Dark Comedy Horror Fiction

Tales from the Eerie Canal weaves the sinister mystery of Edgar Allan Poe with the dark humor of Edward Gorey. No canal. No Lake Erie. Just a stream of the disturbing splashed with bits of the absurd.

Before she knows it, Turquoise finds herself in strange and perilous worlds populated by the likes of human oddities, shape-shifters, serial killers in flying saucers, flesh-eating hippies, man-eating house cats, and sleazy televangelists who produce snuff films for Christ.

Road Kills is a collection of short tales of dark comic horror from the mind of Isaac Thorne. These stories are all connected to travel, to the road. After all, it is always lurking there, quiet and dark, just waiting for you to come out for a drive or a walk or a jog.

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside—the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But Lydia can't eat any of this. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London—where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time—is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Little Stevie just wanted a friend to help make snowmen and snow angels and have fun and games with. Ever unpopular and often lonely, a lot of experiences most children his age have passed him by. A heavy winter brings the town to a standstill, and he seeks the opportunity to play in the snow, but something else is already playing in the snow, and the game it is playing is deadly enough to destroy mankind.

When Brooke is released from rehab and goes back home, her bestie April moves in to keep her company and help her get back on her feet. The two start dating guys. When one guy makes a move on April, Brooke's alter ego Hayden makes him pay with his life.They scramble to hide the body, but then a detective pays a visit and questions them.

It would be easier for Thomas Mullen to move on from what he'd seen if Sarah stopped calling. It would be even better if she stopped appearing to him, and only him, to remind him of what he was powerless to stop. But months later, after Thomas loses his phone and the random woman who recovers it arranges to return it to him, his predicament intensifies. This woman tells him that while she's had his phone, his mother has called. His mother really needs him to call her back. And who is Sarah?

The history of lycanthropes stretches back to man’s beginnings. From cave drawings and tribal folklore to the Inquisition and the 20th century, man’s fascination with werewolves has never wavered. The field of study has been ripped wide open, with new information uncovered daily. How do you detect a werewolf when they are in human form? What if a family member is a werewolf? How do you defend yourself from an attack? How do you escape from savage lycanthropes? Don’t be caught flat-footed again. This is the field guide everybody needs to protect themselves and their family.

Tod Donavon (59), Las Madres Police Department, has detected something horribly wrong with his ex-wife, and it just might have something to do with the thrill-kill cult he's investigating. And possibly his frequent blackouts. If only Internal Affairs would quit chewing his ring, he could finally get some work done and maybe even find some of these missing kids. Someone's not doing their job, but if he's left alone to do his, there won't be any work left, nor anyone to do it.

Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein. You've lived with the stories your whole life. You've read the tales. You've watched the films. But what if the stories were different? What if the things you read about these monsters were warped and twisted? Here lie stories you may not have heard. Stories both weird and shocking. Bizarre and grotesque. Alternate versions of your favorite classic monsters you've never read and never will again. Featuring 13 stories by Jonathan Moon, The Sisters of Slaughter, Tom Lucas and more!

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Will's immortal tales often have a higher body count than a teenage slasher flick—and just as many freakish creatures, and author David Bergantino's retrofitting has turned Shakespeare's centuries-old classics into modern-day fright fests! At Globe University, romance is...complicated. Lenore likes Dimitri who likes Mia who likes Xander who, okay, likes Mia, too. When these mismatched couples are paired off for a summer school “parenting” assignment, trouble is clearly on the horizon—even before a spooky, old-fashioned carnival rolls into town.

When Stacy goes to a party during a pandemic, the virus is the least of her problems. What takes place is nothing short of pure adrenaline, creeptastic terror. A story you won't want to put down.

For one young man, it is always decided by a simple code of chance taught to him by his mentor, a gruff truck driver named Petty who once took him under his wing. Now a trucker himself, the savant travels the quickest routes coast to coast through 1990s America, listening to the Top 40 Countdown and holding the fate of those he encounters in the palm of his hand.

This is the story of a dying little boy fighting to escape a very special hell!

It’s Easter in the land of Oz, and while Jack Pumpkinhead should be enjoying the lovely spring weather, Easter eggs, and candy with his new friend, little Jenny, he can’t. Something is wrong. A terrible memory is beginning to resurface, and Jack is terrified. Whatever it is, he knows it has chased after him for a long time and that he is not strong enough to face it. But very soon, Jack will discover that you can’t hide from the truth forever....

Most people have regrets. Ask them. They will tell you about the opportunities they missed, the dreams they left behind, and the memories of lost loves, locked away until their journeys end. We have no such luxuries, those of us entangled with the dead. It is our job as exorcists to guide them from this world, and finish their unfinished business, even if it means searching for 300 missing souls. This is a recollection of my first case, from a time when I thought nothing of the shadows beneath my feet.

"Ibid" is a parody by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Ibid is a mock biography of the Roman scholar Ibidus (486-587), whose masterpiece was Op. Cit., "wherein all the significant undercurrents of Graeco-Roman thought were crystallized once and for all." The piece traces the skull of Ibidus, once the possession of Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and other notables, to the United States, where it travels via Salem, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island to a prairie dog hole in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Imagine James and the Giant Peach, only instead of a giant peach it's a genetic abomination, an unholy hulk of agonized flesh that should not be...and instead of a small boy sharing a jolly adventure with a group of anthropomorphic insects, there is a mindless killing machine on a nightmare voyage through an ecological hell with a group of horrifying freaks! Torture in the name of science! A plastic island inhabited by mutant sea monkeys! Pollution kaiju! A retelling of a beloved children's classic sure to have the original author spinning in his grave!

The Storeroom Guys is a darkly comic listen for a foggy winter's night. It is a great piece of literature to get a conversation started about strange work colleagues, haunted spaces, post-traumatic stress, and surviving tough times. It has inspired graphic artists, theatre producers, and screen writers. For horror fans, there are lots of clever references to classics of the genre, but there is nothing jaded about the plot, and the twist is as satisfying as it is unexpected. The Guys has contemporary characters - but evil is timeless.