From the mind of the man Stephen King calls "a master of the macabre", comes a brilliant new collection of no-punches-pulled horror stories, some never-before-collected and many originals that have never been published anywhere before. Bentley Little can take the innocuous, twist it around, and write a story that will change your way of thinking. Walking Alone: Short Stories is a shining example of his talent to scare you, creep you out, and make you shudder.

Opulent doesn't begin to describe the Arizona getaway where Lowell Thurman, his wife Rachel, and their three young sons have come for one glorious week. Everything at The Reata is perfect - although Rachel is a bit unnerved by the openly lustful gaze of one of the gardeners, something she doesn't mention to Lowell. Nor does he tell her about the frightening sensation he has in the pool of hands clutching at him, trying to pull him under.

When Ross Lowry moves into his cousin's guest house in the small community of Magdalena, Arizona, he expects nothing more than breathing room and a brief respite from his economic woes. But something is not right in the desert. After a raucous party on New Year's Eve, the luck of the attendees undergoes an immediate U-turn. The rich and successful suddenly find themselves facing catastrophic failure while the less well-off are unexpectedly flush with good fortune.

Once upon a time, waiting for the mail was filled with warm anticipation. But the suicide of the local mailman has left the residents of this tiny Arizona town shell-shocked. Nothing this bad has ever happened here. And now, there's a new mail carrier in town, one who's delivering lethal letters stuffed with icy fear. Nothing - not even the most outstanding citizens or the most secret weaknesses - is safe from the sinister power of this malicious mailman....

Considering she had just attended her mother's funeral, Gloria Jaymes never expected to see the woman again, but then her dead mom shows up at her house. Gloria's mom is...different. She's younger than when she died, dressed in clothes from the 1980s. And nobody else in Gloria's family seems to recognize her. As Gloria tries to figure out the reason for her mother's reappearance and the odd behaviors the woman begins to exhibit, other bizarre events occur. The changes to Gloria's world are small and subtle, at first...then they become much more startling.

In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then "The Store" announces plans to open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when "The Store's" builders ignore all the town's zoning laws during its construction. Then dead animals are found on "The Store's" grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves.

Steve Nye writes for an alumni magazine and his long-term relationship is on the steady path to marriage. But his quiet life takes an unexpected turn when he receives a phone call from his mother. His father attacked her and has been committed to a mental asylum. The doctor says he’s suffering from dementia. But Steve’s father seems so calm, clear-eyed, and perfectly lucid. Is it simply another symptom of delusion and madness? To find the answer, Steve investigates the cryptic message leading him down a terrifying path of his own making—and of his own nightmares.

Cathy was six when the man next door killed his wife and himself. It was early morning, and she was playing outside when she heard the first shot. And then another shot. And another.

Brad Woods has performed a lot of autopsies, but never one like this. The body is purged of all blood. Fear has made Sue Wing run from the darkened school and into night, a fear so powerful she can only name it using the Cantonese myths of her grandmother: Cup-hu-girngsi, the corspe who drinks blood. Reporters like Rich Carter don't believe in the supernatural, but all the signs are pointing to the same conclusion: a vampire is stalking the streets of Rio Verde. No, Rich Carter doesn't believe in such things. Not yet.

Barry and Maureen have just been approved as tenants by the Association. Pity they never read the fine print on the lease. It could be the death of them....

The Collection, Volume One contains 14 terrifying stories from Bentley Little.

The Perry family's new house is perfect - except for the weird behavior of the neighbors, and that odd smell coming from a dark corner in the basement. Pity no one warned the family about the house. Now it's too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising.

After his divorce, Hunt Jackson decides to start over in Tucson, where an old buddy fixes him up with his wife's friend, Beth. The attraction is immediate, and they're married a few months later. But Hunt's happiness is marred by his bizarre encounter with an insurance agent whose insistence that Hunt increase his coverage sounds, incredibly, like a threat. The agent - tall, gaunt, oddly dressed in an old-fashioned suit and fedora - is himself a menacing figure.

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It's the real thing.

Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son- fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill - vanishes. His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother's suicide, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge.

Melanie Turner has made quite a name for herself remodeling historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now her reputation may be on the line. At her newest project, a run-down Pacific Heights mansion, Mel is visited by the ghost of a colleague who recently met a bad end with power tools. Mel hopes that by nailing the killer, she can rid herself of the ghostly presence of the murdered man - and not end up a construction casualty herself....

A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.

Keisha Lewis lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned, and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn't dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country. Following a line of clues, Keisha takes a job as a long-haul truck driver and begins searching for Alice.

The razor's gleaming blade slices effortlessly through skin and tendon, and he relishes the final anguished moments of his prey. There's only one thing he prizes more: their long, silken strands of red hair. But these women are merely stand-ins...a prelude to his ultimate victim.

As a sniper with the elite Massachusetts State Police SWAT Team, Bobby Dodge saved a woman and her young son by shooting her armed husband. But vicious rumors begin to circulate the next morning when Bobby loses his gun and his privileges. It turns out the dead man was the son of a prominent Boston judge and had accused his wife of poisoning their son.

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.

When Amanda travels east to Orlando on a hunch, she's met with the worst news possible. Kingdom Keeper Finn Whitman is missing. Calling on her own gift (she's telekinetic), her sister Jess' ability to dream the future, and their fellow Fairlie Mattie Weaver's unexplained ability to read minds through physical contact, the three gifted girls must navigate treachery, deception, and the stubborn, unwilling parents of the missing Keepers if they're to save their friends.

A secluded Pacific Northwest cottage becomes a door to the past for Tom Winter, who travels back to the New York City of 1962, followed by a human killing machine that he alone must stop.

