The alternative revolution, and later the internet, have made it difficult to remember those heady days before “Smells Like Teen Spirit” invaded the radio and the rock world shifted towards punk rock for ever more. When the Melvins formed, in 1983, REM was putting out its first album for a Gen X audience going off to college for the first time. The first wave of punk had petered out, a victim of its own excesses. The metal underground was spinning up both it’s thrash varieties (Metallica, Slayer, Venom, et al.) and the Sunset Strip pop variety (Motley Crue and friends). The nascent Pacific Northwest scene was just forming high school bands and banging out Black Sabbath riffs in grungy basements and garages. Amongst these, of course, were the Melvins, named for a particularly obnoxious supervisor at a Thriftway in their hometown of Montesano, WA. They shared their scene’s love of 70s hard rock but tempered it through the grinding, off-kilter noise-riffs that were featured on Black Flag’s My War album. As far as local scene bands went, they became minor-league famous by the time Ratt was making it big and attracted a following of stoners and miscreants, first and foremost their sometime-homeless roadie, Kurt Cobain (who claimed the Melvins as his favourite band – and why not, he ripped them off enough). Cobain, of course, would go on to slay the hair metal bands with a single album and usher in the post-Boomer era of rock ‘n’ roll, and the Melvins would get briefly caught up in that wave of mass major label signings. By 1997 magazines like Guitar World were referring to them as part of the unfortunate wave of “boomerang bands” that went from major labels to indie labels when they failed to sell millions of albums, but the band has had incredible staying power over the years, putting out a slew of albums that have been all over the map when it comes to ambient doom-drone, sludgecore metal, chunky classic rock, and a thick filter of weird humour. What follows is a guide to their studio albums, eschewing their live albums except for one key recording.
The earliest Melvins collection straddles the line between snarling punk rock and Black Sabbath worship. Matt Lukin plays bass here, predating his more ‘famous’ days in Mudhoney. Had anyone been paying attention (beside the Seattle underground anyway) they would have seen the way forward for hard rock: you didn’t need cheesy high-pitched vocals about Satan and you didn’t need pretty riffs. What hard rock really needed, circa 1986, was garage-recorded grime – something thick, sludgy…grungy. The term would become synonymous with the early 90s but what it really boils down to is what Osborne, Crover, and Lukin show off here: a gripping mixture of Master of Reality and My War.
By 1987 most heavy bands were either Sunset Strip Crue-wannabes or engaging in speed wars in the thrash metal underground. The Melvins, on the other hand, were playing damaged Black Flag riffs at Black Sabbath speeds with gobs of off-kilter vocals courtesy of Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne. Their debut album ups the ante on the previous year’s EP, sounding like it has a bigger recording budget solely through the typical cost-cutter of the Seattle underground: cranking the volume up until it won’t go further. Two of the songs were rewrites of tracks from Six Songs, and a third (“Leeech”) was a cast-off Green River song the band had fallen for. Part of the writing credit on that track would go to Mark Arm, who would nab bassist Matt Lukin shortly afterwards to form Mudhoney.
After switching out Matt Lukin for Buzz’s girlfriend Lori Black (daughter of Shirley Temple) they decamped to San Fransisco and began tinkering with their sound. The heart of the band on Ozma is still that careening, chunky sludge, but there are moments of further experimentation here and there. “Oven” has a moment that is just drums and Osborne shouting, with some muted guitar serving only to emphasize Crover’s pounding. “Let God Be Your Gardener” starts off almost clean, in comparison to everything else they were up to, and “Revulsion/We Reach” features chimes and weird feedback. The Kiss cover (“Love Thing”) though an instrumental slice, shows an influence on the other side of Osborne’s voice: it’s a bit Ozzy Osbourne, to be sure, but it’s also a lot of Gene Simmons love filtered through the belligerent shout of Henry Rollins.
As the alternative revolution began to break over the radio, the Melvins lengthened their songs and deepened the sludge. Whereas their first two albums would feature a large number of tracks, inflated by several under-2-minute sketches, Bullhead trims the track list down to eight songs with only two clocking in at less than three minutes. The opening track, the nearly nine minute glacial “Boris”, gave the Japanese noise rock band its name. It also features a great last-minute breakdown that shows off exactly how deliciously unhinged Buzz was (and still is). While contemporaries like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were busy cutting the bongloads with Boston and the poppier parts of the Kiss discography, the Melvins were doubling down on their ice-covered pummeling. There’s more Ozzy than Rollins on here: witness a track like “Ligature”, which approaches the haunting, soaring aspects of the best of Black Sabbath much more than their earlier albums. “It’s Shoved” should sound familiar to anyone who owns a copy of In Utero while at the same time proving Black’s worth in the band (she would leave shortly after). Bullhead is an intimidating slab of a album, a thick album that holds its own as a doom rock classic.
Following a 1991 European tour, the joining of Joe Preston on bass, and three simultaneous solo EPs, the band recorded Lysol. It would prove to be their last album on Boner Records and the first record of the drone/doom movement of the 2000s (Sunn O))) foremost among them). Bullhead may have been a slower, denser album than either Gluey Porch Treatments or Ozma, but Lysol slowed everything down into a near-singularity. “Hung Bunny” – the first third of the album – draws out rumbling guitar noise and punctuates it with spectral moans. The rest of the album grinds on slightly faster, but not by much. In amongst everything are another pair of covers, Flipper’s “Sacrifice” and Alice Cooper’s “The Ballad of Dwight Fry”, both of which the band wrestle into submission. The band had to alter the name of the album when the actual Lysol brand complained about the use of their trademark; black tape was originally used to cover the name on the side of the album art but eventually they took it out entirely.
