The little town of Castle Rock, Maine has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told... until now.

There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974 twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong (if time-rusted) iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside.

At the top of the stairs, Gwendy catches her breath and listens to the shouts of the kids on the playground. From a bit farther away comes the chink of an aluminum bat hitting a baseball as the Senior League kids practice for the Labor Day charity game.

One day, a stranger calls to Gwendy: Hey, girl. Come on over here for a bit. We ought to palaver, you and me.

On a bench in the shade sits a man in black jeans, a black coat like for a suit, and a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. On his head is a small neat black hat. The time will come when Gwendy has nightmares about that hat...

Journey back to Castle Rock again in this chilling new novella by Stephen King, bestselling author of The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, and Richard Chizmar, award-winning author of A Long December.

In Washington D.C., thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self-conscious teenaged girl who once spent a summer running up Castle Rock's Suicide Stairs. That same summer, she was entrustedƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚or some might say cursedƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚with the extraordinary button box by Richard Farris, the mysterious stranger in the black suit. The seductive and powerful box offered Gwendy small gifts in exchange for its care and feeding until Farris eventually returned, promising Gwendy she'd never see the box again.

One day, though, the button box shows up without warningƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚and without Richard Farris to explain why, or what she's supposed to do with it. The mysterious reappearance of the box, along with the troubling disappearances in Castle Rock, leads Gwendy home again...where she just might be able to help rescue the missing girls and stop a madman before he does something ghastly.

From New York Times bestseller Richard Chizmar comes Gwendy's Magic Feather, a breathtaking novel that asks whether our lives are controlled by fate or the choices we makeƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒ‚‚and what price we might have to pay for those choices when we reach for the things we most desire. Prepare to return again to Stephen King's Castle Rock, the sleepy little town built on a bedrock of deep, dark secrets, which is about to awaken from its quiet slumber once more.

About fifteen miles west of Stauford, Kentucky lies Devil's Creek. According to local legend, there used to be a church out there, home to the Lord's Church of Holy Voices-a death cult where Jacob Masters preached the gospel of a nameless god.

And like most legends, there's truth buried among the roots and bones.

In 1983, the church burned to the ground following a mass suicide. Among the survivors were Jacob's six children and their grandparents, who banded together to defy their former minister. Dubbed the Stauford Six, these children grew up amid scrutiny and ridicule, but their infamy has faded over the last thirty years.

Now their ordeal is all but forgotten, and Jacob Masters is nothing more than a scary story told around campfires.

For Jack Tremly, one of the Six, memories of that fateful night have fueled a successful art career-and a lifetime of nightmares. When his grandmother Imogene dies, Jack returns to Stauford to settle her estate. What he finds waiting for him are secrets Imogene kept in his youth, secrets about his father and the church. Secrets that can no longer stay buried.

The roots of Jacob's buried god run deep, and within the heart of Devil's Creek, something is beginning to stir...

Blurbs:

Todd Keisling's DEVILS CREEK is the kind of book you have to read with your lights on. Hell, make sure your neighbors have their lights on too! - S.A. Cosby, New York Times best-selling author of Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland

Devil's Creek is an epic novel about small town evil that will touch your heart as it seizes it with fear. Once again, Todd Keisling has proven himself a master storyteller. - Brian Kirk, Brian Kirk, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of We Are Monsters and Will Haunt You

When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction.

Years later, the button box entered Gwendy's life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented.

Now, evil forces seek to possess the button box and it is up to Senator Gwendy Peterson to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities?

In Gwendy's Final Task, horror giants (Publishers Weekly) Stephen King and Richard Chizmar take us on a journey from Castle Rock to another famous cursed Maine city to the MF-1 space station, where Gwendy must execute a secret mission to save the world. And, maybe, all worlds.

On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks-a famous, but struggling, horror writer-receives an antique

desk from his partner, Sarah, in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Perhaps inspire him

to write another best-selling novel and prove his best years aren't behind him.

A continent away, a mysterious woman makes inquiries with her sources around the world,

seeking the whereabouts of a certain artifact her family has been hunting for centuries. With the

help of a New York City private detective, she finally finds what she's been looking for.

