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Fifty-three tried to kill me. But I made it through (minus a few feet of small intestine). Fifty-four seems auspicious. Five and four add to nine, which is allegedly my lucky number. And given that Jennifer turned forty-five this year, that means we’re facing this next revolution around the sun with a pair of nines—twice as lucky and a decent poker hand. So Happy Birthday to me, and thank you to everybody who has taken the time to wish me one so far today. We will, of course, be at the Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic from 11–5 today. Feel free to drop by and shop for books. And if you say “Happy Birthday” to me while you’re in the store, I’ll knock 10% off your purchase. That way, everybody wins!

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A family’s Halloween haunted house becomes a conduit to something ancient and uncanny; a young man’s effigy of a movie monster becomes instrumental in his defense against a bully; a family diminishes while visiting a seaside town, leaving only one to remember what changed; a father explores a mysterious tower, and the monster imprisoned within; a man mourning the death of his father travels to his father’s hometown, seeking closure, but finds himself beset by dreams of mythic bargains and a primeval, corpse-eating titan.

John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with ten new tales of cosmic horror in Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of 21st century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate.

Includes extensive story notes and an introduction by Sarah Langan.

Cover Art by Matthew Jaffe

Cover Design by Scott R. Jones

Pub Date: July 5, 2022

Format: Trade Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-956252-01-9

Format: eBook

ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-71-0

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A professor and a graduate student escort a group of soldiers to a remote Scottish island to find out what’s buried there; a man plays an audio tape left by his late father and unearths a family history of monstrous deeds; a student receives intimidating lessons at a surreal learning center; a young couple struggle to hold their own against a group of brutal pursuers in a devastated landscape; an artist discovers and becomes obsessed with a mysterious statue.

From Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Langan comes this new Word Horde edition of his debut collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, a collection of tales both elegant and macabre, steeped in the tradition of the literary weird.

Includes extensive story notes, an introduction by Elizabeth Hand, and a brand new story exclusive to this edition!

Cover Art by Matthew Jaffe

Cover Design by Scott R. Jones

Pub Date: July 5, 2022

Format: Trade Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-956252-00-2

Format: eBook

ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-69-7

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From World Fantasy Award-winning author Scott Nicolay comes And at My Back I Always Hear, a new collection of eight tales of the macabre and the uncanny.

“[Nicolay’s] perspective is always outsider-identified, entirely concerned with characters who refuse to settle, both literally and figuratively; his protagonists often hover on a knife’s edge, caught in some sadly inescapable moment of realization. They’ve failed and been failed, left discarded amongst the wreckage of systemic inequity. And now that they have nothing left to cling to, their inner eye pops open, suddenly able to see the darkness lurking inherent in every crevice, the emptiness revolving inside every atom.”

—from the introduction by Gemma Files

Cover Art by David Verba

Cover Design by Michaela Waltz

Pub Date: April 26, 2022

Format: Trade Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-956252-02-6

Format: eBook

ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-70-3

https://wordhorde.com/books/and-at-my-back-i-always-hear/

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For generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color. Landscape paintings, trompe l’oeil quilts, decorated dolls, mixed-media assemblages, and more, all featuring the same peculiar hue, a shifting pigment somewhere between purple and pink, the color of the saltmarsh orchid, a rare and indigenous flower.

Graduate student Xavier Wentworth has been drawn to Shimmer, hoping to study the work of artists like quilter Hazel Whitby and landscape painter Shadrach Grayson in detail, having experienced something akin to an epiphany when viewing a Hazel Whitby tapestry as a child. Xavier will find that others, too, have been drawn to Shimmer, called by something more than art, something in the marsh itself, a mysterious, spectral hue.

From Lambda Literary Award-nominated author Craig Laurance Gidney (Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories, Skin Deep Magic) comes A Spectral Hue, a novel of art, obsession, and the ghosts that haunt us all.

Cover by Matthew Revert

Pub Date: June 18, 2019

Format: Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-50-5

Format: eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-51-2

Order here.

