Literary Horror

THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A gripping, sinister folktale set in contemporary Cumbria for fans of Sophie Mackintosh, Angela Carter, Daisy Johnson, Margaret Atwood and Julia Armfield 'A new generation of literary horror begins with Lucy Rose' GENEVIEVE JAGGER 'Deliciously dark and shockingly...

Brought to you by Penguin. Discover the dazzling new queer literary horror novel about chosen family and the risks it takes to become the person you want to be. A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong? It’s the summer of...

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

Whether they are undeniably heroes and heroines or bloodthirsty monsters (or something in between), the undead are a lively lot. This anthology offers some of the best short fiction ever written by the "blood sisters" who know them best: stories you can really sink your teeth into.

In September 1913, a young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills.

England 1321: Deep in the countryside lies an isolate village governed by a sinister regime of Owl Masters. But their dark status quo is disturbed by the arrival of a house of religious women. Why do their crops succeed when village crops fail, their cattle survive despite the plague? Accusations of witchcraft and heresy run rife, while the Owl Masters rain down hellfire and torment on the women, who must look to their faith to save them from the lengthening shadow of evil... a shadow with predatory, terrifying talons.

He lives in solitude beneath the city, an exile from society, which will destroy him if he is ever seen. She dwells in seclusion, a fugitive from enemies who will do her harm if she is ever found. But the bond between them runs deeper than the tragedies that have scarred their lives. Something more than chance - and nothing less than destiny - has brought them together in a world whose hour of reckoning is fast approaching.

Brought to you by Penguin. In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. For as long as they can remember, Evelyn and Lily have only had each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know...

A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men: Of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short-story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration.

Whether for entertainment, under the guise of medicine, or to propel consumerism, heinous acts are perpetrated daily on women’s bodies. In Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, award-winning journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore catalogs the global toll of capitalism on our physical autonomy. Weaving together unflinching research and surprising humor, these essays range from investigative—probing the Cambodian garment industry, the history of menstrual products, or the gender biases of patent law—to uncomfortably intimate.

In Dark Property, a woman carries a dying baby across a desert waste, moving toward a fortress harboring a mysterious resurrection cult. Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. In Contagion and Other Stories, Evenson takes his audiences into a world that is at once apocalyptic, dark, observant, and grotesque without ever dipping into static genre conventions.

'Most lighthouses are a promise of sanctuary. My lighthouse is a threat.' The beam from Guinevere's lighthouse fends off the horrors lurking in the ocean surrounding the isolated Ynys Halen. Guin has one job: keep the light on. So, when Guin slips up, monsters are free to ravage the island and...

Fourteen years ago, deep in the steamy backwoods of Georgia, a 12-year-old girl is bound and ritually tortured. The details of the crime are bizarre, and the few citizens of Lucerne who know the shocking truth of the crime keep it secret. Now, a young orphan boy arrives in the sleepy town and in the dark woods something inhuman stirs in the "snake well". An ancient hunger has awakened. Soft voices call out from the dark forest, drifting over the bayou, echoing in the crawl spaces. The townsfolks' darkest nightmares stalk the moonlit streets.

After the suicide of his uncle, Lucas Heathfield inherits Stoneborough Manor in Oxfordshire. He imagines it as a place where he and his tight-knit group of friends can spend time away from London. But from the beginning, the house changes everything. It begins to have a strange effect on Lucas and he becomes haunted by the death of his uncle, obsessed by ciné films of his uncle's friends at Stoneborough 30 years earlier. Within the claustrophobic confines of the house over a hot, decadent summer, secrets slide out of the past and sexual tensions escalate, shattering the group's friendship and changing their lives irrevocably.

Surprise, you’re dead! This hilarious and moving novel follows a couple forced into unthinkable challenges when, after dying in a plane crash, they find themselves in the lowest tier of heaven, filled with laughter and dread, fear and acceptance, and family bonds even death can't break...

“Narrator Ina Barrón arrives at the mic fully formed, providing a notable performance of distinct characterizations.”—Booklist From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” —The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her...

Many creatures lurk in the dark, weaving on top of one another, roiling together like waves on the night sea. The darkness forms in layers to encompass the land, fill the corners, and obscure angles. Untold mysteries lie just beyond reach told in many tongues, many inflections, many rhythms. The stories are many. Innumerable. Legion.

The five stories that made up R.B. Russell's debut collection, Putting the Pieces in Place, were described on first publication as demonstrating 'a subtle mastery of the macabre. Enigmatic and enticing, they combine a pleasing respect for the great tradition of supernatural fiction with a chilling contemporary European resonance.'

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole...

October 13, 1518; Somerset, England: Eight women are accused of witchcraft and heresy. Using the Malleus Maleficarum, Magistrate Peter Haystead and Father Samuel seek their own brand of justice against the women. This religious fanaticism is plenteous for torture and condemnation of such women, though it is the action of the leaders that creates the very witchcraft that they condemn.