Kealan Patrick Burke

From the mind of John Carpenter, the man who brought you the classic horror film Halloween and all of the scares beyond, and the heart of writer, editor, and producer Sandy King, comes a whopping 14 brand new twisted tales of terror, tricks, and treats. In volume 8 of the award-winning graphic novel series, Carpenter and King bring together the best storytellers from movies, novels, and comics for another spine-tingling collection of stories that will haunt you. Each story is a standalone surprise that captures the essence of the best night of the year. We dare you to read it all the way to the end. If you get too scared, remember, it's only a comic. It's only a comic... or is it? Happy Halloween! With creators John Carpenter, Sandy King, Jaime Carrillo, Elena Carrillo, Amanda Deibert, Cat Staggs, Alec Worley, Tom Foster, Neo Edmund, Jason Felix, Sean Sobczak, Sara Richard, Kealan Patrick Burke, David J. Schow, Andres Esparza, Frank Tieri, Duane Swierczynski, Heather Vaughan, Jennie Wood, Michael Moreci, Scott Hampton, Tim Bradstreet, Nick Percival and many more.

*Cover art by Kealan Patrick Burke's Elderlemon Design is exclusive to the hardcover edition.Addiction is the perpetual epidemic, where swarms of human moths flutter to the flames of hell. Because that warm blanket of a heroin high, that joyful intoxication of a pint of vodka, that electric energy from a line of cocaine, over time leaves you with a cold loneliness and a bitter heart. Relationships destroyed, bodies deteriorate, loved ones lost, yet the craving continues for that which is killing us-living, as the title suggests, like an Orphan of Bliss. Welcome to the third and final fix of addiction horror and the follow up to the Shirley Jackson Award Finalist, Lullabies For Suffering. A diverse table of contents brought together for an explosive grand finale-an unflinching look at the insidious nature of addiction, told with searing honesty but compassion for those who suffer. The table of contents includes: Josh MalermanNew York Times Best Selling writer of Bird-Box and one of the most prolific writers of his generation. His story in Orphans of Bliss is a King Midas curse for those who can never drink enough, where witches watch you from every bar stool.Cassandra KhawA Locus Award finalist and a USA Today Best-Selling author. In their story, What We Name Our Dead, a woman is haunted by the ghost of her substance-abusing fatherKealan Patrick BurkeBram Stoker Award winning author of Turtle Boy, Kin, and Sour Candy, and one of the most talented horror writers in the genre. Burke's work appears in all three addiction horror anthologies, weaved together in one universe. He's done nothing less than create an addiction-fueled mythos.SA CosbyNew York Times best-selling author of Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland. With his unmistakable voice, Cosby tells a story of a powerful new blend of meth that overruns a rural town.Kathe KojaKoja is a multiple time Bram Stoker Award winning author and her trademark intense, speculative fiction is on full display in her short story, Singularity.Christa Carmen, Author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, which won the Indie Horror Book Award for Best Debut Collection. Readers are in for a shock when they follow an addict trying to get clean Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell.Samantha KolesnikKolesnik's novella, True Crime, took readers by storm and won a Splatterpunk Award. Her story, Buyer's Remorse, is about a character constantly craving a new identify with perpetual consumption to fill her empty spaces, but is never fully satisfied.JOHN FD TAFFTwo time Bram Stoker Award Finalist and backbone for the addiction horror series. In Taff's cosmic story, a man has stopped using drugs, but hoards his character defects piled high in his basement cellar.MARK MATTHEWSShirley Jackson Award nominated editor and author of Milk-Blood. Matthews is the editor of all three anthologies, works in the field of behavioral health, and is in recovery from his own addiction.GABINO IGLESIASWonderland Book Award author of winning Coyote Songs. Gabino was nominated for a Bram Stoker award for his work in Lullabies for Suffering and he's once again built a world infected with drugs, this time, a dystopian landscape.

Four months to the day he first encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendelton's teeth fell out. At first glance, Phil Pendleton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined. What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before. But now Adam is in his life, altering and controlling it, and it will take a particular kind of horror to get him out. Because there is nothing ordinary about Adam, or the monsters that come when he calls.

From the mind of John Carpenter, the man who brought you the classic horror film Halloween and all of the scares beyond, and the heart of writer, editor, producer Sandy King, comes a baker’s dozen of twisted tales of terror, tricks, and treats. In volume 7 of the award-winning graphic novel series, Carpenter and King bring together the best storytellers from movies, novels, and comics for another spine-tingling collection of stories that will haunt you. Each story is a standalone surprise that captures the essence of the best night of the year. We dare you to read it all the way to the end. If you get too scared, remember, it's only a comic. It's only a comic... or is it? Happy Halloween. With creators John Carpenter, Sandy King, Jaime Carrillo, Elena Carrillo, Kealan Patrick Burke, Damien Worm, Neo Edmund, Jan Duursema, Nick Percival, David J. Schow, Gustavo Vazquez, Alec Worley, Ben Willsher, Amanda Deibert, Cat Staggs, Mike Sizemore, Dave Kennedy, Duane Swierczynski, Andrea Mutti, Anthony Burch, Sean Sobczak, Andy Price, Tim Bradstreet and many more.

