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.

When Ariadne helped Theseus escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth with the aid of a ball of thread, she led the way for the bewildered victims of a twenty-first century Minotaur. Trapped in an endless maze of Internet chat rooms, a group of mystified strangers find themselves assigned obscure aliases and commanded by the Helmet of Horror, the Minotaur himself.

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...

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.

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 order to get away from the married doctor she had fallen in love with, Susan Moore took a job as a private psychiatric nurse on Sanctuary Island, at Duncarlie Castle. The castle had been brought over stone by stone from Scotland and people said it wasn't haunted.... But if there were no ghosts, there were tragedies that still held sway over the castle and its inhabitants. And Sanctuary Island was a sanctuary only for the birds who lived there, watched over by the enigmatic Park Ranger, Ross Hunter.

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.

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.

'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.

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...

From the author of the horror classic Night of the Living Dead. Tiffany Blake was a beautiful dancer with a glorious future and the backing of a rich benefactor. Then a monstrous accident severed her leg at the hip. Now, the ballerinas are disappearing without a trace. One by one, they fall victim to a dark and deadly pattern of evil - caught by a psycho that would have them pay with their lovely bodies for the cruel fate of another...victims of a madman whose flashing knife will make them writhe a gruesome new dance.

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.

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.'