Showing results by narrator "Matt Godfrey" in All Categories

Each year, for 17 years, Mysterious Bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler commissioned an original Christmas story by a leading suspense writer. These stories were then produced as pamphlets, just 1,000 copies, and given to customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. Now, all 17 tales have been collected in one volume.

Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the US justice system.

It has many names: Bigfoot...Yeti...Sasquatch. But whatever it is, it’s out there in the woods and leaving a trail of blood and severed heads behind it. For John Moon, a half-mad Indian, it is a spirit that holds the key to his inner self. He worships its power and he’ll kill to protect it. Desperate, exhausted, half-starved, Moon will follow it wherever it goes. For Raymond Jason, killing it has become an obsession. He was the only survivor of a hunting trip to the Rockies where the hunters became the monster’s prey.

Five strangers drawn together at a roadside bar on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One rampaging monster, escaped from a secret facility, absorbing victims and accumulating biomass as it moves north from Arizona. The miles between them rapidly dwindling. No, this is not the world’s best math problem, it’s Exponential. The rollicking, brutal, gory, and strangely poignant horror novel from Adam Cesare. Criminals and screw-ups need to face down science run amok in this literary tribute to films like Tremors and The Blob.

An ancient vampire has descended on Isherwood, Indiana, turning its townspeople into a legion of bloodthirsty monsters, and only one man can stop them. Chris Stiles, once a Vietnam War soldier, is now the ultimate vampire hunter. With the help of the ghost of his dead brother, who was killed by the monsters, and an arsenal of high-powered weaponry, Chris is ready for a new war - this time not with the Viet Cong, but against an army of the Undead!

Orson and his friends are heading for an epic magical showdown, and not everyone will make it out alive. The millennia-old Paragon Society is on the brink of destruction. The heart of its power has been reduced to rubble, most of the leadership killed, and Marcus, the blood-mage, is once again on the loose, wreaking havoc. It feels like the bad guys are winning. All hope is not lost. Heidi Aldridge, a reformed blood-mage, may hold the key to unraveling the genetic code that is the very foundation of magic.

Over five million years ago, a group of primates discovered tools. Perhaps it was a large rock, ideal for cracking nuts, or a stick to extract honey from a beehive. Regardless, the future of our planet was changed forever. Slowly, the primate evolved, abandoning the trees for solid ground and four legs for two–and the tools changed with it. Stones were sharpened, then attached to sticks, before stone gave way to bronze, iron, steel.

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey...

Orson Reid: college freshman, gamer, and quite possibly the legendary boogeyman of the magical world. And you thought your life was weird. It all started the night Orson kissed his best friend, Elyse, and she kissed him back. Yes, the kiss was life changing, but in ways Orson never could have imagined. It seems he contracted a "virus" that is making him taller, faster, and stronger. But his life doesn't go completely off the rails until the night Elyse shows up at his house, strips out of her clothes, and shape-shifts into a giant cat - a panther, to be exact.

Deep in the darkest part of the Norwegian woods stands Dead Man's Cabin, where 110 years ago a madman slew his sister and her lover, throwing their decapitated corpses in a nearby lake before drowning himself to join them in death. Ever since, the cabin has been cursed, and anyone who spends the night there is possessed by the killer's spirit and infected with his madness.

His initiation complete, Leg knew he had to prove himself worthy of the gift his totem had given him. The boy was facing a long and difficult journey to dangerous lands. Meanwhile, those with eyes set on ruling the Northern Empire were also making their move. But what was most important to Leg? His personal advancement or the integrity of the empire? Of course, it was possible the two priorities were inseparable, especially since a true wizard had been introduced to the world.

Someone stands to gain millions of dollars from a hunter's accidental death . . . unless that death wasn't an accident. In this fast-paced legal drama, a small-town lawyer and a cerebral pastor make an unlikely team as they uncover the truth behind one man's death. Matt and Elena Thompson...

A young family receives a welcome surprise when old Uncle Ian dies and leaves them a cottage in north Wales. For Ian's nephew and his wife, Ann, it seems a stroke of incredible good fortune, enabling them to leave their unfulfilling lives in the city for a newfound freedom in the remote seaside cottage. There's just one catch. Uncle Ian's will has a strange condition: The couple must care for his pet cormorant or forfeit the bequest.

Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) was one of the most popular and prolific English authors of his time, best known for his historical fiction and novels for boys. But it was in the field of the macabre and supernatural that Walpole was at his best, and this collection of 16 tales contains many of his finest.

When the Paragon Society needs a situation contained, they call in their top battle mage, Lucy, a dual-blade-wielding, fireball-throwing kicker of butts. But a traumatic injury has fractured Lucy's psyche, leaving her trapped deep inside her subconscious. The Society and her friends are desperate to save her and are willing to try anything. The devised plan seems simple enough; Orson and the gang will get magicked into Lucy's mind, locate her, and bring her out. Yeah, right.

It is the beginning of 1918, the last year of the greatest war in human history, to date. All the belligerents stagger on their feet. Starvation is an ever present reality, while disease waits in the wings. In Russia, no longer a belligerent but, instead, rapidly descending into civil war and chaos, a lone family—Father, Mother, four beautiful young girls, and a brave but sickly boy—await their own fate, shivering and hungry in the dark, hoping and praying for salvation. Their relatives in England have turned their backs. The guards set over them do little but torment them.

In October of 2013, Drew Hayes began posting a story to his website. Written over the thirteen days leading up to Halloween, when each chapter ended the next step was chosen by the readers. Sometimes this led to great discoveries and triumphs, other paths led to Dead Ends, though even in those there was much to be gleaned. For ten years, this tradition occurred, until in the year of 2022, the readers chose a finale. This is their story: a tale of deaths and decisions that spanned a decade.

When a coronal mass ejection threatens to send the United States back to the Stone Age, Jim Graves must rush to prepare his family for the coming apocalypse. As the world around him plunges into anarchy, can he rise to the occasion? Jim's love for his family and will to survive are put to the ultimate test.

Robert Bloch gave us fiction's most famous knife-wielding maniac in Psycho's Norman Bates, and in The Night of the Ripper (1984), this master of horror fiction offers his own unique take on history's most infamous unsolved murder case.

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.