Winter Shadows And Other Tales

It is the winter of 1856, and Beatrice Alexander has just returned from Upper Canada to her home on the Red River, in what is now Manitoba. Her father's new wife is threatened by Beatrice and is driving a wedge into the family. Five generations later, in the same house, Christmas promises to be a miserable time. Cass's mother died of cancer and her father has remarried a woman with an attitude that's very hardto take. Miraculously, when Cass discovers the star brooch belonging to Beatrice, her visions lead her to Beatrice's diary. Is she really able to communicate with Beatrice across time, or is it all in her imagination? Margaret Buffie's great skill as a storyteller creates a splendid, engaging novel that offers readers a rich combination of fine history, suspenseful shifts in time, and unforgettable characters.

Traversing the borderlands between terror and lush, fantastic beauty, Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales, Angela Slatter’s eighth collection of short fiction, gathers twelve tales of horror, the uncanny, and dark lament. Here, you will find Lovecraftian terrors, Aussie vampires, fell magic, ancient wisdom, wayward children, and twisted moments of desire gone horribly wrong. From the otherworldly threats of “The Song of Sighs” and “Only the Dead and Moonstruck”, to the sand-blasted Australian outback of “Sun Falls”, to the shadowy secrets of the past in the “The Red Forest”, these tales are dark gems that will haunt you long after your first reading. Originally collected in a limited edition, this publication brings the first-rate chills and nightmarish turns of Slatter’s imagination to a broader readership for the first time. Shortlisted for the Aurealis Award upon its original release, now’s your chance to find out why Stephen Jones has dubbed Angela Slatter ‘a powerful and eloquent voice in horror fiction.’

Christmas will never be the same again... Eira, an Elven warrior with a grudge against humans, must come to terms with her dark past as she reluctantly works with a human boy who may be the key to stopping a conspiracy that could destroy the North Pole and the entire world - the Winter Shadows trilogy twists the classic tales of Christmas into a dark Modern Fantasy. For almost two thousand years, the world has been protected by a secret order. Saint Nicolas and his followers of the Northern Realm have quietly fought and given their lives from the shadows to protect the innocents from unspeakable nightmares. History only holds small shreds of the complete truths of their efforts and near-averted calamities. But now everything has changed. Saint Nicolas is gone. Eira, a peerless Elven warrior and a loner by nature, is the only survivor of an attack on her battalion after a reconnaissance mission goes horribly wrong. Amidst unrest in the Northern Realm, she is dispatched to the human world to locate Nic, a young man who may be the key to unraveling the causes behind the disappearances of Saint Nicolas and her fellow Elves. Eira is uneasy about working with a human, and Nic is reluctant to leave his mother behind as they face foreclosure and an uncertain future. As the body count rises back in the North and as they discover that they are being followed, Eira and Nic must come to terms with who they are and what matters most.

Nanabush. A name that has a certain weight on the tongue—a taste. Like lit sage in a windowless room or aluminum foil on a metal filling. Trickster. Storyteller. Shape-shifter. An ancient troublemaker with the power to do great things, only he doesn’t want to put in the work. Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow. He tells her he’s here to help her, save her. From what, exactly? Sure, her dad’s been dead for almost two years and she hasn’t quite reconciled that grief, but is that worth the time of an Algonquin demigod? Soon Hazel learns that there’s more at play than just her own sadness and doubt. The quarry that’s been lying unsullied for over a century on her father’s property is stirring the old magic that crosses the boundaries between this world and the next. With the aid of Nanabush, Hazel must unravel a web of deceit that, if left untouched, could destroy her family and her home on both sides of the Medicine Wheel.

Number 13 - lucky for horror fans! This award-winning anthology series has now reached its thirteenth spectacular volume and to mark the event, Steve Jones has chosen only the very best short stories and novellas by today's finest exponents of the horror genre. Contributors to this volume include: Gala Blau, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles Grant, Glen Hirshberg, Chico Kidd, Nancy Kilpatrick, Paul J. McAuley, Conrad Williams. Also featuring the most comprehensive overview of the year, a fascinating necrology and a list of useful contacts, this is the one book that all lovers of the supernatural and psychological terror will want on their shelves.

This story deals with a deeply-felt unrequited love which has a deep and corrosive effect on the lives of its principal characters.A love which often finds its ultimate fulfilment and redemption in death.

In Isak Dinesen's universe, the magical enchantment of the fairy tale and the moral resonance of myth coexist with an unflinching grasp of the most obscure human strengths and weaknesses. A despairing author abandons his wife, but in the course of a long night's wandering, he learns love's true value and returns to her, only to find her a different woman than the one he left. A landowner, seeking to prove a principle, inadvertently exposes the ferocity of mother love. A wealthy young traveler melts the hauteur of a lovely woman by masquerading as her aged and loyal servant. Shimmering and haunting, Dinesen's Winter's Tales transport us, through their author's deft guidance of our desire to imagine, to the mysterious place where all stories are born.