The old stories never disappeared; they're waiting for us to discover them anew.A banshee imprisoned for two centuries is freed by a child's curious hand and she wants revenge. A boy hides inside a carriage made of human skin as the Dullahan carries him toward the land of the dead. An American tourist ignores a warning about the hungry grass on Slieve Gullion and never makes it home. A laundrette becomes the site of a death omen when a dead mother appears, washing ...

‘A fast-moving and entertaining tale, beautifully written’ – Ben AaronovitchWhen ghosts talk, she will listen . . .Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker – and she now speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children – leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honour bound to investigate. B...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE'One of the best collections you'll read this year' Sunday Times'Wild, witty stories . . . Exhilarating' ObserverIn this rapturous story collection we encounter a ragbag of west of Ireland characters, many on the cusp between love and catastrophe, heartbreak and epiphany, resignation and hope. These stories affirm Kevin Barry as one of the world's most ...

Macabre meetings, sinister excursions, and deadly relationships; uncanny encounters; a classic ghost story featuring an American god; a historical murderer revived in a frightening new iteration; innovative Lovecraftian turns; shadowy fairy tales and weird myths; strange children, the unexpected, the supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while invent...

The darkness creeps upon us and we shudder, or it suddenly startles and we scream. There need be no monsters for us to be terrified in the dark, but if there are, they are just as often human and supernatural. Join us in this outstanding annual exploration of the year's best dark fiction that includes stories of quiet fear, the utterly fantastic, the weirdly surreal, atmospheric noir, mysterious hauntings, seductive nightmares, and frighteningly plausible futures. Featuring thirty-five tal...

***WINNER of the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize***'I binged it like a Netflix show ... It's stunning' Luke Kennard, author of The Transition______________________________A photograph is hung on a gallery wall for the very first time since it was taken two decades before. It shows a slaughter house in rural Ireland, a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, a meat hook sus...

An electrifying anthology of new horror stories by award-winning masters of the genre.Twenty-one brand-new stories of the ominous and terrifying from some of the horror genre's most talented writers. In 'The Dead Thing' Paul Tremblay draws us into the world of a neglected teenage girl and her younger brother and the evil that lurks at the heart of their family. In Gemma Files' 'Bulb' a woman calls in to a podcast to tell the terrifying story of why she has escaped o...

A bolt of lightning. A crack of thunder. The lingering smell of ozone in the highly-charged air.And the world has changed forever.Welcome to Thunderlands. It looks the same on the surface, but there's just a hint that all might not be what it seems beneath. Even the most ordinary things may be just a touch off kilter.Stewart Bint's collection of 21 short stories ranges from the sublime, through powerful, puzzling, funny, horrific and different, to the unforgivably r...

A memory-eating, closet-dwelling beast escapes its confines; a Somali girl in a Donegal school is tougher than she seems; under a jasmine tree in Andalucía a woman waits for her stolen son; at the edge of a city, two brothers step unwittingly into a game that turns deadly. The scope and diversity of these stories knows no bounds, sitting somewhere between the real and imaginary.Wild Quiet contains a world viewed from unexpected angles, where the ordinary is rendered extrao...

Little Horn is a new collection of fourteen dark short stories and novelettes from Shirley Jackson Award winner and two-time Bram Stoker Award winner Gemma Files.Helping to bring each story to life, this collection includes sixteen full-page illustrations by the author."The Sanguintalist""Echo Chamber""Only Children""Pelican""Hagstone""Poor Butcher-Bird""Pear of Anguish""Bb Minor, or the Su...

An instant classic, The Long Gaze Back, edited by Sinéad Gleeson, is an exhilarating anthology of thirty short stories by some of the most gifted women writers this island has ever produced. Featuring: Niamh Boyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Maeve Brennan, Mary Costello, June Caldwell, Lucy Caldwell, Evelyn Conlon, Anne Devlin, Maria Edgeworth, Anne Enright, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Norah Hoult, Mary Lavin, Eimear McBride, Molly McCloskey, Bernie McGill, Lisa McInerney, Belinda McKeon, Siobh...

Shatter a mirror, and rearrange the pieces. What shapes will you find in the splintered glass?Sinister forces roam London's streets, skulking through the neon-lit rain. They are not alone. Haunted by memories of the man who abandoned her, Amber goes walking in the deep night. The phone box she enters takes her on a journey she could never have imagined, one in which the past and the future will be rewritten. Others follow in her footsteps, their lives intertwining, and the...