Southern Gothic Short Stories

A dark collection of tales from the American South full of twists and turns that you will never see coming. Did you ever have your name on the board for misbehaving in class? If you only got in trouble with the teacher, you should count yourself lucky. Ever find something old in the water? Was it an old box? Did it divide your whole town in ways you couldn’t imagine? What is beauty, and how do you stay forever young? The answer might not be what you want, especially if Joe passes by your house. Where does art come from? An old man’s backyard? Who’s to say?

Catherine “Tink” Mabry, an up and coming attorney, is shocked by her recent inheritance from her estranged family on the bayou. After her mother died during childbirth, Tink’s father had quickly relocated them to the big city of Atlanta, Georgia. With no memory of her mother, she is determined to learn more about her lineage and decides to visit the bayou town of Kane, Louisiana. Candace, Tink's co-worker and best friend, agrees to make the trip with her. Before she has time to explore her family’s history or decide what to do with the declining property, local murders plague ...

Meet the women of American Housewife: They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These 12 irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam.

When autumn drapes itself over Madison, Georgia, the days shorten, the nights deepen, and something restless stirs beneath the magnolias. In this Southern town, history lingers in the bricks of old houses and whispers ride the wind through quiet streets. Some say it is only memory. Others know better. Spirits have a way of keeping company in Madison, whether you invite them or not. Haunting Season in Madison gathers nine cozy horror tales where the monstrous and the human meet in ways that will tug at your heart and raise gooseflesh on your arms. Some stories bring laughter, with goblins ...

Welcome to Madison, Georgia, where the magnolias bloom, the tea is sweet, and the monsters are real. In this cozy horror anthology, the charming town of Madison hides secrets in its flowerbeds and shadows in its attics. Behind every wrought-iron fence and sun-warmed porch lies something unexpected: a banshee who quilts in the carriage house, a wight who prefers crossword puzzles to haunting, a wendigo who wears sweaters by the fire, and cryptids who just want someone to talk to. But don’t be fooled by the cobblestone streets and Southern charm. The ghouls here are real and love has a ...

There are places the light cannot reach. And some truths are only revealed in the dark. Welcome to Sanctuary of Shadows, a chilling collection of thirteen original tales that slip beneath the surface of what we believe is safe, sacred, or explainable. In this world, the line between the living and the dead is frayed. Memories twist like smoke. And even the most familiar places, an old church, a roadside inn, a quiet neighborhood can become gateways to something else entirely. These are not loud horrors. They are quiet knocks at midnight. A whisper behind the wall. A doll that moves when no ...

In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills.

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines.

Tampa Bay joins Miami in representing the (alleged) Sunshine State in the Noir Series arena.

Patuxent County is the story of Les Wadkins, an aging American tobacco farmer, who struggles against nature, time and the human element to bring in his crop in the dead of summer. When Les encounters a trespasser on his farm, an old feud reignites, causing Les to ponder the circumstances of a tragic hunting accident that occurred decades earlier.

Florida Gothic Stories contains 11 of Vicki Hendricks’ best, some previously published and some new to this volume. Hendricks’ stories are riveting and unsettling - some offer surreal sojourns into the dark side of magical realism while others are pure Florida noir, with a full menu of characters twisted and damaged, yet with a gritty determination to survive.

Every autumn, when the weather turned and the wind came off the marsh, the dark waters of Wickers Bog gave up its ghosts and reawakened the old yarns. Julene Ella Haddan is about to be drawn into one of them.

Where grief clings like moss and the dead still whisper… the stories never rest. Angels, Oaks and Iron Gates is Volume One of The Cemetery Diaries, a chilling collection of 14 original fictional ghost stories inspired by forgotten cemeteries, Southern folklore, and the lingering presence of things best left buried. Told through the voice of a man who’s witnessed more than he can explain, each story unfolds like a quiet confession, part memory, part myth. These aren’t true stories… but they feel like they could be. Inside this volume: • 14 original short stories rooted in haunted ...

The Farmhouse, having stood against time and history for nearly 160 years in the Virginia countryside, was forgotten and abandoned until Kyle and Jenny Dowling moved in during the summer of 1972. The Dowlings, married just a year, are struggling to repair their broken marriage. It was to be the perfect place, away from it all, to heal their relationship. Jenny would write, and Kyle would tend to minor renovations. The rent was cheap.

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” is an Edgar Allan Poe short story that expertly blends his dark perspective with the comic. -This is the original story—only word order and difficult vocabulary have been updated. -End notes, interpretation, and discussion of major themes follow the text. -Biographical information on Edgar Allan Poe is included. -For other classic short stories in easy to understand updated English search for “Simplified for Modern Readers Series.”