Small Horrors

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

When sisters Lily and Della Pedley are persecuted for the shocking murder of their parents, they flee from their home in Cornwall to a remote and unnamed island in Scotland - an island known for its strange happenings, but far away from the whispers and prying eyes of strangers. Lily is terrified of what her sister might do next, and she soon realises that they have arrived at a place where nothing is as it seems.

The town of Iron Shores lies hidden along the James River in the forgotten forests of northern Virginia. In a place where inanimate objects come to life, where the past crosses with the present, and where things are not what they seem. A swamp teen melds with a sentient alga and becomes a macabre vigilante. A schizophrenic woman escapes prison with the help of a man in black, but everything she touches turns to blood. A boy unearths the secret power of his BeJezzus, while another realizes the torture the creature can release upon his enemies and learns to wield it. Two Ph.D. Candidates come...

CONTENTS: 1. The Imp of the Perverse [Poe], 2. The Devil in the Belfry [Poe], 3. The Crawling Chaos [Lovecraft], 4. Aunt Joanna [Sabine Baring-Gould], 5. The Outsider [Lovecraft], 6. The Hound [Lovecraft], 7. The Disinterment [Lovecraft], 8. The Horror At Martin's Beach [Lovecraft], 9. The Tree On The Hill [Lovecraft], 10. The Outgoing of The Tide [John Buchan], 11. The Curse of Yig [Lovecraft], 12. The Haunter Of The Dark [Lovecraft], 13. Berenice [Poe], 14. The Angel Of The Odd [Poe], 15. Black Ram [Baring-Gould], 16. The Cask Of Amontillado [Poe], 17. Dracula's Guest [Bram Stoker].

Why would a biotech company release a dangerous virus? Because they already have the cure... A mysterious, man-made virus outbreak races through the small town of Marshall, Wisconsin. Dogs throughout the town are quickly infected by the plague with disastrous results. The gentle pet of yesterday suddenly snaps at its loving owner. Dogs all over town are turned outdoors when they abruptly become aggressive. Stray dogs, reverting to the behavior of their canine ancestors, begin to form efficient and deadly packs. A hunter in the vast forest outside of town becomes the hunted. A runaway ...

Hamming it up with equal parts history and histrionics, Phillip leads an archaeological dig of the farm's original dump site - until one student stops the show by uncovering some human bones. When a full skeleton is later excavated, Kath can't help but wonder if it's somehow connected to Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, and whom she met at this very site. After Phillip is found dead, it's up to Kath to thread the clues together before someone else becomes history.

Natalie and Rose are transported in their imaginations to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, where one of their ancestors survived in a lifeboat for 50 days. Natalie struggles when her daughter, Rose, is diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, but the researching and retelling of Grandad Colin's story provides them both with a way to fight through. Louise Beech has always been haunted by the sea, and regularly writes travel pieces for the Hull Daily Mail, where she was a columnist for ten years.

Summer was dying in Perfect. But boys will be boys and Jimmy Becker discovers something in the woods just beyond town, unwittingly unleashing something upon his hometown. But it was not the first time, and the town of Perfect was being watched by a group that was as old as recorded history, a group that sends someone in the take care of the problem, someone only known as Hunter.

Claire Mumford’s life is going great. Her book sales are taking off, her daughter Maggie is flourishing at school. Even her husband Jesse is happy. His new veterinary clinic was built on a idyllic plot of land outside Georgetown, Delaware. But there is a spirit on the land. One who walks the road searching for her lost love. The one who left her waiting at the altar. And she is angry. Very angry. Meet Naimh Buckey. An Irish immigrant in service as a scullery maid who only wants to better herself by learning to read and someday becoming a house cook. When the handsome son of the estate ...

It's time for Blue Plum's annual historical festival, and everyone-including Kath and her spunky fiber and needlework group, TGIF-is getting in on the action. Expert spinners are being gathered, and a businessman has approached Kath about using the second-floor windows of her store for part of a reenactment. But the reenactment ends in real-life bloodshed when local baker Reva Louise Snapp is shot-with a bullet from a modern-day gun.

Seventeen-year-old Hylee Williams didn’t ask to disappear. She didn’t ask to move from Kansas City, Kansas out to the suburbs in Missouri. But she did disappear, and not only that, but when she vanished from our world, she materialized in a dark, twisted version of the night that changed her life forever: the night her older brother went missing. Just as Hylee realizes this moment could be the key to unraveling the truth about her brother, she’s yanked away from the dark place back to our world.

The Grimes sisters aren’t normal—even by witches’ standards. For weeks, Fiona has been having chilling visions of death, and Eleanor sees restless spirits nearly everywhere she goes. It doesn’t help that Mountain Shadow is a strange place to begin with, where rumors of curses fly as fast as saltwater taffy on a warm summer day. When a string of gruesome murders rocks the small town, Fiona and the rest of her coven begin to worry that a fellow witch may be the killer. Even worse? A witch hunter has just moved in next door, and he suspects the coven.

In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect.

Tess Bellamy’s return home is anything but triumphant. She’s decided Hollywood isn’t for her, resigned to a normal life of caring for her ailing mother. Linna Severand would be a powerful sorceress…if she could escape her family’s mansion, and usurp their control of her magic. Gabriel Majeaux once tried to save the world from evil. Now he’s the last of his kind, moving from place to place to avoid detection. After a series of horrifying events, their lives collide…and if they aren’t prepared, it’s unlikely they’ll survive.

On their way home from the local corner market, two best friends take the usual shortcut through the woods... and come across something glowing in the near distance. Curious, the boys investigate... and soon discover a campfire in an unlikely location. Strangely, there are other people here, too—all seemingly drawn to the same mysterious flame. The mysterious and hungry flame... What Readers are saying: ★★★★★ “It was a great read from beginning to end. I believe the story was aimed more for young adults, but this 55 year old enjoyed it too. Anne Rice, J.R. Rain, and Stephenie ...

Isaac Hayes always gets what he wants, and Charlotte Swift has always resisted submitting to him, only to succumb to his demands to protect her in the end, because she never cared enough about anything to fight for something else. And so Isaac had his true love, polished and gleaming, like so many of his hard-earned trophies.They were content, she was safe, and Isaac was triumphant. But now that Will Furlough is in the post-apocalypse picture, Charlotte's determined to keep him there, or walk out of Isaac's perfect frame all together. Isaac doesn't want to lose her, but now that Charlotte ...

This town's dark secret tried to be nice... John Weston has been living the good life. A successful relationship, a good business, and not one but several women on the side. Tonight, he found out why. Every seven years, the town where he lives chooses a sacred king. For seven years, he has everything his heart desires; at the end of the seventh, he is sacrificed to ensure the prosperity of the town. That's bad enough, but something weird is going on - well, even weirder. All of the people trying to kill John Weston tonight are being as nice about it as they can, and they act like they're ...

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself - and is coming close to a breakdown.

Vera Martinez wants nothing more than to escape Roaring Creek and her parents' reputation as demonologists. Not to mention she's the family outcast, lacking her parents' innate abilities, and is terrified of the occult things lurking in their basement. Maxwell Oliver is supposed to be enjoying the summer before his senior year. Instead he's taking care of his little sister while his mom slowly becomes someone he doesn't recognize. Soon he suspects that what he thought was grief over his father's death might be something more sinister.

The Victorian-era writers featured in this collection are known for their power of invention and command of horror and the supernatural. Included are "A Watcher by the Dead" by Ambrose Bierce; "The Body Snatchers" by Robert Louis Stevenson; "The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving; "Dickon the Devil" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu; "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe; and "The Open Watcher" by Saki.