Karyn and her husband Roy had come to the peaceful California village of Drago to escape the savagery of the city. On the surface, Drago appeared to be like most small rural towns. But it was not. The village had a most unsavory history. Unexplained disappearances, sudden deaths. People just vanished, never to be found.

Cameron and his mother deal with their tragic past in different ways—she with alcohol, he with an imaginary friend. But that imaginary friend has become so much more—a deadly, hard-to-contain force, its primary objective no longer the protection of Cameron. An LAPD detective—struggling to solve a string of grisly killings—and a psychologist—trying to understand Cameron—work together to uncover the connection. But can they stop such an elusive, impossible evil? Or will it rip them to shreds?

Robert and Janet Patterson and their young daughter, Krissy, went looking for the perfect getaway vacation spot. They found it in a backwoods Florida town. Far away from civilization. Quiet and peaceful. And terribly isolated. Robert and Janet should have listened to the local legends. They should have heeded the warnings about the blackwater lagoons. And they should have listened to their daughter when she told them about the whispers in the woods. Because now, it's too late. Krissy's disappeared, and whatever took their little girl is coming back for more....

Summer, 1989. It is a time for splashing in the lake and exploring the wilderness, for nine teenagers to bond together and create friendships that could last the rest of their lives. But among this group there is a young man with a secret—a secret that, in this time and place, is unthinkable to his peers. When the others discover the truth, it will change each of them forever. They will all have blood on their hands. Odd Man Out is a heart-wrenching tale of bullies and bigotry, a story that explores what happens when good people don't stand up for what's right.

Lee, an urban shaman, gets tasked with tracking down a vinyl copy of the Dark Light EP by the ’80s hard rock band, Bad Obsession. The extremely rare record is said to be cursed. Nearly every copy of the album burned in a fire at Tower Records in Los Angeles the day of its release. With only one remaining member of the band alive and living in a home for those battling Alzheimer’s, Lee must return to Maine, a place where he’s battled evil forces before, and see if he can retrieve the album.

Something is terrifying the residents of St. Luke’s Orphanage. Gurgling moans echo through the hallways. Hulking shapes lurk in the surrounding woods. And those who wake in the morning will find one less child under their roof.... Brandon and his girlfriend, Jillian, believe his younger brother is in serious danger. Even though the caretakers at St. Luke’s told them that he’s been adopted, Brandon has his doubts. With the help of a friend and a mysterious guide, they will do whatever it takes to find out just what is happening inside the orphanage walls....

First they feasted on farm animals. Then they found humans.... A little girl was dead, attacked, and mutilated by some things, creatures of nightmare that were spreading outward like the Black Death, stripping the entire town bare of life. The death toll mounted, with bodies maimed or ripped to shreds, and thousands cowered in the shadows, hiding fearfully from the death out of the skies, the millions of sucking probosci eagerly reaching out for the attack.

Seven years after the limitless depths of the Hollow War decimated Earth, leaving only 50,000 humans to fight for survival in Los Angeles, Theo Abrams is sent on a mission to destroy the enigmatic being that initiated this apocalypse, confronting the fact that humanity's yearning to transcend reality caused its downfall....

Evil is alive in Libertyville. It inhabits a custom-painted red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine and young Arnold Cunningham, who buys it. Along with Arnold's girlfriend, Leigh Cabot, Dennis Guilder attempts to find out the real truth behind Christine and finds more than he bargained for: From murder to suicide, there's a peculiar feeling that surrounds Christine - she gets revenge on anyone standing in her path. Can Dennis save Arnold from the wrath of Christine?

The master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills.

The Wishmaster movie introduced horror fans to a new and enduring villain - the Djinn, a demonic genie who would offer wishes but would only grant nightmares. Despite establishing itself as a classic - and unlike many of its contemporaries - Wishmaster never received a novelization - until now! Based on the original screenplay by Peter Atkins, this novelization was written by Christian Francis (Author and narrator of Everyday Monsters and Incubus The Descent).

Cujo is a 200-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats. What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inescapably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has ever written.

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache, and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances.

A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative number one New York Times best-selling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill.

Psychotic killers, devious ghosts, alien monsters, howling storms, undead creatures, and other dark forces haunt the highways and the truckers who drive them in these 18 chilling tales. A ghostly voice on a trucker's CB radio knows more about his life than it should.... Two drivers find their cargo gives them inhuman appetites.... A boy in a truck stop encounters a supernatural force that threatens to destroy the world.... The hypnotic singing lulling a driver to sleep might not be coming from the tires....

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.

Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player 20 years ago and hasn’t returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in 10 years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead are drawing him back to the magical city. For the mythic game he believed he won did not end that night in 1969—and the price of his winnings was his soul. Now, a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card.

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.

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.

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

Back in the 1960s, Mary Terrell shot and killed a man. A former member of the fanatical Storm Front Brigade - a splinter group of the notorious Weathermen - Terrell has stayed one step ahead of the FBI for decades. Living with numerous identities and menial jobs, Terrell's only constants in life have been LSD, psychotic delusions of motherhood, and murderous rage.

Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.

After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.

No good deed goes unpunished. Detroit is a hole where even a werewolf's sins can be buried. Or so Jake Brennan hopes. Hiding from his hunters, shooting heroin to negate the effect of the full moon, he is beginning to turn things around. And the day he is witness to a brutal attack on ER doctor Gwen Cheevey, Jake is forced to transform into something new: a hero. But when a clip of his good deed goes viral, Jake's days of hiding are over. To keep Gwen safe, Jake will need to embrace the beast within.

Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.

Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

A routine investigation into corruption at a North Californian airport sets in motion shocking events that lead hard man Jim Bishop and world-weary ex-cop boss Scott Weiss into the center of a massive criminal conspiracy. The trail of blood that ensues brings them dangerously closer to Weiss's old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire known only as Shadowman and to a plan set to climax with an act of audacious violence and a murder that would be impossible for any killer but one....

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.

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.

Panic is a legendary game played by graduating seniors in the middle-of-nowhere town of Carp, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher: After a series of challenges ranging from sleeping in a haunted house to running across a highway blindfolded, one winner takes home a cash prize in the tens of thousands at the end of the summer. Participating players are sworn to secrecy, which means little is known of Panic’s history. Until now.