by Ronald Malfi
First published 2024
A detective with a sharp tongue investigates mysteries in a city where technology has transformed crime. Suburban vampires hunt their neighbors while maintaining perfect lawns. A cat wanders through streets, healing diseases with its touch until someone discovers the price. Movie stars die violent deaths, their secrets spilling across tabloid headlines. On a hidden moon base, skeletons tell stories of what went wrong in the darkness of space. A child makes a birthday wish that twists into nightmare. Houses consume their inhabitants while dream journals record horrors that bleed into waking life. A beach devours swimmers, their screams lost in crashing waves. Deep sea creatures rise from trenches to claim the surface world. Aliens descend on Earth, turning invasion into intimate terror. These fourteen worlds collide in moments where safety dissolves and characters face their final choices. Each story strips away the illusion that anyone can escape what hunts them.
Genres: science-fiction, mystery, horror, thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, intimate-terror, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Earth, Moon
Period: 21st-century
316 pages · Paperback · Lethe Press
Content warnings: body-horror, graphic-violence