Exit Wounds is a thrilling anthology of crime stories written by masters of the genre, including Dean Koontz, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Elly Griffiths, Dennis Lehane, Joe R. Lansdale, and others. After an introduction by the editors, Paul B. Kane and Marie O’Regan, this collection includes the following stories: “The Bully” by Jeffery Deaver“Dead Weight” by Fiona Cummins“Like a Glass Jaw” by Mark Billingham“On The Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Frans Mier” by John Connolly“The Pitcher” by Sarah Hilary“Disciplined” by Martyn Waites“The Consumers” by Dennis Lehane“Voices through the Wall” by Alex Gray“Wet with Rain” by Lee Child“Happy Holidays” by Val McDermid“Fool You Twice” by Steph Broadribb“Lebensraum” by Christopher Fowler“Dancing towards the Blade” by Mark Billingham“Kittens” by Dean Koontz“Take My Hand” by A. K. Benedict“Dressed to Kill” by James Oswald“Booty and the Beast” by Joe R. Lansdale“The New Lad” by Paul Finch“The Recipe” by Louise Jensen

Exit Wounds

A chilling anthology collecting stories from today’s best horror writers, inspired by and in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Gemma Files, and Genevieve Valentine.

When Things Get Dark

A direct sequel to Aliens and Alien 3—Weyland-Yutani, the Colonial Marines, and Bishop’s creator all pursue the android for the deadly Xenomorph data contained in his brain. Written by T. R. Napper, author of the acclaimed 36 Streets, whose explosive work explores the artificial intelligence and what it is to be human. Massively damaged in Aliens and Alien 3, the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever. His creator, Michael Bishop, has other plans. He seeks the Xenomorph knowledge stored in the android’s mind and brings Bishop back to life—but for what reason? No longer an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Michael tells his creation that he seeks to advance medical research for the benefit of humanity. Yet where does he get the resources needed to advance his work. With whom do his new allegiances lie? Bishop is pursued by Colonial Marines Captain Marcel Apone, commander of the Il Conde and younger brother of Master Sergeant Alexander Apone, one of the casualties of the doomed mission to LV-426. Also on his trail are the “Dog Catchers,” commandos employed by Weyland-Yutani. Who else might benefit from Bishop’s intimate knowledge of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy?

Aliens: Bishop

A razor-sharp debut thriller about what happens when one of the first child stars of the social media age grows up … and goes missing. Hazel Davis is drifting: newly unemployed, living in a city she hates, and significantly less successful than her infamous younger sister, Evie. Evie grew up online, having gone viral at age five in a daddy-daughter dance video. She had an Instagram following in elementary school, and brand sponsorships before she had a driver’s permit. Now she’s a megapopular lifestyle influencer, with a million-dollar career at an age when few teens know what they’re going to major in. But to Hazel, @evelyn is just Evie, her beloved little sister—and a kid who has been exploited for her entire childhood. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel has managed to dodge the family business, but she’s deeply protective of Evie and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend, her frenemies across the influencer industry. So when Evie disappears—in the middle of a live stream, during a brand-sponsored trip to Los Angeles—Hazel knows something is terribly wrong. Determined to find her sister, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of internet culture to untangle the threads of truth behind Evie’s disappearance. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else … doesn’t she? Internet fame, the allure of parasocial relationships, and some of our deepest cultural obsessions collide in this electric thriller by a debut writer to watch.

Such a Bad Influence

In 1968, the world experienced a brand-new kind of terror with the debut of George A. Romero’s landmark movie Night of the Living Dead. The newly dead rose to attack the living. Not as vampires or werewolves. This was something new—and terrifying. Since then, zombies have invaded every aspect of popular culture. But it all started on that dreadful night in a remote farmhouse. Nights of the Living Dead returns to that night, to the outbreak, to where it all began. New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry teams with the godfather of the living dead himself, George A. Romero, to present a collection of all-new tales set during the forty-eight hours of that legendary outbreak. Nights of the Living Dead includes stories by some of today’s most important writers: Brian Keene, Carrie Ryan, Chuck Wendig, Craig E. Engler, David J. Schow, David Wellington, Isaac Marion, Jay Bonansinga, Joe R. Lansdale, John A. Russo, John Skipp, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Max Brallier, Mike Carey, Mira Grant, Neal and Brendan Shusterman, and Ryan Brown. Plus original stories by Romero and Maberry! For anyone who loves scary stories, take a bite out of this!