While the band was busy making strictly non-commercial drone metal, their former roadie was busy becoming the Voice of a Generation. As sales of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains drove a new revolution in rock ‘n’ roll, hungry major label executives began to scour these bands for compatriots and influences to fuel continued growth. One of the odder choices was, of course, the Melvins, although after Kurt Cobain declared them his favourite band their move to major was likely a foregone conclusion. Signed to Atlantic Records for a three-album deal, they attempted an album that was true to themselves, despite their expensive new surroundings. Early production efforts with Cobain grew futile as the Nirvana frontman fell deeper into his heroin addiction, and Osbourne and Crover basically recorded and produced the album themselves. It returns to the same sort of stuff they were peddling on Bullhead – crushingly dense sludge-metal – but the budget is bigger and every instrument hits like a punch in the gut. Even the Kiss cover (“Goin’ Blind”) grinds like the grungiest song ever recorded. Tracks like “Honey Bucket” and “Set Me Straight” lurch like a seasick sailor into punk territory while “Hag Me” and closing track “Spread Eagle Beagle” drive it back home into the drawn-out noise drones of Lysol. “Sky Pup” adds a bass-heavy, bouncy air to the proceedings, showing some more of that Alice Cooper influence that hides beneath the monolithic sludge at times, and along with “Pearl Bomb” showed willingness to experiment with their sound. It’s hard to pick a prototypically “Melvins” album, but Houdini is pretty close.
Released on Amphetamine Reptile and titled backwards in order to get around their Atlantic contract, Prick is an album that can be succinctly summed up by King Buzzo himself: “Complete and utter nonsense, a total joke”. Prick was an outlet for weird experimental noise, fiercely non-commercial even by Melvins standards. New bassist Mark Deutrom doesn’t really get up to much as it’s pretty much a colletion of noise, jokes, feedback, country-twang sketches, and field recordings of buskers in the London Underground. Originally to be titled “Kurt Kobain”, the band changed the name to Prick at the very last minute due to Cobain’s suicide. “Larry” and “Rickets” are the only traditional songs on Prick, and both are quite rewarding. Beyond them, however, this one’s for collecters only.
The band’s second album for Atlantic widens their scope quite a bit. Right from the get-go the band adds more melody than they’d shown in their entire career to date, brought to a heady life by the addition of Garth Richardson (GGGarth) as producer. “Queen”, “Sweet Willy Rollbar”, and “Revolve” all strike out for hard rock territory rather than the sludge-noise they’d perfected on Houdini. “Goose Freight Train” brings all of that to a halt, bringing up a creepy ‘stalking you through the deserted streets’ vibe instead. “Roadbull” features schizophrenic dynamic shifts and a moment that achieves a spaghetti western version of glory. There are plenty of noisy moments on Stoner Witch – especially epic meltdowns like “At The Stake” or “June Bug”, or the pure art-noise bleeding into uptempo riffing of “Magic Pig Detective” – but the album really showed a band that was willing to push the envelope of their sound regardless of what their label might have wanted.
The sitar that opens up “The Bit” shows the way for this album: that old Melvins crunch, now with more *stuff*. Check out the horns and the scractching on “Bar-X The Rocking M”, or the trippy-as-hell middle of “Buck Owens”. Hell, check out Buzz’s mild-as-milk singing on “Black Bock” or “Skin Horse” for a real trip-out. This is the same guy that sang “Hooch” three years prior. Even a lengthy stomper like “Goggles” doesn’t follow the same tried-and-true sledgehammer path of Bullhead or Houdini; these are more like sludge tracks for the thinking person, full of weird deviations and odd nooks and crannies. On tracks like “Sterilized” and “Lacrimosa” they take the ambient drone-metal ideas they brought to Lysol and update them, adding in more of everything – more ambiance, more creepily unfocused vocals, more crashing, glacial drum hits. Stag is a wildly experimental album – probably too experimental for Atlantic, who dropped them after the album was released. After signing the band in hopes of finding the next Nirvana from a list of Cobain’s favourite bands, an album that was about half burbling, creeping noise-drone and weirdness was probably a bit too much to bear.
“Mombius Hibachi” was the first Melvins song I ever heard (on late-night MuchMusic), and as far as introductions went I could have done a lot worse. On an album that’s easily as weird and experimental as Prick, it’s one of the few tracks that kicks out the atmosphere that they were going for on Stag. It’s willfully noisy but compelling for that. “They All Must Be Slaughtered” is reminiscent of the opening drone of Lysol; “Lovely Butterfly” is the reimagining of their sludge metal through overdriven noise-bursts; “Air Breather Deep In The Arms Of Morphious” draws out an ambient drone and bisects it with a distorted, fuzzed-out mid-section and coda. The funniest moment is “Laughing With Lucifer At Satan’s Sideshow”, which amalgamates everything that must have been said to them by coked-out record execs during the Atlantic era. Taken all together it’s the most experimental album in the Melvin’s canon, and amongst the most divisive.
The end of the 20th Century brought the Melvins onto Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records and their sound back to something approximating the halfway mark between Houdini and Stoner Witch. There are still weird ambient moments (like the first couple of minutes of “Manky”) but for the most part The Maggot is a return to the sludgy metal that they made their name on in the first place. It doesn’t hit as hard as Houdini, it doesn’t have that classic snap like Stoner Witch, and it doesn’t have the out-there experimentalism of Stag, but it holds it own. It forms the first part of a trilogy along with the next two albums, which were released as a packaged vinyl trilogy some time afterwards.
