Small Horrors

Kingston is a secluded East Texas town surrounded by a lake and giant pine trees. Except for Friday night football, there is not one thing worth getting excited about. Until Ronnie Javorsky runs onto the field after the national anthem and is shot to death by an unseen assailant. But Ronnie is just the first victim. A macabre game of murder has begun in the quaint town, a challenge to see which sadistic killer can rack up the most kills and do the most destruction before the sun rises. All at the invitation of a mysterious figure known as the Host.

Mayhem explodes when monsters mix with guns, rednecks and beer. Craig Nybo's second novel, Small Town Monsters, visits the town of DePalma Beach, Montana, a peaceful lake community with a five-star rating in any tour travel guide. Monster hunter isn't in the job description when Kurt McCammus, a Los Angeles homicide detective, leaves the big city and all its violence behind to take a job as chief of police in DePalma Beach. He falls in love with the clean air and peaceful community. That is until a local rancher finds 50 head of sheep mutilated on his spread.

When five friends are invited to a religious celebration in a small, isolated town, they are initially showered by the townsfolk with gifts and attention. As the days go by, however, it becomes clear that the community is not as innocuous as it initially presented itself. Mysterious, robed figures violently beat people who express different opinions, strange rituals take place in the church at night, and armed gunmen patrol the town perimeters–all under Prophet Martin’s orders.

Welcome to Pearl, a town obsessed with Halloween: the spooky decorations, the costumes, the candy. No one seems to notice that every October 31st, a kid goes missing. Mason Miller does, though. Somehow he’s the only one who has any memory the person existed at all. When Mason’s sister, Meg, vanishes while they’re trick-or-treating, Mason and his friends are pulled into an underworld where monsters roam the streets. They need to fight the evil taking over Pearl, but none of them know the true danger they're facing.

Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after—and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past. But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom soon finds himself unable to resist.

She thought she had escaped the past. She was wrong . . .16-year-old Kitty has worked hard to get her life back on track after years of traumatic abuse at the hands of her stepfather. And with the support of her boyfriend Aaron and her best friend Lexi, she really starts to believe she can put the past behind her for good. Until girls at her school start getting assaulted. Someone is stalking and targeting her friends one by one. The local sheriff has no idea who the attacker is or how to find him. Which means Kitty must try to discover the identity of this masked serial rapist herself, ...

Back in the summer of 1988, a young Richard Chizmar was catapulted into the centre of a living nightmare as the serial killer Joshua Gallagher - dubbed by the media as 'The Boogeyman' - stalked his tranquil Maryland town. These days, Chizmar enjoys a certain level of notoriety himself as he is the only person to whom Josh Gallagher will talk, on or off the record. Chizmar likes to visit Gallagher in prison but when a masked figure leaves a horrifying calling card in the front of his home, Chizmar finds there is a price for dancing with the devil.

Another strange and frightening tale by Nikolai Gogol with roots in Ukrainian lore. When a poor peasant falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy farmer, a dark power interferes, promising him the fulfillment of his wishes but neglecting to mention the terrible price.

Why would flesh-eating monsters leave a body untouched? The answer lies at Storm Lake, and it might cost Protector Rachel Needham her life... Twelve years ago thirteen-year-old Rachel Needham lost her mother to the claws and fangs of the grendels, Storm Lake’s monsters. Now, Rachel leads teams of protectors into the forests to eradicate the scourge that has spread around the world. Then an old friend, now a reporter, comes to her with a request: help him uncover the creatures’ origins. Rachel agrees to take the mission and brings her team along. They enter the forests around Storm Lake,...

This lovely and nevertheless rather spooky tale by Nikolai Gogol is rooted in Ukrainian lore. It starts quite ordinary - a young man is in love with a beautiful young girl, but other people and unforeseen circumstances stand in the way of their happiness. Quite unexpectedly, our young hero receives an offer of help from a very unlikely source.

When Chloe turns the key to Small Angels, the church nestled at the edge of Mockbeggar Woods where she is to be married, she is braced for cobwebs and dust. What she doesn't expect are the villagers' concerned faces, her fiancé's remoteness or the nagging voice in her head that whispers to her of fears she didn't even know she had. Something in the woods is beginning to stir, to creep closer to the sleeping houses. Something that should have been banished long ago.

A true horror classic of Ukrainian literature, Nikolai Gogol's Terrible Revenge raises the notions of terror, betrayal, and revenge to an entirely new level.

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning publisher Crystal Lake Publishing comes the fiction series, Still Water Bay. In the first episode, “The Guild”, we meet Asadi and his pregnant wife, Taqiya, a couple who have just moved to the small Georgia town of Still Water, on the edge of Still Water Bay. Asadi has joined a group for those suffering from grief to discuss the violent nightmares associated with his past. What he doesn’t know is that Still Water Bay is a haven for monsters, and they’re about to make his worst nightmare come true.

From the attic of a dilapidated English country house, she sees them - Cara first: dark and beautiful, clinging to a marble fountain of Cupid, and Peter, an Apollo. It is 1969, and they are spending the summer in the rooms below hers while Frances writes a report on the follies in the garden for the absent American owner. But she is distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she discovers a peephole which gives her access to her neighbours' private lives.

A Mysterious Incident at the Mental Institution is a spooky, chilling tale from Nikolai Leskov based on a true incident.

Five friends. One vengeful plan. A carnival that knows their darkest secrets. When Lila Moran and her four friends crash on a lonely road, they are trapped in a nightmare where every ride is a test and every game holds deadly stakes. But this is no ordinary carnival—it’s a twisted venue where secrets must be confessed and lies are paid for in blood. A grinning Ringmaster whispers their darkest deeds out loud. Sweet-talking Miss Ruby runs a motel where no one sleeps peacefully. And a silent Strong Man makes sure there’s no escape. As her friends face deadly challenges one by one, Lila ...

Ghost hunters, an exorcism, and a ghostly grey tabby Mad River welcomes a pair of ghost hunters and their television show to town only for a murder to occur as the cameras were rolling. Now Shelby's ghost friends are being accused of the dirty deed and the good reverend is calling for an exorcism. Can Shelby find the killer before the pastor exorcises her spirit friends away from the only homes and town they've ever known? Find out in the Mad River Mystery Series.

Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky's beautifully written and powerful take on the age-old question: "What would happen if you received exactly what you wanted?"

NOT ANOTHER SICK DAY. Caitlyn thought it would be just another day at the office, until casual Friday turns into a quarantine that leaves her trapped in the office with her professional nemesis and two colleagues. Intense questioning from the health department turns up more questions than answers, and they are discouraged to speculate. With nothing to do but work, Caitlyn digs in her paperwork, and finds herself caught in the mystery of tangled paperwork that points to mishandling of funds and sneaky activity at their highest ranks. The suspense runs through the office as they dig up hints ...

When Sandra Meyer's violent ex-boyfriend returns to sleepy Edgarville, Illinois, she turns to the man who stood up to Nick Benedetto years ago. Sandra adores Garth, but she doesn't want any more ties to Edgarville. Now finished with a decade of dedicated service as her mother's caregiver, Sandra is planning her exit from this one-stoplight town. Garth is firmly rooted in Edgarville, with the family monument business and a trophy shop that will need a "mom" to his "pop". Garth has wanted Sandra ever since he slugged Nick more than 10 years ago.