Kirjahaku

Vastarien: A Literary Journal is a source of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas. The journal includes nonfiction, literary horror fiction, poetry, artwork and non-classifiable hybrid pieces. Another double issue Cover art by Anna Trueman and over 300 pages of all new stories, articles, lyric essays, poetry, hybrid pieces and visual art. Contributors include Hailey Piper, Carson Winter, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Greg Sisco, Joanna Parypinski, Dejan Ognjanovic, Christi Nogle, Kurt Fawver, Ivy Grimes, Clint Smith, and many more

New York City, 1990: When you slip through the cracks, no one is there to catch you. Monique learns that the hard way after her girlfriend Donna vanishes without a trace. Only after the disappearances of several other impoverished women does Monique hear the rumors. A taloned monster stalks the city's underground and snatches victims into the dark.Donna isn't missing. She was taken.To save the woman she loves, Monique must descend deeper than the known underground, into a subterranean world of enigmatic cultists and shadowy creatures. But what she finds looms beyond her wildest fears-a darkness that stretches from the dawn of time and across the stars.

"A gorgeous, bloody, surreal nightmare" --Suzan Palumbo"Piper is a voice to be reckoned with." --Gabino IglesiasNew Mexico Territory, 1882: She comes to the Klein ranch at sunset, a strange naked pregnant woman dragging a cavalry saber. Annette Klein and her husband have built peace between their marriage and secret relations beyond, but their serenity dies in bloodshed tonight through a cannibalistic demon and a mad preacher. Annette barely escapes the bloodbath to the nearby town of Low's Bend, where she might find safety with a shotgun-toting barkeep, two no-nonsense boarding room ladies, and the gunslinging bounty hunter who's captured Annette's heart. But hell is at her heels. If she's going to survive until dawn, she'll have to forget everything she knows about peace and mercy, and face a hollow malevolence more ancient and ruthless than she's ever imagined. "Cruel Angels Past Sundown is a gorgeous, bloody, surreal nightmare with a palpable, pulsing heart. Piper's innovative prose is tactile and immersive. It binds you to Annette's soul and the people of Low's Bend and makes you want to fight for them. By the end, I knew neither the wrath of heaven nor hell had any chance of breaking the bonds of queer love and found family. Long live queer horror in the face of those who would call us blasphemous. Thank you for this battle cry in the darkness. This book is a treasure." --Suzan Palumbo, Nebula Finalist"From its unforgettable opening to its furious, apocalyptic climax, Cruel Angels Past Sundown moves with the implacable dread of a nightmare. But the slashes it leaves in your gut, and the hardpan dust it rubs in the wounds, are all too real." --Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening of Terror

Euphoria meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this latest novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper, following a couple whose search to spice up their sex life leads them down a path of madness.A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge. As the line blurs between the world Carmen knows and the one that she visits after reading from the play, she begins to desire more time in this other world no matter what horrors she brings back with her. Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper masterfully blends horror, erotica, and psychological thriller in this captivating and chilling story.

Communications specialist Alto's shift aboard the starship M.G. Yellowjacket turns hellish after waking from a tryst to learn every crewmate has vanished. Worse, a sinister presence has crawled aboard the ship. It's violent, destructive, and it can reach into your thoughts to make you see and feel what it wants.Anxiety-ridden Alto might be the least-qualified person to face a creature that can hack minds like computers. Only a perilous journey to the ship's bridge can reunite comms specialist with crew and give them a chance to call for help.But the intruder only scratches the surface of this crisis, and discovering the truth will bring Alto face to face against a nightmare beyond flesh and thought.

When a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town unleashing a monstrous and otherworldy power that threatens to break reality, Olivia will stop at nothing to find her best friend and get them to safety. Mona Award's Bunny meets Stranger Things in this mind-bending and terrifying examination of female friendship and the lengths we'll go to protect the ones we love, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth. Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she'll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia's going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she'll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm's otherworldly powers and find Sunflower. But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves. Including Olivia.

A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we're gone, from the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Queen of Teeth. What really happened to Cabrina Brite?Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death.Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.

A wildly inventive and downright terrifying collection of 13 stories covering everything from grisly body horror and ancient eldritch beings to horrifying urban legends, all brought to life by the Bram Stoker award-winning author of Queen of Teeth.Perfect for fans of Clive Barker, Mariana Enriquez and Eric LaRocca13 coming-of-rage stories the way only Bram Stoker Award-winning author Hailey Piper can tell them—wildly inventive, brilliantly imaginative, and completely and utterly enthralling.A vicious group of college upperclassmen prey on the freshman girls in “Why We Keep Exploding”; across the world, something is mutating adolescents into bizarre creatures in "The Turning"; a girl on a night out realizes a bizarre cop is hunting her in “The Long Flesh of the Law”; and in the acclaimed novella “Benny Rose, the Cannibal King”, a Halloween prank goes horribly wrong when a murderous ghost steps out of an urban legend and into the real world.These stories take our most difficult years of transformation and twist them into new and terrifying shapes, where the monsters are real and you'll do whatever it takes to get away, or get even.

Within forty-eight hours, Yaya Betancourt will go from discovering teeth between her thighs to being hunted by one of the most powerful corporations in America.She assumes the vagina dentata is a side effect of a rare genetic condition caused by AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical, decades ago, when she and several thousand others were still in the womb.But, when ABP corporate goons upend her life, she realizes her secondary teeth might be evidence of a new experiment for which she's the most advanced test tube . . . a situation worsened when Yaya's condition sprouts horns, tentacles, and a mind of its own.On the run and transforming, Yaya may be either ABP's greatest success, or the deadliest failure science has ever created.

"...one of the best horror books of 2021."-Rue Morgue"A powerful, beautiful horror story."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Within forty-eight hours, Yaya Betancourt will go from discovering teeth between her thighs to being hunted by one of the most powerful corporations in America.She assumes the vagina dentata is a side effect of a rare genetic condition caused by AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical, decades ago, when she and several thousand others were still in the womb.But, when ABP corporate goons upend her life, she realizes her secondary teeth might be evidence of a new experiment for which she's the most advanced test tube . . . a situation worsened when Yaya's condition sprouts horns, tentacles, and a mind of its own.On the run and transforming, Yaya may be either ABP's greatest success, or the deadliest failure science has ever created.

IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY, WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY'LL BE PREY AGAINThe old gods have fled, and the monsters they had kept at bay for centuries now threaten to drown the city of Valentine, hunting mankind as in ancient times. In the midst of the chaos, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims, their bodies strewn throughout the city.Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god—even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in—not knowing they're hunting their close friend Lilac—the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly.As flooding drags this city of cars and neon screaming into the jaws of sea demons and Arcadia struggles to save the people as captain of the evacuation team, Lilac’s ritual killings at last bear fruit, only to reveal her as a small piece in a larger plan. The gods’ protection costs far more than anyone has ever known, and Alex and Cecil are running out of time to discover the true culprit behind the gods’ disappearance before an ancient divine murder plot destroys them all.Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, No Gods For Drowning is part dark fantasy, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you've read before, from an author whose imagination knows no boundaries.

A woman, haunted by the disappearance of her sister and best friend thirty years ago uncovers the terrifying urban legend behind the last film they watched together, in this chilling riff on the cursed film subgenre by the Bram Stoker award-winning author of Queen of Teeth. Perfect for fans of Gretchen Felker-Martin and Andrew Joseph White. In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again. Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she's closed the curtain on it, certain she's moved on despite her parents' resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts. That is until a stranger's murder brings it all screaming back-a terror she's tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too... ... For the girl who got away all those years ago.