The second part of the band’s 1999 trilogy is a much more subdued affair than its predecessor. The songs come off much more like alterna-rock pieces than they do the stomping sort of sludge the Melvins made their name on. The guitars are muted, the drums are produced very quietly, and Osbourne’s whisper-singing takes up a lot more sonic space than his molten howl ever did. The bass is mixed very high, giving tracks like the sprawling “Let It All Be” and “Mary Lady Bobby Kins” a propulsive feel that comes off as a more mature version of their distorted dynamic leaps on Stoner Witch. The Bootlicker brought back the experimental side of the band that had been mostly missing on The Maggot (especially when you take into account the closing track, “Prig”), and affirmed them as not only the Gods of Metallic Stomp, but also as a peachy-keen laid-back stoner rock band as well.
And just like that the trilogy went from weird to completely out-there. The Crybaby is a mixture of cover songs and original material and features a heavy guest list. The album kicks off with 70’s teen heartthrob Leif Garrett singing on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Given the band’s history with former roadie-turned-generational touchstone Kurt Cobain, and Garrett’s history as a commercial unit, is this some sort of a meta statement? Who knows. The cover is pretty faithful, for what it’s worth. Elsewhere, the band covers the Jesus Lizard with David Yow (who also shows up later on with an Osbourne collaboration), Hank Williams with the man’s grandson, Foetus, Bliss Blood, label head Mike Patton, and Merle Haggard on a particularly inspired version of “Okie From Muskogee”, also featuring Hank Williams III. As eclectic an album as you’ll find in the band’s catalogue, it also ranks among their best.
A sort of odds-n-ends collection, a post-Trilogy stopgap. One out-there experiment in back-masking, three covers (including Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive”) and four reworkings of older Melvins material from the Gluey Porch Treatments/Ozma/Bullhead era. In other words, largely inessential and useful only for completists.
The 21st Century found the Melvins forging their own way through the changing music world by weilding a spiked sledgehammer. Their first proper album of the century found them straddling a line between the molten sludge they’d become known for on tracks like “[untitled]” and “The Fool, The Meddling Idiot”, and intricate, proggish tracks like “Dr. Geek” and “Little Judas Chongo”. The “The Fool, The Meddling Idiot” features an ending that bursts open into electronic work that resembles EDM on bad opiates. “The Brain Center At Whipples” evolves into an orgy of speed and crunch. The real hostile ambient takeover is saved for the sixteen minute closing track, “The Anti-Vermin Seed”, which meanders along in a low-frequency thud for ten minutes before blossoming into one of Buzz Osbourne’s best vocal takes.
With the Melvins’ dabblings with variants on industrial and ambient music, it was really only a matter of time before they hooked up with Brian Williams, the Welsh dark ambient pioneer better known to the dregs of society as Lustmord. The results are pretty much as you’d expect: Melvins sludge mixed with industrial-tinged ambient stretches. The centrepiece is of course “Pigs Of The Roman Empire”, a 22 minute piece that follows a lumbering sludge riff through moaning, abandoned vistas. “The Bloated Pope”, “Pink Bat”, and “Safety Third” are Melvins-oriented riff-fests while the rest of the album (especially the opening and closing tracks) are exercises in the creepy mood-building that Lustmord is best known for. As far as collaboration albums go, you can do a lot worse.
Another collaboration album, this time with punk legend Jello Biafra, and the first album that really finds the band playing second fiddle. After witnessing the Dead Kennedys “reunion” (which, after long years of acrimonious lawsuits, happened without Biafra at the mic) the Melvins approached Biafra about doing an album. There is no sludge on display here; the Melvins put together a snarling punk rock record that sounds a lot like what Biafra’s later band, the Guantanamo School of Medicine, would sound like, which in itself is a lot like what a modern Dead Kennedys would likely sound like. The star of the show is Jello Biafra, and the success of the album lies directly in what you think of him. Fans will find a lot to like; detractors will find little to recommend here.
The Melvin’s second album with punk rock political firebrand Jello Biafra combines some leftovers from the Never Breathe What You Can’t See sessions, a couple of remixes from that same album, and a couple of covers. The first of the latter is “Halo of Flies”, a favourite Melvins cover that was performed the first time Biafra saw the Melvins play live. The other is an updated rework of the classic Dead Kennedys screed “California Uber Alles”, which rails against the recall campaign that placed action star Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor’s mansion. The end result is pretty much the same as Never Breathe What You Can’t See, albeit with some interesting tweaks on older material.
I don’t normally include live albums in these discographies because they’re often stopgap albums, meant to keep the band’s name out there while they tour or fight over how the next album is going to sound. They’re rarely satisfying and they’re often quite disappointing (Hold Steady I’m looking in your direction). Every once in a while, though, something either iconic or completely out-there comes along and I’ll have to mention it. Case in point: A Live History of Gluttony and Lust. There are other live Melvins albums, and they’re all okay, although not really essential. ALHGL turns the concept on its head though, in much the same way as Type O Negative’s Origin of the Feces once did: it’s a live album without an audience. The album captures the band playing their iconic Houdini album live to an empty warehouse. Why? Who knows. For that matter, who cares? Houdini was an album crying out for a visceral live treatment, and the band delivers amazingly. Just find a small room, roll in a keg full of cheap beer, invite some friends over, and crank this album to the maximum volume. Bam. Instant Melvins show.
