Urban predators hibernate between November and March. At least, they used to. 

A mytho-ecologist out of Sofia University, recruited into Urban Predators Without Borders, never imagined being one of the only living inhabitants in Block 10—observing a Bulgarian nest while living in a rundown apartment, tranquilizer gun loaded with silver nitrate by his bed. With a species-collapsing outbreak spreading from nest to nest, any variation in local vampires’ habits is extremely bad news.

Science and politics collide as the symbiotic relationship between predator and prey is forever altered. Between a deadly fungus and a system set on extermination, one burning question emerges. Is this infection just biological—or is it institutional?

In this thrilling novella that’s both outbreak and survival horror, award-winning Bulgarian author Elena Pavlova reimagines humanity’s relationship with vampires, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series and The Strain.

The first 200 preorders will receive a special Field Guide!

Set in an alternative steampunk Nigeria, Naomi Eselojor’s Africanfuturist novella is a tale of community sheltering, resistance, and technological responsibility, for fans of Nnedi Okorafor, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and Wole Talabi.

1859, Nigeria. In the fishing village of Itu Agan, nine-year-old Alabi and his inventor father test a new steamboat prototype when a platoon of automaton soldiers raid their village. The metal invaders execute the village chief and capture Korede, Alabi’s father, leaving him and his mother alone and devastated.

There is no choice but to accept the new order. All the village boys begin work as fishermen and plantation farmers as soon as they become teenagers and, for nine long years, Alabi must put the promise of invention nurtured in his childhood to rest.

When he discovers that his father Korede is alive, working for the colonizer regime, Alabi is determined to reconnect with him. After years of hard work to obtain a travel permit and with threats of his mother’s imprisonment should he not return in two months, Alabi sails to the city of factories, unprepared for the resistance that is brewing and the adventure that awaits…

Each pre-order will come with a free postcard of the cover, suitable for framing.

Savat is an ancient city steeped in old magic. But the once god-fearing Savati people find themselves in the tightening fist of the Sodality, a tyrannical power determined to replace magic with technology, and eradicate all devotion to the old gods.

Yet gods still move among them.

Zal, Chaos incarnate, unjustly exiled to the mortal realm, lives for revenge against his family.

Riksa, War shackled, is the tormented captive of her brother Zal in his obsessive quest to open a way between the realms.

Leksi, Nightmare disincarnate, has always resented her metaphysical family destined to cause human suffering and strives to live free of them.

In Savat’s university, the scholar Niki prepares an experiment dangerous to Sodality-imposed rule. Though unskilled in the talents of the magic-wielding arkani, the fruit of Niki’s groundbreaking research would harness magic through music, sound, and vibration itself, giving anyone the ability to access the arcane.

When worlds are ripe for annihilation, all it takes is one god-sized sibling rivalry to light a conflagration.

The first 200 Preorders will recieve a set of four custom character cards!

Set in the 17th century English countryside, The Brink blends historical and eldritch folk horror in a queer tale of awakening while exploring a darkly hungry Derbyshire Peak District—where the perils may be natural, unnatural, or very human.

When the keeper of a demonic hell hole falls in love with the perfect sacrifice, she must choose: her loyalty to both her family and her village, or salvaging her own chance at happiness.

It is 1642 in Derbyshire, England. Jane Vernon spends her days trying to satiate the hungry spirit that dwells within Elden Hole, a generational curse shared with her siblings. But each sacrifice increases her reluctance, until the offering of one travelling merchant starts unravelling the fabric of murderous duty and exploitation that shapes her life.

Isaac Latimer appears as a wealthy wanderer searching the countryside for his cousin, Sarah, last spotted in the company of an older man. As a guilty conscience drives Jane to join Isaac in his hunt, she catches a glimpse of an unburdened life even while realising nothing is as it seems.

Among sacrifices and betrayals, burgeoning love and decaying lies, the spirit’s hunger grows alongside threats in the dark, and only a Vernon can decide between death and damnation.

The first 200 pre-orders will receive a free, stylized “The Brink” full color cover refrigerator magnet when the book ships!

 

Darling has its demons.

