"In the dust zone every man lives with a shotgun under his mattress and a bullet in his brain." Life in the post apocalyptic dust zone of the Texas Panhandle can be brittle at best. Georgy Founder has already lost his wife, his daughter and his legs. But he still has three sons. With ingenuity and cunning the Founders have learned the secrets to surviving their threatening environs. But fear has governed them for too long. Survival is no longer enough. As neurotoxin-ravaged Twitchers rally for control over the region, Georgy is forced to reconcile his past in order to provide his sons a future worth living.

With two brand new stories by Grady Richards. In this dark collection you will find otherworldly spiders, zombie debt collectors, malevolent pets, and prophecy gone awry. You will see into the heart of a child-killer and into the heart of a man mourning the loss of his daughter. You will find terrors locally in a man who fears his neighborhood demons, and distantly in a man who caught a devastating illness in deep space. You will look through the eyes of a maniac, you will feel with the soul of the vengeful, and you will peek through spread fingers as you watch the things which keep you up at night as they begin to crawl forward and feed.

"The Raven" tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". Cover by @Lujayna

They say that people go there when they're ready to die. They say Death himself is a patron. That's where the tavern gets its name. Azrael's Stop. Watering hole for the Angel of Death. But that's just rumour. Ceph doesn't trade in rumour. He just serves drinks. Except, of course, that every couple of weeks, someone dies at Azrael's Stop. Azrael’s Stop is an experimental fiction and music project, about life, death, and friendship. It is the story of a mystical tavern and how the people who go there develop over the course of a year: Ceph, the seventeen-year-old bartender who has seen all his loved ones die; Tom, the depressed old man, whom death will not take; Rye, who visits every day, though he died a year ago; Nael, the blind minstrel who saw war too young; Lona, the mysterious hunter of the dead; Trin, the girl who refuses to deal with her past; and the crow who watches over it all, cawing only when someone dies in Azrael's Stop. Azrael's Stop is part of a larger storytelling project by Silverstring Media, Inc., and is best enjoyed accompanied by the Azrael's Stop Official Soundtrack, which includes music referenced in this story. To learn more, and to purchase the album, go to http://azraelsstop.com This is a preview; the first several chapters are available to read here for free! To get the whole story, it's available as an ebook from http://silverstringmedia.com/store or get more information at http://azraelsstop.com

Written live on the short story marathon that is Once Upon A Deadline for Notting Hill International Book Festival.

An elderly collector of second-hand books wrestles with his unusual ability to "read" the lives of his books' previous owners... and with one unique book he can't seem to read.

Not all outbreaks become pandemics. Some of them are cut off early, before they can really begin. "Zombie" is a humorous horror story about the near-apocalypse, an account of what almost became the last great plague.

Jonathan Hill is home alone on a stormy night, babysitting his baby sister who won't stop crying. When he finds her room door oddly locked, it's only the beginning to a horror filled night.

In an empty world fifteen year old Ben struggles to survive, surrounded by infected humans their only aim in life is to feed on living flesh. Almost out of food and water Ben must leave the safety of his house he shares with his mother in search of supplies, but Ben has another reason to leave his home.