Peter Harris and his comrades might have won the first round, but the vampires have just raised the stakes . . . Following the death of Nero, the surviving vampires separate into deadly cabals, a corrupt vampire council is born, and ancient loyalties fall by the wayside. Not only are the vampires at war with each other, but their servants—the thralls—are on the brink of open rebellion. When Peter Harris and his band of insurgents learn of this unrest, they seize the opportunity and enter the vampire territory with purpose. It is time to free the slaves and rescue the breeders, but what Harris and his gang discover inside the cabal is worse than they bargained for . . . Will Harris and his ragtag soldiers make it out alive?

Lan Agstaff joined the army to escape from the memory of a failed love affair. But on the way to his first posting in Neotra, the suspended animation chamber malfunctions–and instead of peaceful nothingness he dreams endlessly about his lost lover. By the time Lan’s ship gets to Neotra tensions have reached breaking point, making all-out war virtually inevitable. Will Lan be consumed by the flashbacks of his ex-lover or can he recover from the torment of dreams?

It’s 1791 and Captain Thomas Butler and his loyal crew of The HMS Swift, a frigate in the service of King George III, are sent on a series of missions where nothing is what it seems, and forces far darker than any of the crew have experienced before, reign supreme.

Far out in the desert, a superhuman assassin known only as Cain is using blood money to finance the excavation of an artifact as old as the earth itself. CIA operative Gabrielle “Gabe” Lincoln has a very short time to learn the secret of Cain’s power–or soon the earth and everyone in it will be annihilated.

Retributor Jeremiah Brandt has already riled up the zombie cavalry and he’s still angry over losing a huge bounty on a clan of serial killers. So when the Helena Cattlemen’s Association asks for help with a werewolf he jumps at the chance to take it on. There are a few little kinks to work through first before he can get down to the hunt–starting with zombies, a revengeful sister, and cold bath water. But the hunter soon becomes the hunted as Brandt discovers that his past mistakes have come back haunt him.

The year's best, and darkest, tales of terror, showcasing the most outstanding new short stories and novellas by contemporary masters of the macabre, including the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Brian Keene, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Massie, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, and Gene Wolfe. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror also includes a comprehensive annual overview of horror around the world in all its incarnations; an impressively researched necrology; and a list of indispensable contact addresses for the dedicated horror fan and aspiring writer alike. It is required reading for every fan of macabre fiction.

They are the fearful images that have stalked humanity’s nightmares for centuries, supernatural creatures that feast on flesh and haunt the soul, macabre and uncanny beings that frighten and fascinate the imagination. Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, and Ghosts collects classic stories from literary masters inspired by folklore and mythology who dared to explore the darker side of human nature and crafted tales that defied convention, stirred up controversy, and gave life to a storytelling genre that has endured for generations. With stories by Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, Anne Sexton, Oscar Wilde, Yvonne Navarro, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Angela Carter, and others…