Why did it have to be rats? Bev Vincent reviews ‘1922’

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Why Did it Have To Be Rats?

Rats have featured prominently in many Stephen King novels and stories. After the prom, Carrie White imagined rats crawling all over Chris Hargensen’s face. There were rats in the basement of the boarding house in ‘Salem’s Lot and in the walls of Chapelwaite in “Jerusalem’s Lot.” Rats in the sub-basement of the mill in “Graveyard Shift” and in the basement of the castle in Delain. Rats in Desperation, Nevada, in the ventilation system of Shawshank Prison and in the walls of Dooling Correctional Facility for Women. Drowned rats in the toilet bowls at Derry High School. Nigel the robot was programmed to get rid of the vermin in the Fedic Dogan, although he actually fed them to Mordred Deschain.Continue Reading

The Celebration by Paul Melniczek: Brand New Halloween eBook!

We’re very pleased to announce The Celebration by Paul Melniczek, another new addition to our eBook line-up just in time for Halloween!

About the Book:
Halloween is approaching and the small town of Shington is excited to begin their annual festivities, which they call The Celebration. But something is different this year… Something is wrong…

Seven years ago, Nick carried out a series of vicious pranks and mischief. The trouble only stopped after Nick and his beloved blue Nova crashed into the town’s river during a high speed police chase and he died of his injuries.

Now, seven years later, the pranks have started up again. Halloween decorations destroyed, pumpkins smashed, animals gone missing. Worse yet, people are claiming to have seen Nick and his blue Nova…

The Celebration is rapidly approaching and this year something evil is coming along for the ride…

The Celebration

Read more or place your order via the eBook store links on our website!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

An Interview with Joe Hill

Joe Hill‘s compelling quartet of novellas, collectively titled Strange Weather, hits shelves tomorrow, riding a wave of anticipation and positive reviews (including our own). Strange Weather is the latest example of what has become a hallmark of Hill’s career: versatility. The author roams from horror to fantasy to sci-fi….from comics to prose to screenplays…..from massive 700-page epics to to short novels to short stories….fearlessly and effortlessly. Likewise, our discussion covers a lot of ground, beginning with his latest release, then touching on his comics work before teasing a bit about what’s in the future.

Continue Reading

Brand New Jack Ketchum Signed Limited Edition In-Stock Now!

We’re pleased to report Jack Ketchum’s brand new short story collection is in-stock and shipping now! These stories are full of the horror and terror we’ve come to love and expect from the author Stephen King has called, “one of the best in the business.”

Gorilla In My Room

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

‘The Land of Laughs’ by Jonathan Carroll

I’m only just getting started, but I am already enjoying this column. Reading books from a time before cell phones. When people stopped their cars and jumped into a phone booth to make a call. When they went to libraries to do research. When damned near everything and everyone wasn’t available right at your fingertips. A time when people got up and out of the house to buy books at stores. Before we all (yes, I am guilty as charged) had our faces perpetually locked into electronic pacifiers.

A better time? I like to think so. Some will disagree, claiming that we are armed with information at our fingertips at all times. There may be some truth to that, but I think that all too often real information is drowned in misinformation, distortion, misdirection, propaganda, and outright lies.Continue Reading

The Listener by Robert McCammon: Just Three Copies Remain of the Signed & Traycased Lettered Edition!

If you were thinking about reserving the Signed & Traycased Lettered Edition of Robert McCammon’s brand new novel, The Listener, do not wait a moment longer because we only have THREE COPIES left for preorder!

The Lettered Edition will be limited to just 52 signed and lettered copies housed in a custom-made traycase, personally signed by the author on a unique signature page, printed on 60# acid-free paper, bound in leather with colored head and tail bands, featuring hot foil stamping on the front boards and spine, printed and bound with full-color endpapers, smyth sewn to create a more durable binding, includes a different frontispiece by Chris Odgers not in the other editions, includes interior illustrations by Chris Odgers that are not in the trade edition, and will be wrapped in a DIFFERENT full-color dust jacket than the other two editions (image to be kept secret until publication).

The Listener

Read more or place your order on our website before they’re all gone!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: ‘Quiet Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror’ by Jasper Bark

Quiet Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror by Jasper Bark
Crystal Lake Publishing (September 2017)
123 pages; $12.99 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Chad Lutzke

Quiet Places opens with a prologue presenting mysterious goings-on in the small village of Dunballan. Right away we’re given a potentially exciting premise as a lone woman aids local residents in their vegetative states, picking random citizens to assist while they stand slack jawed and wide eyed, empty bellies and soiled clothes.Continue Reading

The Listener by Robert McCammon: A Brand New Novel!

We’re very pleased to announce we’ll be publishing Robert McCammon’s brand new novel, The Listener, in February!

The book was profiled on the Entertainment Weekly website today, which is sending a lot of new and old McCammon fans our way. If you’re interested in ordering one of the signed editions, PLEASE DO NOT WAIT! Reservations are already flying in!

This stunning new novel will also be published as a trade hardcover, and we think readers will be blown away by what McCammon has done here. It’s an incredible story by one of the most gifted storytellers of our time.

