For sixteen years, Amy Grady has been married to a man who slaps, punches, and kicks her. His anger is unpredictable and violence can explode at any moment. Except for the love of her son, Danny, Amy's life is lonely and cold.Walter Loveless, who has just moved in next door to Amy, is lonely, too. He has been living a life of isolation. When they meet, electricity crackles between them and the attraction is instant and powerful. They find in each other the love and affection they have craved for so long. But Loveless has secrets and a past that haunts him. Someone from that past is still pursuing him. Someone deadly. When Amy decides to escape her own past, she runs headlong into Loveless's.

In the debut horror novel from the author of Live Girls, a small town in Northern California finds itself at the whims of an old and hungry evil. Donald Ellis is in a bad place. On a forced leave of absence from work, his personal life has also collapsed. But he's certain that something else is going on—something dreadfully wrong with his town. People are disappearing, leaving inexplicable traces of what might have happened to them. And then there are the dreams—horrifying nightmares seeping slowly into even more troubling daytime visions. Then Freddie appears on his doorstep—a strangely powerful young woman who tells him that his intuition is right. A dark force has taken over his once-sleepy northern California home. Creatures are roaming the night, hungry for lust, thirsty for blood, and knowing exactly how to satisfy their cravings. To fight an evil that hides in plain sight, Donald and Freddie will have...

Are you safe in your house?Look around you. Is your world familiar? Comfortable? Does it seem the same today as it was yesterday? It isn't. Something is loose in your world that wasn't there before. Something terrible.It is born of the devil, nurtured in evil, and set loose to do its vile work. It moves its foul form with a sleek, sudden, malevolent grace. It comes, it touches, it takes over. Then the horror begins. An aging surgeon, a captured fugitive, a pregnant mother, an innocent hospital worker — each is its victim, driven by a grotesque impulse to acts of murder, mayhem, nymphomania, infanticide, cannibalism.Can it be stopped? Perhaps...But the battle will be waged by a few brave, desperate souls on the edge of Hell, while Satan awaits the triumph of his cherished... Darklings.

Ray Garton has been publishing horror and dark suspense for thirty years and has attracted a faithful and appreciative audience for his unique brand of storytelling. His no-frills style and clever plots make his novels and short fiction sleek, fast-running entertainments.This collection brings together a representative sample of his short fiction that is aptly named "grim." This Little Book serves as a great introduction to his work for new readers and a fine addition for his long-time fans and collectors.Stories included in this collection:Cat LoverAutophagyThe Guy Down the StreetSammy Comes Home

(Previously published as Frankenstorm)A storm of epic proportions is brewing off the coast of northern California. Residents have been warned to prepare for disaster. It's a false hope in the face of what's coming...In a secret government lab, virologist Fara McManus tries to stop an experiment out of control—before more human subjects are infected. But in a blazing hail of bullets, survivalist Ollie Monk launches a paramilitary attack on the lab, releasing the infected into the night. And as the nightmare escalates to a fever pitch, internet blogger Ivan Renner traces the destruction as it claims more victims, beginning with a single mother unknowingly spreading the virus. A father and son, held hostage by a lunatic. A local sheriff, single-handedly fighting madness, murder, and worse.No one will find shelter from this storm."Remember when paperback originals were cool? Sex, action, suspense? Try FRANKENSTORM. It's old school."...

Featuring Ray Garton's most controversial religious horror short stories that are sure to get him in trouble with someone, along with a new introduction that will also probably get him in trouble, Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth is way too over-the-top for a mass market publisher or even the regular small press audience... hence this very limited publication that is sure to turn the book into a legendary title for collectors!

Steve Benedetti has a dark and lonely job from which he has decided to retire. On his way home from what he intends to be his final assignment, he stops at a carnival to kill some time. There he meets the Serpent Girl, a woman who mesmerizes him as no other woman has...and stirs in him desires that blind his own better judgment. They each have a dangerous secret. Steve decides to take her with him on the road, a decision that binds them—and their secrets—together in ways neither could ever suspect. They begin an erotic journey that takes them much farther than their physical destination...a bloody journey that will irrevocably change them both. Previously published as Cemetery Dance.

What would you do if the person you loved could kill you with an accidental thought?A man: At the end of his rope, running from his own mistakes... a drug deal gone wrong and a lot of money owed to a powerful figure who will happily take his life as payment.A woman: Running from a husband who wants to kill her and a man who wants to own her, with a secret that could turn the city, the country, perhaps the world into a mass grave.Each has lost everything. Together, they have nothing to lose... but their lives.Drawn together by loneliness and desperation... and a secret project called... Biofire.

