Never underestimate an apprentice’s ability to ruin everything. When mishaps and mayhem befall, they must develop their talents to untangle the messes they’ve made. Black magic, talismans, and incantations intertwine within their worlds, making solutions murky.Featuring eleven stories by best-selling and award-winning authors, The Mage’s Apprentice will take you to fantastical realms, new dimensions, and across time, exposing the secrets of magic.Will the apprentice remain ...

The balance between good and evil is always in flux. Demons vie for control for the key to heaven’s gate to wreak havoc on the Earth and destroy mankind by any means necessary—striking fear, famine, deceit and damnation into the world. Our hope of redemption is entrusted to angels, as they thwart the forces of evil. These eight original tales unveil the hidden world of angels and demons and the battle over our very souls.Contains the short stories:...

Winner of the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards: "Twenty insanely inventive, hauntingly atmospheric and flat out coo coo for Cocoa Puffs stories" ( Hellnotes).A World Fantasy Award nominee, "this anthology . . . is a collection of some of the most talented horror and speculative fiction authors writing today" ( BuzzFeed). It includes all-new stories by Laird Barron, Pat Cadigan, Brian Evenson, Jeffrey Ford, Caítlin R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, Mich...

"Readers who know Lovecraft's legacy mostly through turgid and tentacled Cthulhu Mythos pastiches will find this book a treasure trove of literary terrors." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)Here are nineteen Lovecraftian stories—both new and rediscovered—that take their cues from the mythos of the iconic horror writer. Today's masters of supernatural thrills celebrate H. P. Lovecraft's oeuvre with tales of weird fiction and cosmic horror, collected by H...

In the title story “Polyphemus,” an exploration team on a desert planet faces death when it encounters a terrifying alien monstrosity. In “The Angel of Death,” a serial killer who has a city on edge may finally have met his match in the form of a powerful interplanetary traveler. In the blackly humorous “Uncle Tuggs,” a series of grisly and bizarre deaths may be connected to the mysterious disappearance of old Uncle Tuggs. “The Horror on the #33” tells of a man’s struggle with a deadly and...

A collection of "mesmerizing tales, each one creepier than the next" that go beyond the traditional vampire myths ( Library Journal).When we think of vampires, an image instantly arises: fangs sunk deep into the throat of the victim. But bloodsucking is merely one form of vampirism. For this brilliantly original anthology, multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow solicited stories from many of the most powerfully dark voices in contemporary horror, who co...

Edinburgh’s New Town, built between 1767 and 1850, is one of Europe’s finest neoclassical neighbourhoods, a triumph of town planning, with UNESCO World Heritage status. But the importance of the New Town goes far beyond the quality of its architecture. Nearly 250 years after it was built, today it is not only a carefully conserved Georgian neighbourhood but a vibrant community in which people from all walks of life thrive in harmonious surroundings. Those include over 7,000 residential pro...

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly #23. Lots of good stuff this time—highlighted by a novel from Golden Age mystery author Rufus King, Duenna for a Murder. Plus a few novellas, and lots of great short stories, a solve-it-yourself mystery from Hal Charles, and great selections from Michael Bracken (Laird Long’s “Taken for a Ride”—which qualifies as both a mysery and a fantasy story) and Barb Goffman (Michael Allan Mallory’s “Random Harvest”).On the science fictio...

The first three volumes of The Best Horror of the Year have been widely praised for their quality, variety, and comprehensiveness. Editor Ellen Datlow has now explored the entirety of the diverse horror market, distilling it into the fourth anthology in the series and providing an overview of the year in terror.Fear is the oldest human emotion, the most primal. We like to think we're civilized. We tell ourselves we're not afraid. And every year, we skim our fingers across ...

Laird Hamilton has been hailed as the world's greatest big-wave surfer. His first book, Force of Nature, allows listeners a rare glimpse inside the unique philosophy that has created his circumstances, and not the other way around. After all, this is a man whose biological father abandoned him shortly after he was born; whose first job was working on a pig farm; who dropped out of school in eleventh grade. And then the career decision: surfer. Though earning enough to pay the rent...

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly #38.This issue, we have some real gems—starting with our featured story, Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist. It’s a true classic of fantasy, acclaimed by critics for generations. Plus we have a Hashknife Hartley historical adventure novel (okay, you can call it a Western!) from W.C. Tuttle. Our acquiring editors have been busy, too. Michael Bracken snagged an original private eye tale from Laird Long, Barb Goffman found a terrific John M. Floyd sto...

Even though he passed over 80 years ago, H. P. Lovecraft maintains a visceral influence over a host of contemporary writers. Inspired by the Master of the Macabre's more optimistic writings, this unique collection spotlights the weird works of nine current horror and fantasy authors, including the award-winning Michael Cisco and Livia Llewellyn plus Victor LaValle, Molly Tanzer, and Masahiko Inoue. Also includes Clark Ashton Smith's 1931 "The City of the Singing Flame" and Lovecraft's own ...