Read more on the product page and please don’t wait to reserve your signed copy!

The Listener

Read more or place your order on our website before time runs out!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Booklist calls THE HANDYMAN “a finished mansion full of sick, playful rooms for you to explore.”

We’re pleased to report that The Handyman by Bentley Little is being lauded by the critics as perhaps his best novel to date in his already acclaimed career. Here’s what Daniel Kraus in Booklist just had to say:

“And you thought your contractor was bad? Little, one of the most dependable tanks in horror fiction, follows such delightful jobs-from-hell shockers as The Mailman (1991) and The Consultant (2015) with a story of a simple handyman named Frank Watkins. Or Watson. Or Wilton. Or Wilson. Depends on where he pops up, see. Daniel Martin was just a little kid when Frank built a vacation house for the Martin family—a house that had dead dogs buried under it and suffered a structural collapse that killed Daniel’s brother. Years later, Daniel, now in real estate, happens across other so-called “Frank houses,” structures of shoddy build that always manage to kill their occupants. Teaming up with a paranormal TV show called Ghost Pursuers (Little cleverly credits Frank’s supernatural activity as causing the rise of such shows), Daniel hits the road to track down this hammer-swinging, cement-pouring, child-killing fix-it man. Though Little appears to lose interest during the mumbo-jumbo-filled final battle, this is far from a fixer upper. It’s a finished mansion full of sick, playful rooms for you to explore.”

The Handyman

Read more or place your order on our website!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: ‘Strange Weather’ by Joe Hill

Strange Weather by Joe Hill
William Morrow (October 24, 2017)
448 pages; $17.10 hardback; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand

Earlier this year, people began calling 2017 “The Year of King.” The “King” in question is Stephen King, who’s had a busy year even for, well, Stephen King: new television series based on his novella The Mist and Mr. Mercedes; a milestone birthday (his 70th) in September; a critical and box office smash hit in IT; two more critically acclaimed adaptations for Netflix in Gerald’s Game and 1922; and a brand new novel, Sleeping Beauties, co-written with his son Owen.

Now, as the year is winding down, it’s King’s other son, Joe Hill, who has stepped up to claim his place in “The Year of King” with Strange Weather, a collection of four short novels and one of the strongest overall works in Hill’s already illustrious career.Continue Reading

My First Fright featuring Michael Wehunt

Usually, I avoid stuff that gives me nightmares; I’m funny like that. I don’t get much sleep as it is (father of two little ones) and when I do, I prefer to sleep soundly, my dreams free of terrifying imagery.

Michael Wehunt apparently doesn’t value his sleep. He watches movies that give him nightmares and keeps going back for more! But perhaps that unbridled enthusiasm for the macabre helped lead to his success as a writer?

Wehunt is an Atlanta-based author. His debut collection, Greener Pastures, was shortlisted for the Crawford Award and a Shirley Jackson Award finalist. His short fiction has appeared in publications like Shock Totem, Innsmouth Magazine and, yes, Cemetery Dance.Continue Reading

The Outsider: A Novel by Stephen King: Coming In June 2018 From Scribner!

We’re pleased to report we’ll be receiving copies of THE OUTSIDER by Stephen King, his chilling new novel from Scribner. They’re calling it “one of his most propulsive and unsettling stories ever” and we have to agree. This one is not for the faint of heart.

About the Book:
From #1 New York Times bestseller Stephen King, whose brand has never been stronger, comes one of his most propulsive and unsettling stories ever.

An eleven-year-old boy is found in a town park, hideously assaulted and murdered. The fingerprints (and later DNA) are unmistakably those of the town’s most popular baseball coach, Terry Maitland, a man of impeccable reputation, with a wife and two daughters. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland coached, orders an immediate and public arrest. Maitland is taken to jail, his claim to innocence scorned. Maitland has a foolproof alibi, with footage to prove that he was in another city when the crime was committed. But that doesn’t save him either.

King constructs a propulsive plot, and a race against time to uncover the identity of a terrifying and diabolical killer who has left victims—and “perpetrators”—across the country, and who is on his way to his next horrific act.

King’s psychological suspense is at its most riveting in this extraordinarily dramatic and eerie story. He is devastatingly vivid on the experience of being falsely blamed—the effect on the accused, the spouse, the children; the suspicion of friends, even the most loyal; the impossibility of ever being innocent again (if you are lucky to enough to live). He is also masterful at showing us that supernatural monsters are startlingly like human beings who do monstrous things.

The Outsider

Read more or place your order on our website!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Review: ‘Angler in the Darkness’ by Edward M. Erdelac

Angler in the Darkness by Edward M. Erdelac
CreateSpace (April 2017)
384 pages; $14 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Chris Hallock

Versatile scribe Edward M. Erdelac is a whiz at seamless genre-blending, exemplified by his popular Merkabah Rider series featuring a demon-fighting Hasidic gunfighter and his exploits in the Wild West. Erdelac occupies a special place in literature, honoring the tradition of high concept fantasy engineered by luminaries Robert E. Howard and Jules Verne, spliced with the gritty DNA of Elmore Leonard and Joe R. Lansdale.Continue Reading