Eighteen suspenseful short stories with a twist for lovers of Twilight Zone and Black Mirror. Journey into strange worlds and meet their unusual and sometimes terrifying residents in these stories spanning suspense, horror, paranormal, science fiction, and supernatural from the dark mind of short story award-winning author Susan May.

This was not the first-time that rookie cop Michael Chambers had found himself stuck in this broken-down police vehicle while the rain bucketed down outside. In fact, this kind of "bad luck" had happened almost every time he’d been assigned car 291. Usually, he’d get a flat, or the locks would jam, or the damned on-board computer would freeze. 291, though, had a bloody and tragic history, which might explain why this piece of metallic crap seemed so intent on driving him crazy - excuse the pun.

What if all that stood between us and hell was a match? An ordinary couple stand accused of a heinous crime. They're the last people you'd expect to save the world. Are they criminals, heroes, or completely insane? Or maybe all three? Inspired by true-life headlines, revealed in Susan May's fascinating postscript From the Imagination Vault, Behind the Fire is an engrossing novelette of the random appearances of frightening black things, and one couple's battle to protect their town from these dangerous and hellish creatures.

Bus driver Rory Fine has a gift. With selfless thought, he uses his unique power to relieve others troubles with a mere touch. This brings him great joy, until one rain-swept night when he offers to lift every passenger’s spirits. He asks them to play a game by tapping his palm when they disembark and leave their worries behind with him. Someone aboard, though, hides a deadly and dangerous secret, and this kind act will drag Rory into a perilous battle with a powerful, evil entity.

A chilling anthology in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and listeners. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

The terror begins in a suburban café with seven people brutally murdered by an axe-wielding maniac. The killer is left dead at the scene and that should have been the end of a rare tragedy. But within days, in the very same city, more mass killings occur. Ten eldercare facility residents die in an arson-lit blaze. Then a mother attending a family gathering embarks on a terrifying gun rampage. All the killers are now dead, leaving behind unanswerable questions.

A terrifying, thrilling collection of must-listen horror stories chock-full of nightmarish supernatural beings and the murderously disturbed that are sure to keep you up all night long.

A small-town carpenter exterminates a nest of ravenous insects, only to find them building a new home deep within his flesh. A brilliant doctor’s medication unleashes supernatural vengeance upon a pair of remorseless killers. And a peaceful camping trip becomes a blood-soaked nightmare, when a local legend is unleashed….

No one could understand why Colin and Roy were best friends. Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was fascinated by Roy - and Roy was fascinated by death. Then one day, Roy asked his timid friend: “You ever killed anything?” From that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine - and too irresistible to stop.

We’re all afraid of things that go bump in the night. Shadows in the graveyard, wind moaning through the trees, a creaking door in a sinister old house. There are things hiding in the darkness. And sometimes, what you can’t see can definitely hurt you.... Scare Street is proud to present Night Terrors: Volumes one to three in a single collection. A menagerie of macabre nightmares, featuring 39 tales of supernatural horror for your listening pleasure.

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a horrific accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from that shed.

For three days battle has raged in the snow around the great city of Tar Valon. In the city, a foretelling of the future is uttered. On the slopes of Dragonmount, the immense mountain that looms over the city, a child is born, an infant prophesied to change the world. That child must be found before he can be killed by the forces of the Shadow.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

Jo Carter never thought she'd return to Clear Springs, Minnesota. But when the former journalist receives a cryptic note about the disappearance of her friend Sam twenty years before, she's compelled to find out what really happened. During her investigation, she learns another high school friend has died in a mysterious accident. Nothing is as it seems, and Jo must probe Clear Springs' darkest corners and her own painful and unreliable memories to discover the truth - and save herself from the killer who could still be on the hunt.

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.

Maximilian Oceanus arrives in Spellbound Falls just in time to save Olivia Baldwin from an overly aggressive suitor, only to find himself attracted to the beautiful, if rather aloof, widow. And although Mac has come to Inglenook to get a handle on fatherhood, his newly discovered six-year-old son has set his sights on finding his father a wife. Olivia, however, is busy getting Inglenook ready for its new season, so she doesn't have time to deal with her growing attraction to the dangerously seductive Mac.

The house on Old Mill Road has stood in an open field for longer than Jesse Wells has been alive, its crooked windows and jutting turret tormenting the kids of Warsaw, Michigan the way only a haunted house knows how. Everyone imagines that something terrible lurks within the house’s abandoned rooms - especially Jesse and his two closest friends, Casey and Reed. But when Reed chooses the house as a backdrop for his own suicide, childhood ghost stories are transformed into a nightmare that sends Jesse into a downward spiral of grief.

Living and slaving in Fill City One, you get used to the smell. We call it the Everpresent Stink. But every once in a while, on a spring day with a breeze, it clears away enough to remind us that there is something more out there. Most Fillers' wildest dreams would be just to get past the walls and live in the mainland. But my dream? It’s a little bigger. I’m going to Mars.

After America’s Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement. According to their Bill of Life, human life may not be terminated from the moment of conception until the age of thirteen. But between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, the child may be gotten rid of by their parent through a process called “unwinding.”

What’s happening in Acker’s Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker’s Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?

Media consultant Veronica St. John has been hired to teach a rugged Navy SEAL to impersonate a European prince who's been targeted by terrorists. But one conversation and Veronica knows there's no way she can turn streetwise New Yorker Joe Catalanotto into nobility. Joe, on the other hand, is confident he's got what it takes. Two days isn't a lot of time to get the job done...but it's enough time to fall in love.

John Docherty’s mother has just been taken into a nursing home following a massive stroke and she’s unlikely to be able to live independently again. With no other option than to sell the family home, John sets about packing up everything in the house. In sifting through the detritus of his family’s past he’s forced to revisit, and revise his childhood. For in a box, in the attic, he finds undeniable truth that he had a brother who disappeared when he himself was only a toddler.

"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.