The revolving door that is the bass position for the Melvins revolved again for A Senile Animal, but with a slight difference. Instead of replacing the departing Kevin Rutmanis with yet another disposable bassist, the Buzzo and Crover decided to join forces with Jared Warren and Coady Willis of Big Business, giving the 2006 lineup of the Melvins not just a bassist but a second drummer. The outcome is a sort of return-to-form, Stoner Witch-style, featuring a blend of metallic sludge riffing and classic rock arena anthem making (“Civilized Worm” especially seems like a slowed-down Deep Purple, or maybe classic-era Cheap Trick). “Civilized Worm” actually shows off the strength of the double drummers, ending as it does in a landslide of drum sticks, and the intricate prog-level rhythms of “You’ve Never Been Right”, “Blood Witch”, and “The Hawk” all point to the idea that having a second drummer does not necessarily mean that you’re self-indulgent. “A History of Bad Men”, meanwhile, reprises the best ideas off of Houdini as a headbanging epic, and “The Mechanical Bride” lurches along like the best of Bullhead. Easily the best Melvins album since Stag.
Nude With Boots continues in the same vein and lineup as A Senile Animal. The focus here is definitely on the classic part of classic rock, with the ghosts of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath seemingly everywhere (check out the beginnings of “The Kicking Machine” and the title track for emphasis on this point). There is nothing here to really distinguish it from A Senile Animal, except maybe that the sound is even crunchier than it was two years prior. It touches all the right notes from their heyday, Bullhead-through-Stoner Witch, with some truly crushing moments, such as the dual-drum highlights of “The Savage Hippy” and “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”. This is Melvins stripped down to the basics: no Lysol-esque doom/drone interludes, no hostile ambient takeovers, no weird detours into multi-instrumental jamming. Hard, whalloping riffs that sound heavier than compressed lead, like god intended.
It could be argued that the Melvins get bored every three albums. Stag was certainly their most experimental Atlantic album; The Crybaby was the most out-there of the trilogy albums, and The Bride Screamed Murder is the oddest of the albums with Big Business as the rhythm section. Songs like “Evil New War God” and “Pig House” are classic sledgehammer Melvins, to be sure, (well except for the whistles that carry out the latter), but there are tracks like opening number “The Water Glass” that marry strange call-and-response vocals to strident marching band arrangements, “My Generation” that melts the Who classic into molten metal, “Hospital Up” which ends in a free jazz freakout, and the acapella version of “Peggy Gordon” here called “P.G. x 3”, which is amongst the more haunting versions of a Canadian folk song ever to be recorded. While it’s not as eclectic as either of of their previous “third albums”, it was the most out-there the band had been since 2002.
Out goes Big Business, in comes Trevor Dunn to take over bass duties, albeit with an acoustic standup bass. This “Melvins Lite” lineup produced an album that moved away from the back-to-basics Melvins/Big Business records and moved on to a sprawling, acid-damaged sound that took the lumbering sludge and added in atonal strings, proggish arrangements, and a more harmonious set of melodies. It’s alternately spacey and scuzzy, often within reaching distance of back-to-back songs, like the transititon from “Holy Barbarian” to “Freak Puke”, or the cracked-out Baroque art-damage of “Inner Ear Rupture” moving into the stomp of “Baby, Won’t You Weird Me Out”. The best is saved for last, of course: Paul McCartney cover “Let Me Roll It” is characteristically bludgeoning, and serves as a nice toss-up for the lethal freak-out of the closer, “Tommy Goes Beserk”. Not the highwater mark by any means, but a solid effort for a band on their umpteenth album.
The Melvins have always thrown covers into their albums and live sets, but Everybody Loves Sausages is the first full cover album the band has released. The track list is wide-ranging, including classic touchstones like David Bowie, Queen, and “Black Betty”, poppier choices from the Kinks and Roxy Music, a cut by underground metal pioneers Venom, and a nod to the 80s art-punk scene of their youth through The Jam and Throbbing Gristle. The results are all over the place. Queen’s “Best Friend” is largely unnecessary, consisting of a straightforward reading of the vocals backed with a broken circus synth, and “Black Betty” is just a slightly more breakneck version of the Ram Jam cover, but Mudhoney’s Mark Arm adds a sneering spit to The Scientists’ “Set It On Fire” and the mile-a-minute take on “Attitude” kicks the Kinks original up and down the street. The full cover of Bowie’s epic “Station to Station” is also an interesting reading, adding feedback and existential dread into the coke-disco original. It’s stylistically all over the place, and for a cover album that’s okay.
Thirty years in to this weird experimental sludge metal band, Dale Crover switches to bass so that original drummer Mike Dillard, who left the band in 1984, can take over the kit. Calling themselves “Los Melvins”, the band redo a bunch of songs they’d written way back at the beginning in 1983, throw in some traditional tunes (“99 Bottles Of Beer”, “In The Army Now”, “Tie My Pecker To A Tree”), a cover of The Lewd’s “Walter” and half a cover of The Pop-O-Pies “Fascists Eat Donuts”. It’s a fun sort of reunion album, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it fits together an integral part of the original Melvins story that often gets lost in their improbable rise and fall from a major label recording contract.
The instant USA Today bestseller by Chuck Tingle about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.
“Brilliantly bloody, wildly fun, and extremely scary, Bury Your Gays brings a sledgehammer down on tired tropes and makes a masterpiece of their guts.”―Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black Sheep
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.
But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, “for the algorithm,” in the upcoming season finale.
Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles.
Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future―before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good.
