  Cavalry officer Stephens wants to keep his troopers safe, but when he is pulled into the oldest conflict of them all, he must choose - to serve, or to die. Saloon-hand Jacob wants to live a quiet life, play his fiddle, and sink a few beers. But something has come to his town-something old, hungry, and far from quiet. Farmer Joe Clancy wants to keep his herd alive long enough to be able to sell them and save his farm. But first, he has to save his family, as death stalks the corrals. To fight the growing menace, the three men must confront their inner demons and an all too real evil, one that threatens the lives of everyone it touches. "I have become a big fan of Mr. Meikle, his books are always good and he is one hell of a storyteller." - Famous Monsters of Filmland  Ride the Dark Country is the new collection from Benedict J Jones, author of Pennies for Charon and Slaughter Beach. In these tales you'll find cowboys and mountain men, ranchers and gunslingers alongside shape-shifters, wendigoes and much more besides... Saddle up for a trip to the dark side.  Beware when the vampires come to town. When traveling actors recruited his wife for a plum role, Cody Wilson had no idea they would murder her. Twelve-year-old Willet Black was just as devastated the night the fiends slaughtered everyone he loved. Now Cody and Willet are bent on revenge, but neither of them suspects what they’re really up against. For the actors are vampires. Their thirst for human blood is insatiable. Even if word of their atrocities were to spread, it would take an army to oppose them. But it is 1885 in the wilds of New Mexico, and there is no help for Cody and Willet. The two must battle the vampires—alone—or die trying.  Just as legends and fragments of history from ancient Britain became the Arthurian tales we know―the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the Clantons and others, told and retold in innumerable stories and dramatizations, has became a great American myth. In Emma Bull's Territory, some of the mystery of that brooding, puzzling tale is accounted to the hitherto unrealized presence of magic. It is a story of power, of compulsion, and of consequences. If Roger Zelazny had written a western, or if Susanna Clarke had reimagined the myths and legends of the American West, the results might have been something like Territory. But only something like. Because nobody writes like Emma Bull.  One day every hundred years, a town appears, its location and character different every time. It is home to the greatest miracle a man could imagine: a doorway to Heaven itself. The town’s name is Wormwood, and it is due to appear on the 21st September 1889, somewhere in the American Midwest. There are many who hope to be there: travelling preacher Obeisance Hicks and his simple messiah, Soldier Joe; Henry and Harmonium Jones and their freak show pack of outlaws; the Brothers of the Order of Ruth and their sponsor Lord Forset (inventor of the Forset Thunderpack and other incendiary modes of personal transport); and finally, an aging gunslinger with a dark history. They will face dangers both strange and terrible: monstrous animals, predatory towns, armies of mechanical natives, and other things besides. Wormwood defends its secrets, and only the brave and resourceful will survive...  Legend. Outcast. Free Man. The natural enemy of every free man is his own government . . . He has gone by many names during his long life. Heretic. Rebel. Ransom. Today he is called Cantrell. A beleaguered man of awesome strength and extraordinary power, he is the last bastion of rugged individualism in a world where justice and liberty can no longer protect men like him. . . . and the natural enemy of every government is a free man. After centuries spent fighting the forces of evil and oppression, he has come to this small town in Arkansas to live in peace. But peace is nowhere to be found. Violent hate crimes tear the land apart. An ancient enemy from his distant past pits brother against brother. And the future of the free world rests with him, the lone wolf who can never be truly free now that he has become the hunted once again.  Dead in the West is the story of Mud Creek, Texas, a town overshadowed by a terrible evil. An Indian medicine man, unjustly lynched by the people of Mud Creek, has put a curse on the town. As the sun sets, he will have his revenge. For when darkness falls, the dead will walk in Mud Creek and they will be hungry for human flesh. The only one that can save the town is Reverend Jebediah Mercer, a gun toting preacher man who came to Mud Creek to escape his past. He has lost his faith in the Lord and his only solace is the whisky bottle. Will he renew his faith in himself and God to defeat this evil or will the town be destroyed? Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a "New York Times" bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.  