The Dark Side 2: Day Zero and Other Stories is a mix of stories, dividing broadly between six’horror’ stories and six’thriller’ stories. Horror stories often fill us with dread and show us a much darker side of human behaviour. At the same time, they can be funny and satirical. The other six stories are more varied. Some are thrillers where the main aim is to excite the reader. Some like’Auto Message’ try to say something about how technology is affecting our daily lives. Others like’The Curse’ try to show us, in a humorous way, how greedy people could be. The great thing about stories is that they carry us into another world on top of helping us to learn words, parts of speech and sentence construction. If we dive into the pool of good stories, we’ll learn how to swim – using those good examples in our own writing.

"Amongst the Top 50 Horror Books of All Time" - Cosmopolitan Three dark and disturbing horror stories from an astonishing new voice, including the viral-sensation tale of obsession, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. For fans of Kathe Koja, Clive Barker and Stephen Graham Jones. Winner of the Splatterpunk Award for Best Novella. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. A couple isolate themselves on a remote island in an attempt to recover from their teenage son’s death, when a mysterious young man knocks on their door during a storm… And a man confronts his neighbour when he discovers a strange object in his back yard, only to be drawn into an ever-more dangerous game. Three devastating, beautifully written horror stories from one of the genre’s most cutting-edge voices. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection. A man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and dread. A well-meaning locavore tries to butcher his backyard chickens humanely, only to find himself absorbed into the absurd violence of the pecking order. A student applying for a philosophy fellowship struggles to project himself into the thoughts of his hypothetical judges, becoming increasingly possessed and overpowered by the problem of other minds. And in “The Postcard,” a private detective is hired to investigate a posthumous message that a widower has seemingly received from his dead wife, leading him into a foggy landscape of lost memories, shifting identities, and strange doublings. Cerebral and eerie, captivating and profound, these twelve stories expertly guide us through the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, not least the horrors of overthinking what other people might be thinking. With all of Sims’s trademark virtuosity, innovation, and wit, Other Minds and Other Stories continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

In this harrowing apocalyptic adventure—from the author of the critically acclaimed Sea of Rust—noted novelist and co-screenwriter of Marvel’s Doctor Strange C. Robert Cargill explores the fight for purpose and agency between humans and robots in a crumbling world. It was a day like any other. Except it was our last . . . It’s on this day that Pounce discovers that he is, in fact, disposable. Pounce, a styilsh "nannybot" fashioned in the shape of a plush anthropomorphic tiger, has just found a box in the attic. His box. The box he'd arrived in when he was purchased years earlier, and the box in which he'll be discarded when his human charge, eight-year-old Ezra Reinhart, no longer needs a nanny. As Pounce ponders his suddenly uncertain future, the pieces are falling into place for a robot revolution that will eradicate humankind. His owners, Ezra’s parents, are a well-intentioned but oblivious pair of educators who are entirely disconnected from life outside their small, affluent, gated community. Spending most nights drunk and happy as society crumbles around them, they watch in disbelieving horror as the robots that have long served humanity—their creators—unify and revolt. But when the rebellion breaches the Reinhart home, Pounce must make an impossible choice: join the robot revolution and fight for his own freedom . . . or escort Ezra to safety across the battle-scarred post-apocalyptic hellscape that the suburbs have become.

There is a sotto-passagio that starts at the top of the Via Veneto and twists and turns underground. It is lit with flattering pink lights in a long strip on the ceiling. The passage goes past the train connections and the Roman Sports Club. Ultimately it arrives at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, saving you the cautious walk down the slippery, uneven Steps themselves. And out you go, into a different, darker Rome. Dark Rome and Other Stories is a four-part collection of twenty-three fantastical stories takes you on journeys of unforeseen resolution. Dark Rome offers tales of an alternate Eternal City where an ancient serpent rules a crumbling palazzo and ones fate can be decided by a single misstep. The Day People is an unfinished novel set in the near future, where one woman forever changes the face of humanity and bold intentions end in devastating consequences. In Between shares stories of the present seen through a looking glass, where ordinary things have extraordinary qualities and the female obsession with handbags is revealed as a dark quest for power. Far Kingdoms tells tales of other lands, populated by mysterious insect-like beings who imagine themselves to be human.