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Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows

Underground filmmaker Tina Mori became a legend in the late 1970s with a stolen camera, a series of visionary Super 8 shorts (The Eye, The Stairs, The Imperial Dynasty of America) and a single feature film, heralded as her masterpiece, Dragon’s Teeth. Then she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Was it foul play, or did Tina Mori go somewhere else? And if so, where? Could it have been the otherworldly Carcosa so often referenced in her films?

Through many layers, including letters, a ‘zine made by a teenage horror film fan, and a memoir written by Mori’s college roommate and muse, film historian and debut novelist Brian Hauser delves deep into Tina Mori’s life and legacy, exploring the strange depths and fathomless shadows situated between truth, fiction, fantasy, and the uncanny.

Cover by Matthew Revert

Pub Date: May 28, 2019

Format: Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-48-2

Format: eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-49-9

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PREORDER NOW! Coming March 26, 2019. From Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Carrie Laben comes debut Novel A Hawk in the Woods, a harrowing tale of twin witches on the lam. When newscaster Abby Waite is diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness, she decides to do the logical thing… break her twin sister Martha out of prison and hit the road. Their destination is the Waite family cabin in Minnesota where Abby plans a family reunion of sorts. But when you come from a family where your grandfather frequently took control of your body during your youth, where your mother tried to inhabit your mind and suck your youthful energies out of you, and where so many dark secrets–and bodies, even–are buried, such a family meeting promises to be nothing short of complicated…

“A Hawk in the Woods is wonderfully dark and spellbinding, mixing the road novel, family drama, time travel, cosmic horror, and maybe even a little Heathers. Carrie Laben is an original, compelling new voice. Consider me a fan for life.” –Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

“Carrie Laben is a monster–they don’t even make writers like this anymore. You will be reading her name for decades to come.” –Cara Hoffman, Author of Running and So Much Pretty

Cover by Matthew Revert

Pub Date: March 26, 2019

PREORDER TODAY

Format: Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-46-8Format: eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-47-5

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Listen…

The furious clangor of battle. The harrowing singing of steel. The desperate cries of wounded animals. The gasps of bleeding, dying men. The slow, deep breathing of terrible things–trolls, giants, draugr–waiting in the darkness. The wolf’s wind howling, stalking like death itself. The carrion-crows, avaricious and impatient, circling the battle-ground, the Raven’s Table.

Listen…

The skald’s voice, low, canting, weaving tales of fate and heroism, battle and revelry. Of gods and monsters, and of the women and men that stand against them. Of stormy Scandinavian skies and settlements upon strange continents. Of mead-hall victories, funeral pyres, dragon-prowed ships, and gold-laden tombs. Of Ragnarok. Of Valhalla.

For a decade, author Christine Morgan’s Viking stories have delighted readers and critics alike, standing apart from the anthologies they appeared in. Now, Word Horde brings you The Raven’s Table, the first-ever collection of Christine Morgan’s Vikings, from “The Barrow-Maid” to “Aerkheim’s Horror” and beyond. These tales of adventure, fantasy, and horror will rouse your inner Viking.

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Wonder if this cover’s gonna survive the Tumblr purge.

Listen… The furious clangor of battle. The harrowing singing of steel. The desperate cries of wounded animals. The gasps of bleeding, dying men. The slow, deep breathing of terrible things–trolls, giants, draugr–waiting in the darkness. The wolf’s wind howling, stalking like death itself. The carrion-crows, avaricious and impatient, circling the battle-ground, the Raven’s Table.

Listen…

The skald’s voice, low, canting, weaving tales of fate and heroism, battle and revelry. Of gods and monsters, and of the women and men that stand against them. Of stormy Scandinavian skies and settlements upon strange continents. Of mead-hall victories, funeral pyres, dragon-prowed ships, and gold-laden tombs. Of Ragnarok. Of Valhalla.

For a decade, author Christine Morgan’s Viking stories have delighted readers and critics alike, standing apart from the anthologies they appeared in. Now, Word Horde brings you The Raven’s Table, the first-ever collection of Christine Morgan’s Vikings, from “The Barrow-Maid” to “Aerkheim’s Horror” and beyond. These tales of adventure, fantasy, and horror will rouse your inner Viking.