It's in the home of Tyson Parks.-

Meanwhile, as Tyson begins to use his new desk, he begins acting... strange. Violent. His writing

more disturbing than anything he's done before. But publishers are paying top dollar, convinced

his new work will be a hit, and Tyson will do whatever it takes to protect his newfound success.

Even if it means the destruction of the ones he loves.

Even if it means his own sanity.

Philip Fracassi is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of the story collections Behold the Void (named Collection of the Year from This Is Horror) and Beneath a Pale Sky (named Collection

of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine). His novels include A Child Alone with Strangers, and the upcoming Boys in the Valley. Philip's work has been translated into multiple languages, and his stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. The New York Times calls his work terrifically scary.

Not since The Shining has the descent of a writer into madness been so masterfully rendered on the page. - Ross Jeffery, Bram Stoker-nominated author of Tome

A high creep factor chiller with a sinister edge that had me reading well past my bedtime. Frightening and fun, and deliciously original! - James A Moore, author of the Blood Red trilogy and Cherry Hill.

Fracassi takes the familiar traps-love, obsession, power-and gives them new teeth. It's dark fun twisted tightly around a story of human frailty...He's doing for the desk what King did for the car. - Jeff Terry, THE JEFF WORD

Fracassi's page-turning thriller offers unapologetic horror raised to the next level with strong characterization, great pacing, and visceral details that ensure we experience unspeakable dread alongside the book's protagonist. I think I went a little insane while reading it. --Norman Prentiss, author of Haunted Attractions with your Other Father and The Apocalypse-a-Day Desk Calendar

Stylish, atmospheric, and chilling, GOTHIC is an affectionate ode to the horror greats, and an effective reminder that Philip Fracassi is destined to become one of them. One of my favorite reads of the year so far.- Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Kin and Sour Candy

GOTHIC is the literary equivalent of the abyss gazing right back at you from the hellish depths of its pages. Don't lean in too close, lest you fall into this nightmarish novel and never find your way out again. - Clay MacLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters

A diabolical novel! Fracassi pens this one with furious, devilish glee. Readers--and writers--of horror fiction will love it. - Ronald Malfi, author of Come with Me and Black Mouth

Every now and then your favorite author takes a detour while writing a new novel: a chapter gets chopped, a connected short story is dreamed up, an essay about the book's origins is composed, or an oddity is created on a day off.

Collected here together for the first time are detours by Stephen King, William Peter Blatty, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Kelley Armstrong, Michael Koryta, David Morrell, Michael Marshall Smith, Chet Williamson, Poppy Z. Brite, Stewart O'Nan, and Owen King.

Join these bestselling authors as they share the other works they wrote while they were writing the books you already know and love!

The paperback features additional artwork by Mark Edward Geyer, Donn Albright, Erin S. Wells, Glenn Chadbourne, Will Renfro, Jill Bauman, Chris Odgers, Steve Gilberts, Alex McVey, and Keith Minnion!

In the spring of 1912, American writer Arthur Pearce is reeling from the wounds inflicted by a disastrous marriage and the public humiliation that ensued. But his plans to travel abroad, write a new novel, and forget his ex-wife are interrupted by a lovely young woman he encounters on a London-bound train. Her name is Sarah Coyle, and the tale she tells him chills his blood.

According to Sarah, her younger sister Violet has been entranced by a local count, a man whose attractiveness and charisma are rivaled only by his shady reputation. Whispers of bizarre religious rites and experimental medicine surround Count Richard Dunning, though no wrongdoing has ever been proven. Sarah's family views the Count as a philanthropist and a perfect match for young Violet, but Sarah believes her sister is soon to become a subject in Count Dunning's hideous ceremonies.

Smitten by Sarah and moved to gallantry by her plight, Arthur agrees to travel to Altarbrook, Sarah's rural ancestral home, in order to prevent Violet from falling into ruin. He soon learns, however, that his meeting with Sarah on the train was no accident. And his arrival at Altarbrook represents a crucial but ghastly step in the Count's monstrous plot.

