Short Horror

There's a darker side to the festive season screaming to be let out in this Christmas edition of Twisted Tales... Read on in terror to five chilling stories of horror and suspense, with a couple centering around that magic time of year!

A demented killer believes he’s doing God’s work — and a teenage boy with dreams of getting his license becomes his next target. Elliot Cross doesn't just hate ambitious dreaming — he sees it as sin. In his twisted mind, anyone reaching for more is disobeying the First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. When he volunteers to give Timmy, his daughter’s fatherless classmate, a driving lesson, it’s not a gift — it’s a trap. And the road ahead leads nowhere safe. The Driving Lesson is a short story of religious delusion, power, and cruelty — a standalone ...

Nurse Nina: Filled Deep It's my very first day on the job working for the rich Mr. Manner. My boss Dr. Ardeen embarrasses me by performing an intimate physical exam. I'm stretched and probed. But that isn't the worst, my employer Mr. Manner is present and is watching my dirty initiation. Later that night, I'm given my first night watch over Mr. Manner. It's supposed to be easy and uneventful but Mr. Manner has one of his episodes and needs my help. Dr. Ardeen directs me on the intimate therapy I have to administer. I am not sure I can submit to such behavior. But he won't let me get away ...

For ages, people have been interested in the supernatural. Investigators and science researchers have written many books on the subject. The reality of the supernatural explains phenomena in a new light. Ghost sightings, poltergeists, angels, demons, the old hag syndrome and life after death are just some of the true personal accounts in these pages. Scientific research along with two thousand year old bible references mentioned to support some of these occurrences. For believers and skeptics!

Playing upon our most primal fears, Stephen King draws us into his sinister world - a place where sane men and women see their lives shattered, their realities distorted and destroyed. Now, listeners can probe even deeper into the mind of the master storyteller of the macabre, with this third unabridged production of 5 classic short stories, from King's best selling collection, Night Shift.

Travel along a backcountry road as two bickering siblings encounter a sadistic masked menace. Watch from a couple’s window as a mysterious figure lurks through the darkness of the vacant house next door. Witness a malevolent presence threaten to unravel a man’s sanity decades after testing an urban legend.

Drawing heavily on Lovecraftiana and myth, these are tales of devil’s bargains, love songs to monsters, and the people—human and otherwise—who inhabit liminal spaces. Ghosts, gods, and ghouls make their way as best they can, one step sideways from the mortals around them. Many are connected; some are puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. Spanning a decade of writing, Still So Strange is Amanda Downum's first collection of short fiction, and includes stories originally released in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as original, unpublished work.

A watch commander at the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Operational Center finds himself at the heart of a first contact situation with an alien species and desperately working to prevent a war between humans and the aliens over the same benign assumption about one another.

I never expected my life to go up in literal hellfire. The dark moon should be the best night of my life as a shifter. Instead, my sweet little house cat just combusted into flames in the middle of my bedroom, my tormenting alpha says he’s my mate, and three hellish men just blazed into my life like sinful gods. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. No big deal. Except rejecting the alpha who’s determined to make me his whore ends worse than I ever could have imagined…. With nowhere left to run, I’m forced to acknowledge the gorgeous existence of the three dark stalkers hunting me.

The nightmares return in Scary Stories To Give You Nightmares 3! This all-new collection of eerie tales will send shivers down your spine and make you think twice about what lurks in the shadows. Step into the darkness and uncover a ghostly presence that calls from deep within a cave, a seemingly innocent game that opens a door best left closed, and a doppelganger that isn't quite right. Beware the return of Hello Dolly—she’s back, and she’s not alone. And on a remote island, the echoes of a lost soul refuse to fade. With each chilling story, your fears will take shape in ways you ...

A collection of four critically acclaimed, gripping short novels that explore the darkness lurking within ordinary lives. Black Canyon Twelve-year-old Brian Garrett embarks on a weekend camping trip in Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison, hoping to reconnect with his distant parents. But when his father suffers a brutal accident deep in the chasm, survival takes a sinister turn. Over the next twenty-four hours, Brian will face a horrifying truth about his father—and himself. Rewind A man wakes in a decaying apartment, hooked to a mysterious machine, a dead body in the next room—...

The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.

When electricity hangs in the air so thick the moon and stars fizzle and drown in a sea of light, the people living within it, breathing it in, can never be “normal”. From disfigured mutants accidentally murdering god to a man falling madly in love with a bloodthirsty VCR, we promise you’ve never listened to anything as bizarre as this! In these six tales, Pauley explores the lives of those living in the darkest corners of the world, those living electric: Goddamn Electric Nights.

"Dancers in the Dark" is set in the Sookieverse and features Sean and Layla. Dancer Layla Rue Le May's childhood prepared her to handle just about anything, including her aloof partner, Sean McClendon, a 300-year-old, redheaded vampire. Even so, when she somehow acquires a stalker, Layla Rue is surprised to find that Sean is the only one she can trust.

Chizmar assembles 35 stories, including a previously unpublished novella, and presents us with A Long December. This massive new collection features more than 150,000 words of Chizmar's very best short fiction and includes 8,000 words of autobiographical story notes. Eerie, suspenseful, poignant, the stories in A Long December range from horror to suspense, crime to dark fantasy, mainstream to mystery.

Monday's Child is Fair of Face Cara Martinez's life at Helix Tech has been an endless procession of days. For six years, she's endured the monotony of her basement office job—until one blood-soaked Monday shatters her world. Stalked through fluorescent-lit corridors by a shapeshifting creature of otherworldly beauty and dark horror, Cara is thrust into a deadly game where she's both prey and unwitting player. As she fights for her life, she uncovers sinister secrets lurking beneath Helix Tech's polished facade. But with each narrow escape and pulse-pounding encounter, she senses an ...

Tom is fascinated with bones, human bones. He wants to study them and gets his chance when Mr. Dukes allows him to dig in the vacant lot behind his store. What Tom unearths makes the neighborhood kids tremble with fear. "Ally ally oxen free!" These four little words can bring anyone out of hiding.

A hospice chaplain helps patients cross over to the other side.

~ Sometimes all it takes is the right person in our…AfterLife. ~ In this romance with comedy, a man purchases an abandoned farmhouse in a tax sale unaware it’s haunted by the woman…ahhhhh…ghost that will become the love of his life and he the love of her AfterLife and together bring the man who murdered her to justice as only a Trans Spectral, TSP, couple can.

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft's harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were when first released.