Adrian Ludens

Collected together for the first time, the best weird fiction from Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial weird fiction magazine! Only the very best weird fiction has been hand-picked from the Morpheus Tales archives to create the fifth collected volume of the magazine Christopher Fowler calls "edgy and dark". Featuring fiction by David Lear, Brockton McKinney, Lee Clark Zumpe, Robert Sagirs, Sean Logan, Adrian Ludens, Candra Hope, Ed Plotts, Glen Garrick, Matthew Piskun, Deborah Walker, Paul Johnson-Jovanovic & James Brooks Anthony Baynton, Sharon Baillie, Matt Leyshon, Matthew Acheson, Kyle Hemmings, James Gabriel, Gary Budgen. Established horror best-sellers rub shoulders with rising stars and newcomers in this diverse collection of short weird fiction.

In this book, you will be introduced to twenty newly-collected encounters with darkness, a tangled forest of stories readers of the macabre and strange will eagerly get lost in. A man traveling cross-country is shocked to find the same mysterious figure waiting for him at each new destination in "The Runner, Stranded." A pioneer girl loses her hearing after an arcane ritual yet learns faith can move mountains in "Blind Faith." An angry man pushes the bounds of his own sanity by entombing the young son of a former coworker in "Inside a Refrigerator." Learn a startling truth behind the Mothman legend, how Jack the Ripper relocated to the Yukon during the Gold Rush, and what drove a tortured author named Poe to his early demise. Here are combined new, never-before-released stories with recently published works into a collection designed to flow from the pages into your fingers and hold you tight as you are transported into the emotions and fears of fully-fleshed characters and their anguished tales. You who revel in the strangely mystical and shockingly uncomfortable will certainly delight in the dark mass presented within these pages. And you won't regret a single word.

Thirteen newly collected encounters with darkness from Adrian Ludens, the author of the collections Ant Farm Necropolis and Cobwebs: Tales of Dread and Disquiet. Margo lives in a society where people remove organs and amputate limbs to celebrate growing older. Her world is shattered when her new boyfriend makes a shocking request in "Reduced to Tears." The trickster god Iktomi helps, hinders, and terrorizes a pioneer youth who's trying to solve the gruesome murders of a neighboring family in "The Sodbuster and the Spider." In the weird western novelette "Bottled Spirits," Truman Bonner sets out to rescue his wife, Helena, from ruthless outlaws and personal demons. He and his son, Isaac, face a series of harrowing supernatural ordeals and before the family is reunited, more than one of them may have made a deal with the devil. These, and ten other macabre stories, wait within.

In his fourth collection of dark fiction, Adrian Ludens takes readers on a series of macabre misadventures into the past, present, and future. Eighteen newly-collected stories from the author of Ant Farm Necropolis and When Bedbugs Bite.

Adrian's third published collection is finally available in print again after several years. Twenty macabre stories about death from the author of the collections Bottled Spirits and The Tension of a Coming Storm.

A collection of previously published individual Grave Markers that includes Dominic Stabile's "Full Moon in the West," Adrian Ludens' "Bottled Spirits," and S. L. Williams' "The Dance." Full Moon in the West: Juan "Tezcat" Medina is about to take the law into his own hands. Having lost his wife and daughter to a gang of outlaws, he's been given the chance to have them back with him. All he has to do is kill the six men who robbed him of his family. But there's something different about this gang of outlaws, something Tezcat isn't aware of until it's too late and he's forced into a showdown with evil. Bottled Spirits: Truman Bonner is used to battling personal demons, but an encounter with a parasitic imp leaves him shaken to the core. He locks the imp in a secret cell beneath Deadwood, hoping never to encounter the evil entity again. Then Truman's wife disappears from their homestead after a late-night argument, and Truman and his son, Isaac, set out to bring her safely home. Confronted by a series of harrowing supernatural ordeals, the trail leads them back to the imp's macabre prison. Casualties mount, innocence is lost, and before the family is reunited, more than one person will have made a deal with the devil. The Dance: One wish and Blaze can have anything her heart desires -- no strings attached. She knows this is too good to be true, but the temptation proves to be too great for the young woman who only wants to dance. Because of her background, she knows she'll never be able to afford proper lessons and the opportunities that come with, but all that could change with just one wish. What Blaze is about to learn, however, is that despite what she's been told, all things have a price. But is it a price she's willing to pay?

"This is the kind of book Hitchcock's face used to appear on. When Bedbugs Bite is the certified antidote for stories in which it takes characters 12,003 words to say, 'Hello.' Think of the original Captain Zinger, Fredric Brown, only nastier, much, much ... I mean, really nasty "-MORT CASTLE, Multiple Bram Stoker Award(R) winner, as editor (With Sam Weller) of Shadow Show: Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury) and as author of New Moon on the Water." Every story in Adrian Ludens' When Bedbugs Bite is an itch under the skin you'll scratch to get at, but not without leaving a few scars." -RENA MASON, Bram Stoker Award(R) winning author of The Evolutionist, and East End Girls. Nineteen tales of horror, mystery, dark fantasy, and supernatural suspense. The mysterious allies of a Civil War soldier demand a gruesome form of payment in return for their services; a 1930's film actress takes her role as the Angel of Death to extremes; and a man in search of the legendary Mothman makes an astonishing and deadly discovery. The end of the world begins with a surprise resurrection in a seedy carnival; a small-town funeral may provide the opportunity to dispose of an extra corpse; and a shape-shifting serial killer flees a vengeful witch across the Mexican desert. These stories and twelve more are included in the pages of this collection by the author of Bedtime Stories for Carrion Beetles.

A collection of fifteen dark tales, Gruesome Faces Ghastly Places brings together three South Dakota-based horror authors in one exclusive collection. Ride along on a nightmarish road trip to Nowhere in Doug Murano's "Pavement Ends." Witness a bizarre Old West exorcism in Adrian Ludens' "Ghost Soup." And tour a carnival freak show that is more than it seems in C. W. LaSart's "To Each His Own Hell." These tales and a dozen more are sure to thrill any reader of horror and supernatural suspense fiction." In the very best way, this collection...reminds me of the classic "Hitchcock Presents" paperbacks: The horror here initially seems familiar and then takes twists and turns, zigs, zags, and deadfalls into new and ultra-disturbing places. South Dakota will not likely add this title as a guidebook, but if you like traveling with fear as a companion, you'll want this collection of G and G."-Mort Castle, Bram Stoker Award-winning author and editor." These three voices, brought together here like a chorus, are part of the cutting edge of modern horror. Go ahead and turn the page. I dare you. But I will warn you. You're gonna get sliced up. And you'll love it while you bleed. They're that good."-Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author