Crypt of the Moon Spider

Crypt of the Moon Spider
Author: Nathan Ballingrud
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Total Pages: 69
Release: 2024-08-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250291747

Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into the stickiest of webs. Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe. It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas. But patients aren’t the only ones with trouble on their minds, and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Diablo: Moon of the Spider

Diablo: Moon of the Spider
Author: Richard A. Knaak
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2006-01-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1416531165

Since the beginning of time, the angelic hosts of the High Heavens and the demonic hordes of the Burning Hells have been locked in a struggle for the fate of all Creation. That struggle has now come to the mortal realm...and neither Man nor Demon nor Angel will be left unscathed.... DIABLO Driven by nightmares to the ruins of a mysterious tomb, Lord Aldric Jitan hopes to awaken a terrible evil that has slept since the fall of Tristram. Drawn by the growing darkness in the land, the enigmatic Necromancer, Zayl, stumbles upon Jitan's plot -- unaware that one of his own brethren has set these dire events in motion. Now, as the celestial Moon of the Spider rises, the nefarious demon, Astrogha, prepares to unleash his minions upon Sanctuary. MOON OF THE SPIDER An original tale of swords, sorcery, and timeless struggle based on the bestselling, award-winning M-rated computer game from Blizzard Entertainment. Intended for mature readers.

Wounds

Wounds
Author: Nathan Ballingrud
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1534449922

“[Ballingrud's] evocative and strangely beautiful.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite contemporary authors and any time he’s got a new book out I run to the front of the line. His work is elegant and troublingly, wonderfully disturbing.”—Victor LaValle, award–winning author of The Changeling “Nathan Ballingrud's brilliant fiction brims with imagination, integrity (I do not use that term lightly), and an authentic world-weary dread that bores directly into your heart. With Wounds you'll gladly follow Nathan to Hell and (maybe) back.”—Paul Tremblay, award-winning author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts “Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite short fiction writers.” —Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation and Borne “Stretch[es] the boundaries of the genre by employing these grand, horrific worlds. “The Butcher’s Table” reminds me of the first time I read Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities.” It’s horrifying, but there’s beauty.” —The New York Times “In only two slender collections, Nathan Ballingrud has emerged as one of the field’s most accomplished short story writers.” —The Washington Post “Ballingrud’s work isn’t like any other.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing “One of the most disquieting and memorable short story collections to come out this year.”—The New York Review of Books “Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell is without a doubt one of the best, most accomplished horror collections in recent memory.”—Hellnotes “Wounds will no doubt be remembered as one of the most disquieting and memorable short story collections to come out this year.”—New York Journal of Books “There’s enough nightmare fuel here to inspire weeks of insomnia — all told with an even hand with a penchant for precise storytelling. How else do you chart the furthest reaches of the uncanny?”—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn A gripping collection of six stories of terror—including the novella “The Visible Filth,” the basis for the upcoming major motion picture—by Shirley Jackson Award–winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado—“one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there” (The Verge). In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined: “What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in “The Visible Filth” to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table,” Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

Spider-Man 2099

Spider-Man 2099
Author: Steve Orlando
Publisher: Marvel Entertainment
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2024-07-24
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1302529196

Collects Miguel O'Hara - Spider-Man 2099 (2024) #1-5. Spider-Man 2099 does the monster mash in a horrific vision of the future! The web-slinger of tomorrow, Miguel O'Hara, must face off against the most gruesome adversaries Nueva York has to offer! Blade lends a hand against the Marvel Zombie, seeking to stop an undead infection that threatens Miguel's mother! With the moon under attack, Moon Knight 2099 needs Spidey's help against Dracula! When a howling mad Werewolf by 2099 is unleashed, can Miguel withstand this cursed soul? Body parts fly as the new Terror Inc. strikes! And will Spider-Man burn at the touch of the nightmarish Man-Thing? A new breed of horror is unleashed, thanks to these far-out future versions of some of Marvel's most iconic monsters!