Justice seeks a Stranger. In the Land of magic and shotguns, where Gods pit themselves against each other and man, Strangers are a breed apart – loners, angels, demons – who walk into the towns of Natives, taking what they want. A Native named Justice is pushed to far by a Stranger, and embarks on a quest to the furthest reaches of the Land, from the Frontiers to the Funeral Wastes; the Sudducee Plains to the Mainland Kingdoms. His journey will drag others along in it’s wake and will take him to death and beyond.  There’s things out there that you ain’t dreamed of. Like back-from-the-dead mountain men, green ghost mountain spirits, carrion stallion, time traveling mad scientists and zombified buffalo…just for starters. This weird western novella starts at a gallop and gathers momentum faster than a stampeding avalanche. You will never look at a severed head the same way again. I knew that Steve Vernon was a good writer when I found myself cheering for a decapitated head. – Adrienne Jones – author of Gypsies Stole My Tequila This is, simply put, the wildest western horror romp of recent years. In his new novella, "Long Horn, Big Shaggy," Steve Vernon has taken icons of the Wild West, combined them with elements of H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, and George Romero, and created something unique in both voice and scope that will stick with readers long after the tumbleweeds have rolled off down the path. – Cemetery Dance (David Niall Wilson)  The last of an ancient order of Jewish mystics capable of extraplanar travel, The Merkabah Rider roams a demon haunted American West in search of his renegade teacher. But as the trail grows fresher, shadows gather, and The Hour Of The Incursion draws near... Four novella episodes in one book. This ain't your grandpappy's old west. Fans of Steampunk will love this book!  There are monsters in the West. There is evil, lurking in the blood-soaked hills and bone-strewn plains. But there is also Hawthorne-scarred, enigmatic, deadly, driven by an all-consuming rage to seek out and destroy evil wherever he finds it. Without mercy. But how long can one man fight the demons before becoming one himself? HAWTHORNE: TALES OF A WEIRDER WEST features the stories "That Damned Coyote Hill," "The Long Black Train," "The Spider Tribe," "Bad Sanctuary," and "The Unholy" as well as an introduction by Western fiction legend James Reasoner.  The western-horror story is far older than what most of us would even consider “the west”. For generations the American Indians told dark tales of their own, of spider women, skin-walkers, cannibals, witch¬es, and thunderbirds. When white men ventured into the west, they learned some of these nightmarish stories from the natives—and they brought or created their own as well: tales told around campfires of mournful ghosts and vengeful spirits and terrible monsters native to the wild new land west of the Mississippi. That’s where Edge of Sundown comes in. This collection brings tales that visit the darker regions of the west, the places steeped in myth, legend, and blood. Meet the men and women who lived there—the monsters within and without. Make no mistake, there are more than a few gun-throwing hardcas¬es in these stories, but by and large our protagonists are ordinary folks caught up in very extraordinary circumstances. Most importantly, this is an anthology of western-HORROR tales, not western-fantasy. No tall tales here, no wink-and-a-nudge-as-it’s-all-good-fun safe betting. We’re looking to give you the creeps, fair and square, no fooling around. So right about now you should be checking to make sure your guns are loaded, that your holster is oiled, and you’ve got your hat cinched on tight.  When a man known only as The Deacon set up camp outside Rookwood, a murder of crows took to unnatural, moonlit flight. The crows came to Rookwood; trouble soon to follow. Things were already strange in that God-forsaken town, but no one could have predicted the forces and fates about to meet in a dust-bowl clearing in the desert. A Preacher. A Demon. An Angel. A Gunslinger. A bargain with the darkness was signed in blood, and broken, and as such deals usually do, it went south. Now the fate of lost lovers, faith healers, ancient Gods and the Devil himself collide in a circle of wagons tended by the damaged and deformed, the saved and the shorn. There's a power come to Rookwood, and this one-horse town is about to be transformed. Such deals are only made and broken…on Hallowed Ground. From Steven Savile, International bestselling author of Silver, The Last Angel, and The Sufferer's Song, and David Niall Wilson, Bram Stoker Award-winner David Niall Wilson, author of Deep Blue, This is My Blood, & Heart of a Dragon, comes a tale of the old west, magic, enlightenment and damnation readers have said is like Stephen King's The Gunslinger meets Daniel Knauf's Carnivale  Six-guns, blazing hooves, and the horrors that stalk the night. Everyone brought something from the old country. Grandfather's watch, and grandmother's china; great-grandfather's folklore, and great-great-grandmother's fairy tales. What is never discussed, however, are the undying characters of the folklore: nix and fairy, goblin and vampire, dragon and eldritch things who all came to America's shores in time with the rhyme of their tales. After Charlie's father is murdered by something impossible, he discovers a letter that leads him across the wild west. The man who wrote the letter promised to help, if things went wrong. And things could not go more wrong. His father's murderer is on his trail, materializing from lakes, rivers, and stray pools of water. He will not rest until Charlie has joined his father... Dead West: West of Pale is the first book in J. Patrick Allen's Dead West series. This novel picks up right where his Pulp Ark New Pulp Awards (2016) nominated short story, "Dragonfly Shadow," left off (featured in 18thWall Productions' From the Dragon Lord's Library: Volume One).  