One of the Best Horror Books of 2024 by Esquire!
One of the Best Books of Summer 2024 by Paste, HuffPost, Esquire, and Publishers Weekly!
A city’s haunted history and fairy-tale horrors converge for two women in an addictive novel of psychological suspense by a multiple Bram Stoker Award–nominated author.
Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a historic bungalow on the Chicago River. They’re tethered to a disquieting past, and with nowhere else to go, nothing can part them from their family home. Not the maddening creaks and disembodied voices that rattle the old walls. Not the inexplicable drownings in the area, or the increasing number of bodies that float by Anna’s window.
To stave off loneliness, Anna has a podcast, spinning ghostly tales of Chicago’s tragic history. But when Anna captures the attention of an ardent male listener, she awakens to the possibilities of a world outside.
As their relationship grows, so do Jennie’s fears. More and more people are going missing in the river. And then two detectives come calling.
They’re looking for a link between the mysteries of the river and what’s housed on the bank. Even Anna and Jennie don’t understand how dreadful it is―and still can be―when the truth about their unsettled lives begins to surface.
The instant USA Today bestseller from CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly―a scorching and sweeping new novel about the end of the world as we know it.
One of Esquire and Vulture’s Best Horror Books of 2024 • A GoodReads and Publishers Weekly Editors’ Pick • An Indie Next Pick!
“A blistering, feverish ride through a uniquely American apocalypse.”―Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.
Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin…
The end times are coming.
“I’ve loved Maggie Thrash’s work for years, and Rainbow Black is going to set so many new hearts aflame—murder, intrigue, queer love, dark humor AND satanic panic? Welcome to the Maggie Thrash Fan Club, world!”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
For readers of Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh comes a brilliant, deliriously entertaining novel from the acclaimed author of Honor Girl. Rainbow Black is part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story—set against the ’90s Satanic Panic and spanning 20 years in the life of a young woman pulled into its undertow.
Lacey Bond is a 13-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center.
Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey ’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades.
As an adult, Lacey mimes a normal life as the law clerk of an illustrious judge. She has a beautiful girlfriend, a measure of security, and the world has mostly forgotten about her. But after a tiny misstep spirals into an uncontrolled legal disaster, the hysteria threatens to begin all over again.
Rainbow Black is an addictive, searing, high-octane triumph, an imaginative tour de force about one woman’s tireless desire to be free.
Twenty four years ago, Olive and Stacia went into the woods. Only Olive returned, with no memory of what happened. Now, Olive’s father has vanished, leaving behind research which indicates that he has found out what lives in the woods.
It wakes up every twelve years, taking only children. It has been doing so for at least two hundred years. And it is waking again.
Forced to return to her hometown, Olive finds her memories returning.
What she remembers from the days leading up to Stacia’s disappearance is magical, almost impossible to believe, but she knows that she must return to the woods–to face what lurks there, to save her father, and to find out what happened to Stacia.
“Beautiful, poetic, and gutting. Hollow Girls is a captivating novel that will lure you deep into the woods where magic and darkness entwine. There is so much heart to this story of friendship and blood where oaths and secrets continue to unravel until the very last page. Bring an offering to the Fae, and come along on this memorable journey.”
–Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland.
Winnie Campbell is sixteen and a burgeoning serial killer. Her father blames her for her mother’s death, dotes on her little sister, and executes increasingly cruel punishments meant to humiliate Winnie. As the punishments morph into torture, she begins fantasizing about regaining some semblance of power, eventually working through her rage by killing small animals.
When her violent games escalate and she accidentally kills an infant while babysitting, Winnie gets a taste of a power she doesn’t want to let go of. Her obsession with killing grows, and so does her fascination for Leigh, a girl that reminds her of her younger self.
Winnie wants to kill. She wants to die. She wants to be someone other than herself. And killing Leigh, a symbolic suicide, could be the key to her metamorphosis.
“A shocking and utterly harrowing examination of the creation of a murderer. Although Crushing Snails excels in many areas, this novel is perhaps most skillful at effectively illustrating the very human compulsion for violence and depravity. Murray’s excellent novel showcases the very human possibility of carnage—the horrifying prospect of brutality—when curiosity is sated and when we finally surrender to our most feral desires.”—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
“Masterfully executed and chilling to the core, Crushing Snails is a terrifying look into the darkest depths of the human mind and the ways in which monsters are formed. With the intensity level set to high, Murray draws you into complicity as you witness one girl’s spiral into obsession and depravity, culminating in a horrifying conclusion you’ll never forget.”—Kelsea Yu, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Bound Feet
“A nightmare of power and control, or perhaps even something more wayward. Crushing Snails is provocative and demanding, spiraling and unapologetic. Emma Murray is an exciting emerging voice in horror challenging what is normal and what is safe.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Crime Scene
“Sick, twisted, and compulsively readable—Emma E. Murray’s Crushing Snails is a coming-of-age story that goes to dark and darker places, leaving me constantly hanging between two modes of thought: one-more-chapter and holy-fucking-shit.”—Carson Winter, author of The Psychographist
A woman checks herself into an insane asylum to solve the mystery of her sister’s murder, only to lose her memory and maybe her mind.
From the subversive voice behind The Phlebotomist comes a story that combines the uncanny atmosphere of Don’t Worry Darling with the narrative twists of The Last House on Needless Street
What would guilt make you do?
Hadleigh Keene died on the road leading away from Hollyhock Asylum. The reasons are unknown. Her sister Morgan blames herself. A year later with the case still unsolved, Morgan creates a false identity, that of a troubled housewife named Charlotte Turner, and goes inside.
