Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins. 

AFRAID opens the collection with a new poem, "Afraid," which plays with the question, "Why do we read horror?" The 13 stories that follow include darkly light-hearted tales such as "Donald Meets Arnold," "Sweet Kitty," and "Sink or Swim," the graphically terrifying "Pit Boy" and "Los Penitentes," the darkly sinister "Brazen Bull," "Flip Flap," "Triptych of Terror," "Bargain Basement," "Now I'm With the Invalids," "Next Door Collector," and "Thundersylum," and the other-worldly and introspective "Beggars at Dawn."

Esther isn't afraid of anything - because she avoids pretty much everything. Elevators are off limits, as are open spaces, crowds, family pets, birds, needles, haircuts, dolls and mirrors. But when Esther is pickpocketed by her cocky old classmate Jonah Walker, Esther and Jonah become surprising friends. Jonah sets a challenge: every week they must work their way through the world's 50 most common phobias. Skydiving, horse riding, beekeeping, public speaking, reptile houses - they plan to do it all. 

Dr. Joe Bryce, a dedicated physician, has spent the last three years in war-torn Africa. Having left his millionaire fiancee at the altar, the con man continues his string of taking advantage of rich women to fund his living the high life on his yacht, the Dragonfly. In Nimrod's Chapel, GA, he meets the hottest-selling American romance author, Abby Abelard - a blindingly beautiful and wealthy woman, but one paralyzed after a hit-and-run accident. Her uncle, Dr. Luke, and his wife, Charlene, a substance abuser, like Joe, have secrets of their own.

Kurt Hauptmann will learn to make stained glass to help men see the glory of God, one of the many bizarre heritages handed down from his ancestry. But the family has other, more frightening secrets. The path to God runs through darkness as well as light. And the bond of a family is blood, its own and that of its enemies.

What is the strangeness in Uncle Detlef, head of the stained-glass studio? Why has he descended from his cathedral roofs to steeplejack the perils of a secular world?

Here, to treasure, a new story collection from award-winning horror master Al Sarrantonio. In Halloween and Other Seasons there's a neighborhood rivalry that grows to monstrous proportions, a hedgerow with an appetite, the ultimate Charles Fort story, and the end of the world from the beginning. Halloween and Other Seasons contains 18 gems of weirdness, including Al Sarrantonio's very first published story.

The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's gorgeous and moving debut, a wondrous novel about the power of books, family, and magic. Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls.

Harrison Harrison--H2 to his mom--is a lonely teenager who's been terrified of the water ever since he was a toddler in California, when a huge sea creature capsized their boat, and his father vanished. One of the "sensitives" who are attuned to the supernatural world, Harrison, along with his mother, has just moved to the worst possible place for a boy like him.

Half Apache and mostly orphaned, Edgar Presley Mint's adventures begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. Shunted from hospital to a school for delinquents to a Mormon foster family, comedy, pain and trouble accompany Edgar through a string of larger-than-life experiences. Through it all, listeners will root for this irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home.

In 1961, the small town of Haven thought they'd gotten rid of their monster. After a series of child killings, Paul Greymore was caught carrying a wounded girl. His face, disfigured from a childhood accident, seemed to confirm he was the monster the community hoped to banish. With Paul in prison, the killings stopped. For 17 years, Haven was peaceful again. But Paul served his time and has now returned to Haven - the town where he grew up, and the scene of his alleged crimes.

For months, astronomers have predicted the moon will turn purple when the earth passes through the tail of a comet. But no one has predicted the comet will bring germs that attack human hormones. Older teens and adults die within hours of exposure. On a small island off the coast of Maine, Abby Leigh, 13, has to help her brother and sister survive in this new world, but all the while she has a ticking time bomb inside her - adolescence.

Gus LeGarde's life essentially ended four years ago, when his beloved wife, Elsbeth, leapt from the Letchworth Gorge cliffs. These days, the music professor plays endless Chopin etudes on his antique piano and lavishes love on his family and dog - but nothing buries the pain or answers his burning questions. What made her jump? Why didn't she say goodbye? And how will he be able to live without her?

At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

In a secret, subterranean world beneath the prairie of the Old West, a homesteader risks her life in search of a safe haven. A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is turned into a medical oddity by the brutal power of the furnaces. A young woman created through genetic manipulation is destroyed by the same force that gave her life. With her distinctive blend of magical realism, science, and poetic prose, Anjali Sachdeva demonstrates a preternatural ability to laser in on our fears, our hopes, and our longings in order to point out intrinsic truths about society and humanity.

An unidentified corpse is recovered from a peat bog on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. News of the discovery soon reaches Fin Macleod. However, since swapping his life in Edinburgh for a quiet existence on Lewis, such mysteries are no longer a concern for the former detective inspector. Or so he thought. The sequel to The Blackhouse, which was selected for the WH Smith Richard and Judy Bookclub, and the second book in the Lewis trilogy.