This month, Fiction Vortex is celebrating Halloween with a special all-horror issue. It's still speculative fiction, just with extra scares and mental scars. We know, as well as you do, that true terror isn’t from the dark corners of the world, but from the dark recesses of your mind, and that beneath a thin layer of imagination the true monsters are quite human.This month, Fiction Vortex is celebrating Halloween with a special all-horror issue. It's still speculative fiction, just with extra scares and mental scars. We could give you detailed descriptions of monsters. We could supply a supernatural scapegoat to pin the source of your fears upon. Yet in the end we know, as well as you do, that true terror isn’t from the dark corners of the world, but from the dark recesses of your mind, and that beneath a thin layer of imagination the true monsters are quite human.Fiction Vortex publishes speculative fiction weekly online: FictionVortex.com.

A young widower takes an old Inuit man's advice to commune with his deceased wife. He treks into the northern parts of Alaska, towards the Northern Lights, in search of his wife's spirit. Stricken with hunger, fatigue, and hallucinations caused by grief, he is unsure as to what or who is real. This much he knows, he must continue northward.This is a story by Chrif Elidrissi, about a man, who after having an unpleasant experience with his family, get back to his home and have the most unexpected adventure in his life, while he was walking early in the morning in the county park across from his neighborhood.After he decided to take an early morning walk in the park to clear his mind and exercise his muscles, a man in his 40's witnessed the existence of creatures that shows up only in the early morning and vanish with the mist before dawn.

A master of science fiction, a voice of the changing counterculture, and a genuine visionary, Philip K. Dick wrote about reality, entropy, deception, and the plight of being alive in the modern world. Through his remarkable career Dick has established himself as a writer of the first order and his dreams of the future have proven to be eerily prophetic and even more prescient than when he wrote them. Vintage PKD features extracts from The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, VALIS, and stories including “The Days of Perky Pat,” “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts," and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon,” along with essays and letters currently unavailable in book form.   Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers, presented in attractive, affordable paperback editions. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The third novel in the History of John Daker, The Eternal Champion.

The terrified citizens of Constantinople are plagued by mysterious sorcery. A boy had traded the lives of his family for power. A Christian scholar must track down the magic threatening his world. All paths lead to the squalid prison deep below the city, where a man who believes he is a wolf lies chained.

Trecheon Omnir isn't happy with his life. His motorcycle repair shop barely keeps him afloat, his family has abandoned him, and his experiences in war make it difficult to relate to others. So when his friend and fellow war veteran Neil Black offers him an out, he takes it without question. But Trecheon finds out too late that this "out" is actually an initiation into the world of assassins.Trecheon Omnir isn't happy with his life. His motorcycle repair shop barely keeps him afloat, his family has abandoned him, and his experiences in war make it difficult to relate to others. So when his friend and fellow war veteran Neil Black offers him an out, he takes it without question. But Trecheon finds out too late that this "out" is actually an initiation into the world of assassins. Now he must overcome fear, deception, and guilt in order to turn this bad situation into something he can live with and become the profession's first White Assassin.

If you look up "backwater" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of Grayson, Indiana. Everyone knows everyone else's business, and all the cool kids hang out at the Save-N-Go grocery store.Sara Moon once had dreams, but found herself working the register at Bubba's Chik'N Hut... until the night the Outsiders came.The first episode of the Outsiders series.Theodore Arbuckle had been walking the fine line between reality and his own mind since his early childhood, plagued by voices and hallucinations. For the last four years he has been waking up screaming, tangled in his own bedsheets and covered in cold sweat every night.Over the years he had found ways to keep his mind anchored to the real world, but everything that he has worked so hard on comes crumbling apart in the course of a single night. Now he can't even trust his own mind, let alone other people.And with more secrets uncovered, everything seems to be plotting against him.

Seventeen, dead, and in charge of heaven's dark angels—all itching to kill someone. Madison Avery's dreams of ever fitting in at her new school died when she did. Especially since she was able to maintain the illusion of a body, deal with a pesky guardian angel, and oh yeah, bring the reaper who killed her to his untimely end. Not exactly in-crowd material. It's amazing that her crush, Josh, doesn't think she's totally nuts. Now Madison has learned that she's the dark timekeeper, in charge of angels who follow the murky guidelines of fate. Never one to abide by the rules, she decides it's time for a major change to the system. With the help of some unlikely allies, Madison forms a rogue group of reapers who definitely don't adhere to the rules of the heavens. But as she grapples with the terrifying new skills that come with being a timekeeper, Madison realizes she may not be prepared for what lies ahead—unless she gets some seriously divine intervention.

