Psychological Thriller Short Stories

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger...." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922", the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

From the world's number one best-selling writer - three pulse-pounding novels in one audiobook! This collection includes The Family Lawyer, Night Sniper, and The Good Sister.

He wakes in a white room with no doors, no windows, and no memory. Silence presses in from every side. Objects appear and vanish. Time bends. And something unseen is watching. As strange visions bleed through the walls—a shadow, a chair, the smell of toast—he begins to remember fragments of a life just out of reach. Outside the room, voices call his name. A flatline echoes. The world is slipping away, but he’s still here.

Spring Break, 1997. A group of college friends sets out for an unforgettable trip to Mexico, but their adventure takes a horrific turn when they are abducted by a satanic cult in the Tucson desert. Their captor? Zeena Graves—a strikingly beautiful yet merciless cult leader who commands her followers from the darkness of an abandoned church. As midnight strikes on Easter night, she prepares to enact a ritual drenched in blood and terror that can only be completed After the Pink Moon. Bound by fear, surrounded by zealots, and with time slipping away, the captives must find a way to escape ...

It's been twenty years since the night Jake Marcott was brutally murdered at St. Elizabeth High School. It's a night that shattered the lives of Lindsay Farrell, Kirsten Daniels, and Rachel Alsace. It's a night they'll never forget. A killer will make sure of that....

If you hear the whistle… it’s already too late. Park ranger Caleb Mercer has spent a decade watching over Bitterroot Ridge — a remote national park known more for its silence than danger. But now, hikers are vanishing without a trace, and only Caleb hears the strange high-pitched whistle that seems to follow him deeper into the trees. When wildlife biologist Dr. Naomi Voss joins him to investigate, the pattern becomes disturbingly clear: the whistle isn’t random. It’s a call — and it’s been echoing through these woods for decades. As the disappearances mount and the whistle ...

Ella's life takes a horrifying turn when she encounters a crazed man in a dark cave. As she fights for her survival, she discovers a shocking truth about her own past. Can she escape the clutches of her own twisted memories? Prepare for heart-pounding suspense and mind-bending twists as you delve into the depths of Ella's fractured psyche. Beware, for not everything is as it seems. Will you dare to uncover the secrets hidden within the "Cave of Terror"?

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore.

A lifelike dummy. A strange dinner party. A soul that won’t stay dead. When struggling actor/waiter Luke Barrett is assigned to serve a bizarre memorial dinner, he doesn’t expect the guest of honor to be a creepy carpool dummy—or for the night to follow him home. But soon, Luke begins blacking out. Seeing things. Becoming someone else. As his reality unravels, he realizes the dummy isn’t just a lifeless prop. It’s watching. Waiting. And it wants in. From bestselling author William Massa comes a chilling short story of possession and occult terrors. A quick read that can be read or...

A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalized by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's dominance over the natural world. The mountain paradise of "Monte Verità" promises immortality, but at a terrible price; a neglected wife haunts her husband in the form of an apple tree; a professional photographer steps out from behind the camera and into his subject's life.

Three friends go on a foodie road trip to the Scottish Highlands and Islands to celebrate their pending retirement, expecting stunning scenery, great food, fine wines, and a chance to reminisce about the good old days. When they somehow secure a reservation at a remote and extremely exclusive restaurant set on a private island in Loch Broom, they know they’re in for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience.

Blair Martin’s days rarely vary: she gets up, goes for a run, and then heads to work at a Manhattan literary agency where she nurtures authors through the publishing process. Her nights, spent alone in her too-large apartment, are similarly predictable. Then on an ordinary Wednesday, Blair enters her office building and spies a lost wallet. When Blair tracks down the owner, they arrange for a simple exchange. But the young woman, Maya, seems so vulnerable, much like Blair’s own daughter, Faith, who died tragically just last year, and Blair is unable to simply walk away.

Are you ready to get locked away in a maximum security mental hospital? Go inside the mind of a criminal, along with an innocent man. There will be violence, injections, psychosis, and murder.

Seven Rooms. Seven Rules. One Book You Won’t Forget. The Seventh Room and Other Hauntings is a chilling collection of modern horror stories where nothing is as it seems, and the echoes of the past refuse to stay silent. From cursed architecture to sentient towns, haunted seas to fractured reflections, these tales explore the places we aren’t meant to go—and the things that wait for us there. Step aboard a derelict vessel that rewrites the names of its crew. Stand beneath a nesting tree that feeds on grief. Explore a collector’s basement where stories aren’t written in ink. Stare ...

Leah has spent her formative years isolated on a remote island with her family. But their quiet existence, far from the devastated mainland, is cracking. Father, sensing a coming threat, demands that a wall be built. As the stone blockade rises, Father’s paranoia escalates. So does Leah’s dread that the violence the family left behind has found its way to their sanctuary.

She married for money. She plotted for more. But the insurance policy had other ideas... Chantel Fletcher’s specialty is husbands. Her problem is cash. When her third husband turns out to be worth $2.5 million dead, she makes the leap from trophy wife to cold-blooded conspirator. With a mountain of debt and a dangerous past catching up to her, Chantel enlists her teenage daughter and a dim-witted ex-con to help pull the trigger on the perfect murder. But this is St. Isidore—a town that chews up second chances and spits out twisted endings. And when the cops come knocking, Chantel ...

Now a Lifetime original movie, Stephen King's haunting story about an author of a series of mystery novels who tries to reconcile her old life with her life after a horrific attack and the one thing that can save her: Revenge.

Behind a wall of amnesia, he can’t remember anything. Maybe he can’t bear to. Nameless knows only the mission: Directed by the mysterious Ace of Diamonds, he travels the country, turning predators into prey. But the pain in his past can’t hold him back when dark visions of the future lead him toward his greatest test yet. Nameless is closing in on a revelatory endgame in this collection of short thrillers from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.