Bryan and Ellie Stockton hope they left behind their demons when they move to their idyllic new home in southern West Virginia. Above all, they want a fresh start for their young son, Derrick, who witnessed the tumultuous first years of their marriage—years that were rife with substance abuse, rage, and resentment. Their bright hope for the future is darkened when a child disappears from their neighborhood. The couple becomes suspicious of a reclusive resident with a degenerative brain disorder.

In the summer of 1994, psychologist Daniel Hill buys a rustic farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of West Virginia. Along with his wife and teenage daughter, the family uproots their lives in Ohio and moves south. They are initially seduced by the natural beauty of the country setting. That soon changes when they discover a hidden room in the basement with a well, boarded shut and adorned with crucifixes. Local legends about the previous owner being an exorcist come to light, but by then, all Hell has broken loose.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. Margaret is staying.

Six strangers arrive at the home of preeminent puzzle master Alexei Vasiliev for the reading of his will. Among them are the deceased's widow, who'd already begun divorce proceedings, a virologist troubled by actions in his past, and a convicted murderer on day release. The potential beneficiaries will split Vasiliev's $150M fortune if they participate in his last great work. The choice is simple: leave the house with nothing or continue in the hope of solving the six interconnecting escape rooms within this house.

Real estate agent Anthony Graham has his family on the run after witnessing a murder at the hands of the powerful Costello crime family. They’re forced to hide at one of Anthony’s properties, a deserted campground with a sinister past. No one is safe from the men that hunt them, or the terrors that await them inside The Devil’s Nest.

The dense Michigan forest. Haunting wails. The clip-clop of demon hooves on a bridge to nowhere. It’s more than a tall tale to Brenda Jennings, whose sister disappeared in those woods one fateful night. Three years later, on a solo stakeout in the dark, Brenda goes in after her. She’s desperate for answers, and terrified to find what lies waiting on the other side of that bridge.

After a disease ravages his underground community, Winter escapes with his daughters to the dangerous surface of Earth. With the planet largely abandoned, he has no one to help him make sense of this strange new world while trying to keep his children alive. But the surface is not all complicated artifacts and relics of a deserted universe. Winter is certain someone - or something - is hunting them.

This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.

When tragedy shatters 13-year-old Zelda Ruiz’s adolescence, she retreats with her uncle Mark to the bucolic town of Greywood Bay. But nothing can prepare them for the malignant terror that has long coveted these lands.

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI, are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman - and he’s playing games with them.

Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling: with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. That's about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to hear—affordable housing lottery. They've won an apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan's most revered buildings. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York—people are odd—but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.

Cassie's night of babysitting goes to hell when bombs explode in the distance, planes fly overhead at low altitudes, and alerts on her phone tell her to seek shelter. Luckily, the boy she babysits tells her his father has a bunker in the yard. When they make their way to this underground shelter, they soon discover they aren't alone. Something is living in the bunker, lurking in the walls, and it's hungry.

Michael Danvers’ life of self-imposed seclusion is interrupted when he receives a strange invitation: the unique opportunity to move into and beta-test a fully automated, state-of-the-art smart home.

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks—a famous, but struggling, horror writer—receives an ornate antiquarian desk in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Perhaps inspire him to write another best-selling book and prove his best years aren’t behind him… As Tyson begins to use the new desk, he finds himself writing copy at an unfathomable speed, becomes so focused on writing that he binges on all-night, all-day sessions that take a serious physical and psychological toll. Soon, Tyson begins acting strange. Violent.

Derrick Stockton is in his mid-twenties, approaching three years sober, and working a stable job in Ohio. After surviving the seemingly random horrors of his childhood at the hands of a sinister neighbor, he believes he's finally moved on. All that changes when a brutal murder occurs in his home state of West Virginia. His name is written in blood at the crime scene, and the only evidence is a blurry surveillance video offering a glimpse of the killer, one he knows to be long dead.

Not all monsters are fantasy. Some are very real, and they walk among us. They're our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. They're the people we're supposed to trust...and they know it. Contained within this anthology are 35 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors and best-selling novelists. Brace yourself for the unexpected and unimaginable horror of...human monsters.

