Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:“Necksnapper” by MP Johnson“The Vault of the Sky, the Face of the Deep” by Robert Levy (reprint)“When the Night Blooms, an Artist Transmutes: A Three-Act Play” by Nin Harris“Lump in Your Throat” by Robert Shearman (reprint)

After a company conference in Vegas, apparent opposites Constello "Connie" Coujoe and Raymond Wilson discover there is much more to each other than they've allowed themselves to see. But nothing is simple in love, and life faces with many challenges as they walk the path of self and respective discovery. Will Connie's faith be enough and her ordeal become a force for change among her friends and family? Will Raymond realize love cannot be ordered as business before it is too late?

It's the 1950s. There's always something good on the radio, cherry red Cadillacs cruise the streets and everything is always perfect. Marilyn is still alive and the War is over. America goes to bed, nuclear annihilation postponed another day.Welcome to the American Nightmare.Nuclear families dabbling in the occult. Little League games in the summer, old blood spilled in the dust. Unspeakable things hiss and crawl, unseen along the 38th parallel, camouflaged under muzzle fla...

Josh Malerman’s debut novel Bird Box is a terrifying, Hitchcockesque psychological horror that is sure to stay with you long after reading.This is a book extract including chapter 1 of Bird Box.Malorie raises the children the only way she can; indoors.The house is quiet. The doors are locked, the curtains are closed, mattresses are nailed over the windows.They are out there. She might let them in.The children sleep in the be...

**Almost unbearably tense, chilling and addictive . . . Exceptional' - Paula Hawkins, author of Girl on the TrainA mother knows best . . . doesn't she?**Talented and determined, Devon is the centre of her ambitious parents' world, and the lynchpin of their marriage. There is nothing Katie and Eric wouldn't do for her.When a violent hit-and-run accident sends shockwaves through their close-knit community, Katie is immediately concerned for her daughter, a ri...

Exploring grief, yet neither bleak nor overwrought, this powerful short story won the 2013 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. The judge, Carl Nixon, commended its 'seemingly effortless artistry' and its skilful and well-sustained handling of demanding narrative techniques: 'the author does not miss a beat', he said. Cleverly juxtaposing the past and present, the narrator draws the reader into her life. The judge concluded: 'Beautifully controlled use of simile and ...

Marriage AgreementBetween Daniel Garrett and Kenna ScottStay married one yearFool the familyNo sex!To claim his trust fund and launch a new career, Daniel needs to be married…and no one can tick all the "wifely" boxes like Kenna. And since she's his best friend, the celibacy part should be a piece of (wedding) cake! Or so Daniel thinks…until he hears the words that make him freeze: "You may kiss your bride." One official kiss has the former confirmed...

Joe Hill’s award-winning story collection, featuring “The Black Phone,” soon to be a major motion picture from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse ProductionsImogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . .Francis was human once, but now he’s an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a...

With huge heart, humor, and a compassionate understanding of human nature, Sally Hepworth delivers a page-turning novel about the power of love to grow and endure even when faced with the most devastating of obstacles. You won’t forget The Things We Keep.Anna Forster is only thirty-eight years old, but her mind is slowly slipping away from her. Armed only with her keen wit and sharp-eyed determination, she knows that her family is doing what they believe t...

“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet's ear.” –Oprah.comThe New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation.The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a dramatic revival of the form. Karr’s comic childhood in...

Nightmares come in many forms. Some rend the veil of sleep with heart-stopping madness. Others defy sanity to leave a helpless corner of your mind twitching for release. Sometimes, hours after waking, a nightmare drifts across your memory, tainting your day with wisps of discomfort. NIGHTMARES UNHINGED reveals horror in all its mutable forms—abject to absurd—through twenty tales of terror.Contributors include Mario Acevedo, Edward Bryant, Dustin Carpenter, Sean Eads, Keith Ferrell,...

“Haunting, incisive . . . King is brilliant.” —ElleAn absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line.” —Washington Post“Spellbinding . . . You won’t be able to stop reading this book, but when you do finally finish the last delicious page and look up, you will see families in a clearer and more forgiving way.” —Vanity FairWhen eleven-year-old ...