Nights of the Living Dead

The classic JT LeRoy story collection is now available in audio for the first time ever, featuring eleven previously uncollected stories, including one never before published, and an all-star line-up of twenty-one narrators. “Beautifully structured and written.”—Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn This book of interconnected stories depicts the chaotic life of a young boy on the run with his teenage mother. When Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he finds himself catapulted into her world of motels and truck stops, exposed to the abusive, exploitative men she encounters. As he learns to survive in this harrowing environment, Jeremiah also learns to love his mother, even as she descends into drug-fueled madness. Told in spare, lyrical prose, rich with imagination and dark humor, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things transforms the savagery of Jeremiah’s world into an indelible experience of compassion. Foreword written and read by Jeff Feuerzeig Narrators include: Laura Albert, Shirley Manson, Joshua Caleb Johnson, SOKO, Michael Imperioli, Winsome Brown, Pamela Sneed, Robin Weigert, Lawrence Rothman, Kerris Dorsey, Julie Mintz, Paul Mendez, Donovan Leitch, Daniel Newman, Darnell Martin, Alissa Bennett, Libby Mintz, Laura Desiree, Christelle de Castro, and Laila Hayani.

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

The Club is a blistering, timely, and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centering around an all-male dining club for the most privileged and wealthy young men at Cambridge and following an outsider who exposes the dark secrets of this group, the Pitt Club. As a boy, Hans Stichler enjoys a fable-like childhood among the rolling hills and forests of North Germany, living an idyll that seems uninterruptable. A visit from Hans’ ailing English aunt Alex, who comes to stay for an entire summer, has a profound effect on the young Hans, all the more so when she invites him to come to university at Cambridge, where she teaches art history. Alex will ensure his application to St. John’s College is accepted, but in return he must help her investigate an elite university club of young aristocrats and wealthy social climbers, the Pitt Club. The club has existed at Cambridge for centuries, its long legacy of tradition and privilege largely unquestioned. As Hans makes his best efforts to prove club material and infiltrate its ranks, including testing his mettle in the boxing ring, he is drawn into a world of extravagance, debauchery, and macho solidarity. And when he falls in love with fellow student Charlotte, he sees a potential new life of upper-class sophistication opening up to him. But there are secrets in the club’s history, as well as in its present―and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of what proves to be an increasingly dangerous institution, forced to grapple with the notion that sometimes one must do wrong to do right.

The Club

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible event—their loss, their place in it, and the secrets they all carry. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl’s story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her. Among them, a supermarket clerk recalls an encounter with a disturbingly thin Hayley Jo. An ex-priest remembers baptizing Hayley Jo and seeing her with her best friend, Laura, whose mother the priest once loved. And Laura berates herself for all the running they did, how it fed her friend’s addiction, and how there were so many secrets she didn’t see. Hayley Jo’s absence recasts the lives of others and connects them, her death rooting itself into the community in astonishingly violent and tender ways. Kent Meyers, one of the best contemporary writers on the American West, takes us into the complexity of community and offers a tribute to the powerful effect one person’s life can have on everyone she knew.

Twisted Tree

Poul Anderson was one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century science fiction. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1997, he produced an enormous body of standalone novels and series fiction and was equally at home in the fields of heroic fantasy and hard SF. He was a meticulous craftsman and a gifted storyteller, and the impact of his finest work continues, undiminished, to this day. Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds is a rousing, all-original anthology that stands both as a significant achievement in its own right and as a heartfelt tribute to a remarkable writer—and equally remarkable man. A nicely balanced mixture of fiction and reminiscence, Multiverse contains more than a dozen stories and novellas by some of today's finest writers, along with moving reflections by, among others, Anderson's wife, Karen; his daughter, Astrid Anderson Bear; and his son-in-law, novelist and coeditor Greg Bear. Bear's introduction, "My Friend Poul," is particularly illuminating and insightful. The fictional contributions comprise a kaleidoscopic array of imaginative responses to Anderson's many and varied fictional worlds. A few of the highlights include Nancy Kress' "Outmoded Things" and Terry Brooks' "The Fey of Cloudmoor," stories inspired by the Hugo Award–winning "The Queen of Air and Darkness"; a pair of truly wonderful Time Patrol stories, "A Slip in Time" by S. M. Stirling and "Christmas in Gondwanaland" by Robert Silverberg; Raymond E. Feist's Dominic Flandry adventure, "A Candle"; and a pair of very different homages to the classic fantasy novel, Three Hearts and Three Lions: "The Man Who Came Late" by Harry Turtledove and "Three Lilies and Three Leopards (And a Participation Ribbon in Science)" by Tad Williams. These stories, together with singular contributions by such significant figures as Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, and Eric Flint, add up to a memorable, highly personal anthology that lives up to the standards set by the late—and indisputably great—Poul Anderson.