Morgan quickly discovers that Hollyhock is… not right. She is shaken by the hospital’s peculiar routines and is soon beset by strange episodes. All the while, the persona of Charlotte takes on a life of its own, becoming stronger with each passing day. As her identity begins unraveling, Morgan finds herself tracing Hadleigh’s footsteps and peering into the places they lead.
The terrifying reality of The Redemption of Morgan Bright unfolds over the course of chapters told from the points of view of both Charlotte and Morgan, police interviews, and text messages.
Once there were four Lasco siblings banded together against a world that failed to protect them. But on a hellish night that marked the end of their childhood, eldest brother Shawn died violently after being dragged behind closed doors. Though the official finding was accidental death, Nathan Lasco knows better, and has never forgiven their mother, Stella.
Now two decades later, Stella promises to finally reveal the truth of what happened on The Day of the Door. Accompanied by a paranormal investigative team, the Lasco family comes together one final time, but no one is prepared for the revelations waiting for them on the third floor.
A National Bestseller
The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror novels picks up four years after Don’t Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her in New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones’s finale.
It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.
“Simply put—and I do not say this lightly—Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”—Neil McRobert, Esquire (Best Horror Books of 2024, So Far)
A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
“This book isthe monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home.
A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.
In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.
The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.
The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.
But at what cost?
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we’re gone, from the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Queen of Teeth.
What really happened to Cabrina Brite?
Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?
Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death.
Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.
A Goodreads Best Fantasy Choice Award Nominee!
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes A Sorceress Comes to Call―a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.
*The hardcover edition features a foil stamp on the casing and custom endpapers illustrated by the author.*
Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms―there are no secrets in this house―and her mother doesn’t allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother’s beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.
But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t evil sorcerers.
When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother’s next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother’s plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family.
Embark on a darkly humorous journey of reality TV meets the macabre. On the set of The Groom, a group of women must compete for the heart of Midwestern bachelor Tristan by spending a week in a haunted house. Divorcee Linda, resigned to her role as the show’s underdog, finds her resolve cracking when she begins to fall for fellow castmate Charity. Meanwhile, Sabrina, groomed by her witchy mother to deliver their family from poverty by marrying a rich man, sees winning the competition as her predestined path.
But after a shocking demise, the game takes a sinister turn. As the remaining contestants grapple with their desires for love and survival, they uncover dark secrets within and without the house’s walls. Trapped in a twisted new competition, they must confront their own demons or face elimination.
Sixty-three-year-old Los Angeles stoner, Hank Wallace, is just trying to get by and get high when he takes a gig distributing ads for a local company. But the job quickly turns into more than it seems. Hank begins hearing voices and experiencing strange visions while passing out the ads. Before he knows it, he’s fallen prey to his employer, a demon from another world.
Possessed by the demon, Hank absorbs nightmares from others living in his corner of LA. He becomes a conduit that feeds anxiety and dread to the demon. The nightmares pour in, but they aren’t enough. The demon requires more sustenance than the nightmares provide.
And the demon is in luck. Hank learns that his estranged sister, Carla, his only living relative, is terminally ill with cancer. He has steered clear of close relationships with family for decades, but he cannot avoid it any longer. The demon insists. Carla and her family’s grief is a siren’s call.
Hank drives to Sacramento bearing an invisible gift. The demon can erase their grief, but at what cost? Unless Hank can get his head together and snap out of it, the demon will consume every last one of them.
A USA TODAY Bestseller
From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Adam Cesareand Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
In this “stunningly visceral” (New York Times Book Review) novel, a group of young men seek vengeance after one of their mothers is murdered in a Puerto Rican slum; STAND BY ME with a haunted, obsidian-dark heart.
One of B&N’s Best Horror Books of the Year
For childhood friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul, and Bimbo, death has always been close. Hurricanes. Car accidents. Gang violence. Suicide. Estamos rodeados de fantasmas was Gabe’s grandmother’s refrain. We are surrounded by ghosts. But this time is different. Bimbo’s mom has been shot dead. We’re gonna kill the guys who killed her Bimbo swears. And they all agree.
Feral with grief, Bimbo has become unrecognizable, taking no prisoners in his search for names. Soon, they learn Maria was gunned down by guys working for the drug kingpin of Puerto Rico. No one has ever gone up against him and survived. As the boys strategize, a storm gathers far from the coast. Hurricanes are known to carry evil spirits in their currents and bring them ashore, spirits which impose their own order.
Blurring the boundaries between myth, mysticism, and the grim realities of our world, House of Bone and Rain is a harrowing coming of age story; a doomed tale of devotion, the afterlife of violence, and what rolls in on the tide.
An instant USA Today bestseller!
From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.
“A soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It’s flat-out mesmerizing.”―Paul Tremblay, author of The Pallbearers Club
Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived―but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with high octane viciousness.” ―Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
A woman builds her lover from carefully scavenged pieces and parts. A young girl is groomed for madness by one who loves her most. A neurodivergent boy organizes his life, and loss, by the ticking of a clock. And love can be the most splendid and destructive force in the entire world.
Love is a Crematorium and Other Tales is a collection of seventeen stories that are both bleak and beautiful, devastating and sweet. Enter the crematorium to experience grief, starlit nights, and gorgeous tragedy that make our souls burn from the inside out.
One of Paste Magazine’s “Most Anticipated Horror Books of 2024”
It’s about to get very dark.
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.
Bring a flashlight and a book of matches.
