A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all.

Somewhere just off the interstate, in the heart of the American Midwest, there's a quaint, quirky town where the stars in the sky circle a hypnotic void...where magnetic fields play havoc with time and perception...where metallic rain and plasma rivers and tentacles in the plumbing are simply part of the unsettling charm.

Those who would seek a new world order have unleashed the most devastating virus onto mankind, and even they do not know the secrets hidden in their weapon. Follow along as Harry, a CDC scientist, races to figure out what exactly the virus is and how to stop it. It will be up to him and a group of marines led by Major Sanders to stop the zombie fallout before it ravages an unsuspecting world.

It all starts with a single dead person coming back to life. Within three days, the undead have taken over most of town. Despite heroic efforts and swift initiatives from the government, disaster keeps spiraling. Soon, the infection reaches the nation's borders, threatening to become a worldwide pandemic.

In this classic trilogy, a mysterious disease strikes millions and drives them to attack, overpower, and infect. Others continue to mutate, becoming horrific monsters. In a dying America, survivors ranging from soldiers to scientists to average people struggle on the razor's edge of survival. Each must ultimately choose how far they’ll go to survive and what they’re willing to lose to save humanity. This is a brutal vision of the apocalypse like no other. Will humanity survive the end of days?

The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries 50 scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope. After 10 years in a failed cryogenic bed - body asleep, mind awake - William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.

Birdie Binkowitz is just a little bitter. As a young actress, she was the toast of Hollywood, definitely destined for greatness. Then the dragons had to rise up from their thousand-year slumber, take over Earth and ruin everything. Twenty years later, Birdie is living her worst life in her hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, working at her father's Seed and Feed (and Bagels). Then, a mysterious dragon appears in front of the store seeking her help. He’s got a bone to pick with his fellow dragons–and he wants to hit them where it hurts.

In I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and those unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Everyone else has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he stalks the sleeping undead, by night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

Humanity has been banished to a distant star. Left to fight over resources rationed to them by mysterious machine-overlords known as Wardens. Commander Rylan Holt labors against inter-colony arms trafficking when an informant gives him horrific news. The ruthless cartel boss, Lilith, has stockpiled outlawed weapons of mass destruction. Worse, she claims to have permission from the Wardens to unleash them upon the system.

Prepare to meet the wicked progeny of the master of modern horror. In Lovecraft's Monsters, H. P. Lovecraft's most famous creations--Cthulhu, Shoggoths, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Yog-Sothoth, and more--appear in all their terrifying glory. Each story is a gripping new take on a classic Lovecraftian creature. Contributors include such literary luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Karl Edward Wagner, Elizabeth Bear, and Nick Mamatas.

When he was 19, James Stark was considered to be one of the greatest natural magicians, a reputation that got him demon-snatched and sent downtown - to Hell - where he survived as a gladiator, a sideshow freak entertaining Satan's fallen angels. That was 11 years ago. Now, the hitman who goes only by Stark has escaped and is back in L.A. Armed with a fortune-telling coin, a black bone knife, and an infernal key, Stark is determined to destroy the magic circle.

A survivor of undead suburbia, mountain man Augustus “Gus” Berry is extremely careful when it comes to his actions and movements. He takes no chances and painstakingly weighs every decision—until he sets out for the hospital at the edge of town, hoping to discover a treasure trove of essential supplies. Soon, Gus will experience terror the likes of which he's never encountered before . . .

Contains volumes one and two of the Arisen: Raiders series: Two teams of pipe-hitting special-operations Marines left to die in the fall of North America. One nuclear supercarrier strike group; humanity's last best hope for survival. And seven billion ravening dead guys, rampaging across an overrun planet. For the JFK strike group and its MARSOC guardians, two years of the horrors and glories of Zulu Alpha on the high seas and the fallen world's ports and coasts. Now, their story will finally be told.

Edgar Award nominee Victor Gischler “specializes in morbid humor, dark sarcasm, and comic noir, complete with violence and mayhem” ( Library Journal). Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse picks up 10 years after the end of the world. Former insurance salesman Mortimer Tate leaves his secluded cabin and discovers a desolate landscape complete with cowboys, bandits, and cannibals, where the only traces of civilization are found at Joey Armageddon’s Sassy-a-Go-Go club.

Edgar Award nominee Victor Gischler “specializes in morbid humor, dark sarcasm, and comic noir, complete with violence and mayhem” ( Library Journal). Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse picks up 10 years after the end of the world. Former insurance salesman Mortimer Tate leaves his secluded cabin and discovers a desolate landscape complete with cowboys, bandits, and cannibals, where the only traces of civilization are found at Joey Armageddon’s Sassy-a-Go-Go club.

Summer 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster - another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

One woman's story as she blogs about - and fights back against - the zombie apocalypse.

Allison Hewitt and her five colleagues at the Brooks and Peabody Bookstore are trapped together when the zombie outbreak hits. Allison reaches out for help through her blog, writing on her laptop. It may also be her only chance to reach her mother. But as the reality of their situation sinks in, Allison's blog becomes a harrowing account of her edge-of-the-seat adventures.

Books 1-3 and the prequel novella of the Breakers series.

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.

The end begins with a viral outbreak unlike anything mankind has ever encountered before. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic.

It's been five years since the lights went out, cars stopped in the streets, and magical creatures began roaming Earth. Pete Garey survived the Change, trusting no one but himself until the day he met Ariel - a unicorn who brought new meaning and adventure to his life.