Maverick Hall has spent years trying to forget the chilling events of his thirteenth birthday in the summer of 1999. That fateful night, he and his best friends ventured through a seemingly innocuous tunnel on their bikes — a journey from which not all of them returned. Now, as an adult, Maverick is haunted by a sinister force that compels him to return to his old neighborhood, a place shadowed by secrets, deceit, and an unsettling sense of death. Drawn back against his better judgment, he must face the dark forces that have lurked in waiting, eager for his return.

Travel along a backcountry road as two bickering siblings encounter a sadistic masked menace. Watch from a couple’s window as a mysterious figure lurks through the darkness of the vacant house next door. Witness a malevolent presence threaten to unravel a man’s sanity decades after testing an urban legend.

Bryan and Ellie Stockton hope they left behind their demons when they move to their idyllic new home in southern West Virginia. Above all, they want a fresh start for their young son, Derrick, who witnessed the tumultuous first years of their marriage—years that were rife with substance abuse, rage, and resentment. Their bright hope for the future is darkened when a child disappears from their neighborhood. The couple becomes suspicious of a reclusive resident with a degenerative brain disorder.

At Camp Blaze—a camp with a history of violent tragedy—a group of counselors are stalked and slaughtered by a masked killer. However, due to the missing bodies, the murders are treated as disappearances. ‘Perhaps they’ve ran off to elope,’ the authorities suggest. But, as the disappearances continue to mount, Regina Park—the head counselor—begins to suspect foul play and she fears the killer may be closer than they think...

Cindy Moore, a morbidly obese woman with serious self-esteem issues, has struggled to lose weight for years. Hours of exercise and a nutritious but inconsistent diet have only led to disappointment and depression. On the verge of giving up on everything, her life takes a drastic turn when she discovers a ‘miracle’ diet pill that allows her to lose weight without dieting or exercising. The pills, however, come with disturbing side effects, including dangerous changes to her body, mind, and appetite.

Isla Hansen, a mother reeling from a devastating loss, is beside herself when a mysteriously orphaned child appears on the outskirts of the Hansens’ secluded Colorado property. Although strange and unexplainable, the child’s presence breathes new life into Isla. But as the child settles in, Isla’s husband, Luke, and their five children notice peculiarities that hint at something far beyond the ordinary—anomalies that challenge the very fabric of reality itself.

An alcoholic teacher and father’s world spirals out of control when a former student is killed and he is left with her dog and the dark presence that follows it. Matt Matheny teaches during the day, drinks at night, and barely hides his functioning alcoholism from his veterinarian ex-wife, Lucy, and his six-year-old son, Mikey. His world spirals out of control when a former student is killed, and he's left with her dog, Conehead. But something isn't right with Conehead.

1967: A brutal murder occurs at the Weston State Hospital in West Virginia. To amateur exorcist, Merle Blatty, this shocking story rings of the occult. Fueled by a desire to avenge the deaths of his wife and son, Merle investigates the case, unknowingly stepping into a sinister web spanning decades.

These thirteen stories are our own lives, inside out. A boy's summer romance doesn't end in that good kind of heartbreak, but in blood. A girl on a fishing trip makes a friend in the woods, except then that friend follows her back to the city. A father hears a voice through his baby monitor that shouldn't be possible, but now he can't stop listening. From prison guards making unholy alliances to snake-oil men in the Old West doling out justice, these stories carve down into the body of the mind, into our most base fears and certainties, and there's no anesthetic.

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.

The Oaks is an idyllic, up-market country club—but its ornately carved walls hide a horrific past. Sixty years ago the house was an asylum, home to crazed psychopaths. One night all of them disappeared, never to be seen again. Jack Reed, the owner of The Oaks, has no idea about the building's terrible history. It is only when Jack's son is dragged into the walls of the mansion that he realises what happened sixty years ago—and just where the inmates have been living all this time...

To Hell and Back serves as a mosaic of contemporary fears and timeless terrors, curated and edited by the Bram Stoker Award-winning Joe Mynhardt. This collection of horror stories brings together a diverse array of tales from both beloved and emerging voices in the horror genre, each story a unique exploration of the dark corners of the human psyche.

"Interview with the Devil" is a compelling tale that invites listeners to explore the depths of their convictions and the possibility of redemption in the darkest of narratives. Through a tapestry of philosophical exploration and cosmic intrigue, this novel questions the essence of humanity and the intricate dance of fate and free will.