When Alan Hammerstun inherits a quaint ranch house in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, he and his wife Heather seize the opportunity to leave New York and the haunting aftermath of two miscarriages. Eager to start over in the rural North Carolina town, they hope this new beginning will be the antidote to Heather's severe depression. For a time everything seems perfect. Too perfect, in fact.

The blizzard begins pummeling the Midwest on Christmas Eve, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Todd Curry doesn't need another reason to disappoint his son, so he joins three other people in renting the last four-wheel drive available and they set out into the blinding snow. Only two hours into the treacherous trip west, Todd swerves to avoid a man in the middle of the highway. The stranger claims his daughter is lost somewhere out in the snow.

In the fall of 1993, the quiet suburb of Harting Farms is shocked when children begin to vanish, and one is found dead near December Park - a great, sweeping expanse that is sunken below the streets and surrounded on three sides by vast woodlands, a place children believe is haunted. Newspapers call the abductor the Piper because he has come to lead children away, while kids whisper darker names for him in the school halls. Angelo Mazzone and his friends discover a link to the dead girl and take up the search for the killer.

The town of Stillwater has been dying - the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it - a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word - "vampire". But they're wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

Newly reissued from the "modern-day Algernon Blackwood" comes five terrifying collected horror novellas.

Four brand-new horror novellas all about books, stories, manuscripts—the written word has never had sharper teeth. In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers' Last Ride. In This Book Belongs to Olo, a lonely child has dangerous control over an usual pop-up book. A choose-your-own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story. Full of creepy suspense, these collected novellas are perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Stephen King, and Joe Hill.

For best-selling horror novelist Wilson Paventeau, the scariest novel of his career is the one he didn't write. It bears his name on the dust jacket and contains his bio near the end, but this enigmatic tome is not part of his oeuvre. And the most frightening thing about it may not be the tale between the covers, but the reason for its mysterious appearance in Paventeau's life.

Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife, Allison, is killed. Haunted by her absence - and her ghost - Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.

An 11-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

When two teenagers go missing from the small, rural town of Sallow Bend, the residents come together to search for them. Little do they suspect that finding the wayward girls will be the start of their problems. An old evil is rising, and only one man seems to realize that everyone is in danger and this is not the first time it’s happened. With the carnival in town, people want to have a good time, but for many, this will be the worst time of their lives.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee. Margaret is not most people. Margaret is staying.

Real estate agent Anthony Graham has his family on the run after witnessing a murder at the hands of the powerful Costello crime family. They’re forced to hide at one of Anthony’s properties, a deserted campground with a sinister past. No one is safe from the men that hunt them, or the terrors that await them inside The Devil’s Nest.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world. Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success.

It’s the house of their dreams. Former marine Harry and his wife, Sasha, have packed up their life and their golden retriever, Dash, and fled the corporate rat race to live off the land in rural Idaho. Their breathtaking new home sits on more than forty acres of meadow, aspen trees, and pine forest in the Teton Valley. Even if their friends and family think it’s a strange choice for an up-and-coming pair of urban professionals, Harry and Sasha couldn’t be happier about the future they’re building, all by their lonesome.

It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man.

There are things in the darkness, things much worse than the tracks and abandoned pieces of equipment that trip the children up and gash at their feet and legs, things that brush silently past them, touching their faces before disappearing again....

Alma Harper has been trying to forget what happened in Widowsfield 16 years ago. She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared. When a reporter shows up, just days before March 14th, Alma realizes that her past is coming back to haunt her. What happened on March 14th, at 3:14, 16 years ago? No one but The Skeleton Man can remember.

Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest. It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are ruthless, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.

After a sudden fire leaves Matt's senile and troubled grandmother homeless, she moves in with the family. Her ceaseless demands cause unrelieved tension - and with her comes a shameful secret about her daughters that traps Matt between a dead aunt who haunts him and his own mother, who seeks redemption for her sister's sins - and her own. Matt transforms from a gregarious teenager to a hostile loner prone to fits of rage - tortured by chilling memories and haunted by nightmares.

For more than three decades John Saul has haunted the New York Times best seller list - and listeners imaginations - with his chilling tales of psychological suspense and supernatural horror. His instinct for striking the deepest chords of fear in our hearts and minds is unerring, and his gift for steering a tale from the light of day into the darkest depths of nightmare is at its harrowing best in House of Reckoning.

A ghostly twist. Three nights of terror at the house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be victim of horrifying games. Three nights in which he will face the blood-chilling enigma of his own past. Three hideous nights before Edbrook's dreadful secret will be revealed...And the true nightmare will begin.to the surface, tormenting him, refusing to let him rest. The memory of what he once had been.

So young, so sweet. She appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of traffic, on a busy day. A teenager with no past, no family - no memories. So blond and beautiful. Carol and Paul were drawn to her - she was the child they’d never had. A dream come true. And then Carol’s nightmares began - the ghastly sounds in the night…the bloody face in the mirror…the razor-sharp ax.

Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, 10-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire.

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Frank Pollard awakens in an alley, knowing nothing but his name - and that he is in great danger. Having taken refuge in a motel, he wakes again only to find his hands covered in blood. As far as he knows, he's no killer. But whose blood is this, and how did it get there?

Following the death of his 10-year-old son, physician Peter Croft embarks on a desperate, seemingly random search for a missing child, risking his sanity, even his life in a grief-induced quest. His journey propels him into the darkest reaches of human suffering and pits him squarely against an adversary whose own obsession defies all reason.

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them - not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain.

Thomas Usher has a terrible gift. Following a car crash in which his wife and daughter are killed, he can see the recently departed, and it's not usually a pretty sight. When he is called to investigate the violent death of the daughter of a prominent local gangster, Usher's world is torn apart once more. For the barriers between this world and the next are not as immutable as once he believed.

Lyra's story begins in the Haven Institute, a building tucked away on a private island off the coast of Florida that from a distance looks serene and even beautiful. But up close, the locked doors, military guards, and biohazard suits tell a different story. In truth Haven is a clandestine research facility where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed. When a surprise attack is launched on Haven, two of its young experimental subjects - Lyra, or 24, and the boy known only as 72 - manage to escape.

A new mother is pursued by mysterious men in black. A misguided youth learns the dark secrets of the world from an elderly neighbor on Halloween night. A housewarming party where the guests never leave. A caretaker tends to his rusted relic of a god deep in the desert.... In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi's debut collection is not to be missed.

When Alan Hammerstun inherits a quaint ranch house in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, he and his wife Heather seize the opportunity to leave New York and the haunting aftermath of two miscarriages. Eager to start over in the rural North Carolina town, they hope this new beginning will be the antidote to Heather's severe depression. For a time everything seems perfect. Too perfect, in fact.

In the fall of 1993, the quiet suburb of Harting Farms is shocked when children begin to vanish, and one is found dead near December Park - a great, sweeping expanse that is sunken below the streets and surrounded on three sides by vast woodlands, a place children believe is haunted. Newspapers call the abductor the Piper because he has come to lead children away, while kids whisper darker names for him in the school halls. Angelo Mazzone and his friends discover a link to the dead girl and take up the search for the killer.

For best-selling horror novelist Wilson Paventeau, the scariest novel of his career is the one he didn't write. It bears his name on the dust jacket and contains his bio near the end, but this enigmatic tome is not part of his oeuvre. And the most frightening thing about it may not be the tale between the covers, but the reason for its mysterious appearance in Paventeau's life.

Following the success of his latest novel, Travis Glasgow and his wife Jodie buy their first house in the seemingly idyllic western Maryland town of Westlake. At first, everything is picture-perfect - from the beautiful lake behind the house to the rebirth of the friendship between Travis and his brother, Adam, who lives nearby. Travis also begins to overcome the darkness of his childhood and the guilt he's harbored since his younger brother's death - a tragic drowning veiled in mystery that has plagued Travis since he was 13.

The blizzard begins pummeling the Midwest on Christmas Eve, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Todd Curry doesn't need another reason to disappoint his son, so he joins three other people in renting the last four-wheel drive available and they set out into the blinding snow. Only two hours into the treacherous trip west, Todd swerves to avoid a man in the middle of the highway. The stranger claims his daughter is lost somewhere out in the snow.

Four brand-new horror novellas all about books, stories, manuscripts—the written word has never had sharper teeth. In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers' Last Ride. In This Book Belongs to Olo, a lonely child has dangerous control over an usual pop-up book. A choose-your-own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story. Full of creepy suspense, these collected novellas are perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Stephen King, and Joe Hill.

The town of Stillwater has been dying - the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it - a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater...and feeds off them. The children who haven't disappeared whisper the same word - "vampire". But they're wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

Aaron Decker's life changes one December morning when his wife, Allison, is killed. Haunted by her absence - and her ghost - Aaron goes through her belongings, where he finds a receipt for a motel room in another part of the country. Piloted by grief and an increasing sense of curiosity, Aaron embarks on a journey to discover what Allison had been doing in the weeks prior to her death.

Newly reissued from the "modern-day Algernon Blackwood" comes five terrifying collected horror novellas.

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

After the loss of his parents, young Jack Thatch first met Stella as a child - this cryptic little girl of eight with dark hair and darker eyes, sitting alone on a bench in the cemetery clutching her favorite book. The body of a man found in an alley, every inch of his flesh horribly burned, yet his clothing completely untouched. For Detective Faustino Brier, this wasn't the first, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. Isolated and locked away from the world in a shadowy lab, a little boy known only as Subject "D" waits, grows, learns. He's permitted to speak to no one.