Bøger udgivet af Trepidatio Publishing

"Ravishing flights of fantasy."-Priya Sharma, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of All the Fabulous Beasts and Ormeshadow"Carina Bissett's collection is a thing of wonder and beauty. It is a true representation of Carina herself: whimsical, visceral, lovely, and fierce. You can hear women's voices screaming while roses fall from their lips. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations is a triumph."-Mercedes M. Yardley, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Little Dead RedIn this powerful debut, Carina Bissett explores the liminal spaces between the magical and the mundane, horror and humor, fairy tales and fabulism. A young woman discovers apotheosis at the intersection of her cross-cultural heritage. A simulacrum rebels against her coding to create a new universe of her own making. A poison assassin tears the world apart in the relentless pursuit of her true love-the one person alive who can destroy her. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations erases expectations, forging new trails on the map of contemporary fiction. Includes an introduction by Julie C. Day, author of Uncommon Miracles and The Rampant."Carina Bissett is one of my favorite speculative authors writing today-magic and myth, horror and revenge, wonder and hope. Her stories are original, lyrical, and haunting-Shirley Jackson mixed with Ursula LeGuin and a dash of Neil Gaiman. An amazing collection of stories." -Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion, a Bram Stoker Award finalist

From a corn maze hiding a cosmic secret between its rows to the basement of a Nebraska woman with a magic eye...From a support group for necrophiliacs to a demon searching for a new apprentice...From a town overrun by a sentient garbage dump to the tunnels beneath one of the country's most haunted hotels...From the trail less travelled to a remote outpost on the outskirts of civilization...The 20 stories in this debut collection from horror author Larry Hinkle explore the space between our world and the next. Between then and now, and now and then. Between found and lost. Between the innocence of a child and the bloodlust of a monster.Tread lightly and watch your back. You're never alone in the space between.With a foreword from Bram Stoker Award-winning author Tom Deady.

"This richly-told tale is haunting and heartbreaking in equal measure. Hazel's story will rip you apart, but her indomitable courage against the oppressive forces in the world will also give you hope. A truly marvelous achievement." -Gwendolyn Kiste, Lambda Literary and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Reluctant Immortals and The Rust Maidens¿Hazel loves writing horror stories, and wants to become a writer. She falls for her lovely neighbor Blanche, but when her parents discover her various inclinations, they are outraged and decide to commit her to Montrose Asylum.There she meets the fiery Jo and the fragile Lulla. The three of them follow a mysterious lullaby which calls out in the dark, leading them to an abandoned garden...and a nightmare they may not escape from. "Exquisitely written and profoundly melancholic, Cécile Guillot's Lullaby is a poignant and equally haunting portrait of trauma and injustice that will inevitably linger in the minds of all who are privileged enough to experience this gem of a book." -Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

From Gordon B. White, finalist for the Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Awards, come fifteen tales of evocative prose and unparalleled imagination. From spirit-possessed postcards in the award-nominated title story to the eco-terror of "Dandelion Six" and riot-fueled nightmare of "One of the Good Ones," the armed invasion of a deity's corpse in "Godhead" and a drink with the damned in "Devil Take Me," these stories are haunted by weird ghosts and contemporary horrors. "These are stunning and provocative stories, full of surprises." -Brian Everson, author of The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell "Gordon B. White is in a genre-genus by himself, unclassifiable, breathtaking and beautiful all at once." -Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Ghost Eaters "Absolutely one of my favorite horror authors working today; I'll read whatever he writes." -Keith Rosson, author of Fever House

What does a damaged mind dream about? Does it imagine everyday horrors we're all familiar with, with morbid notions of pain and suffering and loss? Or does it dig a little deeper into those psychological spaces where we hide our darkest secrets and existential dreads? Or is it a darkened void, waiting to trap unsuspecting readers and steal their souls, leaving their minds twisted with SUCH PRETTY CONFUSION? This collection of dark fiction spans over two decades of nightmares from Maine author Peter N. Dudar. The stories selected are his personal favorites, including several new, unpublished pieces with razor-sharp edges. So please consider yourself invited to come play for awhile inside his damaged mind and discover what nightmares await you.

