Weird Fiction

Weird Tales magazine is known for launching a number of sub-genres of fiction—cosmic horror, swords & sorcery, dark fantasy, and others. It has also greatly added to existing genres like science fiction, horror, and—a personal favorite of editor Jonathan Maberry—weird mystery stories. Or, as they became known—occult detective tales.

Drugs. Delusions. Or the Biggest Mystery in Florida Since Will-o'-the-wisp? Meet Barry Babcock, your typical Florida Man—unemployed, self-medicated, and living in a swamp-side trailer with a laundry list of bad decisions behind him. But when a death-defying stunt lands him in a psychiatric facility, Barry’s got a hell of a story to tell. To the staff psychiatrist, it starts off as the usual Florida nonsense: drugs, booze, alligator dodging, and some questionable life choices. But then Barry takes a sharp left into the unexplainable—because according to him, the real reason he wound up...

A young boy with a special quarter makes life dangerous for a burned out mall security officer. A petty thief discovers there are worse things than old feuds. An abductee is put on trial for the ultimate crime of humanity. A loving wife has to make the choice between saving her soul and taking care of the monster she loves. Welcome to Urban Nightmares. In this slender tome you will find 4 stories of people pushed to the edge of human experience...and then beyond!

Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of the Cosmic Trilogy, considered to be C.S. Lewis' chief contribution to the science fiction genre.

Have you ever sensed an enigmatic presence lingering in the cosmos around you? A deadly force, held in check by either vigilant individuals or those fortunate souls who navigated the right path? Has your intuition ever stirred, hinting at something concealed beneath your bed or in the dim corners of your room? Does your small town or large city veil themselves in secrets, or do the stars above harbor a sinister malevolence, casting a looming threat upon our very existence? Dear readers, prepare to be immersed in an anthology that will transport you into the depths of every conceivable fear....

A student’s investigation into a secret cult leads to madness.

FOR REASONS UNKNOWN AND UNKNOWABLE Authorities are calling it the American Dyatlov Pass incident. Four campers on an overnight hike fail to return. Only three bodies are found. Authorities piece together what happened using the latest in cell phone video enhancement and GPS tracking technology, but disturbing questions remain. A literary take on the "found footage" horror film genre! LUNATICS AND MARTYRS A cynical photographer is hired for a photo shoot of a famous wealthy family on their remote island. He arrives with an open agenda and a hidden one. The ancient secrets he uncovers are far...

Whether you kill one man or a hundred, in the end, you only hang once... Deputy Marshal Porter Rockwell can't be harmed by a bullet or a blade but the prophecy about his invulnerability never mentioned a rope. Imprisoned for the supposed murder of a young girl, Porter might be on the verge of allowing the hangman his due. It falls to his friends Roxy and Quincy to make him understand the burden of a lawman, even one as infamous as himself. But dark forces lie in wait to try and end the career and life of this most amazing gunslinger. Bullet and blade might not be what finally take Rockwell ...

The Hollow Feast: An Anthology of Cosmic Transformation Three interconnected tales of consciousness, decay, and the terrible beauty of becoming. In a universe where time itself can be wounded, where libraries exist at the edge of dreams, and where decay is both curse and sacrament, three stories explore what it means to transform - and what transformation costs. “Clockwork Covenant” - When the Great Clock fractures and time begins to unravel, a disgraced horologist and a prophetic princess must descend into the mechanical heart of their city to prevent reality itself from coming undone....

From cult author Ken Shakin, a collection of perverse fiction about love and hate between all species of animal. These are bedtime stories for the grownup beast, full of beings from another world, our own, one where the creatures talk and the civilized devour their neighbors. Four shorts, and a novella that explores misanthropy and misogyny in the same breath: How To Tame A Wild Animal, a murder mystery about wine, women, and castration.

A young woman seeking arcane knowledge. A saint of killers riding shotgun. And an immortal who wants to die… all aboard a runaway train.… Elizabeth Dee never expected a knock at the door would have her taking sides in a power struggle between two feuding wizards, but she discovers that she is the magical key to a cursed mystery centuries old. As she evades the murderous knights and demonic minions of the sinister Count of St. Germain, she learns more of her own true power and legacy…Her father never prepared her for anything like this… But it’s dangerous to go it alone and she is ...

