Showing results by author "Jeff Strand" in All Categories

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Haunted Forest Tour! Sit back, and enjoy a smooth ride in air-conditioned comfort as your heavily armored tram takes you through nature's most astonishing creation. The forest is packed to capacity with dangerous and terrifying creatures of all shapes, sizes, and hunger levels, and you'll get to observe these wonders in complete safety.

Editors Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax put the call out to horror writers and editors of extreme stories, the hardcore stuff that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos, the transgressive tales you can't "unread" (as Chuck Palahniuk says). Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex, and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect.

Mortimer Moorecook, retired Wall Street raider, avid collector, is losing his fight against cancer. With weeks to live, a package arrives at the door of his hillside mansion—an artifact he paid millions for…a hominoid skull with elongated teeth, discovered in a farmer's field in the Romanian countryside. With Shanna, his beautiful research assistant looking on, he sinks the skull's razor sharp fangs into his neck, and immediately goes into convulsions.

Twins Oliver and Trisha love going on adventures with their dad. Canoeing and camping on the Champion River will be their best trip yet! But when they capsize in rapids, their father is knocked unconscious. Alone and without cell phone reception, their only choice is to continue down river for help.

Rusty Moss has raised his niece Mia since she was a baby. Now that she's almost 18, he's worried that the life he's given her - living off the grid in a cabin deep in the woods - is holding her back from her full potential. But that angst gets pushed aside when the undead forest animals arrive. At first it's just a squirrel - shockingly violent and almost impossible to kill. Followed by a grizzly bear, also aggressive and resilient, even when point-blank shotgun blasts to the face are involved.

Jaunty the Clown just wants to entertain families with lighthearted slapstick antics, but people think of clowns as terrifying, nightmarish creatures who hide in closets or under beds. When Jaunty, along with his fellow performers, are fired from the circus, they're told that the world just doesn't like clowns anymore. Still, clowns have to eat. And since these clowns don't eat children, to make ends meet they're eventually forced to take a job in a popular haunted attraction, the Mountain of Terror. But millions of oversized spiders are about to invade....

Rod's life doesn't suck. If you ask him, it's pretty awesome. He may not be popular, but he and his best friends play in a band that has a standing gig. Yeah, it's Monday night and they don't get paid, but they can crank the volume as loud as they want. And Rod's girlfriend is hot, smart, and believes in their band - believes in Rod. Aside from a winning lottery ticket, what more could he ask for? Answer: A different cousin. When Rod's scheming, two-faced cousin Blake moves in for the semester, Rod tries to keep calm. Blake seems to have everyone else fooled....

After a disastrous evening playing slot machines, Ethan Caustin wonders how he's going to explain his massive loss to his wife and kids. As he tries to find his way out of the casino, sick to his stomach and filled with self-loathing, he's approached by a stranger who offers a solution to his problem. It's a simple game. A 99 percent chance for him to win $10,000. In the remote chance that he loses...well, he'll be strapped into a device that shatters his left arm.

Evan Portin is at a sad, scary place in his life. While taking a long walk to compose himself and figure out where to go from here, he encounters a young woman being mugged in a park. When he tries to intervene, he discovers that she doesn't need his help. At all. Her name is Harriett. She is very, very good at defending herself. Everything she owns is in a large backpack. She's never seen a cell phone. She's never been in a car. She's never really ventured into the outside world. And she says she's traveling across the country to slay a Cyclops. She's crazy, right?

All three of the hilariously bloody and action-packed werewolf novels in one collection!

Harry Houdini. Penn and Teller. David Copperfield. Marcus Millian the Third. Okay, so Marcus isn't a famous magician. He may not even be a great magician. But his great-grandfather, the once-legendary and long-retired Zachary the Stupendous, insists Marcus has true talent. And when Grandpa Zachary boasts that he and Marcus are working on an illusion that will shock, stun, and astonish, Marcus wishes he could make himself disappear.

Fire ants. Even when they're normal sized, they're horrible, wretched insects whose sting causes burning pain. But these ants are far from normal. And the city of Tampa, Florida has become infested with the oversized creatures.

Since the dawn of time, across almost every culture, there have been legends of shape-shifters. Men who turn into beasts and prey upon anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. Of the shape-shifter tales, none invokes as much terror as the legend of the werewolf. The stories of men who become wolves persisted through the centuries from campfire folk tales to the modern age, where we are still thrilled and horrified by tales of bloodthirsty predators in our midst.

Though Darren Rust is serving a life sentence in prison, Alex Fletcher is desperate to escape the shadow of his former best friend. Darren is a psychopath who thought he’d found somebody who would kill with him, and when he realized he was wrong, he took everything from Alex. Alex is unable to have a normal social life. Until he meets Luna Booth. Alex may not have found his soul mate, but he’s found somebody that he loves spending time with. Somebody who doesn’t mind the nightmarish skeletons in his closet. In fact, she may be too understanding. Too interested.

When you’re desperate for money, searching for a little adventure, and aren’t the most responsible person in the world, you can end up doing some outrageous things. Which is how Andrew Mayhem, a married father of two, ends up accepting $20,000 to find a key - a key buried with a body in a shallow grave. But what he finds in the grave isn’t quite what he expected, and what begins as a simple evening of morally questionable manual labor turns into a really good way to die.

Alex stared at the red pocketknife shown to him by his daughter. A pocketknife owned by somebody he hadn't seen in years. They met first in boarding school at age 12. Alex Fletcher, shy and scared. Darren Rust, always furiously scribbling away in a private journal. It was not an immediate friendship, but then one night Darren convinced his roommate to sneak off school grounds to see something glorious.

Meet George and Lou, thugs for hire. The kind of intimidating-yet-friendly guys who will break your thumbs, but be polite about it. Their latest assignment is to drive across Florida to deliver some precious cargo to a crime lord. The cargo: a man in a cage. Though Ivan seems perfectly human, they're warned that he is, in fact, a bloodthirsty werewolf.

Corey is falling in love with his co-worker Quinn. This is a problem. Not only because Quinn is married, but because her husband is a serial killer known as the Toledo Trasher, who has been forcing her to participate in his savage crimes.

When Toby Floren was eight years old, he discovered a monster living in the woods behind his house. A ghastly, frightening creature with claws, fangs, and a taste for human flesh. As he ran out of the forest, screaming, Toby felt that he'd been lucky to escape with his life. Years later, Toby finds comfort with the creature. It's his own special secret - something that nobody else in the world knows about. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to confide in.

They call her Blister. She's a hideously disfigured 23-year-old woman, living in a shed next to her father's house, hidden away from the world. Jason Tray is a successful cartoonist, banished to his agent's lakeside cabin for a few days of mandatory rest and relaxation. One night, while hanging out with a couple of the locals at a dive bar, he takes them up on their offer to go "see Blister," having no idea what they're talking about.