Cover Art by Peter Nicolai Arbo Cover Design by Scott R Jones

Pub Date: February 28, 2017

Format: Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-27-7

Format: eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-28-4

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It may be my birthday, but here's your chance to get yourself (or someone else) a present and save 25%. Just use coupon code happybirthday at checkout and save on some of the best weird fiction and horror out there. It's outré! https://wordhorde.com/the-black-friday-sale-has-arrived/

[wordhordepress]

What are your spooky reading plans?

Can we speak with the spirits of the dead? Is it possible to know the future? Are our dreams harbingers of things to come? Do auspicious omens and cautionary portents affect our lives?

Edited by Ross E. Lockhart, Tales from a Talking Board examines these questions–and more–with tales of auguries, divination, and fortune telling, through devices like Ouija boards, tarot cards, and stranger things.

So dim the lights, place your hands upon the planchette, and ask the spirits to guide you as we present fourteen stories of the strange and supernatural by Matthew M. Bartlett, Nadia Bulkin, Nathan Carson, Kristi DeMeester, Orrin Grey, Scott R Jones, David James Keaton, Anya Martin, J. M. McDermott, S.P. Miskowski, Amber-Rose Reed, Tiffany Scandal, David Templeton, and Wendy N. Wagner.

https://wordhorde.com/books/tales-from-a-talking-board/

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“Enter this freakishly inventive cabinet of curiosities if you will, every story providing a redly drippy skull-window straight into the id-vortex of a modern horror master–gape in awe, laugh out loud, feel your mental mouth start to water.” –Gemma Files, from the introduction

Orrin Grey has a knack for cruel stories.

Contes Cruel, to be exact.

Sardonic Tales like the fourteen collected here, ready to wrench the reader’s emotions, tantalize, and terrify. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Roger Corman, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, the Theatre de Grand Guignol, Universal’s monster movies, Hammer horror, kaiju flicks, and more, all while creating something unique, intoxicating, and, yes, cruel.

Guignol and Other Sardonic Tales has something for everyone… even the most jaded readers.

Order your copy of Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales today!

Cover art by everyone’s favorite art creep, Nick “The Hat” Gucker.

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Nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award: Tales from a Talking Board Can we speak with the spirits of the dead? Is it possible to know the future? Are our dreams harbingers of things to come? Do auspicious omens and cautionary portents affect our lives? Edited by Ross E. Lockhart, Tales from a Talking Board examines these questions–and more–with tales of auguries, divination, and fortune telling, through devices like Ouija boards, tarot cards, and stranger things. So dim the lights, place your hands upon the planchette, and ask the spirits to guide you as we present fourteen stories of the strange and supernatural by Matthew M. Bartlett, Nadia Bulkin, Nathan Carson, Kristi DeMeester, Orrin Grey, Scott R Jones, David James Keaton, Anya Martin, J. M. McDermott, S.P. Miskowski, Amber-Rose Reed, Tiffany Scandal, David Templeton, and Wendy N. Wagner.

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Nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award: Nadia Bulkin’s She Said Destroy A dictator craves love–and horrifying sacrifice–from his subjects; a mother raised in a decaying warren fights to reclaim her stolen daughter; a ghost haunts a luxury hotel in a bloodstained land; a new babysitter uncovers a family curse; a final girl confronts a broken-winged monster… Word Horde presents the debut collection from critically-acclaimed Weird Fiction author Nadia Bulkin. Dreamlike, poignant, and unabashedly socio-political, She Said Destroy includes three stories nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, four included in Year’s Best anthologies, and one original tale.

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Nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award: Tales from a Talking Board, edited by Ross E. Lockhart and She Said Destroy, by Nadia Bulkin.

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COMING WALPURGISNACHT–April 30, 2018–from David Peak (The Spectacle of the Void) comes Corpsespaint, a novel of black metal brutality, human malevolence, and pure cosmic horror. 

