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Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron's stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.
The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.
A new mother is pursued by mysterious men in black. A misguided youth learns the dark secrets of the world from an elderly neighbor on Halloween night. A housewarming party where the guests never leave. A caretaker tends to his rusted relic of a god deep in the desert.... In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi's debut collection is not to be missed.
Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us.... Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge.
The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.
Within Strange Tales you will find 22 weirdly twisted stories. Some will frighten, others will shock, but all will stay with you long after the final sentence has finished. If you love the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Tales From the Crypt, or Tales from the Darkside then feel free to come closer and begin. Who knows what you might find?
Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron's stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.
The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.
A new mother is pursued by mysterious men in black. A misguided youth learns the dark secrets of the world from an elderly neighbor on Halloween night. A housewarming party where the guests never leave. A caretaker tends to his rusted relic of a god deep in the desert.... In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi's debut collection is not to be missed.
Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us.... Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge.
The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.
Within Strange Tales you will find 22 weirdly twisted stories. Some will frighten, others will shock, but all will stay with you long after the final sentence has finished. If you love the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Tales From the Crypt, or Tales from the Darkside then feel free to come closer and begin. Who knows what you might find?
In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer's novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author's own.
For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the ninth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night.
Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his 16 Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.
In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.
Laird Barron’s fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and giallo-fueled nightmare vistas. Combining hard-boiled noir, psychological horror, and the occult, Swift to Chase continues three-time Shirley Jackson Award winner Barron’s harrowing inquiry into the darkness of the human heart.
Hasty for the Dark is the second short story collection from the award-winning and widely appreciated British writer of horror fiction, Adam L. G. Nevill. The author's best horror stories from 2009 to 2015 are collected here for the first time.
The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft: a brand new anthology that collects the 12 principal deities of the Lovecraftian Mythos and sets them loose. Featuring the biggest names in horror and dark fantasy, including many New York Times best sellers; full of original fiction; and individual commentary on each of the deities by Donald Tyson.
A diverse collection of 51 short horror stories, including the grizzly confessions of a serial killer, parallel dimensions, becoming trapped in a virtual world, and encountering ancient aliens buried beneath the Earth's crust. Demons, monsters, psychopaths, undead, mad experiments, and paranormal - no matter what makes your heart race, you're guaranteed to face your fear with these terrifying tales.
Behold the Void includes nine stories of terror that huddle in the dark space between cosmic horror and the modern weird, between old-school hard-edged horror of the 1980s and the stylistic prose of today's literary giants.
Where is the real Leeds? How does one get there? Is it floating on the air—words and music you can almost reach out and grab like wriggling worms of sound and ether? Is it in the carnival that seethes under the corrupted church, drawing the lost along shadowy corridors and through the strangely angled funhouse doors to the place where the city fathers perform secret rites with the goat-headed masters of the dark?
Here are 16 chilling, never-before-published tales that explore every aspect of our darkest holiday, Halloween, coedited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most successful and respected genre editors, and Lisa Morton, a leading authority on Halloween. Included are stories about scheming jack-o'-lanterns, vengeful ghosts, otherworldly changelings, disturbingly realistic haunted attractions, masks that cover terrifying faces, murderous urban legends, parties gone bad, cult Halloween movies, and trick-or-treating in the future.
Once upon a time, waiting for the mail was filled with warm anticipation. But the suicide of the local mailman has left the residents of this tiny Arizona town shell-shocked. Nothing this bad has ever happened here. And now, there's a new mail carrier in town, one who's delivering lethal letters stuffed with icy fear. Nothing - not even the most outstanding citizens or the most secret weaknesses - is safe from the sinister power of this malicious mailman....
Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti. His stories have garnered critical acclaim and been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was the inaugural winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He returns with his second collection, Occultation. Pitting ordinary men and women against a carnivorous, chaotic cosmos, Occultation's eight tales of terror (two never before published) include the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated story "The Forest" and Shirley Jackson Award nominee "The Lagerstatte."
What did you love best about Occultation and Other Stories?
Each of Barron's stories is a wonderful microcosm populated by believable, complex characters with rich back-stories. The horror and suspense work so well because we actually care about the people, we feel that they have lives, and we watch with them in fascination and horror as their world slowly and inexorably unravels; revealing the dark secret at the heart of things..
Who was your favorite character and why?
It's hard to pick just one, but I really liked the protagonist of "The Lagerstatte". In a story that's essentially about grief, it's all too easy to write a character that comes off as self-pitying or whiny, so I was pleasantly surprised that despite the story's overall bleak tone, the main character (who is a grieving widow) comes off as both strong and quite funny in places. It is even more surprising when you consider Barron's penchant for writing stories populated by "Manley Men" that he writes sympathetic and believable female characters, and it really illustrates his versatility as a writer.
