The Shivering Ground & Other Stories is a National Indie Excellence Awards finalist, a collection of weird fiction with a steampunk aesthetic.
In "The Door at the End of the Path" a young girl discovers her parents' secret in their gothic house with a garden behind it... in "Conditions" a man with Frankenstein-ian aspirations gets a visit from his twin sister, who tells him about the disappearance of her ex-lover.
"The Eternal In-Between" details a narrator's dream during the plague, while "The Mannequin" explains a medical procedure that involves taking out one's heart. "Brianna" retells Sleeping Beauty with a dark twist, and "Noticing" is post-apocalyptic fiction about a man and an alien creature obsessed with extinct birds, stuck on earth during the end of it all.
"Entanglement" tells the story of love between two soldiers, and "The Day Before Tomorrow" tells the story of friendship between two young girls in an ordinary suburb, that is being slowly eaten away by a vastness of char and bones.
"It's Already Too Late" is a fatalistic group of people's response to the changes in their world, and "The Shivering Ground" creates a narrative between a guard and their winged captive in a post-war city, intertwined with music.
"A Universe Akilter," the collection's only novella, a love story in epistolary format, tells of the meetings, through dreams, between a failed playwright and a young painter who live in different dimensions.
"The Sword" is a gothic fantasy short story collection that weaves together five distinct tales of shared suffering within a surreal space. The sentences are long, intricate, heavy, and interwoven.
This pioneer vampire tale from 1819 spills revenge-cold blood as its narrator leads us through high gothic terror, to radical outrage, to in-jokes for the New York literati and broadsides on the morality of slavery, reaching a blood-soaked conclusion dripping with 'biting' polemic vilifying the bankers who caused the horrendous economic recession of that same year.
An anti-capitalist horror fable from 200 years hence, The Black Vampyre vilified the worst financial predation the capitalist world would ever see, decades before Karl Marx ― the enslavement of Africans in the New World.
One dead man said no. And this is his story.
The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo tells the affrighting tale of a slave who is resurrected as a vampire after being killed by his owner; the slave seeks revenge by stealing the owner's son and marrying the owner's wife. The anonymous writer D'Arcy sets the story against the conditions that led to the Haitian Revolution.
WARNING! Contains moderate bloody violence against slavers and plantation owners!
Barrington Hall is a place of secrets - something Dan Morgan has worked hard to forget. But when a heart-breaking loss brings him back to the place where he spent his childhood summers, Barrington Hall will do what it must to make him remember.
Faye Morgan blames her husband for the death of their teenage son. She doesn’t want to leave the place Toby called home. But after she catches a glimpse of a strange boy in the midnight woods and learns of his connection with Barrington Hall, her need to learn more pulls her further and further into a nightmare world filled with past atrocities and the burning flame of revenge.
**The convoluted chronicle of Vauquelin — a queer, ancient vampire — unfolds in a tapestry of paradoxes. Born into the tumultuous backdrop of elegant, monied, 17th-century France, an ill-fated broken carriage wheel alters the trajectory of his life for eternity.**
After centuries of ennui, his blood-stained past provokes him to seek new horizons: he emigrates to the United States. There he witnesses Los Angeles evolve from primitive dirt roads into its present-day incarnation: a sprawling, soulless metropolis. His life in self-imposed exile is peaceful and relatively carefree: until one night it's abruptly shattered. The very fabric of time itself begins to unravel without explanation, casting him adrift in the chaos of mid-century LA and beyond.
Vauquelin fumbles his way through history in reverse, ripping the scabs off of old wounds and mourning the loss of his futurepast joys, while attempting to keep certain skeletons firmly locked in their closets where they belong.
But the past has a way of making its presence known, especially when one is reliving it. As the threads of his history fray, the vampire finds himself ensnared within the fragmented labyrinth of his existence. Vauquelin’s mundane modern existence is systematically erased, compelling him to confront all his missteps over the last three centuries and acknowledge his defeats. The cobblestoned streets of old Paris beckon, and he is obligated to confront his own macabre history: but with newfound clarity.
An unanticipated glimmer of hope emerges amidst the chaos of his unravelling timelines: a chance for reconciliation, for atonement, tantalisingly presents itself. Yet even as the wheels of time threaten to grind to a halt, uncertainty looms large. As he regresses through time, he surrenders to his brutal nature and faces an unexpected choice that could alter his life completely, and in turn, extinguish the only true happiness he ever knew.
