya Sharma. © 2011 by Priya Sharma. First published in Box of Delights, edited by John Kenny, Aeon Press Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Mulberry Boys” by Margo Lanagan. © 2011 by Margo Lanagan. First published in Blood and Other Cravings, edited by Ellen Datlow, Tor Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Roots and All” by Brian Hodge. © 2011 by Brian Hodge. First published in A Book of Horrors (2011), an anthology edited by Stephen Jones, Jo Fletcher Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Final Girl Theory” by A. C. Wise. © 2011 by A. C. Wise. First published in Chizine issue #48. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Omphalos” by Livia Llewellyn. © 2011 by Livia Llewellyn. First published in Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, Lethe Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Black Feathers” by Alison Littlewood. © 2011 by Alison Littlewood. First published in Black Static 22, April/May. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Final Verse” by Chet Williamson. © 2011 by. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“In the Absence of Murdock” by Terry Lamsley. © 2011 by Terry Lamsley. First published in House of Fear, edited by Jonathan Oliver, Solaris. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“You Become the Neighborhood” by Glen Hirshberg. © 2011 by Glen Hirshberg. First published in The Janus Tree and Other Stories, Subterranean Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“In Paris, In the Mouth of Kronos” by John Langan. © 2011 by John Langan. First published in Supernatural Noir, edited by Ellen Datlow, Dark Horse Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Little Pig” by Anna Taborska. © 2011 by Anna Taborska. First published in The Eighth Black Book of Horror edited by Charles Black, Mortbury Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Dermot,” by Simon Bestwick. © 2011 by Simon Bestwick. First published in Black Static 24, August/September. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine” by Peter Straub. © 2011 by Peter Straub. First published in Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita: The Voyage Issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Night Shade Books is an Independent Publisher of Quality Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us…
Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly eighty years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret…
…of The Croning.
From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.
NAPLES, THE 19TH CENTURY.
In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, holy music has power. Under the auspices of the Church, the Sung Mass can bring about actual miracles like healing the sick or raising the dead. But some believe that the musicodramma of grand opera can also work magic by channeling powerful emotions into something sublime. Now the Prince’s Men, a secret society, hope to stage their own black opera to the empower the Devil himself — and change Creation for the better.
Conrad Scalese is a struggling librettist whose latest opera has landed him in trouble with the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Rescued by King Ferdinand II, Conrad finds himself recruited to write and stage a counteropera that will, hopefully, cancel out the apocalyptic threat of the black opera, provided the Prince’s Men, and their spies and saboteurs, don’t get to him first.
And he only has six weeks to do it. .
The World Snake is coming, devourer of Thrace and Atlantis… and the only one standing in its way is Amber, a sixteen-year-old runaway, recently arrived in Los Angeles.
Amber is more than just a girl with a stolen ID and an attitude; she is a daughter of the wolf-kind, a shapeshifter able to change forms at will. One night, as Amber prowls the Hollywood Hills in wolf form, she stumbles onto an occult ceremony, interrupting the ritual. As a result, Amber finds herself the unwilling mistress of a handsome demonic servant, Richard.
Appearing as a fair youth of eighteen years, Richard is a demon accidentally summoned, then captured, by Dr. John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth I. Richard has been trying for four centuries to free himself from a succession of masters and mistresses, but finds himself bound to Amber, the only one who can protect him from his greatest fear, the herald of the World Snake, the Eater of Souls.
The last thing a girl of the wolf-kind needs is a boy following her around like a lap-dog, but Amber agrees to help Richard reclaim his soul from two of his old foes, hoping to grant Richard his freedom. But all hell is about to break loose, and Amber and Richard are going to need some allies to stop the Eater of Souls and avert the World Snake, and the battle has only begun.
From Carol Wolf comes the urban fantasy debut Summoning, a novel of a wolf girl, a demon boy, and a city on the edge of disaster.
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
First described by visionary author H. P. Lovecraft, the Cthulhu mythos encompass a pantheon of truly existential cosmic horror: Eldritch, uncaring, alien god-things, beyond mankind’s deepest imaginings, drawing ever nearer, insatiably hungry, until one day, when the stars are right….
As that dread day, hinted at within the moldering pages of the fabled Necronomicon, draws nigh, tales of the Great Old Ones: Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Hastur, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and the weird cults that worship them have cross-pollinated, drawing authors and other dreamers to imagine the strange dark aeons ahead, when the dead-but-dreaming gods return.
Now, intrepid anthologist Ross E. Lockhart has delved deep into the Cthulhu canon, selecting from myriad mind-wracking tomes the best sanity-shattering stories of cosmic terror. Featuring fiction by many of today’s masters of the menacing, macabre, and monstrous, The Book of Cthulhu goes where no collection of Cthulhu mythos tales has before: to the very edge of madness… and beyond!
Do you dare open The Book of Cthulhu? Do you dare heed the call?
Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin’ John Hastur. The mysterious blues man’s dark, driving music — broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station — is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.