One of the best writers in modern horror to come along in the last decade. Janz is one of my new favorites. - Brian Keene, Horror Grandmaster

If you're searching the horror horizon for your next dark star, your next must-read, the silhouette you see coming your way is Johnathan Janz. - Josh Malerman, New York Times Bestselling Author

Janz uses a well-mined genre trope to craft something unique and gloriously twisted.- Library Journal, on The Dark Game

Jonathan Janz is the author of more than a dozen novels. He is represented for Film & TV by Ryan Lewis (executive producer of Bird Box). His work has been championed by authors like Josh Malerman, Caroline Kepnes, Stephen Graham Jones, Joe R. Lansdale, and Brian Keene. His ghost story The Siren and the Specter was selected as a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Horror. Additionally, his novels Children of the Dark and The Dark Game were chosen by Booklist and Library Journal as Top Ten Horror Books of the Year. He also teaches high school Film Literature, Creative Writing, and English. Jonathan's main interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children.

Down here in the dark lies a vast and twisted landscape where the wicked, wistful, and profane coalesce. This is where the lonely and lost face their demons, where anxious paranoias are made manifest, and where mundane evil wears a human face. For readers, the sixteen stories found within Cold, Black, & Infinite serve as a harrowing glimpse into the nightmarish imagination of Todd Keisling, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Devil's Creek and Scanlines.

Visit a town where the residents are slowly being replaced by mannequins in We've All Gone to the Magic Show. Go for a drive and discover your favorite radio host is still transmitting from beyond the grave in Midnight in the Southland. Laugh at Karen's misfortune when she learns necromancy isn't the best way to raise a child in Afterbirth. And uncover the true

motivation behind one man's historical betrayal in Gethsemane.

Featuring three previously unpublished stories and an introduction by Bram Stoker Award- winner John Langan, Cold, Black, & Infinite establishes Keisling as a leading voice in contemporary indie horror.

Cast your doubts aside and take the plunge. Touch the abyss. It's waiting.

Twenty four years ago, Olive and Stacia went into the woods. Only Olive returned, with no memory of what happened. Now, Olive's father has vanished, leaving behind research which indicates that he has found out what lives in the woods.

It wakes up every twelve years, taking only children. It has been doing so for at least two hundred years. And it is waking again.

Forced to return to her hometown, Olive finds her memories returning.

What she remembers from the days leading up to Stacia's disappearance is magical, almost impossible to believe, but she knows that she must return to the woods--to face what lurks there, to save her father, and to find out what happened to Stacia.

Beautiful, poetic, and gutting. Hollow Girls is a captivating novel that will lure you deep into the woods where magic and darkness entwine. There is so much heart to this story of friendship and blood where oaths and secrets continue to unravel until the very last page. Bring an offering to the Fae, and come along on this memorable journey. -Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil's Dreamland.

Fifteen-year-old Will Burgess is used to rough times. Abandoned by his father, son of a drug-addicted mother, and charged with raising his six-year-old sister, Will has far more to worry about than most high school freshmen. To make matters worse, Mia Samuels, the girl of Will's dreams, is dating his worst enemy, the cruelest upperclassman at Shadeland High. Will's troubles, however, are just beginning.

Because one of the nation's most notorious criminals-the Moonlight Killer-has escaped from prison and is headed straight toward Will's hometown. And something else is lurking in Savage Hollow, the forest surrounding Will's rundown house. Something ancient and infinitely evil. When the worst storm of the decade descends on Shadeland, Will and his friends must confront unfathomable horrors. Everyone Will loves-his mother, his little sister, Mia, and his friends-will be threatened. And very few of them will escape with their lives.

One of the best writers in modern horror to come along in the last decade. Janz is one of my new favorites. -Brian Keene

Back in 1945, the first portal opened--a tear in reality leading from our world into the mysterious Black Lands, a realm of perpetual night filled with strange and deadly entities. Soon another portal appeared. Then another. Today, the government secures every portal they find, but with more and more opening, and no idea how to predict or prevent the next one's arrival, society is teetering on the brink of panic.

