Showing results by author "Kevin Candela" in All Categories

Gray, leaden clouds blot out the sky, a cold wind chills your bones, and a frantic whispering is heard among the trees. What is happening? There is no need to ask, for you already know the truth: The terror of Trick-or-Treat Thrillers Best Paranormal has returned for yet another year.... Whether it is a monster from your worst nightmares, an ancient evil that should not still live, a mysterious entity hiding near your home, or even your own demonic family members waiting to pounce, our authors know what frightens you.

The Missouri Flying Humanoid is Nosferatu for real - a cryptozoological winged "human" reported to hang around Turkey Creek, Missouri. It's big as a human, with broad wings; a survivor who encountered one reported that it was strong enough to lift his truck up off the road. So when monster hunters Rollie, Eve, Taylor, and Ursula go after it, armed for bear, it's no mere snipe hunt in the woods - the game is life and death, and guns or not, the bold foursome are in way over their heads.

Erno the vole is on a mission to beat the Gardener's brilliant series of tomato garden defenses. He may be the greatest vole thief and acrobat in...well...at least the neighborhood - but that doesn't mean he's up for the challenges ahead. He'll need all his wits, wisdom, strength, and stamina if he wants to take a bite out of those luscious pink-orange tomatoes tonight.

In this wildly imaginative and bullet-fast tale of advanced warrior legions eager to escape their banishment in a parallel dimension, an unlikely band of heroic women, bold and reckless enough to stand in their way, are humanity’s only hope against an impending incursion by a highly advanced army of invisible, disc-riding warriors.

In 1972, the Red Bozos were the friendliest faces in frenetic Midlands Amusement Park. Flash forward four and a half decades: Midlands is a ghost park. Closed long ago and nearly forgotten, even by the locals, it sits shrouded in undergrowth and hill-topping forest surrounded by upscale new homes. Ringed with a decaying fence, hidden from sight, it presents a huge temptation to a group of bored, thrill-seeking youths who are about to learn that terror is, in fact, immortal.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

A seven percent grasp of the infinite. The universe may be limitless, but our senses are not. Just as the human eye sees but a small percentage of the cosmic wave spectrum, in the same way, most of us are only able to perceive a similar sliver of what we brazenly term “reality”, even with the use of all five of our scientifically acknowledged senses. This month-by-month account of people-supernatural relations spans its own sci-fi/fantasy/horror/comedy spectrum, touring the weird side of the cosmos while leaving the passengers comfy and unscathed in their listening chairs.

Gigantic centipedes born of genetic engineering and experimental pesticides and fertilizers storm a small farming community, running down and devouring everything on two legs, in this exciting new tale of suburban terror and mayhem.

With great power comes great responsibility. And on modern day Earth, if great power doesn’t play nice with greater powers it gets something else too: Deadly persecution. After all, the stakes are no less than absolute control of every living being on the planet. Roman Novato and Chalice Rayne can communicate telepathically, sense imminent danger, and more now, but when those accidentally inherited talents are set against shape-shifting alien assassins, invisible drones, devastating particle beam satellites, and the world’s hidden ruling elite the game isn’t exactly fair.

Todd Markway's fate was laid out for him that chilly February 29 when he was born. The Hat Man was coming for him; it was just a matter of time. And no one can stop the Hat Man - no one, that is, but a bunny. Todd's spirit guardian has kept him alive, defending him from the most fearsome "shadow being" in the spectral world on Markway's fourth and eighth birthdays. But the rabbit, Galbey, is gone, and the most critical birthday of all is coming up - Todd's 12th. And this time, he's on his own.

Take a freakishly harrowing journey with an ordinary person who comes to realize that his nightmares have manifested as a power of sorts...though his "gift" is anything but welcome as it stalks and murders at will. The powers of the mind and the campfire scare stories of childhood merge in Tickles: A Little Bedtime Horror Story, creating a monstrous darkness

Stepping up the horror considerably from previous installments in the Krakenstein saga, this fifth tale, and the second in the The Next Regeneration trilogy, sees the return of first trilogy heroes Jeremiah Savage, Key Sharlayne, and even Key's brilliant scientist half-sister, Dr. Deanna Sharlayne, who have just been evicted from the ancient facility that is Emerald Island by its hardly cordial creators.

Nakedman Race Harleson runs for US president - and runs interference between scoffing, scared humanity and an intervening alien race of contractor/mercenaries who have clamped down on the plutocratic pharaohs of the modern age. In the thrilling conclusion of Volume One of Nakedman: Uncomfortable Tales of Epic Adventure, Race and Ellen both end up having to risk everything for a mere outside chance to save the world...and not just from alien invaders.

The creator of The Krakenstein Chronicles follows up his first two SF/fantasy/horror/comedy short story collections, A Year in the Borderlands and Playing with Reality, with a third heaping helping of generally freakish tales from the other side of existence. Wild narratives of mystery, horror, awe - and even some laughs - are assembled here together for the first time. Lost Radio brings you the timelessly eerie and thrilling stories of things that very well could be - whether you want them to exist or not.

Race Harleson is up against it big time: The world is stripping naked, and it seems to be some form of viral madness. He ends up shot into space with a couple of sharp veteran astronauts...and a new sidekick, Dark Matter. Physics super-prodigy Crayten "Cray-Cray" Hobbs has juiced himself up so much that he can alter the essence of matter to his rather freewheeling will, so Race is understandably both awed and annoyed by the hyper young man, and he's stuck keeping his fingers crossed that the people who sent them up there knew what they're doing.

On far distant Gavelin, Leks and Quinara - scrappy human survivors of a demonic plague that has all but wiped out their civilization - race against time in a perilous journey to the perceived safety of the cradle of their society: the great coastal city of Amaline on the Sandarine Sea. Along the way, they meet horrifying carnivorous mud monsters, sentient human-hunting thunderstorms and an outcast bio-alchemist with a warped sense of humor whose bizarre menagerie features a panther-like beast made of living metal.

Aurora Hayes is probably the most agreeable and least judgmental of the Roads Unlimited driving team, but even she has her limits. When something that sure looks like the scary bipedal "myth" called the chupacabra races in out of the darkness in North Texas and jumps aboard her rig, Aurora finds herself stuck with the edgy, bug-eyed little monster on a long haul across the South to Florida. But dealing with the freakish creature, which appears to have no language and seems determined to stay with the truck, is just the warm-up: The thing's master arrives.

In a quartet of tribute tales from theses authors that both idolize and have recently encountered Hank's works, the voice of the poet laureate of the gutter is restored, so that once more the good duker can take a swing.

Just two utterly bizarre days ago, Hylas Bond wouldn't have believed the famous-infamous "Men in Black" even existed. Yet there he is, dodging killer drones on a ridiculously long shot cross-country scramble with a quite possibly crazed girl who's got two dead ones in the trunk of her car. Coby Forge is on a mission, not that she knows where she's going, and once Hylas rear-ends her car and pops that lid open in the middle of a slushy highway with morning traffic zipping past - well, she's got no choice, does she?

In these two "inspired by actual accounts" but still entirely fictional tales, a pair of challengers of the unknown go one on one with two of the world's most famous mysterious legends. In "Beneath Still Waters", a lake-dwelling giant creature draws a devoted paranormal investigator into a staggering encounter that goes far beyond a blurry photo of something with a long neck and humps passing by a Loch Ness excursion boat.