Come, listen to these Lullabies For Suffering. An anthology of incredibly talented dark fiction writers exploring the theme of addiction. Each story in Lullabies For Suffering features the insidious nature of addiction. Damaged humans craving for highs and wholeness but finding something more tragic and horrific on the other side.

From the mind of John Carpenter, the man who brought you the cult classic horror film Halloween and all of the scares beyond, and the heart of writer, editor, producer Sandy King comes 12 more twisted tales of terror, tricks, and treats. In volume 5 of the award-winning graphic novel series, they bring together another stellar ensemble of storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for another spine-tingling collection of stories that will haunt you. Each story is a standalone surprise that captures the essence of fright night. We dare you to read it all the way to the end. If you get too scared, remember, it's only a comic. It's only a comic... or is it? Happy Halloween.

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil's hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you're here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it's just the wind, that the moonlight is playing tricks on your eyes, that it's only the swirling mist you see. But when you hear the graveyard gate clang shut, the dead have something to say. Here are their stories...

OTHER VOICES, OTHER TOMBS is an anthology packed with unsettling stories from the finest independent authors in the horror genre. This collection runs the gamut of styles, including everything from literary horror to creepypasta. Ania Ahlborn, Kealan Patrick Burke, Michael Wehunt, Mercedes Yardley, and Gemma Files are widely considered some of the best authors working in dark fiction right now. Also included are stories from NoSleep Podcast legends: Gemma Amor, JD McGregor, and Michael Whitehouse.

Winter isn't coming...it's already here, and with it comes a horror no door can keep out.It's there in the yard, in the faces of the snowmen a young boy doesn't remember building. It's in the oddly empty streets below Santa Claus's crumbling sleigh. It's in the unnatural movement of the snow that suffocates a widower's town, and in the cold eyes of a lonely man's estranged children. Here, there is no holiday cheer, only spine-chilling fear, in the DEAD OF WINTER.Featuring seven stories, an introduction by the author, and a list of recommended books for the winter season.

Strange text messages portend a strange kind of apocalypse...Two brothers find themselves drawn to the only house in the neighborhood not decorated for Halloween...A man returns to his hometown to bury his overbearing mother, and finds more than memories awaiting him in the shadows of his childhood home...A young girl walks a lonely country road, recalling a rhyme that brings with it memories of death...A teenager hoping for romance gets more than he bargained for when the object of his desire introduces him to the object of hers...An aging millionaire awakes buried in a cheap coffin with only a lamp and a bell for company...The son of a woman accused of being a witch accepts the villagers' peace offering at her funeral, but all is not quite as it seems...A woman with a violent past realizes that this year's Halloween party may be coming for her...and a lonely trick-or-treater awakes in a house rumored to be a place of death.From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke comes the second in his series of seasonal collections. Featuring a brand new story "The Toll", a new introduction, and rounded out by the author's recommended Halloween reading and watching lists, DEAD LEAVES makes for the perfect autumnal read.

The perfect getaway...The perfect place to hide...Hocking Hills, Ohio is an oasis for campers, hikers, nature enthusiasts, and for those who just want to get away and lose themselves in the wild. And as long as you follow your guide's advice and stay within the permitted areas, you can expect to survive the night. Because deep within the dark woods, something insidious awaits, something few have ever seen, something ancient, unknowable, and insatiable. If you go down to these woods today, you won't live to see the sunrise...

When they were kids, Gillian and John used to visit the local cemetery every Sunday after church. It was a curious place for children to frequent, but they had their reasons. The main attraction was the lofty hill that separated the cemetery from the elementary school, and the act of tumbling down it like Jack and Jill was a ritualistic escape from the abuse they were suffering at their father's hands. It was an escape that lasted only until John's tragic death. Now, Gillian is all grown up. Married with two children, she has managed over the years to force the trauma of her nightmarish childhood into the darkest recesses of her mind. But lately there are dreams, and in them Gillian sees impossibly vivid reenactments of the horrors she endured as a child. Nightly, she sees John die all over again, only not in the way she remembers. And something else is in those dreams, stalking her, a terrible figure with wire-hanger hands and a plastic bag wrapped around its rotten face. A monster whose reach starts to extend beyond the boundaries of sleep into the waking world, threatening everything Gillian holds dear. A monster she once called Daddy.

