In this tale, you will meet Mr. Caleb Cantrill, a gentleman who has found something very interesting in the ground, and though he doesn't know it yet, he is about to have a very, very bad day. Set in the wilds of the Cascade mountains of Western Canada in 1895, this introductory tale from Claw: Emergence is the first in a series which will form a rich tapestry of discovery, betrayal, and insatiable hunger, all delivered with small-town Canadian flair.

Hunter can track anything, anywhere, anytime. But he is both horrified and shocked as he begins to follow the creature’s bloody path leading directly toward a city. For the beast is both more powerful and more merciless than any animal Hunter has tracked before. In fact, it seems to embody the most ancient and darkest heart of man – a power that mankind has always feared as the greatest beast of prey.

The world’s food supply grows aggressively, occupying every inch of earth, no matter how inhospitable. World hunger is averted. Humanity flourishes. RC-714 is digested, absorbed…and passed on. The Change affects small fast-breeding mammals first. They multiply with the same aggressive speed as the ExoGen plants, but an insatiable hunger drives them to violence. A war between species breaks out. When RC-714 reaches humanity, along with every other large creature on the planet, civilization implodes.

On December 31, 1981, high atop a snowy mountain peak in the rugged interior of British Columbia, Canada, 98 beautiful people eat, drink, laugh, and dance inside the opulent grand ballroom of the Sinclair Resort Hotel. The clock strikes 12, a cheer goes up, and the music swells; balloons drop and streamers swirl. Then blackness. Fifteen seconds later, the power returns and every living soul inside the ballroom has vanished. Forty years later, preternatural investigator Lively Deadmarsh and his psychic twin sister have been brought in to solve this decades-old mystery once and for all.

A bizarre series of incidents take place on a usually tranquil lake. Boats are found ravaged, a body torn in two, other people are missing and an injured victim cries of a monster. Chief of Police Morgan Sydney must face the reality that a huge monster is lurking in the lake. With bulletproof scales, territorial aggression, and an insatiable appetite, the beast causes mayhem in the peaceful town.

A series of violent shark attacks off the shores of northern California draw the attention of pessimistic Detective Luke Jansen. Despite reports of shark sightings, the injuries are more reminiscent of a chainsaw-wielding maniac. Things get stranger when marine biologist Elise Sheldon encounters the creature. Exhausted and traumatized, her claims that the beast is a Helicoprion are dismissed. With little help from the police department, Luke and Elise form an unlikely alliance that puts them face-to-face with a violent man-eating shark, and its terrifying reason for existing.

Dr. Hugh Meyer believed he had created the ultimate miracle. Using the DNA of ancient creatures preserved in the Arctic, he had genetically engineered one of the most remarkable species of sea creature to ever exist: the Serpent Eel. Believed to possess the cure for countless diseases, the creature holds great promise for the medical community. All goes awry when the beast escapes containment. With a rapid growth rate and remarkable physical evolution, the beast travels to the coastal town of Spiral Bay. There, the creature designed to save human life instead starts taking it.

Mankind is no longer the dominant species. When Harrison Kent suggests an outing to a remote campsite in Colorado, his friends are all eager for a few days of fun and adventure. What awaits them, though, is far more than they ever bargained for. They learn that Sasquatch is real, but these are not the shy creatures of legend. A madness has claimed them, erasing their once peaceful nature and leaving in its wake a rampaging horde of monsters that's about to descend upon the unsuspecting residents of a remote town.

100,000 years ago the object hit the lake at the deepest point, quickly sinking into its mile-deep Stygian darkness. The sheets of ice closed, time moved on and the land forgot. But over the centuries, legends grew of people vanishing, of strange, deformed animals and of an unexplained luminescence down in the lake depths. When Marcus Stenson won the lucrative contract to create a sturgeon fish farm on the site of disused paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal, he thought he had won the lottery and refused to listen to the chilling folktales....

When the Air National Guard receives an emergency call for help from a remote Arctic research station in Greenland, Senior Master Sergeant Dan Cameron is chosen to lead the rescue mission. In an attempt to combat climate change, the scientists have genetically engineered an aquatic biofilm capable of generating oxygen and lowering the temperature of the underlying seawater, producing environmental conditions that awaken an organism that has lain dormant beneath the ocean floor for millions of years.

After years of self-imposed exile, Christy McCauley returns to West Virginia, only to discover that it has become the hunting grounds for a savage beast stalking the hollows of rural Augusta County beneath the light of the full moon. Authorities are baffled as the unknown creature grows ever bolder and the slaughter, more horrific. When Christy finds herself caught in the path of the beast’s rampage, she must decide: flee her home to save her own life, or stand her ground and with the help of her friends, hunt down the predator, and destroy it before it kills again.