Multiverse

Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York, this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner's The Center of the World, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever. This painting has such devastating erotic power that it was kept hidden for almost two centuries, and was even said to have been destroyed—until Henry stumbles upon it in a secret compartment at his summer home in the Adirondacks. Though he knows it is an object of immense value, the thought of parting with it is unbearable: Henry is transfixed by its revelation of a whole other world, one of transcendent light, joy, and possibility. Back in the nineteenth century, Turner struggles to create The Center of the World, his greatest painting but a painting unlike anything he (or anyone else) has ever attempted. We meet his patron, Lord Egremont, an aristocrat in whose palatial home Turner talks freely about his art and his beliefs. We also meet Elizabeth Spencer, Egremont's mistress and Turner's muse, the model for his Helen. Meanwhile, in the present, Henry is relentlessly trailed by an unscrupulous art dealer determined to get his hands on the painting at any cost. Filled with sex, beauty, and love (of all kinds), this richly textured novel explores the intersection between art and eroticism.

The Center of the World

This inspiring anthology collects enduring and entertaining stories that have enthralled young and old, by the cherished authors whose tales have captivated children for generations. Perfect for the family car trip or at-home listening, these recordings sparkle with the wit and wonder of time-tested storytelling. This audio recording includes: - "Moni the Goat-Boy" by Johanna Spyri - "An Adventure on Island Rock" by L. M. Montgomery - "Tom Thumb" by the Brothers Grimm - "The Tin-Man and the Scarecrow" by L. Frank Baum - "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen - "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin" by Rudyard Kipling - "The Mouse" by Saki - "Accidental Magic" by E. Nesbit - "Mermaids" by Louisa May Alcott - "Little Nell" by Charles Dickens - "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen - "The Sun-Dog Trail" by Jack London.

Great Classic Family Favorites

The world-class writers featured in this collection are adept at conjuring the depth and passion that surrounds all stories of love and loss. The short story form is perfect for capturing the dizzying heights that accompany a new object of affection, as well as the queasy unease and bottomless longing of lost loves. This recording includes the following stories: “The Piazza” by Herman Melville (1819–1891), narrated by Peter Marinker Nature’s beauty encourages a riddle, and a haunting, strange story. “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), narrated by Mark Meadows The woman in the garden resembles a flower—but loving her proves poisonous. “The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), narrated by Peter Marinker A chance encounter brings lifelong yearning, against all convention. “Coming, Aphrodite!” by Willa Cather (1873–1947), narrated by Joanne McQuinn Two artists cross paths—with striking results—on the road to professional success. “The Dead” by James Joyce (1882–1941), narrated by Gerry O’BrienA man experiences shifting views on himself, his wife, the past, the living … and the dead. “Clair de Lune” by Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), narrated by Cameron Stewart In spite of himself, an intolerant priest learns of love’s song.

Great Classic Love Stories

This wonderful collection of short stories includes work by some of literature’s most treasured names, with inspired readings by gifted actors. This superlative treasury includes the following stories: “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, read by John Chancer“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Robert Fass“Cousin William” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, read by Kate Fenton“How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” by Mark Twain, read by Bronson Pinchot“A Piece of String” by Guy Le Maupassant, read by Cornelius Garrett“Angela, an Inverted Love Story” by W. S. Gilbert, read by Cameron Stewart“Oh! The Public” by Anton Chekhov, read by Cameron Stewart“The Nightingale and the Rose” by Oscar Wilde, read by John Telfer“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, read by Jennifer Woodward“A Coward” by Edith Wharton, read by John Chancer“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, read by Jennifer Woodward“Araby” by James Joyce, read by John Telfer“The Mark on the Wall” by Virginia Woolf, read by Sarah LeFevre“The Interlopers” by Saki, read by Bill Wallis“Head and Shoulders” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by Stephen R. Thorne“The Stranger” by Katherine Mansfield, ready by John Telfer“The Blind Man” by D. H. Lawrence, read by Ric Jerrom“Nuns at Luncheon” by Aldous Huxley, read by Simon Vance

