Sixteen tales that combine the otherworldly with hardboiled crime fiction—from Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Paul G. Tremblay, Melanie Tem, and others.Here are the femme fatales, the tough guys, the down-on-their-luck detectives—but with a twist. Collected by Hugo and Bram Stoker Award–winning editor Ellen Datlow, these stories of the murderous and macabre will take you onto the dark streets of worlds unlike our own, where the monstrous stalk their prey.

"Lovers of gritty noir will devour this . . . a pulse-pounding account of a writer's descent into despair and violence." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)With his book sales—never strong to begin with—ebbing and the economy crashing, a writer is on the brink. When his wife leaves him and the bank takes his house, he goes over the edge. Living out of his car with his beloved bulldog, Churchill, he's set upon by street punks just as he's about to pawn the...

Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominated editor Warren Lapine celebrates twenty years in genre publishing with his latest effort, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. This anthology contains fourteen nicely varied stories by some of the top names in genre publishing and several new up-and-comers. Included are Harlan Ellison, Mike Resnick, Barry B. Longyear, Kelly McCullough, Shariann Lewitt, Tom Piccirilli, Trent Zelazny, Sharon Lee, Steve Miller, and many others. The stories range from edg...

"...if anybody tells you that all you need is a lucky break, then tell them to shove off. Luck is about the worst thing that can happen in this biz, and it's no substitute for knowledge, experience, and skill."—Tom Piccirilli, from Welcome to Hell"Welcome to Hell is an anecdotal look into Piccirilli's life and writing process that happens to serve as a wonderful tool for any fledgling writer. Oddly, since he's so acclaimed, this may be the Piccirilli book ...

NIGHTMARE is an online horror and dark fantasy magazine. In NIGHTMARE's pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror.This month, we have original fiction from Lane Robins ("The Black Window") and Mari Ness ("Death and Death Again"), along with reprints by Denis Etchison ("Talking in the Dark") and Tom Piccirilli ("The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair"). We also have the latest installment of our col...

Something is calling Jacob Maelstrom back to the isolated home of his childhood — to the scene of a living nightmare that almost cost him his life. Ten years ago his sister slaughtered their brother and parents, locked Jacob in a closet...then committed a hideous suicide. Now, as the anniversary of that dark night approaches, Jacob is drawn back to a house where the line between the living and the dead is constantly shifting.But there's more than awful memories waiting for Jacob at...

From Tom Piccirilli, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, two-time International Thriller Writers Award winner, and finalist for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award, comes The Walls of the Castle, an intense and visceral psychological thriller. This atmospheric yet action-packed, mature psychological thriller, is part examination into the bonds of family and part treatise on the nature of identity, and explores the deepest areas of what makes us who we are. With a noir sensibility and complexity...

After the break-up of his latest relationship, Nathaniel Follows meets beautiful, wealthy, and melancholy Susan Hartford; their rapport is immediate. She invites him to her home for a grandiose birthday celebration, and Nathaniel finds that Susan's life is not as enviable as it seems — in the midst of the gathering he realizes there is a wall of fear around her, and that her self-deprecation has a decidedly violent streak.Susan is both mentally and physically scarred, and after a b...

Bad Dog is a new volume of Tom Piccirilli's most offbeat and unsettling short fiction and novellas spanning the breadth of his twenty-year career. Twice nominated for crime fiction's highest honor, the Edgar Award, and twice winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, Piccirilli is a master of dark characterization and noir atmosphere. Find out for yourself why Tom Piccirilli is on so many "must read" lists when you open the pages of Bad Dog and lose yourself in the diverse stories...

Tom Piccirilli's third poetry collection is his most intensely personal, using the loss of his friends and family, forgiveness and guilt.

From award-winning author Tom Piccirilli comes what Lee Child calls “perfect crime fiction,” a wholly original novel introducing the Rands, a vipers’ nest of crooks and cons, one generation stealing from the next. Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older broth...

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Tom Piccirilli's The Last Kind Words.Five years ago, Eddie Whitt’s daughter Sarah became the victim of a serial killer known as Killjoy, and Whitt vowed to hunt him down—no matter what the cost. But the police have given up. And Killjoy has stopped killing…and in some bizarre act of repentance has begun kidnapping abused infants and leaving them with the parents of his original victims.The only clues to Killjoy’s identit...