North American Lake Monsters

North American Lake Monsters
Author: Nathan Ballingrud
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1618730614

Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible. These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape. Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality
Author: John Darnielle
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0826428991

John Darnielle describesMaster of Reality in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric center in southern California in 1985. The narrator explains Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly.

Red Milk

Red Milk
Author: Sjón
Publisher: MCD
Total Pages: 94
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374603375

WINNER OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY'S NORDIC PRIZE 2023 A timely and provocative novel about a mysterious Icelandic neo-Nazi and the enduring global allure of fascism. In England in 1962, an Icelandic man is found dead on a train bound for Cheltenham Spa. In his possession, policemen find a map on which a swastika has been drawn with a red pen. Who was he, and where was he going? In a novel that reads as both biography and mystery, the internationally celebrated novelist Sjón tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, the founder of Iceland’s antisemitic nationalist party, with ties to a burgeoning network of neo-Nazi groups across the globe. Told in a series of scenes and letters spanning Kampen’s lifetime—from his childhood in Reykjavík during the Second World War, in a household strongly opposed to Hitler and his views, through his education, political radicalization, and final clandestine mission to England—Red Milk urges readers to confront the international legacy of twentieth-century fascism and the often unknowable forces that drive some people to extremism. Based on one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that operated in Reykjavík in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this taut and potent novel explores what shapes a young man and the enduring, disturbing allure of Nazi ideology.

Cult Classic

Cult Classic
Author: Sloane Crosley
Publisher: MCD
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374603405

Hilariously insightful and delightfully suspenseful, Cult Classic is an original: a masterfully crafted tale of love, memory, morality, and mind control, as well as a fresh foray into the philosophy of romance. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR at the Washington Post, the BBC, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and more! One night in New York City’s Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And . . . another. Nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but with the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Memories of the past swirl and converge in ways both comic and eerie, as Lola is forced to decide if she will surrender herself to the conspiring of one very contemporary cult. Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale? With her gimlet eye, Sloane Crosley spins a wry literary fantasy that is equal parts page-turner and poignant portrayal of alienation.

Sacrificial Animals

Sacrificial Animals
Author: Kailee Pedersen
Publisher: Titan Books
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2024-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1803368756

Two brothers return to their family home to care for their dying father, only to find the ghosts of their pasts are restless and hungry for blood in this gothic horror, perfect for fans of Hereditary and readers of Stephen Graham Jones. When their father calls them to tell them he is dying, Nick and Joshua rush back to their Nebraskan childhood home, Stag's Crossing, hoping for a deathbed reconciliation with the man who raised them. But their return sparks memories of their childhood, and their father—Carlyle—a ruthless, violent racist who ruled Stag's Crossing with an iron fist and disowned Joshua for marrying a woman of Asian descent. Very quickly, the family find themselves falling into familiar patterns. Joshua and his father renew their tight bonds. As his long-buried memories of a youthful romance with another boy resurface, Nick finds himself ostracised and growing closer to Emilia, his brother's enigmatic wife. But something else has arrived at Stag's Crossing, a presence out for revenge, and Nick, Joshua and Carlyle, who have traded in blood, dirt and violence for so long, are about to face a reckoning like no other. Inspired by Kailee Pedersen's own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up on a farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut draws on ancient Chinese mythology to explore the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.

Descendant of the Crane

Descendant of the Crane
Author: Joan He
Publisher: Titan Books
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1789094054

In this shimmering Chinese-inspired fantasy, debut author Joan He introduces a determined and vulnerable young heroine struggling to do right in a world brimming with deception. Tyrants cut out hearts. Rulers sacrifice their own. Princess Hesina of Yan has always been eager to shirk the responsibilities of the crown, but when her beloved father is murdered, she's thrust into power, suddenly the queen of an unstable kingdom. Determined to find her father's killer, Hesina does something desperate: she enlists the aid of a soothsayer - a treasonous act, punishable by death... because in Yan, magic was outlawed centuries ago. Using the information illicitly provided by the sooth, and uncertain if she can trust even her family, Hesina turns to Akira - a brilliant investigator who's also a convicted criminal with secrets of his own. With the future of her kingdom at stake, can Hesina find justice for her father? Or will the cost be too high?