Great Classic Stories II

This is a collection of timeless westerns from some of the most well known authors of the genre. Included here are the following stories: “The Little Gold Miners” by Joaquin Miller, “Bulger’s Reputation” by Bret Harte, “The Leaf of Red Rose” by W. H. H. Murray, “The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch” by Ambrose Bierce, “The Californian’s Tale” by Mark Twain, “Twelve O’Clock” by Stephen Crane, “The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo” by Gertrude Atherton, “A Deal in Wheat” by Frank Norris, “The Caballero’s Way” by O. Henry, “On the Divide” by Willa Cather, “Timberline” by Owen Wister, “The Passing of Black Eagle” by O. Henry, “Ananias Green” by B. M. Bower, “Lightning” by Zane Grey, “The Pardon of Becky Day” by John Fox, and “The Laughter of Slim Malone” by Max Brand.

Great Classic Westerns

A great new collection of classic short fiction, brilliantly read by a selection of narrators This recording includes the following stories: - “The Lightening-Rod Man” by Herman Melville - “One of the Missing” by Ambrose Bierce - “The Leopard Man’s Story” by Jack London - “Tennessee’s Partner” by Bret Harte - “The New Catacomb” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - “A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin - “My Watch” and “The Widow’s Protest” by Mark Twain - “An Ideal Family” by Kate Mansfield - “A Painful Case” by James Joyce - “Small Fry” by Anton Chekhov - “The Road from Colonus” by E. M. Forster - “Silhouettes” by Jerome K Jerome - “The Voice of the City” by O. Henry - “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong” by F. Scott Fitzgerald - “The Diamond Mine” by Willa Cather - “The Man with the Golden Brain” by Alphonse Daudet - “Morella” by Edgar Allan Poe - “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant - “The Portrait” by Edith Wharton - “The Philosopher in the Apple Orchard” by Anthony Hope - “Monkey Nuts” by D. H. Lawrence

Great Classic Stories III

The shock and sadness felt during the week following the September 11 attacks drew Americans to houses of worship in record numbers. Regardless of creed, they asked the same questions: Where is God amidst the devastation? How to answer hate with love? Is there hope for peace? This inspirational audiobook helps listeners answer these questions. Featuring excerpted sermons from ten religious leaders, Restoring Faith  is a testament to the human capacity for finding strength through faith. Clergy include Forrest Church of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City; Rabbi Harold S. Kushner of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts; and Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem. All publisher profits from the sale of this audiobook will go to charities benefiting survivors of the events of September 11. 

Restoring Faith

A masterful collection of horror fiction by widely acclaimed authors whose contributions to the genre have been lost in the shadow of Poe Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. There were American, English, and Continental writers who preceded Poe and influenced his work. Similarly, there were many who were in turn influenced by Poe’s genius and produced their own popular tales of supernatural literature. This collection features masterful tales of terror by authors who, by and large, are little-remembered for their writing in this genre. Even Bram Stoker, whose Dracula may be said to be the most popular horror novel of all time, is not known as a writer of short fiction. Distinguished editor Leslie S. Klinger is a world-renowned authority on those twin icons of the Victorian age, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. His studies into the forefathers of those giants led him to a broader fascination with writers of supernatural literature of the nineteenth century. The stories in this collection have been selected by him for their impact. Each is preceded by a brief biography of the author and an overview of his or her literary career and is annotated to explain obscure references. Read on, now, perhaps with a flickering candle or flashlight at hand … Stories by Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Théophile Gautier, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lafcadio Hearn, M. R. James, Bram Stoker, and many others

In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe

The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone—for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes. Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more—all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible; it all seems plausible, even likely.

Perchance to Dream

Bob Odenkirk is a legend in the comedy-writing world, winning Emmys and acclaim for his work on Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and many other seminal television shows. This book, his first, is a spleen-bruisingly funny omnibus that ranges from absurdist monologues ("Martin Luther King Jr.'s Worst Speech Ever") to intentionally bad theater ("Hitler Dinner Party: A Play"), from avant-garde fiction ("Obit for the Creator of Madlibs") to free-verse poetry that's funnier and more powerful than the work of Calvin Trillin, Jewel, and Robert Louis Stevenson combined. Odenkirk's debut resembles nothing so much as a hilarious new sketch comedy show that's exclusively available as a streaming video for your mind. As Odenkirk himself writes in "The Second Meeting of Jesus and Lazarus," it is a book "to be read aloud to yourself in the voice of Bob Newhart."