What will become of Vauquelin when — and if — time begins to march forward again? He has two choices: emerge from the wreckage reborn, or be forever ensnared within a bloody web of his own making.
*This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . .*
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things.
Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband's dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
**He thought he was untouchable...**
David Lansdown, esteemed British horror writer and supernatural sceptic, is used to basking in the glow of the press. Until a hastily snapped photo hits the headlines and makes his affair with his publisher’s son public.
When David finds himself at Bone Hollow, a house with a glass wall overlooking a wild and desolate moor, his only concern is writing his next best seller to bury his misdeeds in the past.
But something stirs beneath the earth. Something bound to the land. Something determined to take everything from him.
Luca Fox-Waite is still in love with the man who cast him aside, but his own childhood demons lurk in his shadow. As he discovers more about Bone Hollow’s history, he finds himself ensnared in its story—a story steeped in time and tragedy.
Because curses lie in bones, and they do not die.
Everyone in Sleepy Hollow knows about the Horseman, but no one really believes in him. Not even Ben Van Brunt's grandfather, Brom Bones, who was there when it was said the Horseman chased the upstart Crane out of town. Brom says that's just legend, the village gossips talking.
More than thirty years after those storied events, the village is a quiet place. Fourteen-year-old Ben loves to play "Sleepy Hollow boys," reenacting the events Brom once lived through. But then Ben and a friend stumble across the headless body of a child in the woods near the village, and the discovery makes Ben question everything the adults in Sleepy Hollow have ever said. Could the Horseman be real after all? Or does something even more sinister stalk the woods?
**Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.**
Connecticut, 1666.
An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector.
The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil.
To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help.
Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan – one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake.
***“If it is a devil you seek, then it is a devil you shall have!”***
A Hole Walked In is a thrilling piece of surrealist-gothic-body-horror short fiction, featuring a protagonist whose face just won’t stop bleeding. Following writers like Carmen Maria Machado and Helen Oyeyemi, A Hole Walked In traverses the feminist Weird and leaves a red trail in its wake.
–Publisher
The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner is a sawmill gothic that begins with June Vogel's return to Storm Break, her family's estate. Things in the great house aren't what they used to be. Doors slam in the night. Faucets turn on, untouched. Something is always watching, whatever June does. And when her brother returns with his new bride, deceit and betrayal threaten to destroy everything she loves.
The gaslit gothic atmosphere of a Victorian penny dreadful meets the dangerous romance of Hades and Persephone in A.G. Howard’s newest lush adult vampire fantasy fraught with passion, horror, and mystery.
In 1832 England, to fall from the peerage is the kiss of death. Yet penniless Mordecai Dureance still has a life worth living: an honest vocation and a humble cottage where he, his new bride, Lynora, and his little brother, Isaac, can be a family. But Mordecai knows he’s meant for more than gardening, if only society wouldn’t shun the unholy byproducts of his horticultural experiments. When an ancient sect of vampires lures him into their hidden city, Nocturnus—an ornate labyrinth of tunnels deep beneath Tatabury’s substratum—they promise wealth and acceptance beyond his imaginings. Discarding his human trappings, Mordecai embraces the darkness and its foundation of sins and blood. Yet he can’t forget his light: the woman who loved him, poverty notwithstanding. To contact Lynora on topside is forbidden, but to live an eternity without her is unthinkable. So, Mordecai will break any laws—natural and unnatural alike—to bring her down into his monstrous world.
Lynora Dureance’s life has crumbled under her blue-stockinged feet. Her wealthy family turned away when she married beneath their class. And now, mere weeks after abandoning Lynora and his young brother, her groom returns to claim her. When Lynora awakens, a victim of Mordecai’s bite, she finds herself cloistered in a castle outside of Tatabury. Her rescuers, a clandestine group of women who raise bats, share her gruesome fate—not yet full vampire but starving for blood. By isolating themselves and holding galas to entrance men, the Sisterhood survives without resorting to murder. In contrast, the vampires’ lethal feedings mark them as monsters. Each sister learns to defend herself, honing combative skills that will help Lynora reclaim her humanness and retrieve Isaac from the local orphan house. The one caveat: she must kill the seductive creature who tainted her blood—if she can see past his face and forget the brilliant gardener she once loved.
