Showing results by author "Josh Malerman" in All Categories

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddy and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: ‘Can I go inside your heart?’ When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay. Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.

Gather round as today’s most diabolically clever authors twist simple moments into otherworldly horrors. An empty baby stroller. A scratching underneath the bed. A farmhouse in the moonlight. With an unnerving sense of the macabre, these stories transform our greatest fears into bone-chilling realities.

In the old world there were many rules. In the new world there is only one: don't open your eyes. In the 17 years since the 'creatures' appeared, many people have broken that rule. Many have looked. Many have lost their minds, their lives, their loved ones. In that time, Malorie has raised her two children - Olympia and Tom - on the run or in hiding. Now nearly teenagers, survival is no longer enough. They want freedom.

Featuring stories from R.L. Stine and Madeleine Roux, this middle-grade horror anthology, curated by New York Times best-selling author and master of macabre Jonathan Maberry, is a chilling tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Flesh-hungry ogres? Brains full of spiders? Haunted houses you can’t escape? This collection of 35 terrifying stories from the Horror Writers Association has it all, including ghastly illustrations from Iris Compiet that will absolutely chill listeners to the bone.

Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin.

Most people ignored the outrageous reports on the news. But they became too frequent, they became too real. And soon, they began happening down the street. Then the Internet died. The television and radio went silent. The phones stopped ringing. And we couldn't look outside anymore. 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 dense Michigan forest. Haunting wails. The clip-clop of demon hooves on a bridge to nowhere. It’s more than a tall tale to Brenda Jennings, whose sister disappeared in those woods one fateful night. Three years later, on a solo stakeout in the dark, Brenda goes in after her. She’s desperate for answers, and terrified to find what lies waiting on the other side of that bridge.

It's the last summer for Kit Lamb: the last summer before college. The last summer with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. The last summer before her life begins. But the night before the big game, one of Kit's players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was murdered, others that she died by her own hand. And some say that Daphne is a murderer herself.

J is one of only 26 students, all of whom think of the school's enigmatic founder as their father. J's peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know-and all they are allowed to know. But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he's beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place? Why can the students never leave? And what secrets is their father hiding from them?

Not all monsters are fantasy. Some are very real, and they walk among us. They're our friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. They're the people we're supposed to trust...and they know it. Contained within this anthology are 35 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors and best-selling novelists. Brace yourself for the unexpected and unimaginable horror of...human monsters.

Josh Malerman is a master weaver of stories-and in this spine-chilling collection he spins five twisted tales from the shadows of the human soul: A sister tells her little brother that "Half the House Is Haunted" with a presence that only she can see, but is it her own mind that is haunted? In "Argyle," a dying man confesses to crimes he never committed, and reveals long-kept secrets far more sinister than murder. A tourist takes the ultimate trip to outer space in "Jupiter Drop," but the real journey is into his own dark past.

With her husband barely clinging to life at home, Becka has taken to jogging. Running helps clear her head and her heart. But it's not until she discovers a free-standing confessional booth deep in the woods that she begins to clear her conscience. As the days pass, and as her husband's condition worsens, Becka returns to the booth, finding it hard to stay away. But what draws her there? Is it the clean feeling of confession? Or is it what might be listening on the other side of the grate?

There's something strange about Walter Kopple's farm. It begins with his grandson, who senselessly murders one of Walter's pigs. But then rumours spread that Walter's grandson heard a voice commanding him to kill. And that the voice belongs to a most peculiar creature: the pig named Pearl. Walter has always been afraid of the strangely malevolent Pearl. But as paranoia takes hold and the townspeople descend on Walter's farm with violent wrath, they begin to discover that true evil wears a human face.

At seventeen years old, James and Amelia can feel the rest of their lives beginning. They have got this summer and this summer alone to experience the extraordinary. But they didn't expect to find it in a house at the bottom of a lake. The house is cold and dark, but it's also their own. Caution be damned, until being carefree becomes dangerous. For the teens must decide: swim deeper into the house-all the while falling deeper in love? Whatever they do, they will never be able to turn their backs on what they discovered together.

A sorcerer on a cliff cuts into his own hand, summoning members of the ancient cult that destroyed his family. A maid hunts her former employer with a sword, attempting to win a revenge that could save us all. A doomed man rides a train to his dead father's home to unravel a terrible secret....

Carol Evers is a woman with a dark secret. She has died many times...but her many deaths are not final: they are comas, a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days. Only two people know of Carol's eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune and - when she lapses into another coma - plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and burying her...alive. The other is her lost love, the infamous outlaw James Moxie. When word of Carol's dreadful fate reaches him, Moxie rides the Trail again to save his beloved from an early grave.

The Danes, the band once known as the 'Darlings of Detroit', are washed up and desperate to have another number one hit. When an agent from the US Army approaches them with an unusual offer, they believe it could be the answer to their inspiration drought. So, under the guidance of their front man, Philip Tonka, the Danes decide to embark on a harrowing journey through scorching desert to track down the source of a strange and debilitating sound.

Addiction is the perpetual epidemic, where swarms of human moths flutter to the flames of hell. Because that warm blanket of a heroin high, that joyful intoxication of a pint of vodka, that electric energy from a line of cocaine, over time leaves you with a cold loneliness and a bitter heart. Relationships destroyed, bodies deteriorate, loved ones lost, yet the craving continues for that which is killing us—living, as the title suggests, like an Orphan of Bliss.

Vivendo em uma casa abandonada, Malorie e os filhos não sabem o que se passa do lado de fora. Sempre com as janelas e portas cobertas e sem comunicação com o exterior, o local é uma área isolada no meio do caos. Até o momento em que uma misteriosa neblina atinge a região e Malorie toma uma decisão que adiou por muito tempo. Após quatro anos trancados, Malorie e as crianças fogem da casa em um barco a remo na esperança de encontrar um lugar distante do surto que matou todos ao seu redor. De olhos tapados, os três encaram uma viagem assustadora rumo ao desconhecido.

Quando eles tomam conhecimento de uma notícia que parecia impossível, Malorie se permite ter esperança pela primeira vez desde o início do surto. Há sobreviventes. Pessoas que ela considerava mortas, mas que talvez estejam vivas. Junto dessa informação, porém, ela acaba descobrindo coisas aterrorizantes: em lugares não tão distantes, alguns afirmam ter capturado as criaturas e feito experimentos, invenções monstruosas e ideias extremamente perigosas. Além disso, circulam rumores de que as próprias criaturas se transformaram em algo ainda mais assustador.