A gripping collection of weird and fantastical stories of supernatural and unbelievable happenings. "Pomegranate Seed" by Edith Wharton; "The Tiger" by Hugh Walpole; "When I Was Dead" by Vincent O'Sullivan; "The Fire" by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne; "Satan's Circus" by Eleanor Smith; "The Coffin Merchant" by Richard Middleton; and more tall stories....

The Atchafalaya Basin is a home to giants. Alligators, boars and other strange things that an unwary traveler may fall prey to when traversing the swamp alone. Such foul creatures stalk the waterways and pockets of dry land, shrouded by ancient trees that survive amongst the muck, that only a fool would travel through such a place on foot. Let alone late at night. The sucking sound of mud on boots added to the deluge of noises in the twilight of the swamp. A narrow path made its way through the swamp, but the man from Salem, Massachusetts, was unbothered by the noises or the fading light of...

In a desolate world where dirigibles rule the skies and blood soaks the dry earth, a young man joins the fight against a tyrant who has problems of his own. Andrew Sutter returns home from hunting to find drought-wracked Carroll Town under the thumb of a tax collector from the cannibalistic Flesh-Eating Legion. A riot becomes a battle, leaving Carroll Town in ruins and Andrew alone in the merciless Iron Desert. Saved from certain death by the riders of rebel chieftain Alonzo Merrill, Andrew finds himself fighting for their doomed cause. Meanwhile, Grendel, first lord of the Northlands and ...

VISIT THE AWESOME TEMPLE OF TOBRIOSUS SOLVE THE GREAT MYSTERY OF THE VANISHED TOBRII RACE For sleuth Barclay Heath, it was a mystery too great to resist. But as night falls on the deserted alien world, his fellow passengers begin to vanish one by one . . . Heath must unravel an age-old mystery before time runs out, before he, too, suffers the same fate as the Tobrii . . . The Barclay Heath Mysteries are set in a whimsical alternate-1920s, where humanity has ventured out into the stars but Twenties values and attitudes prevail. Barclay Heath is a gentleman detective enjoying semi-retirement ...

The song of the wild west, is played with hot lead notes and some folks gotta learn the hard way.Schoolteacher Amasa Davison, is invited to join a prospecting outfit and assay gold for them. Turns out it's really a bunch of desperadoes led by a conniving spiritualist who follows the whims of a ghostly Indian princess (so he says) but when the rest of the bandit's start to turn on each other deep in hostile Ute territory, who can a harmless schoolteacher trust? The greenhorn cook, the untested youthful quick draw or the quiet long-haired gunslinger with a killer's cold eyes?Live the ...

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent of the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there were a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last?

Sky Simmons is 11 years old, mildly allergic to boring things, and absolutely incapable of leaving any mystery alone. Especially when a door shows up in her basement that wasn’t there yesterday. What begins as a weird creak and a whisper soon explodes into an unforgettable journey filled with living hallways, forgotten memories, and a janitor with a mop and a vendetta. In this thrilling and funny middle-grade tale, Sky faces her fears—and the fears of others—as she tries to save her brother, a lost friend, and maybe the entire world from becoming part of the hallway that never forgets.

At World’s Edge: Seven Liminal Stories from the Edge of Reality Beyond the borders of maps and memory lie worlds that obey no known rules. In this haunting anthology of speculative fiction and dark fantasy, seven stories explore what happens when reality thins—where time unravels, identity dissolves, and the familiar becomes unrecognizable. From a girl who returns from a doorless frame altered by the realm she crossed, to a lighthouse powered by memory guarding against something older than night, these tales are eerie, poetic, and charged with slow-blooming dread. Each story is a ...

Ever wonder what else is out there? So does twelve-year-old Drew Shipley, a daydreamer whose only fear is growing up. To escape his present and avoid his future, Drew and his friends roam their small town playing night tag, fantasizing about aliens and spaceships, and exploring the haunted Gladhill barn. But Drew’s fantasies become reality when a starfighter from another dimension crashes in the cornfield behind his house: Sheela Vestril, commander of the Dimension Warriors and last hope in a galactic war to save their world from the vile Lord Malgore.