An octopus chosen for a secret mission; generations march through a mycelial tunnel in space; spirits visit a post-apocalyptic fishing village; houses revel when no one is home; a lifetime of seeing invisible monsters; the world begins granting unspoken wishes-these are only a few of the encounters in Constellations of Ruin. In this short story collection, Andrew S. Fuller explores growth and loss, survival and resistance, on a tour from lost neighborhoods to cursed cities to strange futures. Each tale contains wonder and horror, crafted in a stirring and unforgettable manner. "The 26 diverting speculative shorts of Fuller's collection prove entirely transporting." -Publishers Weekly "These strange and heady tales will take you into worlds of dreams and nightmares, carrying you along with vivid and immersive prose that will take hold of you and not let you go. Put this collection at the top of your reading list." -Gwendolyn Kiste, three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals

"Ruppert is a master of atmosphere...it's impossible to tell exactly when the comfortable reality she presents morphs into something strange, terrifying, and terrible" -Publishers WeeklyIn the twenty-one stories in Imago and Other Transformations there is faith, found and lost again. There are eldritch horrors and profane rituals. And there are characters caught in circumstances they thought they could control.A woman discovers the cost of the magic to resurrect her lost child. A husband struggles against hungry, old gods to win back his missing wife. A child wields a dangerous power his mother had long hoped to harness for her own. Plagues spread. Cities crumble. And the world that ends for some still goes on...

WHAT WE FEAR IN THE DARK CAN BE TERRIBLE.WHAT WE SEE IN THE LIGHT CAN BE WORSE.... This world is full of places that seem empty, but hide awful secrets. A cinematic ghost escapes from an experimental art project, infiltrating first the internet, then the "real" world; an exterminator debugging a dilapidated building discovers it's inhabited by both insects and angels; an intergalactic invasion begins with a single word; an all-female cult rediscovers an ancient, extremely bloody method of communion. Crammed to the brim with cosmic horror and dreadful invention, Dark Is Better (Trepidatio)-Gemma Files's sixth short fiction collection-acts as both a rough overview of her career thus far and a fitting chaser to her 2021 Bram Stoker Award-winning collection In That Endlessness, Our End (Grimscribe). This cabinet of liminal and sidelong curiosities is the universe horror icon Files's stories inhabit...one full of fractures and secrets, of darkness both cosmic and personal. Bringing together stories published over a period of nearly twenty years, this book includes some of Files' best-known works as well as many not widely distributed until now, encompassing the history of her development as a leading voice in the dark and the weird. As the ghastly light of revelation illuminates awfulness after awfulness, we invite you to learn exactly why DARK IS BETTER

A mesmerizing first collection from the cross-genre author, science writer, and artist J. Dianne Dotson, THE SHADOW GALAXY features short stories and poetry spanning magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and Appalachian tales. With stories and poetry spanning three decades of work, the author taps into journeys both fantastical and deeply personal. Categories include Shadow Shores: Tales from the Sea; Other Futures: Tales of the Galaxy and a Place Called Earth; Into the Darkest Hollow: Tales of Horror; Love and Other Moments: Traces of the Heart; Far Appalachia: Tales from the Ancient Mountains; and Resonant Thoughts: Some Poetry. Among these pages, Dotson captures the longing, regrets, and dreams of those living by the sea, such as in "One Evening in Fogvale." In "RODER," a young woman risks her life to help find a robot who captured her heart. "Topaz Sundered" explores an exoplanet mining expedition gone horribly wrong. In "The Queen and the Mountain Laurel," a young Appalachian girl teaches her father an important lesson with the help of mountain spirits. The poem "Obsidian" eviscerates with raw pain from betrayal. Dotson weaves these and many other tales and poems of mysticism, exploration, horror, pain, nostalgia, and wonder, for no shadow can exist without light.

When a disgruntled adjunct faculty teacher decides to get revenge on the head of her department, she begins a dark (and darkly comic) journey into the cracks between modern society and the secret depravity that lies underneath. She has to navigate the demons of technology, creativity, and Hell itself, but soon she must face the deepest, darkest horror of them all: her own personal failures."Polly Schattel's 8:59:29 is an expertly rendered fable of moral conflict. Threaded into the high-velocity plot is a playful but exacting study of obsolete forces leaving residue on the contemporary world. It's a tale of demons and hexes, of class and education, and of technology's pernicious expansion as a governing social force. Wicked, sardonic, intelligent horror fiction." -Mike Thorn, author of Peel Back and See