First time in a digital format for this long sold-out limited edition novella!The morning after a strange meteor shower, the residents of Mount Crag awaken to find a new breed of flower blooming everywhere. They are beautiful, unlike any other flower anyone has seen. And there are so many of them! But before long, the large flowers begin to pop off their stems ... and crawl around ... and hunt. The people of Mt. Crag soon realize that they are the prey.Crawlers is a pulpy throwback story in the tradition of Day of the Triffids. Ray Garton has delivered another winner with this nerve-wracking tale of horror.

First time in a digital format for this long sold-out limited edition novella!Andy Sayer knows what it's like to feel like a freak. Ever since he was badly burned in a fire started by his drunken mother, the horrible scars on his face have set him apart from others, isolated him.Now, the patriarch of a prominent but mysterious family, Matthew Bollinger, has taken an interest in Andy. The Bollingers own the entire area and just about everything in it. They live in an enormous house built on the side of Mount Crag, but they are never seen. Matthew Bollinger wants Andy to come live with them.In the Bollingers, Andy finds acceptance ... and the deepest kind of corruption and evil.Sometimes the worst disfigurements remain invisible ... until it's too late.

Review"Live Girls is gripping, original, and sly. I finished it in one bite." - Dean Koontz "The most nightmarish vampire story I have ever read."-Ramsey Campbell Product DescriptionDavey's on the down and out when he loses his girl, his job and practically his sanity. While some men drown themselves in a forgiving bottle, Davey believes it's much more profitable to sink into Times Square's nightlife and lose himself inside Live Girls. They are the free ravishing pleasures who beckon Davey into a world of irresistible fantasy and ecstasy. One of them propositions him with a kiss, an insatiable kiss that leads him far from the misery he once felt to a demonic place where body and soul are sacrificed for obsessions.

A terrifying tale from a Bram Stoker Award–nominated author who "has consistently created some of the best horror ever set to print" (Cemetery Dance). Foster care is like Russian roulette, says fifteen-year-old Ryan Kettering, who's spent most of his young life in largely abusive homes. Sometimes the hammer clicks and you're fine. Sometimes it's a bullet to the brain. This time it seems the hammer has clicked. Living with the Prestons in a rambling two-story house in Shasta County, the chores are split between Ryan and five other foster kids. Not counting nine-year-old Maddy. Not much is expected of her. She stays in the basement. The other children don't know much about Maddy. But what they do know, they don't like. She's just not right. She speaks in a strange, gravelly adult voice. Maybe Ryan can make a difference. Spend time with her. Get acquainted. He understands what it means to be lonely. That's when he decides to do what no...

Andy Sayer is a new man. His external scars, left over from being badly burned as a child, are gone, and he has fallen in love. But he still lives with the Bollinger family, and Matthew Bollinger keeps a close eye on what Andy does with his life—and on who he loves. While Andy's outer scars have been surgically removed, his internal scars never heal. And Andy's hunger for revenge has receded over the last five years, but it is about to return in a big way.

Horror master Garton delivers his usual ironic and macabre touches as the dead, who are, in fact, pretty ugly, make life a hell for the living. Following a sequence of increasingly dire personal tragedies, culminating in the unexplained death of their four-year-old son, Josh, Jenna and David Kella plan to make a new start of their lives on the old family homestead they've inherited just outside Eureka, Calif., with their surviving son, Miles. What they discover, though, is a nightmare. Ghostly children play on the backyard swings and vanish abruptly. In a cruel and maddening irony, one of the child ghosts resembles Josh. The frights and horrors pile up as psychics, ouija boards and poltergeists join the mix.

Pieces of terror, pieces of suspense, pieces of darkness combine to create PIECES OF HATE, master storyteller Ray Garton's short story collection. Nine works, including "A Gift From Above", a new novel that will surely hit you from below, are here compiled for the sole purpose of scaring you onto the next page. Garton illuminates the dark corners in us all and highlights the depths of the human condition. He takes our ordinary, daily assumptions and turns them on the reader to frightening effect. He makes reading terrifying yet compulsive. He scares us in so many ways. Here are a but a few brilliant examples in this one collection.Table of Contents:"A Gift From Above""Choices""Pieces""Cat Hater""Bad Blood""Ophilia Raphaeldo""The Devil's Music""Bait""God's Work"