As the stranger rides into Jonestown, hoping to forget his past and forge a future worth living, he discovers that not all things are that simple. A terrible virus has taken over the town, turning most of the residents into flesh-eating zombies. Blaine, the mysterious stranger, has nothing more to lose. The West is about to get bloodier.  Black Quill Award Winner, Best Small Press Chill (2011) Nominee for the 2011 Best Novel Spectrum Award Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West's most dangerous outlaw gangs-the troop led by "Reverend" Asher Rook, ex-Confederate chaplain turned "hexslinger," and his notorious lieutenant (and lover) Chess Pargeter. Morrow's task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook's power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself. Magicians, cursed by their gift to a solitary and painful existence, have never been more than a footnote in history. But Rook, driven by desperation, has a plan to shatter the natural law that prevents hexes from cooperation, and change the face of the world-a plan sealed by an unholy marriage-oath with the goddess Ixchel, mother of all hanged men. To accomplish this, he must raise her bloodthirsty pantheon from its collective grave through sacrifice, destruction, and apotheosis. Caught between a passel of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook's witchery, and the ruthless calculations of his own masters, Morrow's only real hope of survival lies with the man without whom Rook cannot succeed: Chess Pargeter himself. But Morrow and Chess will have to literally ride through Hell before the truth of Chess's fate comes clear-the doom written for him, and the entire world.  No one knows where or when the mysterious rips will appear, but from them, Outlanders walk the earth, leaving chaos in their wake. Coyote, a charismatic bounty hunter, travels the land with her enigmatic partner, Caesar. Together –with the help of magic and technology—the unlikely duo tracks down these dangerous criminals from different worlds. Along the way, Coyote discovers a secret that threatens to shatter everything she believes about herself, her father, and her sworn enemy, James Westwood. Whether Outlander or inner demons, some things can't be solved with a six shooter.  A brutal and unflinching tale that takes many of its cues from both cinema and pulp horror, Wraiths of the Broken Land is like no Western you’ve ever seen or read. Desperate to reclaim two kidnapped sisters who were forced into prostitution, the Plugfords storm across the badlands and blast their way through Hell. This gritty, character-driven piece will have you by the throat from the very first page and drag you across sharp rocks for its unrelenting duration. Prepare yourself for a savage Western experience that combines elements of Horror, Noir and Asian ultra-violence. You’ve been warned. Zahler’s debut western novel, A Congregation of Jackals, was nominated for both The Peacemaker award by the Western Fictioneers and The Spur award by the Western Writers of America. Wraiths of the Broken Land promises to be the benchmark for gritty westerns. Zahler has been spearheading the genre's recent surge of popularity, but others quickly joined in to push mainstream penetration for dark westerns: Bone Tomahawk written and directed by S. Craig Zahler was quickly followed by The Revenant and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, after which Westworld and The Dark Tower entered production, culminating with 20th Century Fox deciding to make Wraiths... their followup to The Martian.  The place of the cowboy in fiction is wrapped up in violence and elegiac beauty. Their stories are underpinned by misery and threat. But in among the guns, knives and blood, there was love and hope and glory. The 20 tales between these covers offer a bizarre take on the myths of the Old West. You are as likely to meet a villain from the 21st century as a varmint from the 19th. There are monsters, real and imagined. There are ghosts and gangsters, masked men and marauders. There are showdowns and final sunsets. Above all there is the kind of awe that we all yearn for in our stories. Gutshot is a Smith & Wesson gripped by a skeletal fist, chambers loaded with alien ice, muzzle pointed at your heart . . .
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