At first glance, Phil Pendleton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.A new novella from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY and KIN.

From John Carpenter, the man who brought you the cult classic horror film Halloween and all of the scares beyond comes 13 more twisted tales of terror, tricks, and treats. In volume 3 of the award-winning graphic novel series, Carpenter brings together another stellar ensemble of storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels and comics for another spine-tingling collection of stories that will haunt your dreams at night. Happy Halloween!

The Legend Continues...Twenty-four heart-rending tales with elements of terror, mystery, and a nightmarish darkness that knows no end.Welcome to my lake. Welcome to where dreams and hope are illusions...and pain is God. This anthology begins with Joe R. Lansdale's The Folding Man, one of his darkest stories ever written. Kealan Patrick Burke's Go Warily After Dark pulls us into a desolated world, and reminds us of the price of survival: a guilt that seeps into the marrow. Damien Angelica Walter's Everything Hurts, Until it Doesn't places us in the middle of a family whose secrets and traditions are thicker than blood. Jennifer Loring's When the Dead Come Home explores a loss so dark, that even the stars are sucked into its melancholic vacuum. In the spirit of popular Dark Fiction and Horror anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories and Behold: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, and the best of Stephen King's short fiction, comes Crystal Lake Publishing's Tales from The Lake anthologies. This fourth volume of Speculative Fiction contains the following short stories: Jennifer Loring - When the Dead Come Home Joe R. Lansdale - The Folding Man Kealan Patrick Burke - Go Warily After Dark T. E. Grau - To the Hills Damien Angelica Walters - Everything Hurts, Until it Doesn't Sheldon Higdon - Drowning in Sorrow Max Booth III - Whenever You Exhale, I Inhale Bruce Golden - The Withering JG Faherty - Grave Secrets Hunter Liguore - End of the Hall David Dunwoody - Snowmen Timothy G. Arsenault - Pieces of Me Maria Alexander - Neighborhood Watchers Timothy Johnson - The Story of Jessie and Me Michael Bailey - I will be the Reflection Until the End E.E. King - The Honeymoon's Over Darren Speegle - Song in a Sundress Cynthia Ward - Weighing In Michael Haynes - Reliving the Past Leigh M. Lane - The Long Haul Mark Cassell - Dust Devils Del Howison - Liminality Gene O' Neill - The Gardener Jeff Cercone - Condo by the Lake With an introduction by editor Ben Eads. Cover art by Ben Baldwin. Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing - Tales from The Darkest Depths. Additional book categories: Horror Suspense Thriller Mystery Short stories Anthologies Horror anthology US Fiction Lovecraftian / Lovecraft Dark Fantasy Monsters Occult Supernatural Haunted house and ghosts Myths and Legends

From the Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of THE TURTLE BOY, KIN, and JACK & JILL. Somewhere out west there is a town called Milestone. You won't find it on any map. If you're lucky, you won't find it at all. Once a thriving mining community, the few souls who still dwell there know nothing of hope and everything of damnation. Because Milestone may appear near-death, a ghost town in the making, but it is very much alive. There are the stories of invisible barriers that open and close the borders on a whim, sometimes fatally, the whispers of a man in a top hat who comes cycling up out of the darkness of the abandoned mine to change the fate of the town, the buried music box that summons him, the people with unnatural powers, the old man who counts stacks of pennies and prays they never fall...and the fires that burn brightly with the sounds of screams. Milestone is very much alive, and those unlucky souls trapped within its borders have little choice but to learn the true nature of their prison, or become its latest victim. And even as they fight against the inevitable, the borders continue to expand. Milestone is growing. Included in the book are the novellas "The Witch", "Saturday Night at Eddie's", "Thirty Miles South of Dry County" and "The Palaver".

The intoxication from a pint of vodka, the electric buzz from snorting cocaine, the warm embrace from shooting heroin--drinking and drugging provides the height of human experience. It's the promise of heaven on earth, but the hell that follows is a constant hunger, a cold emptiness. The craving to get high is a yearning as intense of any blood-thirsty monster. The best way to tell the truths of addiction is through a story, and dark truths such as these need a piece of horror to do them justice. The stories inside feature the insidious nature of addiction told with compassion yet searing honesty. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental deaths, and some of the most incredible names in horror fiction have tackled this modern day epidemic. A WICKED THIRST, by Kealan Patrick Burke THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE, by Jessica McHugh GARDEN OF FIENDS, by Mark Matthews FIRST, JUST BITE A FINGER, by Johann Thorsson LAST CALL, by John FD Taff TORMENT OF THE FALLEN, by Glen Krisch EVERYWHERE YOU'VE BLED AND EVERYWHERE YOU WILL, by Max Booth III RETURNS, by Jack Ketchum