There are Things - terrifying Things - whispered of in darkened forests beyond the safe comfort of firelight: The Black Guide, the Broken Ouroboros, the Pageant, Belphegor, Old Leech... These Things have always been here. They predate you. They will outlast you. This book pays tribute to those Things. For We are the Children of Old Leech... and we love you.
There are Things - terrifying Things - whispered of in darkened forests beyond the safe comfort of firelight: The Black Guide, the Broken Ouroboros, the Pageant, Belphegor, Old Leech... These Things have always been here. They predate you. They will outlast you. This book pays tribute to those Things. For We are the Children of Old Leech... and we love you.
Introduction by Paul Tremblay Publishers Weekly top ten list for most anticipated horror/Scifi Fall 2016 releases. Laird Barron’s fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and giallo-fueled nightmare vistas. All hell breaks loose in a massive apartment complex when a modern day Jack the Ripper strikes under cover of a blizzard; a woman, famous for surviving a massacre, hits the road to flee the limelight and finds her misadventures have only begun; while tracking a missing B-movie actor, a team of man hunters crashes in the Yukon Delta and soon realize the Arctic is another name for hell; an atomic-powered cyborg war dog loyally assists his master in the overthrow of a far-future dystopian empire; following an occult initiation ritual, a man is stalked by a psychopathic sorority girl and her team of horrifically disfigured henchmen; a rich lunatic invites several high school classmates to his mansion for a night of sex, drugs, and CIA-funded black ops experiments; and other glimpses into occulted realities a razor’s slice beyond our own. Combining hardboiled noir, psychological horror, and the occult, Swift to Chase continues three-time Shirley Jackson Award winner Barron’s harrowing inquiry into the darkness of the human heart.
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.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." --H. P. LOVECRAFT, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" Howard Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. His chilling mythology established a gateway between the known universe and an ancient dimension of otherworldly terror, whose unspeakable denizens and monstrous landscapes--dread Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, the Plateau of Leng, the Mountains of Madness--have earned him a permanent place in the history of the macabre. In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of horror and fantasy's finest authors pay tribute to the master of the macabre with a collection of original stories set in the fearsome Lovecraft tradition: ¸ The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: The slumbering monster-gods return to the world of mortals. ¸ Notebook Found in a Deserted House by Robert Bloch: A lone farmboy chronicles his last stand against a hungering backwoods evil. ¸ Cold Print by Ramsey Campbell: An avid reader of forbidden books finds a treasure trove of deadly volumes--available for a bloodcurdling price. ¸ The Freshman by Philip José Farmer: A student of the black arts receives an education in horror at notorious Miskatonic University. PLUS EIGHTEEN MORE SPINE-TINGLING TALES!
Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions. Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-U.S. senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn't sure it wasn't, but one final look may bring his sister peace. So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them. At the epicenter of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose. . . .
"Chick Bassist is utterly savage. Lockhart's style waxes poetic as a modern Beat giving us a glimpse into Rock & Roll hell." - Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Occultation and The Croning Erin Locke, the Queen of Rock, wakes up at the crack of noon. "La Cucaracha" has infested her dream, and now echoes through her hotel room. "What the fuck is that?" Erin's voice is muffled by the thick blankets that completely cover her. Beside the lump that is Erin lies a black Ibanez bass guitar. A Heroes for Goats sticker adorns its reflective surface. Erin thrusts one arm out from beneath the blankets and fumbles for the nonexistent alarm clock. She's still slogging off fragments of her dream, that goddamn recurrent creep-out where she's a praying mantis, translucent green, perched on the crest of a burning city, devouring her still-copulating preymate. This time her meal had worn her father's face. Those dreams were the worst. Chick Bassist welcomes you into punk rock hell, the friendless disillusionment of waking up in a shitty motel room in California with half a joint and an empty six-pack, radio blaring Lou Reed, concrete ocean on all sides and a blazing inferno within.
The Cthulhu Mythos is one of the 20th century's most singularly recognizable literary creations. Initially created by H. P. Lovecraft and a group of his amorphous contemporaries (the so-called "Lovecraft Circle"), The Cthulhu Mythos story cycle has taken on a convoluted, cyclopean life of its own. Some of the most prodigious writers of the 20th century, and some of the most astounding writers of the 21st century have planted their seeds in this fertile soil. The Book of Cthulhu harvests the weirdest and most corpulent crop of these modern mythos tales. From weird fiction masters to enigmatic rising stars, The Book of Cthulhu demonstrates how Mythos fiction has been a major cultural meme throughout the 20th century, and how this type of story is still salient, and terribly powerful today.
Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti. His stories have garnered critical acclaim and been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was the inaugural winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He returns with his second collection, Occultation. Pitting ordinary men and women against a carnivorous, chaotic cosmos, Occultation's eight tales of terror (two never before published) include the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated story "The Forest" and Shirley Jackson Award nominee "The Lagerstatte." Featuring an introduction by Michael Shea, Occultation brings more of the spine-chillingly sublime cosmic horror Laird Barron's fans have come to expect.
The last year of elementary school is big for every kid. In this novel, equal parts funny and crushing, utterly honest and perfect for boys and girls alike, Christine Gouda faces change at every turn, starting with her own nickname—Tink—which just doesn't fit anymore. Readers will relate to this strong female protagonist whose voice rings with profound authenticity and absolute novelty, and her year's cringingly painful trials in normalcy—uncomfortable Halloween costumes, premature sleepover parties, crushed crushes, and changing friendships. Throughout all this, Tink learns, what you call yourself, and how you do it, has a lot to do with who you are. This book marks beloved author Karen Romano Young's masterful return to children's literature: a heartbreakingly honest account of what it means to be between girl and woman, elementary and middle school, inside and out—and just what you name that in-between self.