Felix Renn knows the Black Lands all too well. His career as a private investigator has dragged him closer to it than most, and has garnered him a reputation for dealing with supernatural threats. But people who interact with the Black Lands have a habit of turning up dead in horrible ways--if they turn up at all--so when the chance comes up to take on a simple missing person's case in the small town of Sycamore, Felix jumps at the opportunity.

Only, something else is happening in Sycamore. A serial killer is on the loose, and as the bodies continue to pile up, it becomes clear that the perpetrator may be something less--or something more--than human.

Felix may have thought he was done with the Black Lands, but he soon discovers a terrifying truth: the Black Lands isn't done with him.

*Includes The House on Ashley Avenue, currently in development as a NETFLIX FEATURE FILM!

There are haunted places in the world, all existing in reality and every bit as tangible and accessible as the house next door. Sometimes it is the house next door.

In this brilliant debut collection, Ian Rogers explores the border-places between our world and the dark reaches of the supernatural. A mysterious double murder draws the attention of an insurance company with a special interest in the paranormal. A honeymoon cabin with an unspeakable appetite finally meets its match. A suburban home is transformed into the hunting ground for a new breed of spider. A nightmarish jazz club at the crossroads of reality plays host to those who can break a deal with the devil...for a price. With remarkable deftness, Rogers draws together the deadly and the disturbing in twenty-two showcase stories that will guide you through terrain at once familiar and startlingly fresh.

Blurbs:

Ian is a fantastic storyteller of horror. He has an ability to create a unique reading experience with great scares and memorable characters. I knew the moment I finished reading Every House Is Haunted that Ian was someone I wanted to work with. - Sam Raimi, Director of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

...the 22 stories in Rogers's debut collection demonstrate the author's talent for finding the terrifying in the seemingly ordinary... This work of classic horror in the style of Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and early Stephen King should attract fans of a more refined kind of horror. - Library Journal

...Rogers offers some real gems. Every House Is Haunted is a harbinger of great things to come. - San Francisco Book Review

IAN ROGERS is an award-winning author whose short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Cemetery Dance, Broken Pencil, and Shadows & Tall Trees. His work has been selected for The Best Horror of the Year and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. For more information, visit www.ian-rogers.com..

A woman builds her lover from carefully scavenged pieces and parts. A young girl is groomed for madness by one who loves her most. A neurodivergent boy organizes his life, and loss, by the ticking of a clock. And love can be the most splendid and destructive force in the entire world.

Love is a Crematorium and Other Tales is a collection of seventeen stories that are both bleak and beautiful, devastating and sweet. Enter the crematorium to experience grief, starlit nights, and gorgeous tragedy that make our souls burn from the inside out.

When Jennifer receives a message from Scott Dwyer after twenty years without contact, her first reaction is one of excitement. Scott was her first love. Now in her forties and in the middle of a divorce, nostalgia for her youth gets the better of her.

Scott invites Jennifer to his house in Redford, the town she grew up in. It's a place she's tried to put behind her, for not all childhood memories are sunny. When she accepts Scott's invite, she struggles with mixed feelings, especially when she learns of the death of Steven Winters, one of her childhood friends.

Scott invites three people from their past to honor Steven's memory-Corey, Traci, and Mark. But the group is more than old friends. They share a dark secret that has troubled them for decades. Now it's time to face their traumatic pasts. Together, they must unravel the mystery of what happened in the patch of forest behind Scott's house, a place once known as Suicide Woods.

From the author of Gone to See the River Man comes a chilling novel that reminds us that old ghosts are the ones that haunt us most.

Kristopher Triana is a Splatterpunk Award winning author. His works include Full Brutal (Awarded Best Novel at the 2019 Splatterpunk Awards), Toxic Love, Shepherd of the Black Sheep, The Ruin Season, Body Art, The Detained and Growing Dark. His fiction has appeared in many magazines, anthologies, audio books and on websites, and has been translated to multiple languages. His fiction has drawn praise from Publisher's Weekly, Rue Morgue Magazine, Cemetery Dance, Scream Magazine and such prominent authors as Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Bryan Smith and Ryan Harding. While primarily a horror writer, he also writes crime fiction, literary fiction, noir and westerns. He also is a columnist with Backwoods Survival Guide Magazine.

