Weird Fiction

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?

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 ...

When nature gets up close and personal, it isn’t always pretty. A fallen tree sparks a poisonous feud between neighbors. A child searches the darkness for the gleam of a tiger’s teeth. A woman holds off a colony of oddly relentless prairie dogs. In unsettling stories that range from horror to magical realism, award-winning authors lay bare the secrets hidden in the land.

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....

Every day is an adventure for A. J. and the gang. Now your favorite holiday hijinks are available in a single audio collection! Summer is almost over, and you know what that means - time to head back to school! But when a tropical storm ends A.J.'s vacation earlier than expected, he and his family have to stay at Andrea's house. Ugh, disgusting! Soon after, everyone in the house starts getting cabin fever, and even back-to-school shopping won't calm the kids down. So, Andrea and A.J. are sent to Camp Ockatollyquay. The catch? It's a camp to get kids ready for school!

After a soul-crushing Tinder date, a woman returns to her apartment to cook some squid and seethe. Her eye starts to itch; her memory starts to skip, and she starts to spiral. Offense is an auditory explosion and an exploration of the rash of loneliness...and what happens when the voices inside our heads start to warp.

Seven tales. One unraveling world. This is horror for those who’ve looked too long into reflective glass, who’ve heard their name whispered from empty rooms, who’ve sensed something watching from the cracks in routine. In this anthology of cosmic and post-Lovecraftian horror, everyday settings become the staging ground for reality’s slow undoing. Roadside diners, coworking spaces, nursery monitors, and forgotten hospital wings—all bend under the weight of something unknowable, ancient, and still evolving.Inside, you’ll find: “Late Night at The Mother’s Way Diner” – A ...

You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of Obvious Child. But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility.

Have you ever thought or felt that there was something beyond what we can see? If so, take up these four tales and see for yourself. These stories will bring you entertainment, or even perhaps inspire you to reach out . . . to the other side. 1) The Very Cold Corner 2) The Mirror and Mrs. Crandall 3) The Dream-Escape 4) Spot # 57

In Ghostwalkers, a gun-for-hire, literally haunted by his bloody past, comes to the struggling town of Paradise Falls, where he becomes embroiled in a deadly conflict between the besieged community and a diabolically brilliant alchemist who is building terrible new weapons of mass destruction...and an army of the living dead!

A collection of stories: The Possessed Printer Blues: A woman buys a printer at a yard sale. The Long Day Sun: A photography student helps out a friend. Savory Taro Pudding: A short nightmare based on true events. Billionaire Babies: It turns out you can't trust billionaires. Bath Salts Vampire: Teen girls with low self-esteem + a drug dealer who thinks he's an ancient vampire. What could go wrong?

Barbara Lee Handbook (pronounced “Hanbok”), whom fans will know as Barbie Moran, the ‘80s bombshell and star of the cult sci-fi film Weird Menace, sits down with Director Toner Low to discuss the making of the classic film - set on a distant planet, featuring mutant attackers, cyber ladies of the 34th century, and no shortage of warring spaceships - for the Blu-ray edition, in this absurdly funny and poignant meditation on art, legacy, and our ambivalence about the life choices that define us.

Grimeswood, Alabama. After midnight as a heavy fog rolls in... When one of the town's finest residents, a sleepy sheriff's deputy, pulls over a mysterious car on a dark stretch of backwoods highway, he comes face to face with a deathly enchanting vampire of the night, the Empress of the Rose. But upon inspection of the vehicle and its strange driver, Oli Reeves just won’t hear what the lady has to say, nor does he heed the cryptic advice of the letters she uses as identification. A supernatural tale of the occult with creeping thorns based on the knowledge and imagery of the Tarot.

The Meowy Republic stands proud in its traditions and its military might. Unlike the savages to the west and the barbarous centaurs to the east, every meowy has a say in how they are governed. But who shall lead them? Meowllary Clawton? The liberal lion who strives to help the less fortunate? Or Meowgaret Scratcher. A staunch conservative who yearns to expand the nation’s borders for the sake of security. The Republic needs wise leadership in troubling times. How should it deal with the pair of giant fairy-like creatures who look like hairless apes? These humans, as they call themselves, ...

Families that kill together, stay together. The Lawman and his weary companions have survived the Rites and are headed west for Victory Island. Not far behind, Lothair Eichberg has sworn to take revenge for the murders of his own kind. Along the way they encounter another infamous figure from the past recently revived and intent on taking over the world. The frozen dead are still rising, starving for human flesh. Ancient family ties will bring them all together again for one final, bloody reunion.

A trio of outlaws are released from an orbiting prison and sent back to their home planet. The catch? Find the president's missing son, and you’ll be pardoned by the Federation. Welcome to the desert planet of Lazarus, the hottest place in the universe inhabited by humans. It’s not only the heat that will kill you. Lazarus is also home to a spectrum of deadly creatures who have clawed out a living in the harsh desert, and they don’t take kindly to visitors. Not to mention the gangs of vicious bandits roving the land in search of anyone to kill and steal from. As descendants of tough ...

This is a very unusual book, wherein the majority of the story is contents of an ancient diary found by two friends on a fishing holiday while on the grounds of an old dilapidated house. The moldy manuscript has inscribed tales of strange things seen and heard. There are horrible creatures and huge monsters described as though they were old gods of mythology.

- A henpecked husband makes a stand against his surly wife.- Is a mysterious stain on the ceiling of a prison cell a product of the inmate's imagination or something more sinister?- A woman trapped in a loveless marriage finds magic in a gift from a friend.- Something is alive in the outhouse…- A young boy longs to venture beyond the walls of his post-apocalyptic city, until he learns the terrifying truth about what’s out there.- A terminally ill teen’s forbidden love affair turns tragic.- A young witch and her talking dog are tasked with ridding their home of unwanted guests. Magic ...

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

A pirate lost to time. A siren bound in chains. And a love that should have drowned—yet refuses to die. Two hundred years ago, Jack Kelly should have died at sea. Instead, a siren dragged him into the stars, remaking him into a monster. Now, cursed to wander the galaxy as a cyborg, Jack hunts for the past that was stolen from him. And then he finds her. Alien kraken princess Nerissa knew better than to save a human, but she couldn’t let Jack die. Not when she’d spent so many nights watching him from beneath the waves. Not when she knew he was meant to be hers. But love has a price, ...