Sleep, little children,
all safe in your beds.
But when the boogeyman knocks,
if you are up watching…
he’ll make sure that you wish you were dead!

Once every one hundred and fifty years he emerges from the darkest depths to feed. With each soul he takes, he grows stronger. There is but one gift he needs in order to gain the power he seeks. One gift that will allow him to walk amongst all the precious little children.

And it’s the one gift Mattie Hathaway possesses…the ability to bring images to life with just a drop of her blood. The demon Silas has warned her to never reveal this ability, not even to her father who shares her power to communicate with the dead. She’s heeded his warning, but hiding it may no longer be an option.

Children are disappearing all over the Charlotte area. When their bodies are recovered, they are always the same—broken, beaten, and bruised. Fear is spiraling out of control in the Queen City as parents glance nervously around each corner, seeing the boogeyman in every shadow.

When one little girl goes missing in Mattie’s neighborhood, it’s up to her and Officer Dan Richards to find the truth. In doing so, she uncovers a far greater evil than she’s ever come up against. The one thing she was bred to defeat.

Deleriel. A fallen angel…one of the first demons. He is powerful, ambitious, and now that Mattie is on his radar, she’s all he needs to complete his arsenal.

Amid of whirlwind of secrets coming to light, Mattie is faced with uncovering the truth about her own heritage. She must come to grips with it before she can begin to prepare for the battle of a lifetime…a battle she never asked for but is caught in the middle of.

Can she face her own truths before it’s too late?

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Chloe Lindquist and her husband, Todd, moved out to rural Colorado to escape the hassle of plugged-in life. Almost as soon as she moved into the remote cabin, inexplicable things started happening to Chloe. While she knew they must have been hallucinations, they were too realistic to simply dismiss.

Three weeks later, Todd was dead, and Chloe was charged with his murder. While she doesn't deny killing him, she has to determine if she was protecting herself or if she had simply become unhinged.

A disturbing journey into the beauty that rests inside the very heart of darkness.

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing and the editing duo who brought you the critically acclaimed small-town Lovecraftian horror anthology Shadows Over Main Street, comes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories.

Awe meets ache.
Terror becomes transcendence.
Regret gives way to rebirth.

Fifteen short stories and one poem span nearly every twisted corner of the horror and dark fiction genres:

A woman experiences an emotional reckoning inside a haunted house.
A father sees his daughter rescued after a cold case is solved, only to learn the tragic limits of his love.
A man awakens a vengeful spirit and learns the terrible price of settling scores.
A boy comes of age into awareness of a secret universe of Lovecraftian scale.
A young woman confronts the deathly price of existence inside a German concentration camp during the Holocaust.
And much, much more…

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories features the most celebrated voices in dark fiction, as well as a number of exciting new talents:

Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, John F.D. Taff, Lisa Mannetti, Damien Angelica Walters, Josh Malerman, Christopher Coake, Mercedes M. Yardley, Brian Kirk, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Amanda Gowin, Richard Thomas, Maria Alexander and Kevin Lucia. Edited by Doug Murano and D. Alexander Ward.

With a foreword from Cemetery Dance magazine founder Richard Chizmar.

Proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing – Tales from the Darkest Depths

Interview with the Authors:

So what makes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories so special?

John F.D. Taff: Usually, horror stories tell us the dark side of dark stories, the bad stuff that happens during bad times. It's expected that there will be horrors in the kinds of stories horror generally tells. But Gutted explores the other side of things, the darkness that's there in moments you might not otherwise expect; those moments that touch our hearts or resonate more strongly with our other emotions. It's that beauty—that unexpected emotional resonance that can reside comfortably, side by side with fear, in a good horror story—that separates the stories in Gutted and makes them quite unique.

Tell us more about your story.

Ramsey Campbell: Occasionally I try to repay my debt to specific writers. Midnight Sun was my attempt to scale the awesome peak of Algernon Blackwood’s achievement, while The Darkest Part of the Woods clambered the Lovecraftian. “The Place of Revelation” goes for another giant of the field. If anybody guesses which one, I’ll count the tale some kind of a success. The naïve voice can be a highly effective way to tell a tale of terror, creating a tension between what’s told and how.

John F.D. Taff: My story is a distillation of my childhood. I grew up in the '70s, and I wanted to capture that time period as much as anything else. I also wanted to explore one moment during my childhood, when I got my first 10-speed bike—the freedom that bought a kid like me. It opened so many doors, the ability to go out on my own, far beyond my neighborhood. To explore the world, to discover new things. And then, of course, I wanted to explore the dark side of that, the dangers that same key also unlocked. It all boiled down, at least to me while writing it, to a central idea, that question of "How do you let go of things?"

Gutted eBook categories:

Horror Anthologies
Genre Fiction
Short story anthologies
Urban Fantasy
Horror Short stories
Disturbing psychological horror
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Have you ever wondered if there are individuals within the government who can predict the future? Where are they, how do they live, and how do they gain insight into what lies ahead... "3:13 AM" will unravel an alternative tale about one of these oracles.

El sets off with his colleague Marian to Asia. After a twelve-hour flight from London to Bangkok, their journey leads them through Patong to one of the picturesque islands in the Indian Ocean. Their destination is a point that cannot be found on the world map. Only when you zoom in from a satellite image will you see Koh An—a jungle-covered remnant of lava, the sandy beach of which is only fifty leisurely steps long.
It is here that secret agents have been assigned to meet with the mysterious Mr. Lee. By the will of fate, Raymond Lee knows a little more about the world than any of us. And this time his terrible prophecy will make the blood of even the most cold-blooded leaders of the counter-terrorism department run cold. What Mr. Lee saw in his vision is capable of turning life on Earth upside down. But the most terrifying realization is that his predictions have never been wrong.

"Scott Nicholson explores the dark legends of the southern end of the Appalachian mountain chain, a nightmare country that ends in Stephen King's yard."-- Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels

When artists gather at a remote Appalachian estate for a retreat, they are unaware that their energy is feeding something unwholesome. Sculptor Mason Jackson and dying parapsychologist Anna Galloway must uncover the dark secrets of Korban Manor before their spirits become trapped forever.
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CREATIVE SPIRIT
A modern Gothic thriller

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost. The setting of her dream is the historic Korban Manor, and she's compelled to face the secrets of her soul.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to the manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, even Anna can't divert his bizarre passion.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

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The author's preferred DRM-free edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback release THE MANOR. Scott Nicholson is the Kindle bestselling author of 13 novels, including LIQUID FEAR, CHRONIC FEAR, THE RED CHURCH, DISINTEGRATION, THE HARVEST, and SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD. Send him a message from Amazon's Author Central.

"Scott Nicholson understands that the best horror novels achieve primal fear through a combination of sustained atmosphere, richly drawn characters, and believable if uncanny evils that draw unholy power from everyday lives." --Christopher Ransom, author of The Birthing House

"Keep both hands on your pants, because Nicholson is about to scare them off."--J.A. Konrath, Origin

"Scott Nicholson is the kind of writer who always surprises and always entertains."--Jonathan Maberry, Patient Zero
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