He also has a very strong love of animals-especially dogs.

He lives in Connecticut.

Kristopher Triana is without question one of the very best of the new breed of horror writers. - Bryan Smith, author of 68 Kill

When Alex Wilson's estranged uncle unexpectedly dies, Alex realizes he would do just about anything to make peace with the man who had raised him as his own.

He'd even reach out to the dead.

But things more dangerous than ghosts haunt his uncle's broken down trailer and the nearly abandoned one-gas-station town of Fair Hill just beyond. Things that can devour the living and the dead alike, and are all too ready to answer his call.

Some parts of our past never really leave us. There are things that don't know how to die.

These things linger.

From the author of the acclaimed The Eater of Gods, These Things Linger is a twisting and unforgiving novel of desperation, depression, heritage, and of other hungry, vicious things.

This grimy but energetic horror novel from Franklin (The Eater of Gods) follows Alex Wilson as he deals with supernatural horrors in the small town of Fair Hill, Md. Readers seeking a ghoulish ghost story should take a look. - Publishers Weekly

Dan Franklin wrote his first attempt at a horror novel when he was seven. It was terrible. He has, since, improved. The winner of several local awards for short stories and an occasional poem, Dan Franklin lives in Maryland with his extremely understanding wife, his cosmically radiant daughter, and a socially crippling obsession with things that creep. These Things Linger is his second published novel. He can be contacted at DanFranklinAuthor.com

In 1996, Richard Chizmar's debut short story collection, Midnight Promises, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Publishers Weekly called it a sterling collection while singling out The Silence of Sorrow as an understated masterpiece.

Two years later, Subterranean Press published a mini-collection from Chizmar entitled Monsters and Other Stories. In his introduction, acclaimed genre critic Edward Bryant said, When all is said and done, this book should leave you in utter silence, giving you time and opportunity to contemplate what you just read. Tough storytelling from a tough writer; but a writer who is not calloused. Chizmar possesses a finely honed gift of empathy. With utter grace and loving kindness he'll put you right inside the life (and soul) of the monster.

Now, nearly two decades later, Chizmar assembles thirty-five stories, including a previously-unpublished novella, and presents us with A Long December. This massive new collection features more than 150,000 words of Chizmar's very best short fiction and includes 8,000 words of autobiographical Story Notes.

Eerie, suspenseful, poignant, the stories in A Long December range from horror to suspense, crime to dark fantasy, mainstream to mystery.

As New York Times bestselling author Scott Smith (A Simple Plan, The Ruins) notes: It's an idyllic little world Richard Chizmar has created. Boys fish in the shallows of a winding creek. A father tosses a baseball with his young son in the fading light of a summer day. There's the smell of fresh-cut grass. And then, well...just beneath the surface? There are those missing pets whose collars turn up in a shoebox. Or the disturbing photos the dead can leave behind. Or the terrible thing you might find yourself doing when a long lost brother suddenly returns, demanding money. Chizmar does a tremendous job of peeling back his world's shiny layers, revealing the rot that lies underneath. His stories feel like so many teeth: short and sharp and ready to draw blood.

Last summer, sixteen-year-old Will Burgess lost many of the people he loved most. Now he's imprisoned in the Sunny Woods Rehabilitation Center, a facility for troubled youths. Separated from his surviving loved ones and terrified of a change inside him, Will is tormented by a new group of bullies and a sadistic government doctor. When his only ally, an orderly named Pierre, tells him there have been sightings of winged creatures with glowing red eyes, Will believes him.

Because Will has seen the Night Flyers too.

Even worse, he learns the monstrous Children are still lurking underground. They want revenge on Will and will stop at nothing to destroy everyone he cares about. Will and his friends, new and old, must band together to fight the forces of darkness-both human and supernatural. But as Will learned last summer, evil is relentless. And it won't rest until its hunger is sated.

One of the best writers in modern horror to come along in the last decade. Janz is one of my new favorites. -Brian Keene