A collection of short stories from the first issues of Cemetery Dance magazine.

The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two showcases the very finest short stories from issues 26 to 50 of Cemetery Dance magazine, picking up where the acclaimed and award-winning first "Best of" volume left off! Featuring a virtual "who's who" of today's greatest authors of dark fiction, The Best of Cemetery Dance: Volume Two will be one of the most important anthologies of the year. Just a handful of the contributors include Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, Michael Marshall Smith, Ray Garton, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Clegg, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, Peter Crowther, Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, William F. Nolan, F. Paul Wilson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Simon Clark, Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Stewart O'Nan, Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell, and dozens of others!

Twenty years ago, journalist Joel Walker wrote a book about a ritual killing. It exploded into a bestseller and became part of the mass Satanic hysteria of the 1980s. However, his story and the evil he investigated were real and left him the victim of a nervous breakdown. For the last two decades, his has been a quiet existence far from his former home in Massachusetts. But when one of his childhood friends is brutally murdered and rumored to have been involved in bizarre medical experiments, Joel is lured back to find out what really happened. Joel must delve deep into the darkness once more, investigating all the way back to his own childhood, and the secrets he and his old friends buried there years ago. But where do paranoia and madness end and real evil begin? With the Orphans of Wonderland.

Where do you get your ideas?It's probably the most common question an author gets asked during his or her career.This anthology isn't meant to answer that question, but it is designed to give readers a glimpse into how the imagination works.These talented authors were shown a haunting piece of artwork by acclaimed artist Alan M. Clark and then asked: "What worlds do you see hidden inside this painting?"The stories collected in this book are their answers.

This new book from critically acclaimed genre author Michael Aronovitz collects some of his greatest stories that celebrate the beauty of the darkness in the world. In the section titled GIRLS, you'll learn "How Bria Died," and will also meet "The Sculptor" in the story that inspired Aronovitz's full-length serial killer novel of the same name. In the section featuring PSYCHOS, you'll feel the chill of the Anti-Christ in "Quest for Sadness," and fall prey to the most frightening circus creature on the face of the earth in "The Exterminator." In TOOLS & TECH, you'll find out the dark secret of "The Tool Shed," and will also experience the full-length ghost-novella, "Toll Booth." And finally, in MARTYRS & SACRIFICIAL LAMBS you'll experience hell on earth in "The Echo," and unwittingly release the darkest force of the forest in "The Falcon." With Dancing with Tombstones, the author of Alice Walks and The Sculptor deliciously thrusts us down the twisted avenues deep inside the haunt of our most secret repressions.

It takes a graveyard to raise a child. Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy—an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family.

This will be another World's 1st Edition from Cemetery Dance Publications: a unique new book published in the old-fashioned double tradition! A Face in the Crowd by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan (FIRST TIME IN PRINT!) Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It's Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone from decades past, someone who shouldn't be at the ballgame, shouldn't be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers's past, all of them occupying that seat behind home plate. Until one day Dean Evers sees someone even eerier... The Longest December by Richard Chizmar (EXPANDED VERSION!) Bob and Katy Howard are a typical middle-aged couple living the good life in the suburbs. They're happily married, have successful careers, and a grown son starting college. Their recently widowed next-door neighbor, James Wilkinson, is practically a member of the Howard family. When police show up at the Howard's doorstep one snowy December morning with the news that they have been investigating Wilkinson for a series of violent crimes, Bob and Katy are left in shock and disbelief. The elderly James Wilkinson they know and love is kind and gentle. He shared their Thanksgiving table just a couple weeks earlier. He couldn't possibly be responsible for the gruesome deeds of which he's being accused. Or could he? The Longest December (a revised and expanded version of Chizmar's acclaimed novella, A Long December) is a cat-and-mouse, Hitchcockian thriller that will shock you with its brutal twists and turns while also breaking your heart. Stephen King calls it ...a really terrific piece of work. I couldn't put it down. Chizmar played his cards with great craft. I'm an old hand at this, but I kept chasing the red herrings.

"Like Stephen King, he knows how to summon serious scares." - Bentley Little, The Haunting Stoker Award finalist THE RED CHURCH For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won't stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her. Sheriff Frank Littlefield hates the red church for a different reason. His little brother died in a freak accident at the church twenty years ago, and now Frank is starting to see his brother's ghost. And the ghost keeps demanding, "Free me." People are dying in Whispering Pines, and the murders coincide with McFall's return. The Days, the Littlefields, and the McFalls are descendants of the original families that settled the rural Appalachian community. Those old families share a secret of betrayal and guilt, and McFall wants his congregation to prove its faith. Because he believes he is the Second Son of God, and that the cleansing of sin must be done in blood. "Sacrifice is the currency of God," McFall preaches, and unless Frank and Ronnie stop him, everybody pays. --------------------------- "Scott Nicholson understands that the best horror novels achieve primal fear through a combination of sustained atmosphere, richly drawn characters, and believable if uncanny evils that draw unholy power from everyday lives." --Christopher Ransom, author of The Birthing House "Keep both hands on your pants, because Nicholson is about to scare them off."--J.A. Konrath, Origin "Scott Nicholson is the kind of writer who always surprises and always entertains."--Jonathan Maberry, Patient Zero "Scott Nicholson writes with a mixture of H.P. Lovecraft, Manly Wade Wellman, and Clive Barker." - Kevin J. Anderson Keywords: Stephen King, Joe Hill, horror fiction, paranormal, suspense, mystery, supernatural thriller, ghost story, haunted house story, scary google books, spooky ebooks, Dean Koontz, James Herbert, John Saul, Edgar Allan Poe, Blake Crouch, J.A. Konrath, Jonathan Maberry, Peter Straub, Brian Keene, ghosts, Stoker Award finalist, Adam Nevill, Sarah Pinborough, Paul Tremblay

A Collection of essays and columns which discuss the writing and publishing business in and out of the genres of Science Fictiuon, Horror, Suspense, as well as writing for televisions and film. It is full of wit, humor, and experience.

Elina Gertsman's multifaceted study introduces readers to the imagery and texts of the Dance of Death, an extraordinary subject that first emerged in western European art and literature in the late medieval era. Conceived from the start as an inherently public image, simultaneously intensely personal and widely accessible, the medieval Dance of Death proclaimed the inevitability of death and declared the futility of human ambition. Gertsman inquires into the theological, socio-historic, literary, and artistic contexts of the Dance of Death, exploring it as a site of interaction between text, image, and beholder. Pulling together a wide variety of sources and drawing attention to those images that have slipped through the cracks of the art historical canon, Gertsman examines the visual, textual, aural, pastoral, and performative discourses that informed the creation and reception of the Dance of Death, and proposes different modes of viewing for several paintings, each of which invited the beholder to participate in an active, kinesthetic experience.