Lynora’s and Mordecai’s conflicting paths converge on one explosive night as they discover a strange blood-related illness infecting the children at the orphanage. Only by violating the laws that separate them, and bridging the broken trust between their worlds, can Lynora and Mordecai uncover the real monster and stop the evil force behind the plague—before it claims Isaac as its final victim.
***The Haunting of Hill House* meets *Knives Out* in a bid for an inheritance that will leave Helen Vaughan either rich...or dead.**
Helen Vaughan doesn't know why she and her mother left their ancestral home at Harrowstone Hall, called Harrow, or why they haven't spoken to their extended family since. So when her grandfather dies, she's shocked to learn that he has left everything—the house, the grounds, and the money—to her. The inheritance comes with one condition: she must stay on the grounds of Harrow for one full year, or she'll be left with nothing.
There is more at stake than money. For as long as she can remember, Harrow has haunted Helen's dreams—and now those dreams have become a waking nightmare. Helen knows that if she is going to survive the year, she needs to uncover the secrets of Harrow. Why is the house built like a labyrinth? What is digging the holes that appear in the woods each night?And why does the house itself seem to be making her sick?
With each twisted revelation, Helen questions what she knows about Harrow, her family, and even herself. She no longer wonders if she wants to leave…but if she can.
Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.
When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.
It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.
But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.
In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human.
Some say that hell is other people and some say hell is loneliness . . .
In the thirteen darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator's expectations; a ruined mansion which grants the secret wishes of a group of revelers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems.
Asta is an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners, who now, beyond anything, wishes only to fit in with a group of friends they will long outlive. An Oxford historian, in bitter competition with the rest of her faculty members, discovers an ancient tome whose sinister contents might solve her problems. Livia orchestrates a Satanic mass to distract herself from a recently remembered trauma and two lovers must resolve their differences in order to defy a lethal curse.
**They’ll lure you in with fruit and gems and liquor and dancing, merriment to remember for the rest of your life. But that’s an illusion. The market is death itself.**
Beneath the streets of York, the goblin market calls to the Wickett women―the family of witches that tends to its victims. For generations, they have defended the old cobblestone streets with their magic. Knowing the dangers, they never entered the market―until May Wickett fell for a goblin girl, accepted her invitation, and became inextricably tied to the world her family tried to protect her from. The market learned her name, and even when she and her sister left York for Boston to escape it, the goblins remembered.
Seventeen years later, Lou, May’s niece, knows nothing of her magical lineage or the twisted streets, sweet fruits, and incredible jewels of the goblin market. But just like her aunt, the market calls to her, an echo of a curse that won’t release its hold on her family. And when her youngest aunt, Neela, is kidnapped by goblins, Lou discovers just how real and dangerous the market is.
To save her, both May and Lou will have to confront their family’s past and what happened all those years ago. But everything―from the food and wares, to the goblins themselves―is a haunting temptation for any human who manages to find their way in. And if Lou isn’t careful, she could end up losing herself to the market, too.
Mercy Chan is a triad exorcist with a mysterious past. After washing up on the shores of Hong Kong with no memory during World War II, she found a home in Kowloon Walled City, an infamous, ghost-infested slum full of lost and traumatised civilians. Since the war ended, Mercy has rebuilt her life and found work as a ghost-talker for the local triad, dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt this place.
But the past she can’t remember won’t let her go. An unusually powerful ghost lurks in Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. Unnervingly, it claims to know Mercy – and her forgotten childhood.
As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realise that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making.
A chance to live life over, to correct one’s mistakes — is it a blessing or a curse? In Beguiled by Night , Vauquelin, an ancient, queer vampire living in present-day Los Angeles, finds his time unwinding like a spool of dirty thread til he’s re-deposited into seventeenth century he seizes the chance for redemption. In Citizens of Shadow , he clings frightfully to his aim — until he learns the hidden costs of tampering with fate. Centuries of self-exile and isolation claim their due. What glory might unfold when you open your heart to what else is to come … and what rewards will you reap when you embrace your authentic self?
Lush, gothic horror unfolds in Citizens of Shadow , a queer dark fantasy of vampires, time travel, and sinister secrets threatening to unravel an eternal existence.
