Southern Gothic Anthology

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?

Times are rough for Max and Sandra. They've lost their income, live in a trailer, and struggle to make ends meet - all due to the resurrected Tucker Hull. To make matters worse, the ghost detective, Marshall Drummond, refuses to move on and resides in their trailer. Barely able to afford food, they are desperate to get back on their feet. So, when Max's sole client is murdered in the mysterious Baxter House, he knows they've reached the breaking point. And there's only one way out - push on through.

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.

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.

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.

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 American South is rife with stories of a haunted past - especially its houses. In this eclectic and impressive collection, 13 novelists were asked to build their tales around the photo of a dilapidated mansion. They were given two requirements - the house must appear in the story, and it should be a Southern Gothic tale. And they delivered. From childish demons to a mad novelist, from the Mississippi Delta to the Appalachians, this collection from emerging voices and New York Times best-selling authors explores what happens when secrets that lie beneath the dust are disturbed....