Showing results by author "Josh Hilden" in All Categories

The first 24 stories of the Free Story Friday series are collected here for the first time in audio. Includes "Under the Bed", "Into the Tall Grass", "Down the Slope", "The Quality of Life", "Letters from Galileo", and more.

The homes and safe places that have been the places of the living are now empty and broken. Pursued by a force of malevolent evil two groups of survivors race toward the hoped for safety of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But in the North the perceived safe haven of White Harbor may not be as safe as its residents believe. As a more human evil plots against the bastion of life and the travelers from the south are tried and tested on their journey the world marches closer and closer to becoming a domain of the dead.

Following the war with Ast-Murath, Meg Carson finds herself at a crossroads. Losing the woman she loved and the man she considered a brother, she goes on a journey of growth and exploration. From the realm of the dead, to high above the Earth, Meg searches for closure and a release from the pain of loss.

When the dead rose, society collapsed. First went the landlines, then went the cell service. The power died and with it went television, radio, and the internet. In all but the luckiest of areas communications beyond the level of hand-delivered mail and smoke signals were the norms. In the days, weeks, and months following the death of civilization, The Relay rose to fill the void.

Some said the world would end in the cold. Some said the world would end in a fire. Some said when there was no more room in hell the dead would rise up to devour the living. Nobody thought it would be because of the corn.

A Bahamian Cruise. A dysfunctional family. An out of this world occurrence. (This short story is a vignette that will one day be the basis for a novel).

Half a century after Harwick slammed into the Earth and nearly ended human civilization humanity is getting back on its feet. In the rebuilding city of Atlanta. A young grad student presents his mentor with the diary of the Traveler. A person of myth and legend the traveler crisscrossed North America collecting the stories of the survivors of Hardwick but rarely spoke of his own adventures. In this original tome, the secrets of the traveler are finally scratched.

What really happened when the first man and the first woman were expelled from paradise? Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Garden, part of the expansive Hildenverse of stories.

They arrived without warning, raining death and chaos across the surface of the Earth. Humanity fought back, and although we didn't win, we did cripple them, fighting them to a standstill on the planet and in orbit. Now, more than a hundred years later, the world is a very different place. Technology varies wildly from region to region as does which race dominates the other. After so many decades of détente, the enemy is once more on the move; but not just against the surviving enclaves of humanity, also against members of their own species.

Season 3 of Summer Camp of the Dead picks up right where season 2 ended. While the kids at the camp hurry to raise a defense against the approaching bandits, Bob and the rest race to reach the island of safety ahead of an approaching hoard of the hungry dead.

The Marquette Institute and the Department of Preternatural Activities (DPA) have been America's primary defense against the things that go bump in the night for more than a century and a half. It has been said that without the activities of this group and similar organizations, the human race would've fallen under the heel of dark forces long ago.

Flight or fight? When Emily Paulson was first confronted with that ancient imperative, she choose fight. She lost and was subjected to cruelty that nearly fractured her soul. Now an adult and a successful reporter with a wreck of a personal life, she is returning to her childhood home accompanied by the demons from the past. On her journey along the rails between the cities of Atlanta and Detroit, she will meet a young mother and her innocent child fleeing in fear from a monster that darkly mirrors the demons of Emily's own past.

In a matter of seconds the sun, moon, and stars disappeared from the sky, replaced by an inky, infinite blackness. Global communications were disrupted, and chaos reigned worldwide as panic set in, and humanity reset to its basest of behaviors and most primal of natural instincts.

Jeff and Dawn face down the dead in a town that shouldn't exist. Jillian and Ashley meet Burke and have to reach a consensus on how they deal with the odd man. As Creighton's body heals, his mind fractures, and he enters the jungle this time on the hunt as opposed to being the hunted. In the trees and fields, Emily and the hunter square off in a duel in which only one can survive.

Sailors have always had their stories, their tall tales of the sea. While many are the bragging and one-upmanship of men who do work no one else wants to do, some of them are frighteningly real. What a few sailors lucky enough to survive know is that beneath the icy waters of the Northern Pacific, a terror from the forgotten depths of history hunts them.

In Frankenstein, King of the Dead, Book 1, an expedition to the continent of Antarctica started a chain reaction of chaos. Mr. Franklin Victor Castle, formerly known only as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, launches into action, continuing a mission he began more than a century earlier. He never counted on her entering his life. Now, in the besieged city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Frank's best friend and truest love is trapped by the living dead. Frank heads off with only one goal...to save her.

Nine short stories set in the Shores of the Dead universe. Broken into blocks of three, they take place after each of the novels in the series.

Flash Fiction stories are tales of a thousand words or less. In this collection, you the listener are offered ten short tales of horror and creeping terror.

Six short tales set between the first and second Shores of the Dead Trilogies. Learn more about Ben and Jenn, Riley, Kelly, Capshaw, Nancy and Charlie, and Scarlet.

In the early days of the war in Afghanistan, a three man group of Marines are sent to protect a scientist on an unbelievable mission. Joined by an ancient Soviet soldier, these five men are all that stand between chaos and order in the mountains.