In the wake of his divorce and the loss of his New York art job, Shane Bellamy is bereft and directionless. The remote cottage on the Missouri river provides the perfect escape: small, picturesque, and lonely. There, Shane becomes fascinated with the history of the cottage, and that of its larger sister property, the Riverhouse, now demolished. Inspired, he embarks on an unusual art project, one that almost seems to have a life of its own. As the painting develops, surprising Shane both with its style and its strange, silent strength, he finds that the image is a sort of portal, inviting him into the Riverhouse's past. He learns of it owners, portrait artist Gustav Wilhelm, known for his arrogance as much for his genius, and of Wilhelm's wife, the beautiful but ignored Marlena. His painting progress, and the story blooms in Shane's mind like a dark rose, full of deepening mystery and harrowing secrets… Gradually, Shane comes to realize that the decades' old drama isn't yet finished. Ghosts haunt the cottage, particularly the intriguing Marlena, and Shane cannot help being inexplicably drawn to her, despite her obvious dangers. As a result, Shane finds himself caught in the spiraling collision course of his own life and that of the Riverhouse. He knows he should escape, and yet he cannot seem to walk away. After all, he thinks, ghosts can't harm the living. Can they? In the end, the power of the story draws Shane into its embrace, like a man walking right up to a cliff's edge, believing he can stop anytime, not knowing that there is someone behind him, sneaking up, waiting for just the right moment, the perfect moment, to give one…little…push.

He claims he's not a fan of rock-and-roll, but somehow Harlan Ellison's seminal novel based on the career of Jerry Lee Lewis ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the first -- and still one of the best -- dissections of the wildly destructive rock-and-roll lifestyle, Spider Kiss isn't about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit or space invaders that smell like chicken soup. Instead, it's the story of Luther Sellers, a poor kid from Louisville with a voice like an angel who's renamed Stag Preston by a ruthless promoter. Preston's meteoric rise on the music scene is matched only by the rise in his enormous appetites -- and not just for home cooking -- and soon the invisible monkey named Success is riding him straight to hell. This raucous early novel reinforces Ellison's reputation as one of America's most dynamic writers.

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The second in a series of free anthologies that will showcase quirky, ironic, whimsical and unusual fantasy stories from writers around the world.The second ebook in a proposed series of free anthologies that will showcase quirky, ironic, unusual, absurdist and philosophical fantasy stories from new and established writers around the world. These anthologies will attempt to present the sort of work that lies outside and beyond the conventional genres and labels of fiction. This issue contains a previously unpublished story by David Gerrold, author of the 'Trouble With Tribbles' episode for STAR TREK.

The Unisayan are not sacred, worshipped or protected... They are hunted.Araman Raliena uses her healing powers to save the life of General Kassen, who is to murder a creature she fights to protect, interrupting a dangerous man's plans to stop an alliance between two kingdoms. Dergen will use the Rite of the Sinner to enslave an Armon's sacred power and not even Raliena's will can oppose him...The mysterious Unisayan are not sacred, worshipped or protected... They are hunted. Despite vowing never to complete her duty as Araman and lure a Unisayan to a Knight’s sword, Raliena uses her healing powers to save the life of Kassen; a General who is to murder a creature Raliena fights to protect. This act of kindness unwittingly interrupts a dangerous man’s ploy to stop an impending alliance between two tremulous kingdoms, but Raliena is mistaken when she thinks it is the throne he wishes to claim. A shadowy past rouses a new future for Fardonmeria and with a dusky past of his own, Dergen will use the Rite of the Sinner to gain what is his by force. Using the ancient slavery of an Armon’s sacred power, he will become Master Sinner and not even Raliena’s will can oppose him.

Calla Tor wakes up in the lair of the Searchers, her sworn enemy, and she's certain her days are numbered. But then the Searchers make her an offer–one that gives her the chance to destroy her former masters and save the pack–and the man–she left behind. Is Ren worth the price of her freedom? And will Shay stand by her side no matter what? Now in control of her own destiny, Calla must decide which battles are worth fighting and how many trials true love can endure and still survive.