What does David Drummond bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Mr. Drummond does an excellent job bringing the stories to life, he conveys the terror, confusion, anger, helplessness, and exasperation of the characters without becoming cartoonish or melodramatic. I did feel that some of the voices he does in "The Broadswords" were a little over the top, but overall I loved his narration and I hope he continues to narrate Barron's works.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Absolutely. In fact, I wanted to listen to the whole book again the moment it ended, something that I've not experienced in years.
Any additional comments?
If you've not heard of Barron, this collection is an excellent introduction to his brand of terror. That is, stories that manage to be both literary and visceral, stories that celebrates many of the horror genre's tropes and conventions while at the some time subverting them. There's really no one out there writing works like Barron and if you love horror (especially horror of the cosmic, psychological, and somewhat pessimistic variety) then you owe it to yourself to buy this collection ASAP!
7 of 7 people found this review helpful
I'll be thinking about these stories for a long time to come. Laird Barron makes me feel like I'm being watched.
Creepily, expertly read. And the writing! Don't get me started...
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
The reading of the book was pretty decent, just struggled through the slow pace. sorry
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Very eerie Pacific Northwest feel is captured throughout, with average, everyday characters gradually broken in turn by something otherworldly or unknown.
Unsettling and Adult, but even funny at times, I quite enjoyed it and will seek out his other works ASAP.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
If you could sum up Occultation and Other Stories in three words, what would they be?
The Shadows Beckon
What other book might you compare Occultation and Other Stories to and why?
Murgunstrumm and Others By Hugh B. Cave. also The Book of Cthulhu 1 and 2.
There is Historical Lore here that begs one to continue to turn the page. Assortment of stories with a common theme that stays focused on the main antagonist, a Black Book a tour guide to roads, places, and peoples who are of the dark and love you, mostly because you are delicious to them. They also appreciate how well they can fit inside your skin, then your life impersonating, and then frightening their next selected course on the menu. What makes his work so original is his villans are reluctant then accepting, and finally eager to fulfill their compact with the great dark.
What about David Drummond’s performance did you like?
Captivating sincerity and memorable characters are even more deeply brought to life by someone with the ability to create growing passion and connections thru even the most subtle of nuances. Humorous places made me laugh out loud, the creepiness made me want to go looking for these places to experience the haunting for myself. I am fascinated by the otherness of the World and do not fear the nature of darker places. David Drummond reminded me of how those characters are so at home in the dark and are just being themselves and evoking answers to why people are in a most primal sense afraid of the dark.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The end of the last story where the mans fate is sealed by his curiosity. Reminded me of Seven. How even with all the "reality" we see around ourselves there are places that eventually, if we ignore the warnings from inside, we will be called towards and participate in the fulfillment of others well thought out designs.
Any additional comments?
I have just recently discovered this Author. Intrigued by him with the story "The Men from Porlock" wherein we are introduced to Boris Kasimov. This was from a Themed compilation called The Book of Cthulhu, tales of Lovecraft themes by modern writers. After that story, its amazing ability to take a children nursery tale and revise it with enhancements that seem a missed train of logical and progressive thought. Expanding even more the adult truth of why Grimm's Fairy tales were sinister warnings and not innocent literature. I knew this is the work of a Master of the Art with a Shamans skill of crafting depth, belief and historical curiosity. What is "real" about this work is there are droves of people going missing in the forest, and even today the leaders of the Native American tribes are hesitant to speak of the skin-walker. There are totems and rituals practiced even today to prevent such beings from entering a domicile on the reservations. Laird Barron has the remarkable gift of taking a fragment of lore and expounding upon it so uniquely that he like Howard Phillips Lovecraft will be given the honored gratis of people believing the guide actually exists and he is using fiction to warn us of the very real dangers lurking everywhere in all the shadows especially in the forests among the trees. I am devouring everything I can get my hands on by this author. I love his work and look forward to what other characters he can adopt into his Legendary Universe. Like Neil Gaiman he has created a startling Mythos that is in its infancy, I am eager to see how more populated his Worlds will become and who is next called to dine at the table by the Dark Abyss.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Loved it! Stories create a complete atmosphere of horror. Characters are realistic and well performed. Not to be read for quick thrills. I became immersed in these stories. If you like writers such as Lovecraft or Ramsay Campbell then this collection is for you
not for me.. very boring. I generally love this genre, but this could not peak my interest at all.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful
Dislike the narrator all of his male voices were the same . stories generally boring, rehashed same old devil under the bed stories .
0 of 7 people found this review helpful