RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES As the world frets over a rash of clown sightings, Elle Bourdain laughs. After being hired by a movie studio to promote the upcoming horror film, CLOWN, Elle starts an advanced advertising campaign. Her agency hires actors in dozens of metropolitan areas to dress like clowns and frighten people. The campaign goes viral as schools shutdown, children refuse to play outside, and adult paranoia skyrockets. Elle basks in the glory of her professional victory… until she encounters a horrifying clown of her own. And then the laughter stops.
Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life. Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee
Thirty-five creepy stories about pigeons, ancient predators, Girl Scouts, and other terrifying things. Includes author's notes on how he got his ideas for these stories.
A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns. From the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is drawn into their haunting, fantastical world. This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story. With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.
Enter the most terrifying place of all...the mind of R.L. Stine! The Nightmare Hour...the time when the lights fade, the real world slips into shadow, and the cold, moonlit world of evil dreams takes over your mind. What horror awaits a boy who has to spend Halloween in a darkened hospital? How do you outwit a ghost who wants your skin? What makes Nightmare Inn the most frightening place to visit? In this spine-tingling collection of stories that inspired the hit TV show R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, bestselling author R.L. Stine spins a web of terror that will trap you in the world of nightmares. And there’s more... In Nightmare Hour, the author shares the secrets behind his twisted tales. Where did the idea for each bone-chilling story come from?
A long-out-of-print classic by a master of underground comics In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the much-lauded Paying For It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Chester Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist. Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape. The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and, as with every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.
“Carlton Mellick III goes past silly, through weird, detours around dumb, blasts through bizarre, and gets to a place where the normal physics of narrative no longer apply. You will never be the same.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and Homeland In a topsy-turvy world where clowns are killers and crooks, Little Bigtop is a three-ring circus of crime, and no syndicate is more dangerous than the Binzo family. From the wildly original mind of Carlton Mellick III comes the short-story collection ClownFellas—an epic mob saga where life is cheap and the gags will slay you. For years, the hard-boiled capos of the Binzo family have run all of the funny business in Little Bigtop, from the clown brothels to the illegal comedy trade. But hard times have befallen the Binzos now that Le Mystère, the French clown Mafia, has started moving in and trying to take over the city. If that weren’t enough, they’ve got to deal with the cops, the Feds, the snitches, the carnies, the mysterious hit man Mr. Pogo, and the mutant clowns over in the Sideshow district. With the odds stacked against them, the Binzos must fight to survive . . . or die laughing. Praise for ClownFellas “Mario Puzo meets Barnum & Bailey . . . You just can’t look away as the ridiculousness escalates.”—Publishers Weekly “The most original novelist working today? The most outrageous? The most unpredictable? These aren’t easy superlatives to make; however, Carlton Mellick may well be all of those things, behind a canon of books that all irreverently depart from the form and concepts of traditional novels, and adventure the reader into a howling, dark fantasyland of the most bizarre, over-the-top, and mind-warping inventiveness. In my opinion, ClownFellas is his best work to date.”—Edward Lee, author of City Infernal and Header “I rarely enjoy clowns—which is ironic since I’ve been one for over four decades—but ClownFellas is great on so many levels, irony being one of them. What can I say besides I love it! Great read, and funny as hell . . . I have been accused of being unfunny before, and after the trial I had to enter the Witless Protection Program. This is funny!”—Barry Lubin, aka Grandma, longtime Big Apple Circus clown “If Martin Scorsese and Ronald McDonald had a baby, this would be it. . . . Each story is clever, multi-layered, and filled with witty dialogue. . . . A must-read.”—This Is Horror “Mellick’s writing is wonderfully descriptive and wildly imaginative. . . . I was utterly delighted, amused, and engrossed. . . . ClownFellas is a gem!”—The Qwillery “A rollercoaster ride through a strange world that borders on our own reality . . . a story that is just as difficult to define as it is to put down.”—Examiner.com “Mellick has created another amazing read. . . . Highly recommended.”—Kitty Horror
These fierce, funny and feminist short stories shine with everyday heroines at work and at play. Ordinary lives are transformed as women try to be themselves while clowning around for others. Captured in familiar situations as well as in flights of fancy, the women in these stories are engaged in acts of self-preservation: they are exhilarated to discover the joy and surprise of other women's company, they make bold sexual choices, they go on a night-time excursions; as grandmothers, they give their grandchildren unsuitable presents. In one story, a young woman and her mother harness their creativity to express their horror at the world around them. In another, a teenage mother struggles with her feelings for the father of her child. One of the tales follows a woman who experiences the freedom of the workplace while another shows how imprisoning it can be. Compassionate, unexpected, and full of small triumphs in the face of adversity, this collection establishes Hannah Vincent as one of the freshest voices in contemporary fiction.
A former professor offers film critic Simon the chance of a lifetime—to write a book on one of the greatest long-lost comedians of the silent-film era, Tubby Thackeray. Simon is determined to find out the truth behind the jolly fat man's disappearance from film—and from the world. Tubby's work carries the unmistakable stamp of the macabre. People literally laughed themselves to death during his performances. Soon, wherever Simon goes, laughter—and a clown's wide, threatening grin—follow. Is Simon losing his mind? Or is Tubby Thackeray waiting for him to open the door back to the world? Ramsey Campbell has won a dozen British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards and three Bram Stoker Awards. A new Campbell novel is an opportunity to delight in the craftsmanship of an extraordinary writer. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Creepy clowns are everywhere, sighted all over the world. They are watching YOUR children. Why?Put your best face on... The circus is coming to town!A creepy clown stares at a young boy from the woods next to his grade school. The boy tells his father. The father wants to get to the bottom of it. Who are they? What do they want? Questions he never should have asked... The answers are here. This is the terrifying story of a desperate father, a simple medicated "beauty lotion," a secret clinical study at a big Pharmaceutical company north of Chicago, and how SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS changed MY life forever. Nothing will be the same again, for me OR for you. Creepy Clowns: Who are they? What do they want? The answer is as clear as the big red nose on your face.