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.

"You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?" Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place - peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous - where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself.

Fed up with her wild behavior, 16-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business. She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next.

One Christmas Eve in a small hollow in Boone County, West Virginia, struggling songwriter Jesse Walker witnesses a strange spectacle: seven devilish figures chasing a man in a red suit toward a sleigh and eight reindeer. When the reindeer leap skyward, taking the sleigh, devil men, and Santa into the clouds, screams follow. Moments later, a large sack plummets back to earth, a magical sack that thrusts the down-on-his-luck singer into the clutches of the terrifying Yule Lord, Krampus.

The Earth is under siege - and no one knows about it because the invaders erase those whom they consume. A handful of men and women stand on the border between the mundane and the magical. They have a special spark of soul - not quite enough to be naturally gifted in spellcraft but greater than the average person, a tiny flame that can ignite incredible potential. They possess the ability to fight back against the Vorid: the ability to become a Contractor.

Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead's most unusual agents - an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind - until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death. One inbetweener is a sorcerer. He's summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits, and they’re spreading through the city like a plague.

The end of the world didn't happen overnight. After years of war, societal breakdown, freak storms, and rising tides, humanity already hovered near the edge. Then came the most unexpected threat of all: the world's corpses rising up to deliver the final blow.

Brendan, Eleanor, and Cordelia Walker once had everything: Two loving parents, a beautiful house in San Francisco, and all the portable electronic devices they could want. But everything changed when Dr. Walker lost his job in the wake of a mysterious incident. Now in dire straits, the family must relocate to an old Victorian house that used to be the home of occult novelist Denver Kristoff - a house that feels simultaneously creepy and too good to be true.

From out of the clear blue sky, an unknown chunk of rock from the frozen void strikes the Earth with unimaginable force, gouging a wound into the very crust of the planet. Millions die in an instant, and millions more await the end as the looming catastrophe unfolds...Thousands of miles away from the disaster, a call comes in the middle of the night. Families act, and react, and while panic spreads, the world keeps on spinning. Maybe a little slower, and perhaps with a teeny bit more of a tilt, but such things are a mere trifle to the existence of a planet.

When Vivian closes her eyes to go to sleep, she prays she doesn't wake up, that the world just goes away. Little does she realize her prayers are about to be answered. Vivian wakes to a world void of life. Bodies everywhere, cars smashed into buildings and each other. It seems whatever happened occurred in an instant. Everyone is dead. Everyone but her. Now Vivian not only searches out others, but for answers as to what happened and why.

Fifteen years after losing most of his family to a devastating, pudding-related tragedy, Simon Debovar has settled into a life of self-imposed exile from the stinking, selfish morass of humanity. Content that his daily highlights will include hazelnut coffee, a long bath, and the occasional jar of olives, his life is completely upturned by the discovery that his ornate living room carpet is the deciding factor in a bet between God and Satan.

The beloved King Ik is dead, and there was barely time to check his pulse before the royal throne was supporting the suspiciously shapely backside of an impostor pretending to be Ik's beautiful, long-lost daughter. With the land's heroic hunks busy drooling all over themselves, there's only one man left who can save the kingdom of Jenair. His name is Dungar Loloth, a rural blacksmith turned innkeeper, a surly hermit, and an all-around nobody oozing toward middle age, compensating for a lack of height, looks, charm, and tact with guts and an attitude.

War. Disease. Poverty. Lucille Ball. It's the end of the world and look who's back... Winner of the Reader's Favorite 2014 International Book Award for Comedy.The year is 1999 and the millennium is fast approaching. Baseball fan and thirty-two-year-old confirmed bachelor and architect, Seth Miller, is content with his life, as long as the Yankees win and his mother stays away from his Greenwich Village apartment. Seth's life, though, is turned upside down when he is informed by his overbearing and overprotective mother that he is God's youngest son and by default the second coming of Christ...

Filled with adventurous human drama-and shocking inhuman horror - Rise Again is a vivid and powerful debut novel of the zombie apocalypse.

Somewhere just off the interstate, in the heart of the American Midwest, there's a quaint, quirky town where the stars in the sky circle a hypnotic void...where magnetic fields play havoc with time and perception...where metallic rain and plasma rivers and tentacles in the plumbing are simply part of the unsettling charm.

By day, Mark Wojcik can be found elbow-deep in engine grease, making cars and trucks safe for the highway. By night, he can be found traipsing through the wilds of Pennsylvania, making the world safe for humans. He's more than just a mechanic, he's a New Templar Knight. He travels the backroads and byways fighting weresquonks, ningen, selkies, ghosts, and . . . gnomes? Is that gnome . . . naked? (Sigh.) Season One collects the first four novellas in the Spells, Salt, & Steel series: Spells, Salt, & Steel; Open Season; Deep Trouble; and Close Encounters.

They promised a cure for cancer, but they delivered civilization's ultimate end. When the world's largest Pharmaceutical company inadvertently unleashes a deadly virus, it plunges society into darkness. Dan Porter must stare into that darkness and try to find the light. Separated from his family by thousands of miles, he must brave the treacherous landscape, doing whatever he can to live to see another day.

A mid thirties truck driver must make hard choices on his quest to get home to his family while the world as we know it comes to an end. 700 miles, no truck, and just his loyal dog to accompany him, can he survive in this new world? A world where The System spawns monsters and mutates plants and animals to absorb and refine essence? Let us find out.