Literary Horror

For 25 years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself and keeping her demons inside her heart. She can’t remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her off on her personal journey toward redemption.

Dracula. A name of horror, depravity and the darkest sensuality. Yet the real Dracula was just as alluring, just as terrifying, his story not of a monster but of a man - and a contradiction. For the one they called 'The Devil's Son' was both tyrant and lawgiver, crusader and mass slaughterer, torturer and hero, lover and murderer. His tale is told by those who knew him best. The only woman he ever loved, who he must sacrifice. His closest comrade and traitor.

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move - prompted by James' penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check - is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between lake and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple.

Experience the blazing, surreal sensation of a fever dream...A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale.

A decade after the first zombie outbreak, a bus crashes in a small American town, killing everyone on board. Local churchgoers rush to the scene to save the living and destroy the dead. But they're too late. A terrifying new plague of living dead has been unleashed. A new horde of victims has been infected. And this time, they are ravenous.

Abby Cooper senses a convicted killer is innocent, but she'll need hard evidence to save the woman before it's too late.... A ticked-off judge has tossed Abby in the slammer for contempt of court, and during her brief but unpleasant stay she learns the story of a condemned woman who is facing a far more serious sentence. Skylar Miller has been found guilty of murder and faces the death penalty. Everyone believes she's guilty, including her own family and her ex-husband - everyone, that is, except Abby.

A well-to-do gentleman arrives in the seaside town of Badington. It's winter and out of season for tourists, but he has business to attend to with a peculiar old man and his beautiful daughter. However, to shocking results, for this out-of-towner everything is not as it seems. With his wonderful way with words, incredible description and beautiful literary style, award winning author, Robert E. Kearns is sure to captivate with this sensational short story. Now with a four star editorial review from Readers' Favorite

FBI agent Harmony Black and her team, Vigilant Lock, face a new type of threat: one from beyond the stars. They'd always heard the Red Knight was an urban legend: in 1954, three years before Sputnik launched, a mysterious satellite was sighted circling Earth, though no power on the planet had such technology.

モルグ街のアパートで親子が惨殺されるという事件が勃発した。母親の遺体は、のどを切られ、アパートの中庭に投げ落とされ、その娘は、暖炉の煙突の中に、押し込められていた。現場で犯人の声を聞いた人々の証言にはスペイン語、イタリア語、フランス語とさまざまだった。警察が解決できないこの不可解な事件をオーギュスト・デュパンが、見事な推理で犯人を鮮やかに突き止める。エドガー・アラン・ポーの生み出した世界初の名探偵オーギュスト・デュパンの推理をオーディオブックでお楽しみください! ※本作品は発表時の未熟な時代背景から、今日の社会では一般的でなく、不適切と思われる表現が含まれている箇所がございます。しかし作品のオリジナル性を最大限に尊重し、なるべく当時のまま忠実に再現することを優先いたしました。(C)2008青空文庫

Brian Evenson's fifth story collection constructs a human landscape as unearthly as it is mundane. Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to listeners of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it.

The outbreak tore the US in two. The East remains a safe haven. The West has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other: He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

When Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread, she led the way for the bewildered victims of a twenty-first century Minotaur. Trapped in an endless maze of Internet chat rooms, a group of mystified strangers find themselves assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of Horror, the Minotaur himself.

In a remote village near the English coast, residents gather in a misty churchyard. More than a decade into the 20th century, superstition still holds sway: It is St. Mark's Eve, the night when the shimmering ghosts of those fated to die in the coming year are said to materialize and amble through the church doors. Alone in the crowd is Constantia Gifford, the taxidermist's daughter. Twenty-two and unmarried, she lives with her father on the fringes of town, in a decaying mansion.

The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide.

A ghostly twist. Three nights of terror at the house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be victim of horrifying games. Three nights in which he will face the blood-chilling enigma of his own past. Three hideous nights before Edbrook's dreadful secret will be revealed...And the true nightmare will begin.to the surface, tormenting him, refusing to let him rest. The memory of what he once had been.

If only I’d ignored that letter, I wouldn’t have had to have done the things I did on this dark night. But I didn’t ignore it; how could I? A hand-written letter dressed in a stamped, plain-white envelope from a stranger requesting a meeting. Her name was Andrea, and she had information that could be crucial to my well-being. So many reasons not to go. But how could I not? I wished I’d thrown that letter away.

For more than 100 years, creative souls have traveled to the Bosco estate to live and work under its captivating spell. Novelist Ellis Brooks is writing a book based on the dark events that took place during the summer of 1893. All she knows is that the wealthy Milo Latham brought in a psychic medium to help his wife contact their three dead children - only to have the seance turn deadly and his remaining child abducted. As Ellis uncovers the Latham family's dark secrets, a series of bizarre accidents occurs.

Eyes of Horus is the story, told in the first person, of Ra-ab, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx, one of 18 provinces in Egypt. He comes to learn that the Oryx is different from the rest of Egypt, in that it is still in touch with the light. The rest of Egypt is plagued by fear and ruled by corruption. The pharaoh is an ineffectual ruler. The priests have replaced the worship of Ptah with the worship of Set. Only the Oryx has cast off these shackles - and it is from the Oryx that a silent brotherhood arises of the eyes of Horus - the Watchers of the Horizon.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.