Monster Horror

Satisfy your craving for extraordinary authors and exceptional fiction: Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond. Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour! Sit back, and enjoy a smooth ride in air-conditioned comfort as your heavily armored tram takes you through nature's most astonishing creation. The forest is packed to capacity with dangerous and terrifying creatures of all shapes, sizes, and hunger levels, and you'll get to observe these wonders in complete safety.

A student’s investigation into a secret cult leads to madness.

A psychologically twisted story of the escape of a lifelong prisoner.

In the backwoods of the Miskatonic River valley, an unspeakable creature seeks to come through the veil into our world.

A dreamlike tale of haunting melodies and visions of alternate worlds.

A sailor recalls the monstrous terror that lay at the bottom of the deep in this, Lovecraft’s earliest tale of unspeakable horror from outside our universe.

Amelia Scarcliffe’s monstrous brood, harbingers of Cthulhu, will soon spawn. Her songs spell insanity, death...and illimitable wealth. And Moriarty will do anything to get his hands on gold, even if it means tearing down the walls between this world and a realm of horrors. Meanwhile, after Sherlock Holmes’s last tangle with the Order of Dagon, horrifying monsters haunt the Thames, and madness stalks the streets of Whitechapel. Gang war between Moriarty’s thugs and the powerful cult can only bring more terror - unless Holmes and Dr. Watson can prevent it.

After the devastating events on Prism Lake, Grady and the other survivors head south, hoping to find safety in one of the rumored "Cities of Light". But as they embark on their journey, they quickly discover the monsters aren't the only things out in the snow they must fear.

"Perfect deadpan marks the opening of Ali Simpson’s The Monster'" writes Susan Merrell of The Southampton Review in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading.

As a species, people have tamed the Earth. Individually, in the face of a superior predator, we're all just as helpless as the day we were born. And a superior predator is out there. Humans may be the Apex predator, but there's something even more deadly. It's the Super Apex.

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

Dieter Harmon stared in shock at the sight of the hiker's corpse, the head hanging only by a tangled ribbon of flesh. But what horrified him were claw marks on the victim's chest. Something has gone terribly wrong with the government's plan to return wolves to Yellowstone.

There isn't a style or pop culture trend in the monster world that Cleo De Nile isn't on top of. But on a visit to the human world, Cleo discovers a tradition that completely escaped her: Monster Con, where humans gather to dress up as their favorite monsters. Convinced it's what Monster High has been missing-and determined to prove to her family that she can be a leader-Cleo decides to put on the school's first ever Human Con.

As the heir to the Halliday name and fortune, Win's entire life has been carefully orchestrated from the moment he came into the world. He's never been allowed to aspire for anything outside that plan, including love. After the tragedy that followed his younger brother chasing his foolish heart, the Halliday Matriarch insists on picking a bride that's up to her outrageously high standards. Unfortunately, the only woman Win would ever consider marrying isn't found anywhere on his mother's list.

One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence.

The real monsters are men. London 1888, and Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the people of the city. Evelyn, a young woman disfigured by her dangerous work in a matchstick factory, with nowhere to go, does not know what to make of her new position as a maid to the Elephant Man in London Hospital. Evelyn wanted to be locked away from the world like he is, shut away from the filth and dangers of the streets. But in Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, she finds a gentle kindred who does not recoil from her and who understands her pain.

Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. And moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over as someone different. In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones.

Horror fans will get their thrills in this collection–from werewolves to vampires to zombies–all the time-worn horror baddies are there. But so are predators of a distinctly American variety–the horrors of empire, of intimate partner violence, of dispossession. And so too the monsters of Rogers’ imagination, that draw upon long-told Cherokee stories–of Deer Woman, fantastical sea creatures, and more.

A fantasy/horror novella, Our Monsters Are Real takes place in the summer of a small, Midwestern town called Edlund. Daryl, the farm boy hero, is soon to graduate high school and uses an unknown source of magic against a morbid family. Teenage adolescence, desire, and rock and roll all play their part in discovering secrets that affect the lives of the Carters as they settle into their new life.