Cherry LaRouche escaped the claws of Darling, Louisiana at sixteen. When she returns after her mother’s death, Cherry and her children are forced into a nightmare where evil spreads like infection and the house itself demands her bones.

While Cherry tries to separate fact from fantasy, the locals discover the bodies of several murdered children. When Cherry’s own daughter goes missing, she’s forced to face everything she had fled from and confront the true monsters of Darling.

From Mercedes M. Yardley, three-time Bram Stoker Award winner for Little Dead Red, Love is a Crematorium, and “Fracture,” comes a stunning revised edition of Darling. This Southern Gothic tour de force is the first novel in the interconnected world of The Hunger Garden, where demons and delights both await you.

Each Preorder will receive a free “Welcome to Darling” refrigerator magnet!

“…at that moment, all I could see was a crown perched precariously on her head. All I had to do was reach out and grab it.”

Poppy Leathers has two work lives.

The job everyone knows she has: manager to art influencer extraordinaire Jason Tasker.

The other job: assistant to Brooklyn’s premier artisanal hitman, Atticus Garcia.

Two different worlds, all the same crap.

Undervalued and constantly taken for granted, Poppy reaches her breaking point when her art boss decides he’s desperate to adopt a baby—by any means necessary—and her hitman boss has fallen into an ennui that has left him ready to retire—a major health hazard for anyone with her institutional knowledge.

What’s an overworked, bright-eyed sociopath to do but lock in and grind her way further up the ladder?

Taking advantage of her bosses’ lack of common sense and judgment, Poppy begins to politick her way into a solution that will push her into the stratosphere of the hipster crime world—but ambition can only get her so far, and when a charismatic cheesemonger out of Coney Island named Amity careens into the middle of her schemes, Poppy Leathers is going to need to decide what is truly important to her before she finds herself on the wrong side of the gun.

A chaotic journey into a hyper-stylized crime world of Brooklyn, POP! is a fable for the overworked and overambitious.

All pre-orders will receive a free, stylized “POP!” magnet when the book ships!

The graduating class of Bishop Carlbus Prep has a secret.

The Outing Party is a tradition at Bishop Carlbus, a semi-illicit party hosted by a Senior student after the annual Outing, a weekend field trip taken by the graduating class every year. In 1995, Amy Keaton was determined to host a legendary Outing Party, but everything goes wrong. Her classmates are rude. Someone seems to be sabotaging her plans. And as the night goes on resentment and rage start driving everyone to extremes. The party spins out of control, and by the next morning Amy Keaton is dead, and twenty-five kids have a soul-crushing secret.

In 2015, six Bishop Carlbus Prep alumnus—Victor, Kate, Leo, Titus, Ida, and Winnie—gather for the funeral of their old high school classmate Zillah. They soon realize that they are now the sole surviving members of the Class of 1995—everyone else who attended Amy Keaton’s Outing Party is dead. And many of those deaths are bizarre and shocking. Sucked dry by leeches. Consumed by mice. Swept out to sea.

The survivors begin piecing together the events of the last two decades, and wonder: Is someone hunting them? Are they next?

And, maybe, do they deserve to be next?

 

 

We all have secrets. That’s one truth. Another is that secrets are tricky to keep: They want to be shared. In the company of these secrets, societies emerge. They fester and spread. From the esoteric to the pragmatic, history is built on these societies made as much of myth and rumor as blood and bone.

Some societies are real organizations with documented histories. The Freemasons. The Molly Maguires.

Some are patchwork figments of speculation, conspiracy theory, and perhaps even the delicious specter of world domination. The Illuminati.

And some take other forms: from cults to covens to covert operations, secrets can bind us to the society of others or split us apart with sinister intent.