The Bob Odenkirk Memorial Library

A Load of Hooey

Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy's featured story recounts his quest to uncover his family's Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection. Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are actively seeking long-lost relatives, meeting up with seldom-seen family members, or perhaps just visiting the old country to get a feel for their roots. A foreword by the Genographic Project's Spencer Wells sets the scene.

Journeys Home

Inspired by the 1917 Russian revolution and the last months of the Romanov sisters, The Five Daughters of the Moon is a beautifully crafted historical fantasy with elements of technology fueled by evil magic. The Crescent Empire teeters on the edge of a revolution, and the Five Daughters of the Moon are the ones to determine its future. Alina, six, fears Gagargi Prataslav and his Great Thinking Machine. The gagargi claims that the machine can predict the future, but at a cost that no one seems to want to know. Merile, eleven, cares only for her dogs, but she smells that something is afoul with the gagargi. By chance, she learns that the machine devours human souls for fuel, and yet no one believes her claim. Sibilia, fifteen, has fallen in love for the first time in her life. She couldn’t care less about the unrest spreading through the countryside. Or the rumors about the gagargi and his machine. Elise, sixteen, follows the captain of her heart to orphanages and workhouses. But soon she realizes that the unhappiness amongst her people runs much deeper that anyone could have ever predicted. And Celestia, twenty-two, who will be the empress one day. Lately, she’s been drawn to the gagargi. But which one of them was the first to mention the idea of a coup?

The Waning Moon Duology

The Five Daughters of the Moon

The Columbia space shuttle and its contents rain down on the people of Kiser, Texas, in Kathryn Schwille’s imaginative debut novel set six weeks before the invasion of Iraq. What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the space shuttle’s break-up, as the people of Piney Woods watch their pastures swarm with searchers and reporters bluster at their doors. A shop owner defends herself against a sexual predator who is pushed to new boldness after he is disinvited to his family reunion. A closeted father facing a divorce that will leave his gifted boy adrift retrieves an astronaut’s remains. An engineer who dreams of orbiting earth joins a search for debris and instead uncovers an old neighbor’s buried longing. In a chorus of voices spanning places and years, What Luck, This Life explores the Columbia disaster’s surprising fallout for a town beset by the tensions of class, race, and missed opportunity. Evoking Sherwood Anderson’s classic Winesburg, Ohio and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the novel’s unforgettable characters struggle with family upheaval and mortality’s grip and a luminous book emerges—filled with heartache, beauty, and warmth.

What Luck, This Life

Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren’t all heroes. Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He’s a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything—or anyone—could be the fuse to ignite them: a recently released convict trying to prove his innocence, a prominent cattleman who craves respect at any cost, a wily traveling dentist at odds with a violent local blacksmith, or a firebrand of an editor who is determined to unlock the town’s secrets. Jones walks into the middle of it all, and this time, he may be the hero that this town needs.

Give-a-Damn Jones

Knit me into a cocoon. Help me eat a burrito. Pretend to be a chair at my dinner party. Wrestle a Komodo dragon. Race me in a lobster suit. Author Kelly Mahon posts absurd gig ads online, and shares the conversations she had with the brave souls who wanted the job. We’re living in a gig economy. But would you respond to an online ad seeking someone to search for escaped ants? Or take an offer for a free tattoo by someone who “needs the practice?” How about a mattress for sale “tainted by geriatric love” or a workout plan that involves throwing Virginia hams? And if you hit reply, and the poster is sketchy about the details or offers to pay you with a gift card for clams, how long would you keep the conversation going? When New York City copywriter Kelly Mahon started posting weird, fake gig ads as a creative outlet, she found that there was someone interested in every bizarre offer she came up with. And the subsequent awkward email threads were equally hilarious and bizarre. Race Me in a Lobster Suit collects Mahon’s funniest fabrications, plus the hysterical email conversations that followed as she ratcheted up the crazy. While some respondents become suspicious, others seem willing to play along with the joke. And don’t worry, everyone involved agreed to share their emails in the book, so there are no hard feelings. In a world where it seems like everyone’s suspicious of everyone else, it’s nice to know that there are still people who will at least consider helping a stranger reenact a recurring spider nightmare or explain the principles of pig Latin to a baffled mother of three.

