Small Horrors

Five friends. One vengeful plan. A carnival that knows their darkest secrets. When Lila Moran and her four friends crash on a lonely road, they are trapped in a nightmare where every ride is a test and every game holds deadly stakes. But this is no ordinary carnival—it’s a twisted venue where secrets must be confessed and lies are paid for in blood. A grinning Ringmaster whispers their darkest deeds out loud. Sweet-talking Miss Ruby runs a motel where no one sleeps peacefully. And a silent Strong Man makes sure there’s no escape. As her friends face deadly challenges one by one, Lila ...

A glimpse of eight-year-old Ivor in a pretty market town inspires young artist Gemma Palmer to write and illustrate a children’s book. Gemma next meets Ivor when she is 29 and he 16. They become lovers, to the consternation of Gemma’s friends…for the real Ivor is quite different from the sunny character she turned him into in her much-loved books. Lurking in the secret places of his heart are impulses that are dangerous and malign. It can only be a matter of time before they are released, ready to strike. But when? Where? At whom?

A TOWN ON THE EDGE OF THE UNKNOWN. A WOMAN ON THE BRINK OF SANITY. A DARKNESS THAT WILL NOT BE CONTAINED. On a quiet Halloween night in 1957, Jimmy Ray Barton and his pregnant wife, Sharon Rose, encounter something beyond their comprehension—a glowing green cloud that drags their truck off the road and sets off a horrifying chain of events. By morning, Jimmy Ray is dead, Sharon’s memories are shattered, and her sanity hangs by a thread. Was it an accident, a crime of passion, or the work of something otherworldly? But Sharon isn’t the only one in Clairton, Pennsylvania, struggling ...

She thought she had escaped the past. She was wrong . . .16-year-old Kitty has worked hard to get her life back on track after years of traumatic abuse at the hands of her stepfather. And with the support of her boyfriend Aaron and her best friend Lexi, she really starts to believe she can put the past behind her for good. Until girls at her school start getting assaulted. Someone is stalking and targeting her friends one by one. The local sheriff has no idea who the attacker is or how to find him. Which means Kitty must try to discover the identity of this masked serial rapist herself, ...

On a 10-year mission to avenge the brutal sacrifice of her man by Stargut, the local sheriff, himself on a mission to create the perfect man-beast, Lovey, abandoned by her spellbound friend Patty, is joined by a stranger. Tom is a preacher of sorts who has followed the scent of evil for a hundred years. He mysteriously appears in the village of Wrong, a rural Midwestern town, its mutant inhabitants mere creations of the devil lawman. Together, the three converge under the moon into the wood down by the river at the doorsteps of hell.

Trigger warning.That’s what the front entrance should say. Instead, it lies the same way the outsiders do. Week after week, it cheerfully ushers unsuspecting loved ones and visitors to the registration desk where they’ll sign day passes to visit us: the broken girls. The lost. The forgotten. The damaged. The twisted. Every Saturday—Sundays on holidays too—outsiders will visit with no clue what really goes on in the place they’ve sent us to where nothing ever changes. With dull eyes and plastic smiles, we’ll nod, grin, and take their hopeful offerings of trinkets from a deceitful...

Have you ever wondered why winning lottery tickets always seem to be purchased in a small town in the middle of nowhere? Nadine did more than wonder. Unhappy with the way her life turned out and desperate for a change, she devises a plan to travel to a remote town that appears to pay out lottery winnings every week. Her lackadaisical husband Sam is hesitant at first (which irritates the hell out of Nadine) but then joins her on a trip that will surely change their lives. W

Shipwrecks are part of life in the remote village of Porthmorvoren, Cornwall. And as the sea washes the bodies of the drowned onto the beach, it also brings treasures: barrels of liquor, exotic fruit, the chance to lift a fine pair of boots from a corpse, maybe even a jewel or two. When, after a fierce storm, Mary Blight rescues a man half dead from the sea, she ignores the whispers of her neighbours and carries him home to nurse better. Gideon Stone is a Methodist minister from Newlyn, a married man.

It is difficult to combine mysticism with humor, but Alexander Grin takes on the challenge and comes out with flying colors. For all its mystical and mythical references, An Incident at the Apartment of Madam Cerize, is quite a heartwarming story, giving all of us some hope that, sometimes, powers that be do care.

Frank Whelan is the seventh son of a seventh son, so by now, he should have inherited his father’s legendary healing power but still hasn’t managed to graduate beyond small-time skin afflictions. He already feels adrift when his twin, Bernie, reveals a life-changing decision that calls into question everything Frank thought he knew about his place in the family. And then he discovers his father had been keeping secrets of his own. And so Frank turns to an unlikely source for guidance and finds himself on a quest for answers...from this world and the next.

This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback - a desolate place of gas stations and fast-food franchises: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: The ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape.

Small Bites is a collection of 14 short stories of the paranormal, horror, science fiction and fantasy. Each a tale of curiosity, hunger, longing, fear and love.

The Addisons - Julia and Tonio, 10-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie - are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet another trip to rehab. When a terrifying blizzard strikes outside the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge in the town at the Travelers Rest, a formerly opulent but now crumbling and eerie hotel where the physical laws of the universe are bent.

A Mysterious Incident at the Mental Institution is a spooky, chilling tale from Nikolai Leskov based on a true incident.

Penny and Hattie are sisters in a small town, bound tight to the point of knots. They share a secret they cannot escape, even while it pulls them apart. One night, a match is lit, and Penny's terrible husband is killed - a marriage going up in flames and offering the potential of a new life. The sisters retreat into their family home, a house of secrets and memories, and try to live in the shadow of what they put in motion. But Penny's husband is not the only thing they are hiding - both from the outside world and from each other.

In Ireland, in the Spring of 1881, a new pastor by the name of Reverend Gabriel Proctor is appointed to lead the people of the town of Brackley on the path to salvation. However, upon his arrival, he becomes smitten by the beauty of his young housekeeper, Eloise. His devotion to her become a dangerous obsession which brings him into conflict with the local RIC inspector, Abraham Gault.

An isolated Welsh island seemed like the perfect escape for a convict on the run, a jilted woman, and a policeman seeking a quiet life. When the surly locals turn to murderous violence, the three visitors are forced to flee together, trying to stay one step ahead of their increasingly insane pursuers. The bad news keeps coming. There are too many to fight. There is no escape from the island. And the worst storm in years has just begun. They can only run and hide as they face a night of horror and madness. If they don't work together, then none of them will live to see the light of day.

Alexander Grin is known for his strange and chilling tales, and this one is certainly one of the oddest of them all. The author would like us to consider what would happen if a creation not only outsmarted its creator but became truly dangerous.

Married couple Jack and Ali Gardiner move to a self-sufficient spiritual commune in the English Fens, desperate for fresh start. The local village is known for the witches who once resided there, and Rosalind House, where the commune has been established, is a former psychiatric home, with a disturbing history. When Jack and Ali arrive, a chain of unexpected and unexplained events is set off, and it becomes clear that they are not all that they seem. As the residents become twitchy, and the villagers suspicious, events from the past come back to haunt them, and someone is seeking retribution....

Years after the Salem witch trials one witch remains. She just doesn’t know it...yet. Growing up, Lydia Montrose knew she was descended from the legendary witches of Salem but was warned to never show the world what she could do and so slowly forgot her legacy. But Willow Hall has awoken something inside her.... 1821: having fled family scandal in Boston, Willow Hall seems an idyllic refuge from the world, especially when Lydia meets the previous owner of the house, John Barrett. But a subtle menace haunts the grounds of Willow Hall, with strange voices and ghostly apparitions in the night....