Science Horror

During the rule of her murderous Dark Fae uncle, Thistle "Tricks" Periwinkle found sanctuary among the Wyr in New York. Her ethereal beauty and sparkling personality won the hearts of the public, but after her uncle's death, there are those who don't want to see her ascend to the throne. Able to wield thunder and lightning, Wyr sentinel Tiago Black Eagle has ruled the skies for centuries. He's sent to protect Tricks when she's almost assassinated in Chicago....

The Movie Town Theater is holding its first ever Film Noir Festival, with Pen handling book sales for the guest speakers, including screen actress Hedda Geist. The legendary femme fatale has been out of the spotlight for decades. Unfortunately, the moment she steps back into it, she's nearly killed. Then other guests start to die, and Penelope wants to know why her little town's Film Noir weekend has taken a truly dark turn.

My name is Frank Moon, and I have no idea what to expect next. The Unseen are everywhere. The dead are too. Millions are gone, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my family from becoming a part of the rising death toll. We didn’t find Jill’s parents in Florida, but we’re hopeful they’re still alive and hunkered down in their cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I thought things couldn’t get any worse. Nope, once again, I’m dead wrong. When we arrive on the scene, we discover that a whole new horror awaits us. A handful of the Unseen aren’t just ravenous monsters roaming a ...

Heaven is under siege. Since the beginning of time good and evil have been locked in conflict, universe wide, but now the darkness is growing dangerously close. The select few chosen to sacrifice paradise are desperate to recruit a new batch of souls in the waning hope of fighting off defeat. Former WW2 veteran, Gerald, has lived a long and happy life. Always putting his friends and family first, he dies content, ready to rest in peace. The cosmos has other ideas for the former soldier though. It is time for the warrior to take up arms once again. Just one soul can make all the difference...

We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks--as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. . . He speaks quietly, plainly, even gently . . . carrying us back to the night when he departed human existence as heir--young, romantic, cultivated--to a great Louisiana plantation, and was inducted by the radiant and sinister Lestat into the other, the "endless," life....

When Lewis Barnavelt and Rose Rita Pottinger explore an abandoned theater, they discover an unpublished opera score entitled "The Day of Doom". Ignoring a strange omen, they show it to their music teacher, who heralds "The Day of Doom" as a masterpiece. Little do they know that the eerie Henry Vanderhelm, the composer's grandson, arrives - with a plan. A plan to awaken the dead and enslave the world!

Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny are attending the re-opening of Tyrone’s Castle, an ancient Cornish inn originally built by smugglers. Over dinner that night, the guests entertain one another with ghost stories inspired by local legends and superstitions. But it would appear that the curse of Tyrone’s Castle has struck for real when one of their number disappears into thin air. And then another....

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation casts a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

In best-selling author Katie MacAlister’s Love in the Time of Dragons, suburban mom Tully Sullivan wakes up in a far-off place surrounded by strangers—many of them muscular, sexy ones—claiming to be dragons. They insist Tully is a dragon, too, and that she’s committed crimes deserving of death. Now Tully must disprove the allegations before time runs out.

When fate knocks, answer the door. Unless it knocks three times. Then pretend you didn't hear it. Nora Ashcroft knows all too well that life is full of trouble when you can speak to the dead. When she accidentally lets in a dark entity to the house she shares with Ruby, it's up to her to banish the who-knows-what before the rest of Eastwind devolves into complete chaos. If she hopes to succeed, she'll need a special kind of assistance, and, unfortunately, the best man for the job is also the last witch in town she wants to spend time with...

"The Crystal Cup" reveals the struggle a young artist faces when he is taken from his family and forced to work for the king. He is promised freedom in return for his hard work making a perfect crystal vase. But the story takes a tragic twist when he dies immediately following his completion of the vase. The king jeopardizes his reign after displaying the artist's remains alongside the vase during a feast at the castle.

The most terrifying predator in the ocean isn't hungry. It's smart. And it wants revenge. For marine biologist Mira, a week on the open ocean was an escape from a stalled career. For estranged brothers Jack and Rob, it was a final, desperate attempt to mend a family shattered by tragedy. Aboard the gleaming yacht Sea Pulse, they sought a quiet horizon. But the ocean had other plans. When a storm of unnatural ferocity rips their vessel apart, they are left adrift, clinging to a fragile life raft in an endless expanse of water. Their ordeal has just begun. They are not alone. The creature ...

It was the ultimate death game in a nightmare future America. The year is 2025 and reality TV has grown to the point where people are willing to wager their lives for a chance at a billion-dollar jackpot. Ben Richards is desperate - he needs money to treat his daughter's illness. His last chance is entering a game show called The Running Man where the goal is to avoid capture by Hunters who are employed to kill him.

After recent events, a little fun in the sun is just what Doc and the gang need. Unfortunately, it may take a bit more than beach time to make things right because something is very, very wrong with Doc Holliday....

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Robert "Bubba" Brabham never wanted to hunt monsters. He mostly wanted to drink beer, hunt deer, and chase women, like every other giant redneck in the world. But life interfered, and Bubba found himself holster-deep in the family business: monster hunting. Now he's the Southeastern Regional Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic Church...Bubba has to save the world from the things that go bump in the night! Just as soon as he's done with his beer. And maybe after one more lap dance.

In I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and those unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Everyone else has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he stalks the sleeping undead, by night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

Fresh out of jail and eager to start a new life, Chet Moran and his pregnant wife, Trish, leave town to begin again. But an ancient evil is looming, and what seems like a safe haven may not be all it appears. Snared and murdered by a vile, arcane horror, Chet quickly learns that pain and death are not unique to the living. Now the lives and very souls of his wife and unborn child are at stake. To save them, he must journey into the bowels of purgatory in search of a sacred key promised to restore the natural order of life and death.

Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales is the third volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume is made up of eight novella length stories. It includes Wellman's "Judge Pursivant" and "Sergeant Jaeger" stories, as well as a lost classic from Strange Stories (1939).