A series of bizarre occurrences suddenly plague the island of Cielo Nublado. A dead whale washes ashore riddled with enormous bite marks. A fishing charter is reported missing, jet skiers vanish, and a yacht is found mysteriously ravaged after some kind of enormous impact. Chief of Police Nico Medrano tries to investigate the matter. His search for answers puts him on a collision course with an 80-foot predator, long thought extinct. Violent and merciless, it has risen to the surface, and seeks to wreak havoc on the small island community.

A missing child draws Deputy Daniel Clark into a bizarre investigation that leaves him questioning what he just witnessed. Trained to trust his instincts and to pay close attention to detail, his rational brain is at war with what he has seen. Something very strange is happening in rural Sloan County, Missouri. Nothing in his experience has prepared him for anything like this. More disappearances only make the mystery deepen as the Sheriff tries to cover up what’s really going on. Clark enlists the aid of other deputies who, like himself, have seen things that don’t make sense.

On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the centre of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors. Thawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years.

Recon Marine Conor McCall didn’t expect action during his training op in the icy waters off Norway. But when a bizarre summer fog engulfs his boat, he and his team find themselves in a fight against strange, cruel monsters from the depths of the North Sea. When even their allies are enemies, the Recon Marines must do what they have always done: adapt or die. But with a world of ice and monsters seeking to destroy them, every second is mission-critical.

Ben McKelvie believes he's moving up in the world when he and his fiancée buy a house in the cushy Washington, DC, suburb of Barcroft. Instead he's moving down - way down - thanks to Madeleine Roux, the crazy neighbor whose vermin-infested property is a permanent eyesore and looming hazard to public health. First Ben's fiancée leaves him; then his dog dies, apparently killed by a predator drawn into Barcroft by Madeleine's noxious menagerie. But the worst is yet to come for Ben.

Moving from Boston to remote Bearkill, Maine, isn't homicide cop Lizzie Snow's idea of a step up. But breaking away from tragedy and personal betrayal is at least a step in the right direction. Her dead sister's fate still torments her, as does her long-missing niece's disappearance. The town is full of people who see everything, say little, and know more than they'll share with an outsider.

As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut - a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg's Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard - a business district operated by the Others. Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job.

Twenty years ago, a fire ravaged the Dillinger family's old homestead, killing Judd Dillinger and crippling his girlfriend. Most people blamed a serial arsonist who'd been seen around town. But strange things are happening in Prairie Creek, Wyoming, again. Ira Dillinger, the family's wealthy patriarch, has summoned his children home for his upcoming wedding. Eldest son, Colton, and his siblings don't approve of their father's gold-digging bride-to-be. But someone is making his displeasure felt in terrifying ways, setting fires just like in the past. Only this time, there will be no survivors.

Eight years ago, in Sun Valley - snowcapped playground for the wealthy and ambitious - all that stood between New York State attorney general Elizabeth Shaler and a knife-wielding killer was local patrolman Walt Fleming. Now, Liz Shaler returns to Sun Valley as the crown jewel and keynote speaker for billionaire Patrick Cutter's world-famous C3, a media and communications conference where the richest, most powerful business tycoons converge.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine.

Melanie McLaughlin desperately wants to adopt two orphaned siblings and give them a real home for Christmas. A just-for-the-holiday marriage to Bryce Landry fits her plan perfectly...until unexpected sparks have Melanie dreaming of forever by his side....

Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in.

The Facility is a research centre that specialises in cryptozoology, the search for legendary creatures. Once these ‘cryptids’ are found, they are caged, abused and experimented on to graft their physical prowess onto ordinary soldiers. Even as the Facility’s troops hunt down Shaw, and the cunning Cryptid Nine plans her escape, something far more horrifying is emerging from hibernation to feed. And both human and cryptid will discover that nothing can stop the Wendigo....

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

The town of Lake Woebegotton, MN is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives. Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living! Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets in order to survive an onslaught of the dead.

Curiosity just might be the death of Mrs. Murphy - and her human companion, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen. Small towns are like families: Everyone lives very close together. . .and everyone keeps secrets. Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town - until its secrets explode into murder. Crozet's thirty-something post-mistress, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh Corgi (Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her.

Clare Fergusson, St. Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Miller's Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady"; she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot, and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown.

Modern day wizard Felix Slade knows better than to meddle in the lives of witches. But when a chance encounter with a beautiful witch, Gabriella, sparks a vision of her demise at the hand of a werewolf, he knows he must act. To make matters worse, his vision reveals feelings he has for this woman he's only seen from afar, and in that moment his life is changed forever. Trouble has been brewing in sleepy Leotown, but explodes when Felix witnesses the gruesome murder of Gabriella's coven leader and ends up number one on a short list of suspects.

