The Beauty Of Death Vol 2

In each of these stories from some of greatest writers of horror and dark fiction, water plays the dual role of accomplice and executioner. With accidental drownings, irresistible calls of sirens from the deep, strange whisperings from household plumbing, faces of the dead in droplets of water, rabid fish, leviathan monsters, and more, these thirty-nine tales of death by water will make you think twice about taking that long-awaited cruise, going for a midnight swim, or taking your next shower. Stories by: Joanna Parypinski, Lucy Taylor, Dona Fox, Eric J. Guignard, Lucy Snyder, Stephen Gregory, Daniel Braum, Simon Bestwick, Peter Straub, Lisa Mannetti, Daniele Bonfanti, Ramsey Campbell, Gregory L. Norris, Michael Bailey, Marge Simon, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Frazer Lee, Paolo Di Orazio, Dennis Etchison, John Palisano, Brian Evenson, Michael Hanson, Edward Lee, Tim Waggoner, Gene O'Neill, Jonah Buck, David J. Schow, Anthony Watson, Bruce Boston, Michael A. Arnzen, Adam Nevill, John Langan, Alessandro Manzetti, Clive Barker, Lisa Morton, Jodi Renee Lester, Jeremy Megargee, Nicola Lombardi, Adam Millard. Edited by: Alessandro Manzetti & Jodi Renee Lester

WELCOME TO THE MASQUERADE 2020 was a reality horror show. And like most obnoxious entertainment reality shows, this one had its own idiosyncratic rules and penalties. Call it The Big Lockdown. We were forced to go to ground, to hide in our holes. Some went underground and never came back. Uncertainty ruled because the rules kept changing. Were we following the science or the mad scientists? Was the light at the end of the tunnel the fiery mouth of hell? We couldn’t say for sure, so we ventured out for food, booze and sundries like scavengers in a slow-motion apocalypse, keeping our distance from fellow human beings because you never knew who might be carrying that heavy viral load. And everywhere we went, we went behind the mask. So, it became obvious: The theme of our offering of extreme horror tales from 2020 had to be Masquerade. Our masquerading storytellers nevertheless did what they do best. They went deep into the belly of the beast and sent up fictions reflective of these “trying” times. Their stories peel away the masks (or in some cases, the skin) to reveal the inner workings of darkest hearts and minds and deeper fears. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Nipples In Dad’s Tool Box - Ronald Kelly Going Green - Christine Morgan Whiskey To The Wound - Rachel Nussbaum /thestrangethingwebecome - Eric LaRocca Hey Valentine - Amanda Cecelia Lang In Subspace, No One Can Hear You Scream - Hailey Piper The Pogonip Fog - Sean Patrick Hazlett Gunfire And Brimstone - Alicia Hilton The Happiest Man In The World - Matthew Brockmeyer Synaesthete - Melanie Harding-Shaw Full Moon Shindig - Patrick C. Harrison Iii The Drinking-Horn - Christine Morgan Otto Hahn Speaks To The Dead - Octavia Cade All The Stars In Her Eyes - Deborah Sheldon The Village - Matias F. Travieso-Diaz The Smell Of Night In The Basement - Wendy N. Wagner The Saint - Alessandro Manzetti Her Wounded Eyes - Robert Guffey

The sudden death of Mishima has thrown everyone trapped in this strange facility—but most of all his former student Nao—into despair. They have no choice but to keep searching together for some way to escape, but paranoia and doubt are beginning to take hold of them...

MACHINE OF DEATH tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out.

If a machine could predict how you would die, would you want to know? This is the tantalizing premise of This Is How You Die, the brilliant follow-up anthology to the self-published bestseller, Machine of Death. THIS IS HOW YOU DIE Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death The machines started popping up around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn't give dates or specific circumstances-just a single word or phrase. DROWNED, CANCER, OLD AGE, CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. And though the predictions were always accurate, they were also often frustratingly vague. OLD AGE, it turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or being shot by an elderly, bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machines held onto that old-world sense of irony in death: you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does. This addictive anthology--sinister, witty, existential, and fascinating--collects the best of the thousands of story submissions the editors received in the wake of the success of the first volume, and exceeds the first in every way.

Is the affirmation or intensification of life a value in itself? Can life itself be thought? This book breaks new ground in religious and philosophical thinking on the concept of life. It captures a moment in which such thinking is regaining its force and attraction for scholars, and the relevance of thought to social, cultural, political and religious dilemmas about how and why to live. Bringing together original contributions by highly distinguished authors in the field of Continental philosophy of religion, including John D. Caputo, Pamela Sue Anderson, Philip Goodchild, Alison Martin and Don Cupitt, this book has a distinctiveness based on its refusal to sit easily within either secular philosophical or theological approaches. The concept of life mobilizes a thinking that crosses narrow disciplinary boundaries, whilst retaining philosophical rigour. Three sections explore the various dimensions of the question of life: The Politics of Life'; 'Life and the Limits of Thinking'; and 'Life and Spirituality'. This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers in the humanities, particularly to philosophers, theologians, cultural theorists and all those interested in philosophical or theological debates on the concept of life.

The polarization in the Church today can be traced back to a more fundamental crisis in theology, one which has failed to connect our mundane experiences and the mysteries of the Christian faith with the person of Jesus Christ. Ecclesial discourse on the so-called ‘hot- button issues’ of the day too often take place without considering the foundation and goal of the Church. And this is unfortunately due to a similar tendency in the academic theology that informs that ecclesial discourse. In short, much of post-conciliar Catholic theology is adrift, floating aimlessly away from the center of the Christian faith, who is Christ. The Center is Jesus Christ Himself is a collection of essays which anchor theological reflection in Jesus Christ. These diverse essays share a unified focal point, but engage with a variety of theological subdisciplines (e.g., dogmatic, moral, Biblical, etc.), areas (e.g., Christology, Pneumatology, missiology, etc.), and periods (e.g., patristic, medieval, and modern). Given the different combinations of sub-disciplines, areas, and periods, theology is susceptible to fragmentation when it is not held together by some principle of unity. A theology in which the person of Jesus Christ serves as that principle of unity is a Christocentric theology. Together, the essays illustrate not only what Christocentric theology looks like, but also what the consequences are when Christ is dislodged from the center, whether by a conspicuous silence on, or by a relativization of, his unique salvific mission. The volume is published in honor of Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at Boston College, Rev. Dr. Robert P. Imbelli, who dedicated his teaching and writing to bringing Christ back to the center of Catholic theological discourse.