Nightmare Carnival

Nightmare Carnival
Author: Ellen Datlow
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504082737

Encounter the scariest clowns and freakiest curiosities under the big top, in stories by Stephen Graham Jones, Laird Barron, Priya Sharma, and others. With an introduction from Katherine Dunn Ladies and gentlemen, step right up for fifteen tales of terrifying rides, supernatural sideshows, and petrifying performers guaranteed to keep you up all night—with Hugo and Bram Stoker Award–winning editor Ellen Datlow as the ringmaster. In Stephen Graham Jones’s “The Darkest Part,” three men are driven to madness by the clown that has haunted them since one misguided Tunnel of Love ride during their childhoods. The deaths of three circus performers—two brothers and a beautiful fire dancer—become the burning obsession of an author who wrote a book about the tragedy in “The Firebrand” by Priya Sharma. “Skullpocket” by Nathan Ballingrud takes you to an alternate fantasy world where a well-respected ghoul from a town near Chesapeake Bay grieves the death of his one true love, a freak show attraction known as the Orchid Girl. Under the tent, you’ll find more chilling stories by Genevieve Valentine, Robert Shearman, N. Lee Wood, Nick Mamatas, A. C. Wise, Terry Dowling, Joel Lane, Glen Hirshberg, Jeffrey Ford, Dennis Danvers, and Livia Llewellyn. “To Datlow’s credit a number of her selections take the dark carnival theme into provocative new territory. . . . Ballingrud’s tale is a magnificent piece of storytelling. Accompanied by another 14 estimable acts, it makes admission into Nightmare Carnival well worth the price.” —Locus “There’s not a bad story in the bunch.” —Horror DNA

Nightmare Carnival

Nightmare Carnival
Author: Ellen Datlow
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
ISBN: 9781616554279

A boy's 11th birthday heralds the arrival of a bizarre new entourage, a suicidal diva just can't seem to die and a washed-up wrestler goes up against a strange new foe. All of these weird marvels, and more, can be found at the Nightmare Carnival! Hugo and Bram Stoker award-winning editor Ellen Datlow presents a masterwork of terror featuring contributions from Terry Dowling, Joel Lane, Priya Sharma, Dennis Danvers and Nick Mamatas.

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley
Author: William Lindsay Gresham
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2011-04-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590174283

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Carnival Nightmare

Carnival Nightmare
Author: Selena Winters
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-05-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In the once-quiet town of Willow Creek, my life was a steady beat, a rhythmic routine, until the carnival stormed in, a whirlwind of chaos and danger. Under the neon lights and haunting melodies, Cade's eyes found mine-piercing, intense, sending shivers through my soul. He was a dark storm, a looming shadow over my every move. Cade's obsession was relentless, his desire a madness that knew no bounds. Like a predator, he stalked me, every step a calculated move in his sinister dance. I tried to resist, but his twisted charm was a siren's song, pulling me deeper into his carnival of nightmares. Reality blurred into illusion, and I found myself ensnared in a sinister game, where every shadow whispered secrets and every smile hid a threat. In Willow Creek's heart, where nightmares walked freely and darkness reigned, I faced a chilling truth: in a stalker's eyes, love and obsession are one. As the carnival lights dim and darkness falls, I stand at a crossroads. Will I succumb to Cade's dangerous embrace, or will I fight to break free from his deadly grip? Carnival Nightmare is a dark stalker novella with heavy subjects that some readers may find triggering. There will be access to a full list of the warnings at the beginning of the book. This story has no cliffhanger and ends with a HEA.

Japan's Carnival War

Japan's Carnival War
Author: Benjamin Uchiyama
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107186749

This cultural history of the Japanese home front during the Asia-Pacific War challenges ideas of the period as one of unrelenting repression. Uchiyama demonstrates that 'carnival war' coexisted with the demands of total war to promote consumerist desire alongside sacrifice and fantasy alongside nightmare, helping mobilize the war effort.

Best Horror of the Year

Best Horror of the Year
Author: Ellen Datlow
Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1597805874

For over three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror readers crave. Now, with the eighth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Encompassed in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as: Neil Gaiman Kim Stanley Robinson Stephen King Linda Nagata Laird Barron Margo Lanagan And many others With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. But this light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows. It is a catalog of terror, fear, and unpleasantness as articulated by today’s most challenging and exciting writers.

Now, Conjurers

Now, Conjurers
Author: Freddie Kölsch
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2024-06-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1454951613

NOW PAY ATTENTION, BECAUSE ALL THE DETAILS MATTER. November 1999. North Dana, Massachusetts. Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia: star quarterback, secret witch, and Nesbit’s even-more-secret boyfriend. No one knew why brilliant, gentle Bastion lived his life by a seemingly arcane set of rules, including a strange manner of speech and an inability to say his own name. Now the remaining members of North Coven—Nesbit, Dove, Drea, and Brandy—vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover: Bastion had been locked in a terrifying battle of wits and wills with something living deep beneath an ancient mausoleum in the local cemetery. North Coven must confront the red-gloved monster that took piece after piece of Bastion, that he fought until his last breath. Not knowing that Bastion left behind the key to its destruction . . . Now, Conjurers is a wildly original, spine-chilling YA debut about queer found family and a love that outlasts death.

Peterloo

Peterloo
Author: Graham Phythian
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2018-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0750989513

On 16 August 1819 on St Peter's Field, Manchester, a peaceful demonstration of some 60,000 workers and reformers was brutally dispersed by sabrewielding cavalry, resulting in at least fifteen dead and over 600 injured. Within days the slaughter was named ' Peter-loo', as an ironic reference to the battleground of Waterloo. Now the subject of a major film, this highly detailed yet readable narrative, based almost entirely on eyewitness reports and contemporary documents, brings the events of that terrible day vividly to life. In a world in which the legitimacy of facts is in constant jeopardy from media and authoritarian bias, the lessons to be learned from the bloodshed and the tyrannical aftermath are as pertinent today as they were 200 years ago. Film director Mike Leigh has defined Peterloo as 'the event that becomes more relevant with every new episode of our crazy times'.

Paper Tangos

Paper Tangos
Author: Julie M. Taylor
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 1998
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780822321910

In PAPER TANGOS, classically trained dancer and anthropologist Julie Taylor examines the poetics of the tango, while recounting a life lived crossing the borders of two distinct and complex cultures. Drawing parallels among the violence of the Argentine Junta, tango dancing, and her own life, Taylor weaves the line between engaging memoir and cultural critique. The book's design includes photographs on every page that form a flip-book sequence of a tango. 89 photos.

Blood

Blood
Author: Ellen Datlow
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2023-11-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 150408876X

A collection of “mesmerizing tales, each one creepier than the next” that go beyond the traditional vampire myths (Library Journal). When we think of vampires, an image instantly arises: fangs sunk deep into the throat of the victim. But bloodsucking is merely one form of vampirism. For this brilliantly original anthology, multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow solicited stories from many of the most powerfully dark voices in contemporary horror, who conjure tales that will chill readers to the marrow. In addition to the traditional fanged creatures, Datlow presents stories about the leeching of emotion, the draining of the soul, and other dark deeds of predation and exploitation, infestation, and evisceration . . . tales of life essence, literal or metaphorical, stolen. Seventeen stories by such acclaimed authors as Elizabeth Bear, Richard Bowes, Kathe Koja, Margo Lanagan, Carol Emshwiller, and Lisa Tuttle redefine the terror of vampirism.