Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk!

Edited by Lois H. Gresh. Cover art by Steve Upham.

Welcome to Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk!, a smorgasbord of stories by, among others, finalists and winners of the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Arthur Ellis Award. Within these pages you’ll find stories that fuse all the elements of dark fiction.

Sometimes, darkness is internal, generated by our minds or bodies. Sometimes, it’s due to external devices, such as monsters, shadows, or lurking dangers. A dark fantasy story requires an otherworld, an imaginary realm, a supernatural story requires a creature or event that exists beyond our natural universe, and a dark science fiction story revolves around science gone bad.

Weird fiction lies on the boundaries of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. It creates a mood. At its best, it features dark, bizarre, and unexplained phenomena. Here, the monsters aren’t vampires, werewolves, or splatterpunk killers. Instead, something has violated the natural laws of reality, and the strange events of the story could happen. Darkness driven by the weird is particularly potent.

Within these pages are tales of horror, twisted science and fantasy, and the weird: something for every dark appetite. Included in Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk! are intensely weird stories, as well as traditional weird tales, dark science fiction, dark fantasy, and pure horror. Some of these stories will blow your mind. Others will just scare the hell out of you.

Contents:

• The Rest is Noise – Nicholas Kaufmann
• Beneath Their Shoulders – Norman Prentiss
• Ignis Fatuus – Scott David Aniolowski & T.E. Grau
• The Flea Circus – Cody Goodfellow
• The Corpse Detective – Darrell Schweitzer
• When the Stars Run Away – Ann K. Schwader
• Reign – Michael Marano
• Golden State – Lisa Morton
• Sidestep – Lynn Spitz
• Five-Star Review – David Sakmyster
• Little Bastards – John D. Haefele
• Gurrl UnDeleted – Nancy Kilpatrick
• Thirst – James Alan Gardner
• What Was Called – Nick Cato
• Faceless – Yvonne Navarro
• Death Eater – Christopher Fulbright
• Aunt Paloma – Mark McLaughlin
• Medieval Metaphysics – Robert M. Price