It’s been years since the groundbreaking debut of black metal band Angelus Mortis, and that first album, Henosis, has become a classic of the genre, a harrowing primal scream of rage and anger. With the next two albums, Fields of Punishment and Telos, Angelus Mortis cemented a reputation for uncompromising, aggressive music, impressing critics and fans alike. But the road to success is littered with temptation, and over the next decade, Angelus Mortis’s leader, Max, better known as Strigoi, became infamous for bad associations and worse behavior, burning through side-men and alienating fans.

Today, at the request of their record label, Max and new drummer Roland are traveling to Ukraine to record a comeback album with the famously reclusive cult act Wisdom of Silenus. What they discover when they get there will go far deeper than the aesthetics of the genre, and the music they create–antihuman, antilife–ultimately becomes a weapon unto itself.

Equally inspired by the fractured, nightmarish novels of John Hawkes, the blackened dreamscapes of cosmic-pessimist philosophy, and the music of second-wave black metal bands, author David Peak’s Corpsepaint is an exploration of creative people summoning destructive powers while struggling to express what it means to be human.

Here’s some of the praise David Peak’s Corpsepaint has received so far:

“Corpsepaint is an imaginative, doom-laden foray into the contested domain coupling black metal’s disabused hostility to liberal-capitalist ideology with an ethereal and perforce transgressive henosis of hate.” —Edia Connole, co-author of Floating Tomb: Black Metal Theory

“Novels about rock bands are usually just that: novels about rock bands: depictions, imitations. Peak’s Corpsepaint is much more than that. It captures the dark spirit, howling aesthetic and nihilistic philosophy of black metal and makes it the motor of the fiction. A grim and unforgiving book that steps deeply into the darkness and invites you to follow.” —Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses

“Beautifully, wonderfully, tragically dismal! Thought provoking horror that reaches deep inside you, rips out your still-beating heart, then asks you to consider what it means.” —Amber Fallon, author of The Warblers

“Sliding into darkness and doom like a tourbus on black ice, Corpsepaint starts harder and darker than most poser potboilers finish, with a true metalhead’s understanding that the real demons of nihilistic aggression and self-destruction are more diabolical than anything Tipper Gore thought she heard playing Stained Class backwards. When the amoral engine of metal madness reveals its true philosophy and purpose, the grimy walls falls away and the intimate green-room misery becomes a coldly glorious symphony of cosmic horror. Get in the pit with this one. You won’t want to come out… and it won’t let you.” —Cody Goodfellow, Wonderland Award-winning author of All-Monster Action and Sleazeland

“A work of true cosmic horror set in the death-tinged world of the black metal scene. Peak drags the reader below ground to confront forces seeking to spread a powerful, ancient darkness. Corpsepaint is a bleak, terrifying ride.“ —Michael Griffin, author of The Human Alchemy

“This book is brutal in the way only stoner metalheads can say the word. But it’s also brutal in the way only real lived human suffering is. Total, unending and strangely life affirming if you can manage to walk away from its wreckage in any way intact. Corpsepaint bludgeons the senses with an eerie alchemy of occult dread, jackbooted human malevolence and surprisingly affecting sorrow. The spell cast here by Peak perfectly conjures up a sensation of being lost on a winter night in the woods and knowing that something ancient and inhuman watches your every step, marking you as trespasser and seeing you for what you know you truly are: alone.” —Tony McMillen, author of An Augmented Fourth

“Gripping and mythic, bleak in a way that makes nihilism look cozy; if there’s a darker metal than black, this book is it.” —Christine Morgan, author of The Raven’s Table

“Corpsepaint is a bleak descent into the romance of drugs, decay, the occult, and black metal. This one will stay with you like the voice of a choir singing from the surface of long dead distant planets.” —Christopher Slatsky, author of Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales

Order your copy of Corpsepaint today!

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“Our fingers moved, and I could feel the warmth of her skin, and Cassandra spelled out the letters one by one, and by the fourth letter, I knew the board was real…” —from “YesNoGoodbye”, by Kristi DeMeester. Find it in Tales from a Talking Board, out now from Word Horde.

Special Valentine’s Day thanks to our models, Katie and Elle.