native girl

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to digest.

When There's No More Room in Hell… The Dead Will Walk the Earth. It started small—a strange illness spreading through a New Jersey town after a minor natural disaster. Within hours, people fell sick. By the next day, they were dying. By the third, they were rising. And by the end of the weekend, the world was gone. Garrett Newton thought his biggest challenge would be adjusting to civilian life after a combat injury ended his military career. Instead of starting his new job, he’s running for his life as the dead flood the streets, hunting the living with mindless, relentless hunger. ...

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: They become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.... The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.

There are places in this world where even angels fear to tread. In book 2 of the gripping thriller, Cain Haight — a drunk ex-soldier, his opportunist ex-wife, her redneck mother, and a sweet Amish woman are on a mission to rescue two kids from the rebel soldiers who kidnapped them. But they have to survive journeying across the Tennessee landscape filled with nightmarish creatures. The words of Cain’s grandmother echo in his ears. “There are places in this world where even angels fear to tread.” But that’s where we’re headed, straight into Hell. Grab your copy and start reading ...

In the little upstate New York town of Union Grove, springtime is a most difficult season, known as "the six weeks want," when fresh food is scarce and winter stores have dwindled. Young Daniel Earle returns from his haunting travels around what is left of the United States intent on resurrecting the town newspaper. He is also recruited by the town trustees to help revive the Hudson River trade route shut down peevishly by the local grandee, planter Stephen Bullock.

In the sequel to his best-selling World Made by Hand, James Howard Kunstler expands on his vision of a post-oil society with a new novel about an America in which the electricity has flickered off, the Internet is a distant memory, and the government is little more than a rumor. In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, travel is horse-drawn and farming is back at the center of life. But it’s no pastoral haven.

Besides having dangerous encounters with mammoths, wolves, and saber-toothed tigers, Moctu has to deal with his older rival, Jabil, who fights and undermines him at every opportunity. After Jabil murders several elders who go against him, he deftly shifts blame onto the Pale Ones. He takes over as the tribe's leader and makes Moctu's life miserable. On a hunting trip, Moctu is captured and enslaved by the Pale Ones. While with them, Moctu is shocked to discover that these primitive people can make fire, and he learns the skill.

John Eric Carver and Shrek are a retired Navy SEAL war dog team, now living in the mountains outside of San Diego. Both man and dog thought their life was now settled, finding peace on the 40-acre ranch they had moved to. But life, and a mutated virus, changed all that.

A devastating attack. A family separated. A desperate struggle to survive. Jackson Block is trapped far from his family and those he loves when a rogue state unleashes a devastating attack on the United States. To reunite with his loved ones he must fight through streets that have turned into a war zone as survivors and government agents alike threaten not only his existence, but that of the entire nation. Zero Hour is a near-future, what-if tale of the apocalypse told through a frighteningly realistic lens.

Benny Catspaw’s perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He’s not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn’t know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he’s never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time.