Race Me in a Lobster Suit

Where is Wendy? Leading a labor strike against the Lost Boys, of course. In Jane Yolen’s first full collection in more than ten years, discover new and uncollected tales of beloved characters, literary legends, and much more. A Scottish academic unearths ancient evil in a fishing village. Edgar Allan Poe’s young bride is beguiled by a most unusual bird. Dorothy, lifted from Kansas, returns as a gymnastic sophisticate. Emily Dickinson dwells in possibility and sails away in a starship made of light. Alice’s wicked nemesis has jaws and claws but really needs a sense of humor. Enter the Emerald Circus and be astonished by the transformations within.

The Emerald Circus

Fantasy icon Jane Yolen is adored by generations of readers of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined.

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale

The most spine-tingling suspense stories from the colonial era—including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft, and many more This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods. Today the best-known tale of colonial horror is Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, although Irving’s story is probably best known today from various movie versions it has inspired. Colonial horror tales of other prominent American authors—Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper among them—are overshadowed by their bestsellers, and are difficult to find in modern libraries. Many other pioneers of American horror fiction are presented afresh in this breathtaking volume for today’s public readers. Some will have heard the names of Increase and Cotton Mather in association with the Salem witch trials, but will not have sought out their contemporary accounts of what were viewed as supernatural events. By bringing these writers to the attention of the contemporary readers, this collection will help bring their names—and their work—back from the dead.

Colonial Horrors

This collection of twenty-two short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow. From the murderous backstreets of New Orleans to an abandoned shipyard of the Hudson River, from sun-weary Los Angeles to a maze of dank and forgotten tunnels beneath Manhattan, these stories present a landscape at once alien and undeniably familiar.

Tales of Pain and Wonder

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s fourteenth collection of short fiction, comprised of twenty-eight uncollected and impossible-to-find stories. Treading the grim places where desire and destruction, longing and horror intersect, the author rises once again to meet the high expectations she set with such celebrated collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love, and the World Fantasy Award–winning The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories. In these pages you’ll meet a dragon’s lover, a drowned vampire cursed always to ride the tides, a wardrobe that grants wishes, and a lunatic artist’s marriage of the Black Dahlia and the Beast of Gévaudan. You’ll visit a ruined postindustrial Faerie, travel back to tropical Paleozoic seas and ahead to the far-flung future, and you’ll meet a desperate writer forced to sell her memories for new ideas. Here are twenty-eight tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse. The stories in Dear Sweet Filthy World were first published in the subscription-only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the first availability to the general public for most of these rare tales.

Dear Sweet Filthy World

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Finch) writes, “Kiernan creates her own light in this remarkable collection, and shines it on dark places. In doing so, she gives us gritty, lyrical, horrible, beautiful truths.” The Ammonite Violin & Others, the author rises to meet the high expectations she set with such collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated To Charles Fort, With Love. Within these pages, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakable and the erotic, the grotesque, and the sublime. Here are stories of dream and metamorphosis, strange lands, and beings existing beyond the veil of death and beyond this earth. Here is a selkie who’s lost her sealskin, a woman with a blackhole in her heart, a fairie girl fallen to the Queen of Decay, the descent of a modern-day Orpheus, and a killer who has fashioned the most exquisite musical instrument from the remains of one of his victims. Here are dreams, nightmares, and worse things yet. The Ammonite Violin & Others is comprised of stories first published in the subscription only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the stories’ first availability to the general public.

The Ammonite Violin &amp; Others

Twenty curses, old and new, from bestselling fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Christina Henry, M.R. Carey, and Charlie Jane Anders. ALL THE BETTER TO READ YOU WITH It’s a prick of blood, the bite of an apple, the evil eye, a wedding ring, or a pair of red shoes. Curses come in all shapes and sizes, and they can happen to anyone, not just those of us with unpopular stepparents … Here you’ll find unique twists on curses, from fairy tale classics to brand-new hexes of the modern world—expect new monsters and mythologies as well as twists on well-loved fables. Stories to shock and stories of warning, stories of monsters and stories of magic.

Cursed

From the greatest names in fantasy and horror comes an anthology of stories inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Join Alice as she is thrown into the whirlwind of Wonderland. Within these pages you’ll find myriad approaches to Alice, from horror to historical, taking us from the nightmarish reaches of the imagination to tales that will shock, surprise, and tug on the heart-strings. So, it’s time now to go down the rabbit hole, or through the looking-glass, or … But no, wait. By picking up this book and starting to read it you’re already there, can’t you see?

