Showing results by author "Kevin Candela" in All Categories

Cleaning up is dirty business. Especially when you're Argiss Valance, a ruthless corporate magnate, and you want the world to see you as its ultimate philanthropist...even as you secretly plumb the ocean's depths for the key to immortality. Enter Koalatron, towering garbage-munching mechanical marvel, brainchild of Valance's brilliant wife Deanna, and cutting edge genius, Dr. Max Shepperton. When Shepperton goes missing and a growing sea-horror rises, Deanna, her journalist half-sister Key Sharlayne and renegade eco-vigilante Jeremiah Savage find themselves in a terrifying showdown.

The ghosts were there the day it opened for business. The Leeward Hotel is a mirror. From the moment its first stone was laid, it has reflected the mysteries of the restless and the restless Atlantic Ocean over which it looms atop a stark cliff in Cornwall, with guests frequently seeing the highly eccentric owners walking around the halls while they were supposedly locked in their private haven upstairs.

The saga of Krakenstein concludes in cataclysmic, mind-blowing action in the Next Regeneration trilogy. The former Dr. Max Shepperton, who long ago became a superhero daikaiju by default when he merged with an ancient marine creature and the mutated result grew to immense size, is still at it 20 years after the original trilogy. This time around, he takes on a shape-shifting titan made of nanobots and controlled by his vengeful brother, and battles a life-draining giant horror from the depths of outer space.

Working on the High-Altitude Atmospheric and Light Observatory research platform 16 miles above Earth's surface , Crystal Calhoun is used to an alien form of existence. But when she dreams through the waking eyes of a shipboard peer, the game changes, and when she learns that the same thing is happening to others, her paranoia kicks in and she seeks to understand what's happening. The problem is that even the people running the entire operation don't have a clue, and what's worse is that they're more confused and worried than she is. Crystal becomes determined to get to the truth.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

Aurora Hayes is probably the most agreeable and least judgmental of the Roads Unlimited driving team, but even she has her limits. When something that sure looks like the scary bipedal "myth" called the chupacabra races in out of the darkness in North Texas and jumps aboard her rig, Aurora finds herself stuck with the edgy, bug-eyed little monster on a long haul across the South to Florida. But dealing with the freakish creature, which appears to have no language and seems determined to stay with the truck, is just the warm-up: The thing's master arrives.

It’s that time of year again. In the shadows, otherworldly creatures lurk, under the gravestones, the dead begin to rise, and in that old house down the lane, ghosts rattle their chains. For once more, Trick or Treat Thrillers brings you our pick of the best Indie-paranormal short stories for 2020! Before you begin listening to our selection of 13 stories, however, we recommend you first check under your bed, in your closet, and outside of your window. You never know what may be coming your way.

Stepping up the horror considerably from previous installments in the Krakenstein saga, this fifth tale, and the second in the The Next Regeneration trilogy, sees the return of first trilogy heroes Jeremiah Savage, Key Sharlayne, and even Key's brilliant scientist half-sister, Dr. Deanna Sharlayne, who have just been evicted from the ancient facility that is Emerald Island by its hardly cordial creators.

On far distant Gavelin, Leks and Quinara - scrappy human survivors of a demonic plague that has all but wiped out their civilization - race against time in a perilous journey to the perceived safety of the cradle of their society: the great coastal city of Amaline on the Sandarine Sea. Along the way, they meet horrifying carnivorous mud monsters, sentient human-hunting thunderstorms and an outcast bio-alchemist with a warped sense of humor whose bizarre menagerie features a panther-like beast made of living metal.

The big squidheaded guy who's not Cthulhu is back - and this time, it's really, really personal, because the monster who's out to destroy him is his own brother! Twenty years after Krakenstein and Magenti saved humanity from itself, the giant monster battles are still going on. Towering "bug lady" Magenti may have disappeared of late, but Krakey is still patrolling the world. Tailed by the Moray 2 stealth sub, which is captained by none other than longtime Krakenstein "human friend" Shea Sanders, the titan isn't able to stop the latest problem by himself.

With great power comes great responsibility. And on modern day Earth, if great power doesn’t play nice with greater powers it gets something else too: Deadly persecution. After all, the stakes are no less than absolute control of every living being on the planet. Roman Novato and Chalice Rayne can communicate telepathically, sense imminent danger, and more now, but when those accidentally inherited talents are set against shape-shifting alien assassins, invisible drones, devastating particle beam satellites, and the world’s hidden ruling elite the game isn’t exactly fair.

Here collected for the first time are the thrilling and hopefully hilarious tales of the world's most embarrassed superhero. "Everyman" Race Harleson just wanted to do his guard shift and pick up his check - so the cosmos decided he'd get to be special, giving him Superman-like powers including strength, flight, and virtual invulnerability...so long as he's completely naked while he fights crime and saves the world.

Just two utterly bizarre days ago, Hylas Bond wouldn't have believed the famous-infamous "Men in Black" even existed. Yet there he is, dodging killer drones on a ridiculously long shot cross-country scramble with a quite possibly crazed girl who's got two dead ones in the trunk of her car. Coby Forge is on a mission, not that she knows where she's going, and once Hylas rear-ends her car and pops that lid open in the middle of a slushy highway with morning traffic zipping past - well, she's got no choice, does she?

One thing a sneak thief needs is ambition, and Sal and Gazel certainly don't come up short there. Sure, they're mainly just ripping off low profile places like out of the way frontier museums...but they have big plans.

In the year 1284, the legendary Pied Piper punished the villagers of Hamelin, Germany, by leading their children off into a hole that opened in a mountainside. The parents never saw their offspring again. This much is common knowledge thanks to the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which came to be in the year 1482.

Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein. You've lived with the stories your whole life. You've read the tales. You've watched the films. But what if the stories were different? What if the things you read about these monsters were warped and twisted? Here lie stories you may not have heard. Stories both weird and shocking. Bizarre and grotesque. Alternate versions of your favorite classic monsters you've never read and never will again. Featuring 13 stories by Jonathan Moon, The Sisters of Slaughter, Tom Lucas and more!

Unityfest is more than just a huge pop event organized by superdivas Tarina, B-Word, and Kalli, globally renowned as the Sirens, for the chart-topping trio are in reality sorcerers many centuries old and the event is a ruse designed to drain the very life from their millions of adoring fans, thus making the three veritable gods on Earth.

Just like their new home of Sunder Creek, set in the shadow of Blood Ridge, young Ronnie Carpenter and her shy ward Essa Hale harbor strange secrets. In fact, their arrival seems to bring the town’s dark and unspoken terror to light, as it affects Essa in mysterious ways. Soon, inexplicable events all point to an ancient legend being all too real. What does the dreaded ilé nagí, the fiery spirit of the woods, want with the girl? Ronnie must find out before it’s too late.

Race Harleson is up against it big time: The world is stripping naked, and it seems to be some form of viral madness. He ends up shot into space with a couple of sharp veteran astronauts...and a new sidekick, Dark Matter. Physics super-prodigy Crayten "Cray-Cray" Hobbs has juiced himself up so much that he can alter the essence of matter to his rather freewheeling will, so Race is understandably both awed and annoyed by the hyper young man, and he's stuck keeping his fingers crossed that the people who sent them up there knew what they're doing.

In the thrilling conclusion of the Krakenstein Trilogy, it’s all-out giant monster mayhem featuring a total of no less than 10 - count ’em, 10 - titanic terrors. Merged with the mysterious subterranean facility whose origins predate even the dinosaurs, Dr. Deanna Sharlayne is determined to help her...well, he used to be a man, anyway...take on the fury of our world itself.