Just a second. That was all it took. In that second Anita Sherwood sees the face of the young boy in the window of the bus as it stops at the curb...and she knows it is her son. The son who had been kidnapped two years before. The son who had never been found and who had been declared legally dead. But now her son is alive. Anita knows it in her heart. She is certain that the boy is her son, but how can she get anyone to believe her?

A master craftsman, Don Lark could fix everything except what mattered, his own soul. After tragedy claimed the one thing he loved, he began looking for dilapidated houses to buy, renovate, and resell at a profit, giving these empty shells the second chance at life he denied himself.

As a boy, Will Klein had a hero: his older brother, Ken. Then, on a warm suburban night in the Kleins’ affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman—a girl Will had once loved—was found brutally murdered in her family’s basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished. And when his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good.

A young, ambitious lawyer is eager to prove he is better than the mobster dominated family he grew up in. Working as a Bronx Legal Aid attorney he learns how to become an unbeatable defense lawyer. But it's 1982. The Spiderman rapist is on the loose and New York City is a city in fear. When an outraged victim commits suicide right before his eyes, searching for absolution and determined to prove his client's innocence, he knocks the pegs out from under the prosecution's case.

It begins as a statistical oddity: a spike in children born with acute speech delays. Physically normal in every way, these children never speak and do not respond to speech; they don't learn to read, don't learn to write. As the number of cases grows to an epidemic level, theories spread. Maybe it's related to a popular antidepressant; maybe it's environmental. Or maybe these children have special skills all their own.

Following the death of his 10-year-old son, physician Peter Croft embarks on a desperate, seemingly random search for a missing child, risking his sanity, even his life in a grief-induced quest. His journey propels him into the darkest reaches of human suffering and pits him squarely against an adversary whose own obsession defies all reason.

From the mind of the man Stephen King calls "a master of the macabre", comes a brilliant new collection of no-punches-pulled horror stories, some never-before-collected and many originals that have never been published anywhere before. Bentley Little can take the innocuous, twist it around, and write a story that will change your way of thinking. Walking Alone: Short Stories is a shining example of his talent to scare you, creep you out, and make you shudder.

Brad Woods has performed a lot of autopsies, but never one like this. The body is purged of all blood. Fear has made Sue Wing run from the darkened school and into night, a fear so powerful she can only name it using the Cantonese myths of her grandmother: Cup-hu-girngsi, the corspe who drinks blood. Reporters like Rich Carter don't believe in the supernatural, but all the signs are pointing to the same conclusion: a vampire is stalking the streets of Rio Verde. No, Rich Carter doesn't believe in such things. Not yet.

When Ross Lowry moves into his cousin's guest house in the small community of Magdalena, Arizona, he expects nothing more than breathing room and a brief respite from his economic woes. But something is not right in the desert. After a raucous party on New Year's Eve, the luck of the attendees undergoes an immediate U-turn. The rich and successful suddenly find themselves facing catastrophic failure while the less well-off are unexpectedly flush with good fortune.

Successful author Todd Klein and his wife Rosita live a quiet small town life. Todd's latest novel is selling well and despite recent budget cuts, Rosita relishes her job at the local library. After years of marriage, they're still in love, the mortgage to their suburban home is paid off, and their future is bright. Until, that is, Todd makes an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew his license.

In a small Arizona town, a man counts his blessings: a loving wife, two teenage daughters, and a job that allows him to work at home. Then "The Store" announces plans to open a local outlet, which will surely finish off the small downtown shops. His concerns grow when "The Store's" builders ignore all the town's zoning laws during its construction. Then dead animals are found on "The Store's" grounds. Inside, customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange products appear on the shelves.

When Gregory Tomasov moves into an abandoned farm on the edge of McGuane, Arizona, he discovers a terrible secret buried in the walls of the old building.

Barry and Maureen have just been approved as tenants by the Association. Pity they never read the fine print on the lease. It could be the death of them....

The formerly laid-back principal has become unusually strict. And with her toadying secretary, she seems to be running the show. That isn’t all. The janitors no longer work nights because of what they hear. The students are frightened by what they see. And things are happening on school grounds that defy rational explanation. But there is an explanation. It’s just not anything that anyone can begin to believe — or hope to survive.

Bentley Little was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. He is the author of 10 previous novels, including The Revelation, The Mailman, The Summoning, Death Instinct (published under the name Phillip Emmons), University, Dominion, The Ignored, The Store, The House, and The Town. An acknowledged master of horror, he is currently at work on his next novel.

A college freshman finds herself stranded in Arizona with no place to stay and nowhere to run. Cabin fever closes in on an isolated park ranger, as two sinister beauties lurk in the desert outside his door. A California divorcee is starting a promising new life. But her young son knows better—because he's seen what's creeping outside the window. A cross-country traveler is on a journey of self-discovery. But one tourist trap holds its own dreadful surprises....

Five complete strangers from across America are about to come together and open the door to a place of evil that they all call home. Inexplicably, four men and one woman are having heart-stopping nightmares revolving around the dark and forbidding houses where each of them were born. When recent terrifying events occur, they are each drawn to their identical childhood homes, only to confront a sinister supernatural presence which has pursued them all their lives and is now closer than ever to capturing their souls....

Opulent doesn't begin to describe the Arizona getaway where Lowell Thurman, his wife Rachel, and their three young sons have come for one glorious week. Everything at The Reata is perfect - although Rachel is a bit unnerved by the openly lustful gaze of one of the gardeners, something she doesn't mention to Lowell. Nor does he tell her about the frightening sensation he has in the pool of hands clutching at him, trying to pull him under.