Psychological Anthology

Here is the original manuscript of Raymond Carver's seminal 1981 collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Carver is one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature - his style is both instantly recognizable and hugely influential - and the pieces in What We Talk About..., which portray the gritty loves and lives of the American working class, are counted among the foundation stones of the contemporary short story.

Step into the shadows where the line between flesh and nightmare blurs, where the body becomes both canvas and cage. In this chilling anthology, darkness reigns supreme as twisted minds explore the depths of human agony and transformation. From the grotesque to the surreal, each story delves deeper into the macabre, weaving tales of torment that will leave you breathless and disturbed.

Mark is the accused rapist. Miss P. is the victim, his former teacher. Moira M. is an apathetic juror. As the trial unfolds in this intense short story, three personal histories emerge, along with three alarmingly different points of view: Obsessed and angry. Menaced and disillusioned. Disaffected and searching through an unexamined life for moral conviction.

A fantastic short story collection from critically acclaimed and bestselling author John Updike.

While renovating her Victorian home, Ana Clementine finds an ornate door buried under forty years of earth. Once she restores it to the attic, she starts hearing whispers, her loving husband has become a stranger, and her baby daughter learns a chilling new word. Maybe Ana has unlocked the house’s secrets. Or maybe she’s becoming just a little unhinged herself.

The most terrifying thing that you can possibly imagine is your own body in the hands of a monster. Or worse, in the hands of another human being. In this definitive anthology of body horror selected by a World Horror Grandmaster, you'll find the unthinkable and the shocking: a couture designer preparing for an exquisitely grotesque runway show; a vengeful son seeking the parent who bred him as plasma donor; a celebrity-kink brothel that inflicts plastic surgery on sex workers; and organ-harvesting doctors who dissect a living man without anesthetic.

You were never offline. You were overwritten. In this chilling expansion of Echo//Break, twenty-four new digital confessions unravel the thin line between memory and simulation, identity and interface. Told in raw, first-person monologues from those who stumbled into corrupted apps, haunted networks, and sentient backups, these stories peel back the layers of a world that remembers more than you ever gave it. Inside this collection: A private journal begins writing its owner’s future regrets A smart home starts reenacting its previous tenant’s death A cloud AI builds a perfect version ...

In the title story of Walk Between the Raindrops, a woman sits down next to a man at a bar and claims she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise line are quarantined, to horrifying and hilarious effect. And “Hyena” begins simply: “That was the day the hyena came for him, and never mind that there were no hyenas in the South of France, and especially not in Pont-Saint-Esprit—it was there and it came for him.”

Ein kleines Buch über Kummer, das erstaunlich gute Laune macht. "Alle wirken innerlich blitzblank, nur in unserem Inneren sieht es aus wie bei Hempels unterm Sofa", denkt sich Kioskbesitzer Armin, als er vergeblich versucht, erfolgreich zu meditieren. Und auch im Inneren der anderen Figuren dieser literarischen Kolumnen herrscht Unordnung: Frau Wiese kann nicht mehr schlafen, Herr Pohl ist nachhaltig verzagt, Lisa hat ihren ersten Liebeskummer, Vadims Hände zittern, Frau Schwerter muss ganz dringend entspannen, ein trauriger Patient hat seine Herde verloren, und Psychoanalytiker Ulrich legt sich mit der Vergänglichkeit an.

He's a serial killer. A murderer of young women, all killed in brutal attacks. But despite Hamish Wolfe's conviction, he's always stuck to his story - he's innocent, and he's been wrongly imprisoned. And now he wants someone to investigate and, more importantly, to write his story. Maggie Rose is a notorious defense attorney and writer whose specialty is getting convictions overturned. At first Maggie is reluctant to even acknowledge Hamish's requests to meet, ignoring his letters. But this is a very charismatic and persuasive man, good looking and intelligent.

Demented tales of horror and suspense! There's nothing more terrifying than the things people are capable of doing to one another. Forget vampires, werewolves, and zombies (though there are a few here). The real scary stuff is happening all around us, every day, every night. Twisted Tales is a glimpse into some of our more depraved moments.

It is at the end of the eighteenth century, in the new French Republic, when the savage is first seen outside the village of Lacaune. The boy quickly becomes a legend among the townsfolk. Is he truly a human child or a wild beast? "Wild Child" is based on the story of Victor of Aveyron, the feral child brought from the French wilderness to Paris in an attempt to civilize him. It is the story of a boy who, at the tender age of five, had his throat slit in the forest and was left for dead.

Lovely young Kay Crandall has come back for the reunion of a high school where she once taught. But Kay cannot guess that the happy occasion is about to turn into a nightmare - as she falls into the hands of a madman who wants to make her into his wife - and his victim. From The Anastasia Syndrome, Mary Higgins Clark's best-selling collection of short fiction, Terror Stalks the Class Reunion is a riveting, unabridged audio production.

Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....

It is All Souls Day, and the spirit of Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table and remembers. In flowing, relentless prose, Conway recalls his life in rural Ireland: as a boy and man, father, husband, citizen. His ruminations move from childhood memories of his father's deftness with machines to his own work as a civil engineer, from transformations in the local economy to the tidal wave of global financial collapse. Conway's thoughts go still further, outward to the vast systems of time and history that hold us all.

Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.

Night Portals is a metaphysical anthology series that explores the hidden secrets of life around us. Twelve "What If" short stories from the mind of Ernie Howard. The Old couple is the second book in the series. Pete checks on his elderly parents at least once a week. The countless visits all melt into one, but it doesn't matter how many boring visits he has with his parents. He makes these visits with a sense of foreboding. Will this be the last time? Pete and his wife have a different visit this time around. One that is far worse than death.

What happens when the monsters aren't supernatural—they're systematic? In this chilling collection of modern Gothic tales, five classic stories of horror are reimagined for our contemporary world, revealing that the most terrifying threats come not from ghosts or ghouls, but from the very institutions and systems we trust to protect us. From a billionaire's pandemic party that becomes a dance with death, to a corporate executive's systematic abuse that finally provokes the ultimate reckoning—these stories expose the horror hiding in plain sight within our modern society. "Isla Dorada" ...

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." (Anthony Bourdain) Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter. Brad Phillips is a well-known Canadian artist.

Step into a world where reality bends, and the impossible becomes plausible. "The Enigma Grid" by Craig S. Wilson is a mind-bending collection of short stories that will leave you questioning the very fabric of existence.