Rules of ‘48 by Jack Cady

In a city with roots deep in the Confederacy, five men will endure seven deadly weeks that forever alter their perceptions of the world. For redneck auctioneer Wade and his son Jim, pawnbroker Lucky, auction grip Lester, and Howard, a kid from Jackson Street, the haunting events transpiring over the summer of 1948 will irrevocably mark their understanding of race and responsibility in postwar America.

Laconic, nuanced, and stylish, master storyteller Jack Cady’s depiction of the mid-century American South is fraught with racial tension, precise detail, and the delicate, figurative ghosts of the actions and inactions of the past.

From Jack Cady, award-winning author of The Hauntings of Hood Canal and Ghosts of Yesterday comes the astonishing final novel Rules of ‘48, a stirring semi-autobiographical examination of changing social conventions and the development of the American conscience in the aftermath of the greatest war in history.

House of Windows by John Langan

When a young writer finds himself cornered by a beautiful widow in the waning hours of a late-night cocktail party, he seeks at first to escape, to return to his wife and infant son. But the tale she weaves, of her missing husband, a renowned English professor, and her lost stepson, a soldier killed on a battlefield on the other side of the world, and of phantasmal visions, a family curse, and a house… the Belvedere House, a striking mansion whose features suggest a face hidden just out of view, draws him in, capturing him.

What follows is a deeply psychological ghost story of memory and malediction, loss and remorse. This unnerving tour de force, exploring the literary haunted house, from Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft to today, incorporates family trauma, abstract art, literary criticism, the occult Dickens, and the war in Afghanistan. From John Langan (Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters) comes House of Windows, a chilling novel in the tradition of Peter Straub, Joe Hill, and Laird Barron.

Eclipse Three edited by Jonathan Strahan

To observe an eclipse is to witness a rare and unusual event. Under darkened skies the sun becomes a negative image of itself, its corona transforming the landscape into a strange space where anything might happen, and any story may be true…

In the spirit of classic science fiction anthologies such as Universe, Orbit, and Starlight, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year) presents the non-themed genre anthology Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here you will find stories where strange and wonderful things happen–where reality is eclipsed by something magical and new.

Continuing in the footsteps of the multiple-award-nominated anthologies Eclipse One and Eclipse Two, Eclipse Three delivers new fiction by some of the genre’s most celebrated authors, including Karen Joy Fowler’s story of a family’s desperation and a rebellious young woman’s strange incarceration; Ellen Klages’s fable of a practical girl, an unusual tortoise, and an ancient mathematical puzzle; Pat Cadigan’s story of a mysterious photograph and two friends’ journey through space and time in order to solve its riddle; Jeffrey Ford’s tale of a legendary sword imbued with the power to turn flesh to coral, and of the artist that wields it; Daniel Abraham’s story of divine providence, sacred oaths, and the omens that indicate whether a man is fit to be king; and Caitlin R. Kiernan’s chronicle of an astronaut whose memories of a lover lost to an alien intelligence haunt her.

How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce

William Heaney is a man well acquainted with demons. Not his broken family – his wife has left him for a celebrity chef, his snobbish teenaged son despises him, and his daughter’s new boyfriend resembles Nosferatu – nor his drinking problem, nor his unfulfilling government job, but real demons.

Demons are real, and William has identified one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven smoky figures, dwelling on the shadowy fringes of human life, influencing our decisions with their sweet and poisoned voices.

After a series of seemingly unconnected personal encounters, with a beautiful and captivating woman met in the company of an infuriating poet, a troubled and damaged veteran of Desert Storm with demons of his own, and an old school acquaintance with whom he shared a mystical occult ritual, William Heaney’s life is thrown into a direction he does not fully comprehend. Past and present collide. Long-dormant choices and forgotten deceptions surface. Secrets threaten to become exposed. To weather the changes, William Heaney must learn one thing: how to make friends with demons.

Madness of Flowers by Jay Lake

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter.

Meanwhile, the deadly political struggles in the City Imperishable take a turn for the worse, and Imago must use every ounce of his cleverness and guile in order to maintain power against the vengeful machinations of the corrupt assemblage of Burgesses, not to mention preserve his own life. Political intrigue, adventure, and all-out war await the principles and inhabitants of the City Imperishable. Though it all, the City may endure, but none will remain untouched by the Madness of Flowers…

In the tradition of Perdido Street Station, City of Saints and Madmen, and The Etched City, Campbell Award-winning author Jay Lake returns to the decadent urban fantasy first glimpsed in Trial of Flowers. The trial may be over, but the madness is just beginning…

The Best Horror of the Year Volume One edited by Ellen Datlow

What frightens us, what unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw is tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the twenty-one stories and poems included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year.

Legendary editor Ellen Datlow (Poe: New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe), winner of multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, joins Night Shade Books in presenting The Best Horror of the Year, Volume One.