First Contact Horror

A writer in California. A doctor in Boston. A motel owner and his employee in Nevada. A priest in Chicago. A robber in New York. A little girl in Las Vegas. They’re a handful of people from across the country, living through eerie variations of the same nightmare.

From master storyteller Stephen King comes his classic #1 New York Times bestseller about four friends who encounter evil in the Maine woods. Twenty-five years ago, in their haunted hometown of Derry, Maine, four boys bravely stood together and saved a mentally challenged child from vicious...

In the wake of the solar eclipse, a portal between our world and a paranormal realm opens—and a scientist’s life will never be the same, in this thrilling serialized adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of The Hollows. Dr. Renee Caisson knows there are worse things than an...

A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona. Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation but which haunts the Signalman. In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea, a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible - the Children of the Next Level - and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming, and they will help to usher it in.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

Alien visitors devastate a remote farm in Lovecraft’s first and best venture into science fiction.

Something ancient has been unearthed on Mars… and it’s hungry. In 2052, a squad of Marines from the Earth Military Federation is dispatched to investigate a terraforming colony that has gone mysteriously silent. What they discover is a nightmare: the entire outpost has been brutally slaughtered after unearthing a massive alien structure buried beneath the Martian surface. As the unit delves deeper into the station, they uncover horrifying evidence of what caused the massacre—and realize too late that the true threat is still alive. Now, trapped in the dark corridors of the colony, the...

We were not created by accident. We were engineered. When a mysterious signal from deep space matches a hidden pattern in human DNA, astrophysicist Dr. Mara Voss uncovers a truth older than civilization — and far more dangerous. Humanity was designed by the Architects, god-like beings who abandoned their experiment… until now. As the signal awakens across the globe, machines begin to think, minds begin to fracture, and Earth itself starts to rewrite its own code. To stop the transformation, Mara must confront the one secret she swore she’d never face — the father she lost, now ...

Somewhere in Russia… Boris Petrov in his glory days had a career in the Russian secret service but now he is well past his prime and just a bored police officer. Annoyed by obnoxious colleagues and petty crimes he languishes in his filthy office. An emergency call changes everything. He is the only available officer and he reluctantly takes up the case. He locates the origin of the emergency call by EMMA in the middle of nowhere. He is greeted by an obscure professor in a secretive building full with high-tech equipment and the darkest secret he could never have imagined even in his ...

A deadly cargo. A crew trapped in the void of space. A nightmare they can’t escape. The crew of the starship Antori thought they’d landed their biggest payday yet—an easy job transporting a sealed container to a nearby star system. But when curiosity gets the better of one crew member, the contents of the cargo are unleashed… and the nightmare begins. Hunted through the dark, claustrophobic corridors of their ship, the crew must fight to survive against a relentless extraterrestrial predator. As systems fail and hope dwindles, the real question isn’t just whether they can escape ...

When CIA Special Operations officer Major Jim Carter is sent to the town of Serene, Texas, he's still grieving for Agent Cathy Abbey, who was not only a fellow agent—but the woman he loved. And the woman he chose to shoot rather than let Al-Shabaab insurgents abduct her. A decision that haunts him. When Carter arrives in Serene, it's to discover that all one hundred and twenty-one citizens of the town have been murdered by insectoid creatures assumed to be extraterrestrials. None of the authorities know how the aliens arrived on Earth or what their intentions are.

Humanity waited centuries for proof we were not alone. We were not prepared for how the universe would answer. Across the world, people feel it at the same time — a pressure in the air, a silence that feels deliberate, aware. Then reality itself begins to misbehave. Bodies stop responding. Time slips. Gravity falters. Hospitals lose control of the human body. This is not an invasion. It is a correction. As scientists, governments, and faith leaders struggle to understand what has been triggered, one irreversible human decision proves devastating. Humanity learns too late that silence was ...

The year is 2164. Humanity has slipped the surly bonds of its golden sun, and prospers as it finds a way across the stars. A new era of exploration dawns, its citizens asking the question eagerly: “Is there anyone out there?” Now, the answer comes suddenly and violently, a surprise attack on a peaceful colony. Deadly conflict, long forgotten by the governments of Man, makes itself known once more. New enemies emerge from the void: children of war, heirs to its terror and splendor. But this foe too has questions to answer, faced as it is with a civilization previously unimagined.

After Task Force Ember’s successful intervention in Ukraine, John Dempsey disappears without a trace—with no notice or explanation given to his teammates. Spotty intelligence eventually places him in Russia where he is rumored to have been captured by the Russian FSB and is now presumed dead. Mourning his loss, Ember is forced to pick up the pieces, restructure, and continue their mission of keeping America safe. As the president’s “go-to” black ops asset, Ember is directed to find and finish off the Russian spymaster Arkady Zhukov and any last remnants of Zeta cell.

In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like "Precious", in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste", a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus.

After a year of torment following the loss of his wife, Isabella, to a serial killer with an artistic flair, Marcus Lockwood retreats with his son, Elias, to Moose Hollow—a secluded campground in backwoods Maine—in search of healing. There, a close-knit band of lifelong campers immerses them in a warm, nostalgic experience filled with fishing, canoeing, crackling barbecues, and a taste of normalcy. When whispers of eerie UFO sightings ignite a vigil on the beach, Marcus and Elias eagerly join the hunt for the inexplicable.

The Fourth of July in Red Hollow is a celebration of heat, noise, and tradition. But this year, the celebration is just camouflage. Photographer Owen sees it first—a glitch in his camera showing a man's smile stretching into an impossible, grotesque crescent . Hot dog vendor Al serves the same blank-faced man the same exact order twice in ten minutes, a film skipping on repeat . Then, in front of the entire town, Mayor Thompson collapses during his speech, only to rise again—unnaturally smooth, his eyes glassy, and wearing a perfect, hollow smile . When a silent, pristine ambulance ...

It's supposed to be a simple job, a look-see operation to make sure something terrible hasn't happened. The leader is prone to fits of violence, and there are rumors of previous human rights abuses. Only, when they arrive, the ship is...empty. The question is - where did everybody go? Armed only with riot gear, they explore the ship, intent on discovering the truth about what's happened on The Ark. What they find will be more nightmarish than anything they've seen before. Indeed, it's worse than anything they could imagine.

The West Texas desert towns of Inferno and Bordertown have been slowly dying. The Snake River isn’t the only thing that divides them. Racism and gang wars have turned the sun-scorched flatlands into a powder keg. If anything can unite them now, it’s the UFO that comes crashing through the clouds. It brings with it a young alien named Daufin, a fugitive who has taken human form. She knows the terror that awaits this planet—because it’s looking for her.

A Washington Post and Publishers Weekly Best SF/Fantasy/Horror Novel of 2025 Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia. Festering masses of...