A collaborative poetry collection by Bram Stoker Award-winning writers Michael Bailey and Marge Simon—dissecting a fiery world's relentless destruction.In Sifting the Ashes, over a hundred individual and collaborative poems explore what it takes to survive after all is suddenly taken. Combined life experiences of love, loss, and personal tragedy sift what's salvageable from the aftermath of fire, searching through the layers of ash for lessons about death, cremation, and the variou...

Marge Simon has been writing speculative fiction and poetry for decades. She is a Bram Stoker Lifetime award winner, has won the award for poetry twice and been a finalist an impressive fifteen times. She is a Rhysling Award winner. She holds the Dwarf Stars and Strange Horizons reader's choice awards. She has been an icon of dark, speculative verse spanning generations of creative voices, remaining vibrant and evocative throughout.This book collects some of her finest work, broken...

CAT PEOPLE is a poetry collection where cats are never merely pets.They are goddesses and familiars, predators and muses, hunters and healers. Moving through myth, dream, and city streets, these poems explore feline power in all its forms—seductive, feral, comic, dangerous, and tender.Blending dark fantasy, surreal humor, and intimate moments, Cat People examines transformation, desire, aging, devotion, and hunger. Cat women, cat gods, witches, artists, and lovers share spa...

Marge Simon has been writing speculative fiction and poetry for decades. She is a Bram Stoker Lifetime award winner, has won the award for poetry twice and been a finalist an impressive fifteen times. She is a Rhysling Award winner. She holds the Dwarf Stars and Strange Horizons reader's choice awards. She has been an icon of dark, speculative verse spanning generations of creative voices, remaining vibrant and evocative throughout.This book collects some of her finest work, broken...

Look in my eyes. My bronze skin reflects the flames of the battles.I feed on bullets and shrapnel.I have trenches instead of veins and a bombardier's whirring plays my favorite symphony inside my big head. This is my story, with some of my best camouflages and disguises, and you should expect your peace plans to fail. Because that's what I do for living.Look at my million golden teeth necklace. Ring any bells? Maybe you're too young. I probably should have mentioned...

For as long as there has been civilization, the horse has been by man's side. They have worked the fields, carried men through wars, traveled through the harshest conditions to get us to our destinations, amused us in circuses, and given us pleasure when we just wanted to go for a ride.Some horses are lucky enough to have caring owners that give them a nice peaceful retirement when they become old or lame, but for many others, fate is not so kind. These horses suffer abuse, torment...

The Legend Continues…In the spirit of popular Dark Fiction and Horror anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories and Behold: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, and the best of Stephen King's short fiction, comes the Tales from The Lake anthologies.This 5th and final volume includes:"Always After Three" by Gemma Files - A young couple discovers that in a downtown condo you almost never kn...

Autumn approaches, and with it comes a time of dark magic. In this issue we celebrate the fantastical, the foreign and the fatalistic. We have kallikantzaroi on a mission, banana Popsicle munching bombs, alien friends happy to lend more than a hand, a band that really puts themselves into their music and part one of Flashlight, Knife and Flowered Crown, an electrifying, modern fairy tale.Poetry, flash fiction and keen illustration add variety to the mix. An Spanish interview of Jac...

Children aren’t the same as kittens, as Miss Mary Mason is reminded when she volunteers to keep two orphans in her home through Christmas. Ragged and dirty, their manners leave much to be desired. Still, Mary perseveres, not willing to return them to a system that will certainly not meet their needs. You won’t want to miss this remarkable story of the far-reaching power of love from internationally read author Annie Acorn!

You sit down at the weathered harvest table to write a letter to your son. You need to explain the horrific events of the night, the circumstances that stained your hands with so much blood - the horrors that led you to take the lives of your own father and grandfather. You journey back through darkness, deliberately, tentatively, to recover your own childhood. You compose your captivity, your torture, and the brutality of the men youve just killed. This was life on the farm: the strange ...

Macabre meetings, sinister excursions, and deadly relationships; uncanny encounters; a classic ghost story featuring an American god; a historical murderer revived in a frightening new iteration; innovative Lovecraftian turns; shadowy fairy tales and weird myths; strange children, the unexpected, the supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while invent...

A violent home invasion shatters Eileen’s tranquil country life, forcing her to confront her deepest fears.This short story takes place in the world of the Elements of the Undead, but is not part of the series.