Esther isn't afraid of anything - because she avoids pretty much everything. Elevators are off limits, as are open spaces, crowds, family pets, birds, needles, haircuts, dolls and mirrors. But when Esther is pickpocketed by her cocky old classmate Jonah Walker, Esther and Jonah become surprising friends. Jonah sets a challenge: every week they must work their way through the world's 50 most common phobias. Skydiving, horse riding, beekeeping, public speaking, reptile houses - they plan to do it all. 

A man determined to kill a clown. A child's eleventh birthday heralds the arrival of a bizarre new entourage. A suicidal performer just can't seem to die. All of these weird marvels and more can be found at the Nightmare Carnival!

Jay adores his small daughter, Bonnie, and nothing matters more to him than being a good father. But Bonnie's traumatic birth puts an unbearable strain on his marriage with Shauna, and the couple eventually separate. Struggling to cope with the separation from three-year-old Bonnie, Jay thinks constantly of his own mother, whom he hasn't seen since he fled Ireland a decade before.

This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but with a whisper - a whisper of wings! Death has come out of Africa in the form of swarms of vicious African flies. A living plague, these monstrous bugs cannot be battled like some ordinary disease. Medical science is unable to prevent the deadly autoimmune reaction caused by the bite of these insects. Across the world, billions are dead and more are constantly dying. Governments are falling everywhere, and civilization is collapsing.

Within Strange Tales you will find 22 weirdly twisted stories. Some will frighten, others will shock, but all will stay with you long after the final sentence has finished. If you love the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Tales From the Crypt, or Tales from the Darkside then feel free to come closer and begin. Who knows what you might find?

Ophelia Lang needs money, and she needs it bad. Her parents' restaurant is going under, and ever since she lost her job teaching third grade elementary, scraping enough cash together to pay the bills has proven almost impossible. Her parents are on the brink of losing their home. The vultures are circling overhead. So when Ophelia is offered an interview for a well-paid private tutoring gig in New York, how can she possibly say no?

If war is madness, how can love survive? Growing up in the borderlands between Croatia and Serbia, Miro's blissful childhood is shattered when his best friend is horribly wounded by a land mine, a legacy of conflicts gone by. Moving to the Dalmatian coast, where his parents start a small hotel, he thinks he has left this all behind - he falls in love and starts a family with his childhood sweetheart, Dina.

American Maggie Monroe is a journalist for New York's hard-hitting current affairs show Newsline. Independent and fearless, the more cutting-edge the story, the happier she is. But when her next assignment turns out to be an in-depth documentary on the decline of England's ruling classes, she's furious at being sent to cover a bloody tea party.

Anti, a quiet English boy living in Quito, Ecuador, strikes up a friendship with flamboyant classmate Fabian, who is everything Anti isn't: handsome, athletic, and popular. What's more, he lives with his rakish Uncle Suarez, while Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents. Suarez, a storyteller par excellence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales, and before long their relationship becomes one conducted entirely through the medium of storytelling.

Shadows at the Door Publishing brings you 13 chilling tales inspired by the ghastly, the ghoulish, and the macabre. Landmarks stained in death, spectres lurking outside, old legends rising from the dark, these stories bring unique and chilling horrors from around the world. Immerse yourself in the eerie locales of Durham, Norfolk, Derbyshire, Rugby, the Scottish Highlands, Montreal, Pennsylvania, New York, Lake Superior, Rural Yorkshire, East Sussex, and the darker corners of southern England.

This volume brings together 17 masterful tales of cosmic horror inspired by Lovecraft's work. In his fiction, humanity is a tiny, accidental drop of light and life in the endless darkness of an uncaring universe a darkness populated by vast, utterly alien horrors. Our continued survival relies upon our utter obscurity, something that every fresh scientific wonder threatens to shatter.

Zimbabwe, 1980s. The war is over, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. It is the start of a promising new era. For Robert Jacklin, it's all new: new continent, new country, new school. And very quickly he learns that for some of his classmates, the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on...

In the hushed aftermath of a total eclipse, Laura witnesses a brutal attack. She and her boyfriend, Kit, call the police, and in that moment it is not only the victim's life that is changed forever. Fifteen years on, Laura and Kit live in fear. And while Laura knows she was right to speak out, the events that follow have taught her that you can never see the whole picture: something - and someone - is always in the dark....

Bodies surface and disappear, seduce and corrupt in these original stories by best-selling, award-winning female crime writers. Keep your eyes peeled, your ears cocked and your wits about you as 20 deliciously twisted tales take you to surprising places....

Run away, one drowsy summer's afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict. Over six decades, the consequences of a moment's impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family's survival....