"When you're given a gift, something else gets taken away." A precocious young girl with an unusual imagination is sent on an odyssey into the depths of depravity. After her father dies violently, young Mara is surprised to find her mother welcoming a new guest into their home, claiming that he will protect them from the world of devastation and destruction outside their door. A grotesque and thrilling dark fantasy, We Can Never Leave This Place is a harrowing portrait of inherited grief and familial trauma."We Can Never Leave This Place is the apocalyptic 21st century Grimm's fairy tale you need in your life. Eric LaRocca plucks images directly from the muck and mire of our id and fashions them into something grotesquely beautiful." ~Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Pallbearers Club "We Can Never Leave This Place is a bleak and tender, monstrous and visceral fable of family and loss, and the courage it takes to confront them both." ~Kathe Koja, author of The Cipher

Where All is Night, and Starless collects seventeen unsettling stories of our fears and weaknesses, and of our often unreliable strengths: stories of monstrosity and the occasional hope, deliberately themed across three aspects of weird fiction. The section 'On Mythos' covers re-interpretations and subversions of themes from H P Lovecraft's Mythos; 'On Mysteries' looks into strange transformations, and 'On Myth' delves into the realms of folklore and folk horror, each with a dark twist. From the churning hell of World War One to the quiet English suburbs, from contemporary Alaska to colonial Africa, these are weird tales of the decisions we make when faced with something strange, with turns wry, ironic, and dark. Some horrors are found not outside, but in the mirror before us.

Phantom limbs, porous realities, and strange reflections shifting in black glass. The thirteen stories included in David Peak''s decade-spanning collection explore how memory affects place and place affects memory, the traumas that haunt bodies like ghosts, and the desperation of needing to be seen and understood by others. Only in pulling back the bloody veil of this world may we be so blessed to see things as they really are-and not as we wish them to be.David Peak builds stories that are intricate structures, impossible monuments to human darkness. To read them is to feel something tap against a secret part of us, a hidden bone that refuses to be forgotten. -Nadia Bulkin, author of She Said DestroyDavid Peak writes like a black-winged emissary from the Void, and Eyes in the Dust and Other Stories is a travelogue behind the walls, beneath the surface, and through the worm-tunnels that pierce a dying world''s heart. From fever dreams and haunted houses to fissures in reality and the emptiness beyond, no one else captures the aspects of the abyss like David Peak.  -Gordon B. White, author of As Summer''s Mask Slips and Other Disruptions

Nora Smith may be the best rat-catcher, pickpocket, and liar in gas-lit London, but her skills can’t help save her brother when he is killed in a fight. That’s when Aleister Blake appears, a man who offers to reclaim her sibling from death. For a price.At Aleister’s bidding, Nora leaves her life in the streets and moves into his house, one brimming with secrets. There are servants she only sees from the corner of her eyes and an entire second story she can’t access. When Aleister challenges her to help him find what he values most in the world in exchange for keeping her brother alive, she must use all of her talents to follow the only hint he has given her: the ship christened Pandemonium. With the enigmatic Aleister at her heels, Nora chases Pandemonium’s trail right into London’s underbelly, where blackmailers and smugglers thrive. Right to the truth that will force her to finally confront who she is and what it really means to make bargains with the Devil. 

A vengeful witch twists time and space on her way to the pyre, and hundreds of years later, a woman loses everything to the addictive lure of omniscience. A Season of Loathsome Miracles has begun, a season untethered to the sun and spanning across centuries. A World War I flying ace is conscripted into war on a cosmic scale, and a musician of the distant future travels beyond known space to play the ultimate concert. A vice cop scours the streets of Manson-era Los Angeles in search of a sentient snuff film while, in our own time, a yoga student learns a new practice that transforms her, body and soul. Max D. Stanton's debut collection assembles thirteen short stories of gruesome horror, bleak ascensions, and gallows humor.

A genderfluid witch in a small Southern town prepares for their Black Cotillion coming out party.  Singing worms converge on an old woman and young boy living in a house buried deep underground. Revenge drives an angry spirit through possession after possession in the bare-knuckle boxing ring.  A father and son’s canoe trip to one of the world’s “soft places” culminates in an ecstatic encounter with the Weird. These are just a few of the fifteen stories contained in As Summer’s Mask Slips, and Other Disruptions, Gordon B. White’s debut collection of horror and Weird fiction.

THIS IS AN INVITATION TO DROWNING.These are the stories of things out of water-of sea bed deserts choked with ghosts; of the lonely, roving children of the fen. Here your garden grows belowground. You will be born into a cradle of your own bones, shadows will burst from your eyes, and your mouth will fill with thorns. Storms will twist inside you, and the ghosts of your past will follow you and chart your future.Here, things are out of place-ectopic and unviable-and you will mourn the unborn, those underwater things out of water.