Showing results by author "John Lees" in Literature & Fiction

In this incredible follow-up to the New York Times and USA Today best seller FaceOff, 22 of the world's most popular thriller writers come together for an unforgettable anthology. MatchUp takes the never-before-seen best seller pairings of FaceOff and adds a delicious new twist: gender. Eleven of the world's best female thriller writers, from Diana Gabaldon to Charlaine Harris, are paired with 11 of the world's best male thriller writers.

John has been training the mythical mathematical creatures known as actuaries for nearly 20 years. Join John as he tries to help recalcitrant student actuaries pass their professional exams armed with nothing but a copy of the actuarial tables and a sense of humor. Experience his Basil Fawlty-like antics as he strives to maximize the likelihood of socially awkward actuaries being able to survive in the “normal” world.

Six-foot-9 and 400 pounds, hailing from parts unknown, he is the one-man walking gore machine of the Deep South Wrestling Conference, and his name is Goon. But Detective Phillip Straker isn't a wrestling fan. The bodies pile up like dirty laundry: sex-obsessed tramps used as playthings by some unspeakable creature. Straker is determined to solve the rash of mutilation murders with trimmings that beg description. Is it just coincidence, or do all the victims have something in common?

Before the Age of Monsters, there was Monster Island. Top-secret habitat for genetically-resurrected dinosaurs. But something has gone terribly wrong. Somehow, the beasts have escaped – first there were scattered sightings worldwide – then people went missing. But now a pleasure-cruise shipwrecked on a tropical beach has discovered an entire savage prehistoric jungle.

These stories represent decades of collaboration between author David Niall Wilson and a wide array of talented authors. All have been professionally published - some have been reprinted and collected. All are the result of two muses meeting on paper. Meet a modern day Don Quixote, fighting Y2K bug nightmares, and striving to save the woman of his dreams. Learn how Edgar Allen Poe might have found his tales. Face off on a lonely mountaintop with Lovecraftian nightmares.

Man-eating crocodiles have invaded the Everglades. In a desperate effort to save lives, Ranger Daniel Reid has partnered with Gator Glades reptile park to trap and remove the invasive hybrids. But crocs breed in high numbers, and park director Jen Summers predicts an ecological disaster. Abigail O'Neil has returned home, just ahead of a past come back to haunt her. A man named Colin Mason is coming to settle a score, and he is privy to the darkest secrets of Abigail's life—her crocodile-infested home has now been invaded by a monster more cold-blooded than any reptile.

The island nation of Ferranda is the jewel of the Acrarian Kingdom, and its Founder, Aritz a Mata, is revered as a god amongst men. But twenty-five years ago, Aritz was merely a man, a colonizer, an Invader seeking glory and fame in the name of his King and Queen, and Ferranda was a nameless union of indigenous Tribes, reverent of the heightened powers and aptitudes granted to them by their Animal Deities, but sundered by the foreigners claiming their lands to the south.

Once upon a time, Dinosaurs ruled the Earth. But the Mesozoic era – the Age of Reptiles – came to its cataclysmic end sixty-five million years ago. The Age of Monsters begins tonight. And the world of humankind will crumble. Some will call it Judgment. Some will attempt to fight. Others will simply run. Most will just try and survive. But no one will escape. In the mountains. In the oceans. In the cities and towns. Even up in space.

Maternal love takes a sinister turn, when a young man discovers that his mother is not quite what she seems. An ancient legend looms over a local street, as the neighborhood children search for their missing friends. And a woman awakens to the ultimate nightmare, after her bad taste in men leads to a horrifying predicament.…

Edward Lee and John Pelan have cooked up yet another tasty treat. They will whet your appetite with a delectable trip to the Pacific Northwest in search of the rare Crackjaw Eel. This romp through the woods is flavored with inbred rednecks, sauced with generous helpings of sex, and topped with an ending thats sure to have food critics raving the world over. Only those with strong stomachs and a taste for heavy spice should attempt this meal.

The reticulated python is the largest and most dangerous of the giant constrictors – documented to swallow humans whole. But people still keep them as exotic pets. Frank has raised Buffy from a hatchling. She measures over twenty-four-feet and more than three-hundred pounds. She is Frank's pride-and-joy. She is also his secret – a black-market purchase, kept illegally – unbeknownst to his neighbors, who might fear for their pets... or their kids.

For centuries, legends have told of the Kraken - nightmarish, tentacled beasts, attacking ships, and devouring sailors. Now, they have arrived off the shores of Beach City. Researcher Travis Prescott has been hunting these elusive beasts for years. For reporter Ashley Wells, it is the story of a lifetime. For Professor Clyde Spencer, it is the culmination of a lifetime's search. And for the wealthy and connected Colin Mason, it is a new and deadly obsession. But for Beach City, it is the beginning of a nightmare. Sometimes legends are real.

When the ragged group of castaways stagger ashore, they think they are saved. Instead, they find themselves prey. But they are not alone in this lost world – and dragons are not the only predators. Reptilian savagery gives way to human nature – primal instinct becomes betrayal and murder – and they will all soon learn that sins of the past are never truly buried. But the lost world knows no judgment – and survival knows no sin. The dragons wait for them all. And they're hungry.

Doctor Jack Wright runs the Venom Lab, keeping mambas, cobras, and vipers of all kinds. He risks his life daily, extracting toxins directly from the fangs of the most venomous serpents in the world. But after a break-in at the lab, dozens of these deadly reptiles have escaped into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Scare Street is proud to present 14 diabolical new tales in this bone-chilling collection. Each ghastly short story unleashes a new nightmare, ripped from the depths of your psyche. It’s almost as if this book has a mind of its own; a monstrous, disturbed mind, a mind full of dark dreams, and twisted nightmares.

Cheerful in the face of dark opposition. Innovative to improve a backward world. Industrial as a cure for oppressive conditions. Unyielding beneath all who seek to bind and control them. Faithful until they conquer the fear of death and rise to great acts of heroism and service. Mormons and steampunks are two faces of the same coin. Twelve authors spin tales of true believers facing impossible odds, risking this life in the hope of gaining something better after.

Carson Sheridan has dedicated her life to shark conservation, but can't deny the horrific series of attacks that point unerringly to a massive Great White–all off the same beach–all at the same time of year. Great Whites in California are in historically large numbers and record sizes. But the waters off Surf Shore are particularly deadly, and Carson is about to discover why.

Crocodiles are born man-eaters. Given the opportunity, it is the one big predator that will go for you every single time. Two people have been killed inside a month, and now a monster croc has been captured – a hybrid – grown huge with 'hybrid-vigor' – and in the Everglades, a new and deadly invasive species – the most aggressive predator on the planet.

Few horror stories are as chilling as the ones written by Victorian writers. This collection of eight enduring stories, some well-known, others less familiar, carry you to all corners of the world where terrors lurk. Featuring work by H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edgar Allan Poe and Vernon Lee, experience the skin-crawling undead, a pestilence that leaves no one unaffected, imagined horrors that emerge from disturbed minds and others that require no imagination at all....

High in the ridges of Appalachia, Emily Child carries a secret that could kill her. Pregnant, but not in the way she dreamed of, her body has turned against her, and time is running out. While her husband searches in desperation, Emily follows an older trail: the half-forgotten path to the Isabella, the midwife who raised her, a woman whispered about in both reverence and fear. Guided by memory, folklore, and the voices of the hills themselves, Emily must navigate not only the dangers of her own failing body but also the haunting pull of a world where the line between healing and myth blurs.