Angels Scream

Some things are best left undisturbed... Necromancers, revenants, even a summoned demon or two - they're all in a day's work for the men of the Echo Team and their enigmatic leader, Cade Williams. But nothing could prepare them for the fury they are about to face... When a Jesuit priest wanders out of the New Mexico desert, telling wild stories about a secret research installation and bloodthirsty demons hunting through its halls, the Echo Team is called in to deal with the situation. Their orders - investigate the facility, determine exactly what happened there, and deal with any infernal presence that might exist. But the being they encounter there beneath the desert sands has found a way to break the bonds of Hell itself and doesn't plan on going back easily. This time, their foe might prove to be too much for even the best the Templars have to offer. Fans of the Dresden Files, Mercy Thompson, and Jane Yellowrock will love this hard-hitting dark fantasy adventure that pits modern Templar knights against fallen angels and other supernatural enemies. If you like supernatural thrillers or dark fantasy with a touch of horror, this series is for you! Joseph Hutton, the New York Times bestselling author of Hunters Rise, presents the thrilling new Echo Team novel featuring Knight Commander Cade Williams and the men of the modern Templar Order. Don't miss it!

Eighteen stories of Christmas horror from bestselling, acclaimed authors including Scott Smith, Seanan McGuire, Josh Malerman, Michael Koryta, Sarah Pinborough, and many more. That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. Marley untying the bandage that holds his jaws together. The hideous children--Want and Ignorance--beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The heavy ledgers Marley drags by his chains. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Bestselling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

Pearls of Wisdom is a story about life and death. It is a story of one man's path to finding love, happiness and a fulfilled life. Aaron Long had died of terminal lung cancer. His loving wife Caitlin was grief stricken and had delayed gathering his personal belongings. Finally, after two weeks of grieving, she decided it was time to complete this task. While she was going through his personal belongings, she found an envelope with a note and safe deposit key. The note described a journal he had written, just before his death, and placed in a safe deposit box. Caitlin Long went to the safe deposit box and retrieved her husband's journal. As she began reading the journal, she soon realized it was his final gift to her. Pearls of Wisdom is about self discovery and self fulfillment. The importance of human relationships cannot be understated when attempting to have a happy and fulfilled life. The story deals with topics that people face during their lifetime. They may face some or all of the following topics: parental influence, success and failure, love, race, war, suicide, marriage and children, education, health and eventually death. Pearls of Wisdom is a story of love, hope and living life to its fullest.

Exploring right and wrong and good and evil on the mean streets of New York City, author Michael Marra presents a second collection of twelve short stories in When Angels Cry . Drawn from Marras experiences growing up in New York City, the narratives illustrate that there is redemption among all of lifes murder, corruption, betrayal, passion, and greed. In the selection More Than a Cloud, the family of a former boxer waits expectantly to hear the outcome of his liver transplant. In The Confession, Father Murphy has heard everything during confessions throughout his twenty-six years at Saint Rosalies Church in a crime-filled area in Brooklynuntil two men separately confess to the same brutal murder of a family of five. In The Piano Man the Nassau County Police Department investigates the murders of young women whove been garroted with piano wire. When Angels Cry provides insight into lifes stark realities, but also shows there are bright spots in the darkness among us.

Think of human emotion as a geography, with peaks of pleasure and valleys of pain. Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy. Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy—of xenocide. They will kill. And they will revel in it. Welcome to the world of Scream. Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the enslavement or death of entire races. But Trelayne falls in love with Philomela, a Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug. Does he love her for her beauty, for the drug she gives him, from guilt for what he has done to her people? And does she love truly him as she swears? Or is he simply her only hope for freedom, for her and her entire race? Forced to choose between freedom and love, what will they do? "...a multi-layered tale about a circus that features a pair of ‘angels’ who have the ability to produce a drug that produces pleasure based on intensity of emotion. Factor in that the owner of the circus is in love with one of the angels as well as addicted to the drug she produces, and the story quickly becomes one that holds the reader’s attention until the very end." —SpecFicWorld "Smith describes a disturbingly plausible military application for the narcotic ... The basic concept behind the drug strikes me as one of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven't heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here." —Strange Horizons "...remind[ed] me of the reasons I love the author’s writing: his characterisation, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption."—SF Crowsnest Reviews "A visceral work [...] a true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking."—Café de Ontem "The story has so many layers that I'm still sorting them out. And like an onion, I'm not sure if I'll ever find the final layer."—Tangent Online "A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: 'They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.' (A++)"—Fantasy Book Critic "Scream Angel was especially horrifying and compelling, and I wound up re-reading it again after I had finished the book."—Fluidity of Time

Though it may seem a bit complicated, the story is simple, and when all the pieces are laid out, it is plain to see where it all began. It started with one single human by the name of Tane MacGregor; one single, officially insane, homeless dust rag of a man. He occasionally caught glances from passing strangers as he swung his feet rhythmically from the drawbridge over the calm waters of Spa Creek, and he was often found in the company of angels. As it was said, MacGregor was seen as the glue, the string binding all the events and beings which created a rather remarkable occurrence in the soft, beautifully adjacent, scenic towns of Annapolis and Eastport and, in particular, about the small Eastport Drawbridge over Spa Creek, spanning and dividing the two. Now, as the story would be told and retold in most homes and taverns around the Chesapeake for many years, it was too easily called coincidence. True, it began at a certain time with a certain person, in a certain situation, accompanied by an incredible series of events, people, celestial beings, lawyers, homeless schizophrenics, ghosts, God, junk food, and small deviations in time and space, with waving definitions of good and evil, all coming together in a perfect harmonic mix but coincidence?

In Antarctica, an alien artefact from before the dawn of human history is about to be released… Ever since Lauren and the rest of the team activated the Resonancy Generator near Cuba, the radio signature of our planet known as Earth Song has been changed forever. But it’s raised as many questions as it answered, including why the signal didn’t revert to normal after nearly all the micro minds were all awoken. Could it be there is something else coded into the Earth Song signal and whose purpose hasn’t yet been fulfilled? And if so, does this relate to the buried Angelus secret that lies at the heart of all micro minds? As the team works hard to discover the truth, it soon also becomes apparent that key data is missing thanks to the destruction of many of the micro minds by the Overseers. In a desperate attempt to seek help to understand the true purpose of the broadcast, Lauren heads back to Jodrell Bank to enlist the help of her old friend and boss, Steve Andrews. Working closely with scientists around the world, they must put together the clues and find a way to fully activate the encrypted Earth Song signal. The time has come for old hostilities to be forgotten and for new alliances to be forged. But even then, can the allies hold out long from the first wave of an attack to unearth the buried secret that holds all the answers to our world’s salvation? Earth Scream is the sequel to Earth Yell, and is part of the Multiverse Chronicles, following humanity’s struggle to survive across parallel universes.