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The secret is, vampires are real and I am one.

The secret is, I'm stealing from you what is most truly yours and I'm not sorry...

New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody—he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city's sidewalks.

The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It's almost too easy.

Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him... or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.

And neither are the rest of us.

Nebula- and World Fantasy-nominated Novella

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he's in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.

Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these questionably-sane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within, and which are lurking in plain sight.

From award winning author Daryl Gregory, a thrilling and colorful Lovecraftian adventure of a teenage boy searching for his mother, and the macabre creatures he encounters.

Harrison Harrison--H2 to his mom--is a lonely teenager who's been terrified of the water ever since he was a toddler in California, when a huge sea creature capsized their boat, and his father vanished. One of the "sensitives" who are attuned to the supernatural world, Harrison and his mother have just moved to the worst possible place for a boy like him: Dunnsmouth, a Lovecraftian town perched on rocks above the Atlantic, where strange things go on by night, monsters lurk under the waves, and creepy teachers run the local high school. On Harrison's first day at school, his mother, a marine biologist, disappears at sea.

Harrison must attempt to solve the mystery of her accident, which puts him in conflict with a strange church, a knife-wielding killer, and the Deep Ones, fish-human hybrids that live in the bay. It will take all his resources--and an unusual host of allies--to defeat the danger and find his mother.

Padlocked doors. Strange light fixtures. Mutant cockroaches.

There are some odd things about Nate's new apartment.

Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn't perfect, it's livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and th eodd little mysteries don't nag at him too much.

At least not until he meets Mandy, his neighbor across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela's apartment. And Tim's, And Veek's.

Because every room in this old Los Angeles brownstone has a mystery or two. Mysteries that stretch back over a hundred years. Some of them are in plain sight. Some are behind locked doors. And all together these mysteries could mean the end of Nate and his friends.

Or the end of everything...

One of Lovecraft's longest works, this novella was turned into a graphic novel by British artist I. N. J. Culbard in 2010 (more on his work later). At the Mountains of Madness owes much of its creeping melancholy to not only Lovecraft's fascination with polar exploration, but also to the legacy of polar exploration in fiction, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Told in the first-person by Miskatonic geologist Dr. William Dyer, At the Mountains of Madness details a scientific expedition to Antarctica that unearths the ancient and ruined city of the Elder Things of the Necronomicon.

This Novel was originally serialized in 1936 February, March and April issues of Astounding Stories. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Foundations of Fear: An Exploration of Horror, edited by David G. Hartwell, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror and The The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories.

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft is available free on the Internet.

A definitive collection of stories from the unrivaled master of twentieth-century horror in a Penguin Classics Deluxe edition with cover art by Travis Louie.

"I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." -Stephen King

Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Philips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S. T. Joshi, Lovecraft's preeminent interpreter, presents a selection of the master's fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as "The Outsider" to the overpowering cosmic terror of "The Call of Cthulhu." More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this volume reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical- and visionary-American writer.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Suggestions for Further Reading - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• A Note on the Text - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi
• Dagon - (1919)
• The Statement of Randolph Carter - (1920)
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - (1987) - (variant of The White Ape 1920)
• Celephaïs - (1922)
• Nyarlathotep - (1920)
• The Picture in the House - (1919)
• The Outsider - (1926)
• Herbert West--Reanimator - (1922)
• The Hound - (1924)
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924)
• The Festival - (1925)
• He - (1926)
• Cool Air - (1928)
• The Call of Cthulhu - (1928)
• The Colour Out of Space - (1927)
• The Whisperer in Darkness - (1931)
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth - (1936)
• The Haunter of the Dark - (1936)
• Explanatory Notes - (1999) - essay by S. T. Joshi

In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

Hugo-winning Novella

The "Laundry" is Britain's super-secret agency devoted to protecting the realm from the supernatural horrors that menace it. Now Bob Howard, Laundry agent, must travel to the quiet English countryside to deal with an outbreak of one of the worst horrors imaginable. For, as it turns out, unicorns are real. They're also ravenous killers from beyond spacetime...

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

After stumbling upon the algorithm that turned him and his fellow merchant bankers into vampires, Alex Schwartz was drafted by The Laundry, Britain's secret counter-occult agency that's humanity's first line of defense against the forces of darkness. Dependent on his new employers for his continued existence -- as Alex has no stomach for predatory bloodsucking -- he has little choice but to accept his new role as an operative-in-training.

Dispatched to Leeds, Alex's first assignment is to help assess the costs of renovating a 1950s Cold War bunker into The Laundry's new headquarters. Unfortunately, Leeds is Alex's hometown, and the thought of breaking the news to his parents that he's left banking for civil service, while hiding his undead condition, is causing more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses.

Alex's only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a drama student appearing in the local Goth Festival who is inexplicably attracted to him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock.

But Cassie has secrets of her own -- secrets that make Alex's night life behaviors seem positively normal...

Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from mythology as a wild beast, now considered extinct. Mikael takes the troll, whom he has named Pessi, back to his apartment. But Mikael does not discover that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultra-hip Stalker jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the art director of the advertising agency, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden feelings.

Collection of early Lovecraft stories inspired by Lord Dunsany.

Table of Contents:

• About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft: Through the Gates of Deeper Slumber - essay by Lin Carter
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - (1943) - novella
• Celephais - (1922) - shortstory
• The Silver Key - (1929) - shortstory
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key - (1934) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
• The White Ship - (1919) - shortstory
• The Strange High House in the Mist - (1931) - shortstory
• Postscript About The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and H. P. Lovecraft - (1966) - poem by Lin Carter

The state took Aphra away from Innsmouth. They took her history, her home, her family, her god. They tried to take the sea. Now, years later, when she is just beginning to rebuild a life, an agent of that government intrudes on her life again, with an offer she wishes she could refuse. "The Litany of Earth" is a dark fantasy story inspired by the Lovecraft mythos.

This short story can also be found in the anthologies New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird (2015), edited by Paula Guran, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com, or listen to a podcast of this story at Drabblecast.

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she's found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen's eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don't think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she's about to confess, Homily reveals why she's in the area: she's hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn't an option. Shesheshen didn't curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily's twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.

From the acclaimed author of The Troop--which Stephen King raved "scared the hell out of me and I couldn't put it down.... old-school horror at its best"--comes this utterly terrifying novel where The Abyss meets The Shining.

A strange plague called the 'Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget--small things at first, like where they left their keys, then the not-so-small things, like how to drive or the letters of the alphabet. Their bodies forget how to function involuntarily. There is no cure.

But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Mariana Trench, a heretofore-unknown substance hailed as "ambrosia"--a universal healer, from initial reports--has been discovered. It may just be the key to eradicating the 'Gets.

In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab, the Trieste, has been built eight miles under the sea's surface. But when the station goes incommunicado, a brave few descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths...and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine.

Set in the rural wilderness of western Massachusetts, "The Dunwich Horror" follows one Wilbur Whateley, the bastard offspring of a family devoted to worshipping to "Great Old Ones" and to studying the Necronomicon, Lovecraft's fictional grimoire full of forsaken lore and magic. Whateley is ultimately defeated by Professor Warren Rice and Dr. Francis Morgan, two representatives of Lovecraft's many scholarly protagonists. "The Dunwich Horror" is notable not only for its use of anachronistic Yankee dialects, but also its numerous references to the fictional Miskatonic University and the superstition surrounding whip-poor-wills.

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales in 1929. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Fraser and Herbert A. Wise, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft and The Dunwich Horror and Others.

The Dunwich Horror is the basis for several films of the same name.

The April 1929 issue of Weird Tales containing "The Dunwich Horror" is available free on Internet Archives.

A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona. Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation, but which haunts the Signalman.

In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible -- the Children of the Next Level -- and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming and they will help to usher it in.

A day after the events at the ranch house which disturbed the Signalman so deeply that he and his government sought out help from 'other' sources, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory abruptly loses contact with NASA's interplanetary probe New Horizons. Something out beyond the orbit of Pluto has made contact.

And a woman floating outside of time looks to the future and the past for answers to what can save humanity.

John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He's been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid's stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He's also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he's hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.

As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He's infected with an alien presence, and he's spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.

A rundown apartment in Koreatown. A Los Angeles winter. A strung out, worn out, wrecked and used government agent is scraped up off the pavement, cleaned up, and reluctantly sent out into battle one last time.

Ellison Nicodemo has seen and done terrible things. She thought her only remaining quest was for oblivion. Then the Signalman comes calling. He wants to learn if she can stop the latest apocalypse. Ellison, once a unique and valuable asset, can barely remember why she ever fought the good fight.

Still, you don't say no to the Signalman, and the time has come to face her fears and the nightmare forces that almost destroyed her. Only Ellison can unleash the hound of Tindalos.

Deacon James is a rambling bluesman straight from Georgia, a black man with troubles that he can't escape, and music that won't let him go. On a train to Arkham, he meets trouble -- visions of nightmares, gaping mouths and grasping tendrils, and a madman who calls himself John Persons. According to the stranger, Deacon is carrying a seed in his head, a thing that will destroy the world if he lets it hatch.

The mad ravings chase Deacon to his next gig. His saxophone doesn't call up his audience from their seats, it calls up monstrosities from across dimensions. As Deacon flees, chased by horrors and cultists, he stumbles upon a runaway girl, who is trying to escape her father, and the destiny he has waiting for her. Like Deacon, she carries something deep inside her, something twisted and dangerous. Together, they seek to leave Arkham, only to find the Thousand Young lurking in the woods.

The song in Deacon's head is growing stronger, and soon he won't be able to ignore it any more.