Wonderland

In the shadows of war and history, the mirror between man and monster breaks … From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy of World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are … only human. In this second collection from Gemma Files—featuring the award-winning ‘The Emperor’s Old Bones’ (winner of the 1999 International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Fiction), and five never-before-published stories—we tour the overlooked intersections between wilderness and civilization where secret dances of fear and pain are performed and hunters and hunted change roles.

The Worm in Every Heart

If you go down deep enough, you find all sorts of things … In her second collection from Trepidatio Publishing, award-winning author Gemma Files takes her listeners on journeys out beyond safe borders—from the trackless depths of the sea, to the empty desert frontiers of the Weird West, even to the edges of cracks between worlds. Here, in these narrow spaces between the known and the unknown, behind the paper-thin curtains of reality, lurk monsters both human and ancient: selkies and avenging revenants, voodoo priestesses and pirate sorcerers, ghosts and vampires, and the most famous murderer of all time. But however strange the things found in these deep places, what draws them up, and calls them back, are forces the human heart knows all too well: grief and vengeance, rage and loss … and, most terrible of all, love.

Drawn up from Deep Places

Bestselling author Julianna Baggott delivers her mind-bending debut short-story collection, featuring an array of genres populated by deeply human characters, and with film rights to the stories already having been sold to Netflix, Paramount, Amblin, Lionsgate, and others! In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who’s been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been “banned for life,” and finds herself falling in love. In “Backwards,” a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In “Welcome to Oxhead,” all the parents in a gated community “shut off” when the power goes out. In “Portals,” a small town deals with hope and loss when dozens of portals suddenly open. In “How They Got In,” a grieving family starts to see a murdered girl in all of their old home videos. This fantastical collection from a unique voice contains a myriad of stories of the weird and wonderful. Julianna Baggott is a talented and clever guide, and I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You will take the reader on a journey unlike anything they’ve experienced.

I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You, and Other Stories

A comprehensive chronicle of Comic-Con International and modern geekdom itself as told through countless intimate, hilarious, and often thought-provoking stories by nearly fifty of the most integral members of today’s convention and fandom community. See You At San Diego is the comprehensive chronicle of Comic-Con International and modern geekdom itself as told through countless stories by nearly fifty of the most integral members of the Comic-Con and fandom scene. This full-fledged oral history—bursting with intimate reflections, hilarious observations, and at times, heartbreaking stories—is about how the geek at last inherited the earth and the story of the transformation of mainstream American pop culture into comic book culture over the past century. Join some of the biggest names in fandom as they launch off at ludicrous speed into the spiraling galaxy of geek culture through the kaleidoscopic lens of the planet’s biggest pop culture gathering worldwide (clocked twice by Guinness!): the San Diego Comic-Con. With such special guests as: Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Kevin Smith, Bruce Campbell, Felicia Day, Scott Aukerman, Stan Sakai, Sergio Aragonés, Trina Robbins, the Russo Bros., Lloyd Kaufman, Tim Seeley, Kevin Eastman, and many others. The audiobook also features forewords by Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo) and Jeff Smith (Bone), plus an afterword by Wu-Tang Clan’s own uber-nerd mastermind RZA.

See You at San Diego

July 1989, in a sleepy Michigan town, high school grad Nina Laramie heads out with her friends and is never seen alive again. Months later, her skeleton is found near a remote party spot in the forest. The ME determines Nina has been brutally raped and bludgeoned to death. Fear and anger ripple through this tight-knit community when the case goes cold. Thirty years later, Riley St. James, a Detroit PD assigned to Nina’s case, is determined to get her first big cold case win despite having a similar past to the victim. Relying on her investigative prowess and gut instinct, Riley tracks down a witness, who saw Nina Laramie’s murder. But as the truth comes to light, Riley must face the killers who want their secret to stay in the Hole in the Woods. Based on the 1989 true-life murder case of Shannon Siders of Newaygo County, Michigan. After the case went dormant, a Michigan cold case team formed in 2011 and uncovered new evidence that enabled them to arrest, try, and convict the killers, who were sent to prison for Shannon’s murder in 2015.