Where we’re going, there’s not a speck of light.
It is in the darkest moments, during the loss of hope, that the language of crows is most clearly heard. The words are as menacing as piercing beaks, the events as perilous as a sea of black feathers. The corvid tongue spreads diabolical thoughts and devious visions.
Legend has it that crows prophesize offenses of the worst kind, their harsh tones are harbingers of horror. Collectively, crows are a murder, and they call out orders about their own name. The Language of Crows and other stories contains dark fairy tales, historical horror, and psychological horror in voices of the violent and the violated. It is a collection of witches’ spells, monsters’ murmurs, and voices within one’s head.
Do you dare to listen to the language of crows?
A brand-new collection of four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.
THIS SKIN WAS ONCE MINE
When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known about her father.
SEEDLING
A young man’s father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother’s body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist. Then he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction.
ALL THE PARTS OF YOU THAT WON’T EASILY BURN
Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction…
PRICKLE
Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences…
From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.
“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.
King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.
A young queer man finds love at a magical clothing shop-and the courage to stand up to the homophobic cops. A witch who makes custom nightmares wonders why all her victims are connected to the Black Panthers-and who she’s really working for. A soon-to-be father encounters a mysterious hitchhiker who tries pulling him back to the days of his violent past. A brand-new vampire, freshly hired at the blood bank, delights in her heightened sexual desire and superhuman strength.
Cynthia Gómez’s debut collection is a magic-soaked love letter to Oakland, brimming with feminist rage. Its twelve stories center ordinary people-Latine, queer, working class-as they wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and dread.
Christi Nogle has established herself as a modern Ray Bradbury, this collection adds fantasy, slipstream, and fabulism to her canon.
One Eye Opened in That Other Place collects Christi Nogle’s best weird and fantastical stories. The collection focuses on liminal spaces and the borders between places and states of mind. Though you might not find a traditional portal fantasy here, you will travel across thresholds and arrive at other places and times that are by turns disquieting, terrifying, and wonderful. Get up close with the local flora and fauna, peruse the weird art exhibits and special shows, and consider taking a dip in the mossy, snail-filled tank of water. Make sure to bring your special glasses
This new collection will appeal to readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Wilkinson, Steve Rasnic Tem, M. Rickert, Lynda E. Rucker and Stephen King’s novel Lisey’s Story.
The Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author returns with a new collection of literary horror and weird fiction that glitters with startling prose and tortured souls.
Invaginies is an invasion, it is a perception that is bodily and transcendent creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth-and not always voluntary–enlightenment.
Every line sings and strikes like grotesque poetry of the possessed. With 17 disturbing tales exploring plagues, possessions, gender & corruption, set in apocalyptic eras not much unlike our own, Joe Koch brings the terrors of a postmodern world into vivid focus.
Haunting and beautiful, Koch takes their place among the great names of the weird like Brian Evenson, exploring the queer perspective in horror as Billy Martin and Clive Barker, and contemporary rising voice, Eric LaRocca.
Literary prose meets the grotesque in this collection of stories to galvanize lovers of horror and weird fiction. With a growing cult audience, this collection is sure to shoot to the top of readers’ tbr piles.
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as “singular and wise and fresh” (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil includes: “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”
A great next read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties and V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
Recommended reading by Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and more!
The World is Weird.
You will be discouraged from participating in it.
However, your participation is not optional.
Zip up your human suit and set sail, imbibing every perspective you can
in order to perfect the persona.
Push to the outer edges. Document your travels, and forget to return.
There will be a test.
Learn what it means to be human.
Forget what it means to be human.
Learn what it means to be human.
Forget what it means to be human.
Do not panic.
BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two encompasses the finest Weird speculative fiction published in (roughly) 2023. Edited by Alex Woodroe.
Table of contents:
Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas – Lullaby for the Unseen
Thomas Ha – In That Crumbling Home
Hussani Abdulrahim – The Library Virus
Patrick Malka – Show Me
Eirik Gumeny – A Balanced Breakfast
David Simmons – Food is Poison
Premee Mohamed – Quietus
Perfect Kiss Strickoll – punctum (o baked alaska for you i am a former american)
LC von Hessen – Transmasc of the Red Death
Simone le Roux – The Man Outside
KS Walker – River Bargain Baby
M.M. Olivas – The Prince of Oakland
Amitha Jagannath Knight – My Mother, The Exoskeleton
Rachael K. Jones – The Sound of Children Screaming
Judith Shadford – Endless Yearning
Daniel DeRock – Guest Opinion: We must take action regarding the [REDACTED] High School janitor
Geneve Flynn – A Box of Hair and Nail
Anemone Moss – Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez – Up In the Hills, She Dreams of Her Daughter Deep In the Ground
Elena Sichrovsky – Embryo
Ivan Zoric – Our Roots Will Dry Out in the End
Michael Bettendorf – As the Music Plays Groovy
Chris Kuriata – Family Not Going To Heaven
If books have no power, why are they trying so hard to keep them from people?
4,240 unique book titles were targeted for censorship or banning in 2023 alone.
Shadows in the Stacks was published to raise funds for the Books Unbanned Initiative through the Library Foundation SD. All proceeds from sales go to the Library Foundation SD.
This collection of terrifying tales was edited by Vincent V. Cava, James Sabata, and Jared Sage, with a foreword by Laurel Hightower, and features all-new stories from…
Kevin David AndersonZachary AshfordS.A. BradleyBridget D. BraveKel ByronVincent V. CavaClay McLeod ChapmanRebecca CuthbertAlexis DuBonJamie FlanaganDouglas FordEvelyn FreelingAi JiangLucy LeitnerJonathan MaberryJ.A.W. McCarthyTim McGregorJohn PalisanoJames SabataWilliam SterlingAlvaro Zinos-Amaro
Each limb tells a story. Every organ shares a secret.