Lawless, British Columbia is on edge after a powerful earthquake jolts the region, quickly followed by a string of savage animal attacks. Newly stationed to the area after her predecessor mysteriously disappears, Conservation Officer Christine Moon needs to calm the jangled nerves of the small mountain town. Awakened from ancient slumber, something stalks the swirling, grey mists that surround Lawless. A beast with a gnawing hunger that grows stronger by the minute - its only thought, to satisfy its ravenous appetite.

In this tale, you will meet Mr. Caleb Cantrill, a gentleman who has found something very interesting in the ground, and though he doesn't know it yet, he is about to have a very, very bad day. Set in the wilds of the Cascade mountains of Western Canada in 1895, this introductory tale from Claw: Emergence is the first in a series which will form a rich tapestry of discovery, betrayal, and insatiable hunger, all delivered with small-town Canadian flair.

On December 31, 1981, high atop a snowy mountain peak in the rugged interior of British Columbia, Canada, 98 beautiful people eat, drink, laugh, and dance inside the opulent grand ballroom of the Sinclair Resort Hotel. The clock strikes 12, a cheer goes up, and the music swells; balloons drop and streamers swirl. Then blackness. Fifteen seconds later, the power returns and every living soul inside the ballroom has vanished. Forty years later, preternatural investigator Lively Deadmarsh and his psychic twin sister have been brought in to solve this decades-old mystery once and for all.

Lorenzo was a quiet Michigan town, known for its beautiful lake and resorts. Summer has arrived and water activities are abundant. It was one of the reasons Officer Royce Dashnaw took the job in the small town. Being a single dad, he wanted to live a quiet life where his daughter could enjoy the beauty of nature. Unfortunately, nature also has a dark side. The serenity of Lorenzo has been disrupted by a series of strange events. A woman flees from the water with strange bites on her legs; bodies are found in the shallows, stripped to the bone; and the local fish have disappeared.

Mankind is no longer the dominant species. When Harrison Kent suggests an outing to a remote campsite in Colorado, his friends are all eager for a few days of fun and adventure. What awaits them, though, is far more than they ever bargained for. They learn that Sasquatch is real, but these are not the shy creatures of legend. A madness has claimed them, erasing their once peaceful nature and leaving in its wake a rampaging horde of monsters that's about to descend upon the unsuspecting residents of a remote town.

Dr. Hugh Meyer believed he had created the ultimate miracle. Using the DNA of ancient creatures preserved in the Arctic, he had genetically engineered one of the most remarkable species of sea creature to ever exist: the Serpent Eel. Believed to possess the cure for countless diseases, the creature holds great promise for the medical community. All goes awry when the beast escapes containment. With a rapid growth rate and remarkable physical evolution, the beast travels to the coastal town of Spiral Bay. There, the creature designed to save human life instead starts taking it.

When a protective young man finds a vicious solution to his troubles, will he save his family or unleash a deadly nightmare? Brady Bennett can’t shake his guilt. Blaming himself for his dad’s fatal hunting accident seven years prior, the eighteen-year-old doesn’t trust his cruel stepdad and worries for his twin sister. But his suffering takes a strange twist after fleeing into the woods from a nasty school bully, only to see his attacker get ripped to pieces by a savage beast.

Crease is known in Weaver as ‘the bug guy’, the man who takes care of insects and other critters. But what emerges from the shadows of the town’s waste plant is beyond anything found in nature. Fist-sized cockroaches. Bird-sized wasps. Spiders, millipedes, ticks, all swollen to enormous bulk with vicious appetites to match. And other things, creatures that should never exist. Through the night, they come, slithering, buzzing, scuttling, crawling over skin, burrowing into flesh, making the town their nest.

THE DARKNESS IN THE PINES THE BEAST OF FALLOW PINES This short story takes place before THE BEAST OF FALLOW PINES and SOMETHING IN THE WOODS. After the tragic death of his wife, Howard Ward returned to Fallow Pines to live a life of quiet seclusion. When Howard comes across the mangled remains of a bear in the woods, he discovers that something he thought only existed in campfire legends is stalking the darkness of the pines. For fans of cryptids and monsters in the woods.

Under dirty black skies, the town of Dead Crow is deluged by days of rain, flooding the streets and cutting it off from the outside world. Chief Andy Curran already has his hands full, getting residents to safety and battling a greedy mayor. But now people are going missing in the endless rain. Curran soon discovers that there are things living in the overspilling river that threatens to drown Dead Crow. Their eerie clicking sounds drift across the frightened town as they emerge from its toxic waters.

It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives - an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie are looking forward to two days of boys, booze, and fun-filled luxury. But what starts out as fun turns twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine. And things only get worse from there. When a mysterious killer begins picking them off one by one, there's no escape. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on one another, can Meg find the killer before more people die?