"Enter this freakishly inventive cabinet of curiosities if you will, every story providing a redly drippy skull-window straight into the id-vortex of a modern horror master--gape in awe, laugh out loud, feel your mental mouth start to water." --Gemma Files, from the introduction Orrin Grey has a knack for cruel stories. Contes Cruel, to be exact. Sardonic Tales like the fourteen collected here, ready to wrench the reader's emotions, tantalize, and terrify. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Roger Corman, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, the Theatre de Grand Guignol, Universal's monster movies, Hammer horror, kaiju flicks, and more, all while creating something unique, intoxicating, and, yes, cruel. Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales has something for everyone... even the most jaded readers.

For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the eleventh volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman Kim Stanley Robinson Stephen King Linda Nagata Laird Barron Margo Lanagan And many others With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.

In the dark narratives that make up When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías, winner of the Dublin IMPAC prize and author of the bestselling A Heart So White, a dapper Paris doctor dispenses a treatment for dissatisfied wives. A mother auditions for her first porn movie. A writer working on a study of pain makes himself the subject of his experiments. A voyeur mistakes a murderer for a fellow peeping tom ... these are some of the characters observed by the narrator of these chilling stories. Ironic, unsettling, imbued with dread and with droll humour, Javier Marías' short tales cast a shrewd, sardonic eye on humanity. Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.

"In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff - gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. And all manner of players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate."--Publisher.

It is Halloween, a day that used to be your favourite of the year.As a child, you counted down the days to Halloween, thrilled at the prospect of venturing out into the night in a monster's clothing and returning with a sack stuffed full with candy.As you grew through adolescence, your tastes gradually changed. You still lived in anticipation of Halloween, but you no longer cared much for its typical offerings. The costumes weren't real. The candy was too sweet.What you wanted was adventure, panic, black magic. You wanted to find yourself on a dark hilltop, shaking with fear as impossible shadows crept up the slope toward you. You wanted to see the dead sit up in their graves. You wanted to stumble through the fog trying to escape the clutches of a madman. You wanted to survive a nightmare...Death by Halloween is a 'choose-your-own-adventure' style interactive book for adults and mature teens. It features: Masterfully executed hyperlink navigation Over 100 choices Over 50 endings A gender-neutral protagonist Ghosts Ghouls Murderers Self-loathing Cannibals Demons Mutilation Scarecrows Specters Zombies Pie And much more! Please have a look at the sample to get a better idea of whether or not this book is right for you. Because this is an interactive book, the sample chapters will be out of order and not interactive. They will, nevertheless, give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.PLEASE NOTE: As mentioned above, this book has some fairly graphic scenes of violence and is intended for a somewhat mature audience.

Underground filmmaker Tina Mori became a legend with a stolen camera, then disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Film historian and debut novelist Brian Hauser delves into Mori's life and legacy, exploring the strange depths and fathomless shadows situated between truth, fiction, fantasy, and the uncanny.

Charles Carter, dubbed Carter the Great by Houdini himself, was born into privilege but became a magician out of need: only when dazzling an audience can he defeat his fear of loneliness. But in 1920s America the stakes are growing higher, as technology and the cinema challenge the allure of magic and Carter's stunts become increasingly audacious. Until the night President Harding takes part in Carter's act only to die two hours later, and Carter finds himself pursued not only by the Secret Service but by a host of others desperate for the terrible secret they believe Harding confided in him. Seamlessly blending reality and fiction, Gold lays before us a glittering and romantic panorama of our modern world at a point of irrevocable change.

John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with a new book of stories. An aspiring actress goes to an audition with a mysterious director. An editor receives the last manuscript of his murdered friend. A young lawyer learns the terrible connection between her grandfather and an ancient race of creatures. A bodyguard drives her employer across a frozen road toward an immense hole in the earth. In these stories and others, John Langan maps the branches of his literary family tree, tracing his connections to the writers whose dark fictions have inspired his own. Introduction by Stephen Graham Jones.

One hundred twenty-five years ago Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of London. As we come up to the quasquicentennial of the murders, Ross E. Lockhart brings together in this collection 19 more stories of the Ripper from many of today's "darkest dreamers."

You're on the run from the cops and need a place to disappear somehow. Luckily you happen across a secret ocean in the middle of Wyoming. An undiscovered world of zombies and pirates that, according to maps, couldn't possibly exist. But here it is, a vast white sea that is made of some kind of greasy blubber substance instead of water.