A woman saves the leg of her dead child. A man leaps from soul to soul, trying to find a pure heart. Uteri wander, skin peels back, and human bodies liquify all over this world.
Slice into the anatomy of this collection to discover all the unseen horrors the human body can deliver.
Brand new stories from Alex Wolfgang, Ai Jiang, Mary Rajotte, Julie Sevens, Christopher O’Halloran, Sasha Brown, Bridget D. Brave, Taylor Ketterer, Demi-Louise Blackburn, Lindsey Ragsdale, Emma E. Murray, Johnathon Heart, P.L. McMillan, Rachel Searcey, Bryan Young, Kai Delmas, and David Worn, with a foreword from Paula D. Ashe.
A manifestation of ecstasy, heartache, horror and suffering rendered in feverish lyrical prose. Inside are sixteen new stories by some of the genre’s most visionary queer writers. Young lovers find themselves deliriously lost in an expanding garden labyrinth. The porter of a sentient hotel is haunted within a liminal time loop. A soldier and his abusive commanding officer escape a war in the trenches but discover themselves in an even greater nightmare. Parasites chase each other across time-space in hungry desperation to never be apart. A graduate student with violent tendencies falls into step with a seemingly walking corpse. Featuring stories from Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Robbie Banfitch, August Clarke, Son M., Jonathan Louis Duckworth, M.V. Pine, Ed Kurtz, LC Von Hessen, Matteo L. Cerilli, November Rush, Meredith Rose, Charlene Adhiambo, Violet, and Thomas Kearnes.
It’s the question asked of any story about a haunting: why didn’t you just leave? But if accounts of people who have stayed in haunted houses are any indication … it’s never that simple.
In this book, you’ll find twenty-two all-new stories about the reasons people don’t leave scary situations-parents who stay in haunted houses to protect their children, convicts who literally can’t leave their prison, retail workers who need a paycheck even if it’s from a haunted workplace, trauma survivors suffering from agoraphobia, and more.
Featuring Shauntae Ball, I.S. Belle, Die Booth, Max Booth III, Christa Carmen, Raquel Castro, Alberto Chimal, Gabe Converse, Lyndsey Croal, Victoria Dalpe, Alexis DuBon, Corey Farrenkopf, Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, E.M. Linden, Steve Loiaconi, R. Diego Martinez, J.A.W. McCarthy, Suzan Palumbo, Tonia Ransom, Rhiannon Rasmussen, and Eden Royce. With illustrations by Luke Spooner, Yves Tourigny, and Yornelys Zambrano.
An empowering cross-genre YA anthology that explores what it means to be a monster, exclusively highlighting trans and queer authors who offer new tales and perspectives on classic monster stories and tropes.
Be not afraid! These monsters, creatures, and beasties are not what they appear. We Mostly Come Out at Night is a YA anthology that reclaims the monstrous for the LGBTQA+ community while exploring how there is freedom and power in embracing the things that make you stand out. Each story centers on both original and familiar monsters and creatures—including Mothman, Carabosse, a girl with thirteen shadows, a living house, werebeasts, gorgons, sirens, angels, and many others—and their stories of love, self-acceptance, resilience, and empowerment. This collection is a bold, transformative celebration of queerness and the creatures that (mostly) go bump in the night.
Contributors include editor Rob Costello, Kalynn Bayron, David Bowles, Shae Carys, Rob Costello, H.E. Edgmon, Michael Thomas Ford, Val Howlett, Brittany Johnson, Naomi Kanakia, Claire Kann, Jonathan Lenore Kastin, Sarah Maxfield, Sam J. Miller, Alexandra Villasante, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.
Be warned, dear reader: The Black girls survive in this one.
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.
The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.
A death row cell that recounts the dark stories of its inmates. An informant who consumes shards of crystallized skulls to see the past. A world where to speak of the dead is a violation of an unjust society’s rules. Heists, drugs, cults, detectives, murder, monsters, revenge.
Commit yourself to Howls from the Scene of the Crime, an anthology of crime horror laced with blood, secrets, and occult compulsions from some of the best established and emerging horror authors writing today. Featuring a foreword by Bram Stoker Award(R) winning crime horror author, Cynthia Pelayo.
Beyond The Bounds Of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror
Raw Dog Screaming Press
Welcome to a world of horror viewed through a kaleidoscope lens. Embark on a journey to untangle the writhing tendrils of human terror in a dimension where the possible and impossible blend-an unstable realm where comfort can be found in the coldest pits, and dark gods feast upon the sweetest suffering-where infernal sounds birth silent letters that drift along midnight shores and the unexplained lurks beneath crumbling urban structures. Step over the edge of what you think you know, and find yourself…Beyond the Bounds of Infinity!
Featuring stories by L. Marie Wood, S.A. Cosby, Jessica McHugh, and Mary SanGiovanni-alongside newer voices like Cassius Kilroy, Jessica L. Sparrow, and Vicky Velvet-Beyond the Bounds of Infinity offers a collection of weird fiction and cosmic horror stories that are diverse down to the cellular level. From Taíno folk horror to the horror of identity in a world that just doesn’t understand, from cozy to apocalyptic, and everything in between, let these authors show you what fear really is, and what it means to them.