In Sinister Societies, six acclaimed horror writers explore these darker implications:

1. A foster kid finally feels as though she’s a part of something much bigger than the hellish life she was living, when a new home brings her old life into fractious focus.
2. A secret agent—a dancer, singer, assassin—investigates a series of mysterious murders in Europe that point to an invisible killer with inhuman characteristics.
3. In a dark, dreamy town, a line of otherworldly women is tasked with keeping the carnivorous landscape at bay.
4. An accidental murder in a Cleveland, Ohio alleyway during the height of Prohibition—and the discovery of a mysterious book—sparks a series of events that threaten to engulf the entire world.
5. In a late-1800s mining town, the Molly Maguires arrive to help workers fight for better working conditions—but even they can’t save the ones sent to work in Tunnel 17.
6. The Rat King controls the underground, and the Coin King controls the overstreets, but when a pickpocket proves that power can be stolen, chaos reigns.

Join Mercedes M. Yardley, Tom Deady, Sarah Read, Errick Nunnally, Cindy O’Quinn, and Michael Burke as they uncover the darkness that infests the hidden corners of the mind and the soul.

With a foreward by John Skipp. Edited by Linda Hartley.

Spring.

Even in the shadows of skyscrapers, spring sees an awakening in the concrete jungle that we call “the city.”
Spring in the City: A Collection of Dark Speculative Fiction is the next anthology in Ruadán Books’ “…In the City” series that takes place in the different metropolises around the world during the changeable, unpredictable return of life from its cold slumber.

But what awakens is not always beautiful.

• In Stockholm, the vengeful goddess of spring awakens, ready to begin her hunt once again…
• Faced with an impossible choice, Detroit teens must confront a malevolent entity to protect their urban neighborhood from the creature’s insatiable hunger…
• A journalist escapes to Cape Town to research folklore and only encounters terrifying creatures from local legends, blurring the lines between reality and nightmare…
• When mysterious fireballs devastate Tel Aviv, a young girl is gifted with extraordinary powers which she must embrace to confront a prophesied cosmic entity…

Hell hath no fury…

Up-and-coming young artist Jefferson Fontenot has everything going for him: The hot New Orleans art scene has noticed him, and he’s finally found his true love, Nevaeh Parker.

But Fontenot’s bright future hides a darkness known as Gemma Landry— the artist’s lover and art scene influencer. Gemma believes Jefferson’s talent holds the key to her seizing control of the popular Carondelet Street Gallery. But when Gemma discovers Jefferson’s infidelity, she enslaves the artist with a poison she acquired from swamp-dwelling witch Mirlande St. Pierre.

Now trapped in a rotting body and plagued by hellish visions, Jefferson finds himself reduced to a zombie-like servant for his unhinged ex, while Nevaeh is forced to embrace her past, hoping to save the man she loves. As the dark curse courses through Jefferson’s veins, everyone involved soon discovers—in the most brutal of fashions—the terror that awaits when you cross Gemma Landry.

The city.

Noisy, crowded, ever in motion, the city can be more than a setting—it can be a character, as nuanced and as fickle as a human being, with as many traits and quirks as the best mapped out characters. The city can be the ever-present and constant companion (or foe) to the protagonist and antagonist alike.

Winter in the City: A Collection of Dark Speculative Fiction is an anthology of dark speculative fiction tales that takes place in 18 different cities around the world during the bleak—sometimes harsh—season of winter.

After midnight is as dark as it gets…

Whether thanks to an overnight college radio shift or cable pumping flickering videos into TVs across America, the music of the alternative era was the soundtrack to our lives, and sometimes our deaths. 120 Murders is an anthology of power chord crimes and keyboard horrors–the best noir, dark fantasy, and transgressive fiction from writers inspired by grunge, goth, ska, synthpop, and every eclectic sound of the alternative era.

A prisoner inside a ghoul-infested fortress, Erzelle must play her harp for the entertainment of the flesh-eating cult that murdered her parents.

Her nightmare’s upended in the space of a day by the arrival of Olyssa, a fellow musician, and so much more.

Erzelle joins the quest to find Olyssa’s missing sister, a journey across a mutated landscape that leads to an enemy responsible for the deaths of millions.

To end the slaughter, the pair has no choice but to draw on the deadly magic that reshaped the world … a power that’s consuming Erzelle even as she fights to control it.

Ruadán Books welcomes author Mike Allen, and delights in bringing the first of his Stormblight Symphony series to our readers!