Hole in the Woods

A story collection drawn from across her career brings into English for the first time the extraordinary stylistic and thematic range of the Mexican writer and MacArthur “genius” Cristina Rivera Garza. “One of Mexico’s greatest living writers,” wrote Jonathan Lethem in 2018, “we are just barely beginning to catch up to what she has to offer.” In the years since, Rivera Garza’s work has received widespread recognition: she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant for fiction that “interrogates culturally constructed notions of language, memory, and gender from a transnational perspective,” and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Yet we have still only started to discover the full range of a writer who is at once an incisive voice on migration, borders, and violence against women, as well as a high stylist in the manner of Lispector or Duras. New and Selected Stories now brings together in English translation stories from across Rivera Garza’s career, drawing from three collections spanning over thirty years and including new writing not yet published in Spanish. It is a unique and remarkable body of work, and a window into the ever-evolving stylistic and thematic development of one of the boldest, most original, and affecting writers in the world today.

New and Selected Stories

In Nebula Award–winning author Sam J. Miller’s devastating debut short-fiction collection—featuring an introduction by Amal El-Mohtar—queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seamlessly intertwine. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the boys, beasts, and men roaming through Miller’s gorgeously crafted worlds can destroy listeners, yet leave them wanting more. Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con-man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes clearly enumerated revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. In the aftermath of a shapeshifting alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something out of the Arctic to infect the rest of the world. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity of death. Sam J. Miller shows his savage wit, unrelenting candor, and lush imagery in this essential career retrospective collection, taking his place alongside legends of the short-fiction form such as Carmen Maria Machado, Carson McCullers, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Boys, Beasts & Men

A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love—and a curse. The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them—could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.

The Family Izquierdo

This beautifully written novel, with its complicated, stubborn characters, will haunt you long after the last page.” —Margot Livesey, Author of The Boy in the Field The death of Donald Ray in a freak car accident becomes the catalyst for the release of passions, needs, and hurts. Clayton’s discovery of dead Donald Ray upends his longtime emotional numbness. Darlene, the seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her late husband while proving herself still alive. Soon Clayton and Darlene’s bond of loss and death works its magic, drawing them into an affair that brings the loneliness in Clayton’s marriage to a crisis. When Aurilla Cutter, Clayton’s mother-in-law, learns about the affair, her own memories of longing and infidelity are set loose. Like Darlene’s passions—unappeased and clung to—Aurilla’s possess an intensity that denies life to the present. As Aurilla’s own forbidden and tragic story of love, death, and repeated loss alternates with Darlene’s and Clayton’s, the divide of generations narrows and collapses, building to the unlikely collision.

Loving the Dead and Gone

A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by the Baba Yaga, featuring Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley, and R. J. Joseph, with a foreword by Christina Henry. Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that spins on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the baba yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the baba yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and these are her tales. Edited by Lindy Ryan, this collection brings together some of today’s leading voices of women-in-horror as they pay tribute to the baba yaga, and go Into the Forest.

Into the Forest

relevance|desc

publishdate|desc

publishdate|asc

rating|desc

title|asc

author_lastname|asc

BookBeat ger dig tillgång till tusentals ljudböcker direkt på din mobil. Hitta din nästa favorit genom att bläddra igenom våra utvalda topplistor.

Älskar du att läsa böcker? Upptäck tusentals e-böcker hos BookBeat. Välj och vraka mellan bästsäljare, crime, romance, fakta och mycket mer!

Få tillgång till tusentals e-böcker på din mobil. Bläddra och hitta din nästa favorit e-bok idag!

Ljudböcker - Hitta din nästa ljudbok

BookBeat ger dig tillgång till 1 miljon ljudböcker och e-böcker i mobil och surfplatta. Prova gratis!

Ljudböcker och e-böcker. Prova gratis! - BookBeat

Om du inte är ute på ett äventyr är det bättre att registrera dig på {countryLanguage} sajten.

Här hittar du våra mest populära författare och deras böcker. Hos BookBeat hittar du ett stort utbud av författare och olika kategorier, så den här listan kommer garanterat att ge inspiration till din nästa läsupplevelse!

{authorName} böcker - BookBeat

{NarratorName} som uppläsare - BookBeat

Letar du efter en ny favorituppläsare, eller har du redan en favorit du vill lyssna ännu mer på? Perfekt! Här har vi nämligen samlat de mest populära uppläsarna och böckerna de läst in. 

Sök - BookBeat

Titel

Person som diskar och lyssnar på BookBeat

Uppläsare

various narrators

Kom igång med BookBeat idag

Om oss

Följ oss

Hjälp och kontakt

Info

BookBeat

Ladda ner BookBeat