Showing results by author "Steve Vernon" in All Categories

Meet Lady Macbeth - a high school librarian, ex-assassin, and part-time kelpie, whose mother wanted to name her Hemorrhoid at birth. Now she has to take on a Sea Hag - eight legs of Godzilla-ugly poured into a bucket full of meanness - with the help of a one-woman army named Rhonda, a 200-year-old sea captain, and a hunky lighthouse keeper who won't admit that he's dead as well. Kelpie Dreams is a funny, action-packed, shoot-em-up paranormal romance novel for folks who hate romance novels.

Olan Walker was first out of the slat truck and he could have slid through one of the slats. That man was nothing but lank. He was as lean as a dog in Lent. He was as lean as hunger poured thinner than a spoon full of prison soup. He looked like he ate nothing but wind and shadow all his life. If there was a king and queen of skinny; a duke of raw bone, an earl of gaunt, and a prince of scrawny - well Olan Walker was the lord high ruler of them all.

Ghost stories. Everyone knows one. Everyone can tell you one. Ghost stories haunt and linger and tantalize. Come on along with Steve Vernon - ghost story collector, writer, and teller - as he brings you eight of the creepiest yarns imaginable, stories that will creep up on you and teach you the fine old art of the booga-booga. Eight stories - including Steve's haunting salute to the road gang, "The Forever Long Road of Olan Walker". Walk down this road, if you'd like to. Or better yet - run!

“I hate cats more than any on the planet,” Grandpa always told us. “A dog you can take hunting and a moose you can shoot, but a cat only gets in the way and barfs on your carpet in the nighttime, most usually in the very spot that you step on first thing in the morning with your bare feet - and then you are left walking around the whole day long smelling of cat-barfed-on-footprints.”

It started out as a simple drive down a country road. Oh sure, Hillman was thinking about suicide. Oh sure, the dead woman is in his back seat was goading him on. What was the point? Why bother living? Who am I? It turns out Coyote has something to say about that. Coyote...and a troll.

In 1691 the town of Crossfall taught the witch Thessaly how to die. They beat her, they shot her, they hung her - but nothing worked. When they finally tried to bury her alive Thessaly set the field against them. The first man died as a gust of wind harrowed the meat from his bones. A root, flung like a dirty javelin, cut a second man down. Many more deaths followed. The Preacher Fell impaled the witch upon her very own broom, but she dragged him down into the field to wait for three more centuries.

Nobody really knew how long the old Funnel mansion had stood empty, waiting up there high on Carpenter's Hill like a child's forgotten lunch box, any more than anybody knew just how long that old cat had squatted in behind the screen of the front porch window. Three young boys are about to find out just exactly what the dark and horrifying secret is behind that cat. Only two of them will survive.

It happened in early September, the time of year when the city does its damndest to remember what heat was, just one more time before winter rocks on in ...

Will has got a secret. He keeps that secret hidden in the field out back behind his house. Sam and Artie will do just whatever Will tells them to do because they know what Will's secret is, and they will do anything to make sure that Will doesn't lose his temper on them.

Everything that you have read about Bigfoot is a lie. Everything that you have heard about Bigfoot is the truth! Enjoy three stories from the files of The Creep Squad - that pack of cryptids, legends, and nondescript rumors who fight crime and misjustice anywhere that you aren't looking. What if all the stories were true? What if Bigfoot really did exist? What if he depended upon people's belief in him for his very existence? What if he needed a job and the only one he was suited for was keeping the other legends in their place?

There is a big old sledding hill not more than two or three good snowballs' worth of distance from our home, just behind Hank Macabee's house. That hill was waiting for me and my brand new toboggan. It's one of those sneak-up kind of hills with a long slow ride down that picks up speed as it goes with a bump-hump at the end that you never see coming. The Christmas tree crashed through Hank Macabee's bay window. The tree stand clattered behind it and bounced with a clank on Hank's half-frozen front lawn. Hank came through the door with a shotgun in hand.

You can smell that long-dying aroma of Autumn in the air. Kids are talking trick or treat and the leaves are already screaming at you in red and yellow and deep golden rust as they prepare for one final parachute down into the dirt. The tombstones are talking amongst themselves and winter is hiding just around the corner. It is the time of the year when people draw around the wood stove and the campfire and whisper stories of death and omens and ghosts and things that don't even have a name.

Hammurabi Road is a dark redneck-noir novella of retribution, backwoods justice, and getting closer to a black bear than was ever dreamed possible. We start off with the eternal triangle - four men ride out in a pick-up truck; three in front and one duct-taped and bound in the back. It is a clear-cut case of Northern Ontario railroad vengeance, served up as cold as a frozen hunting knife. Fans of the movie and television series Fargo are going to love Hammurabi Road.

This isn't John Wayne. Lone Star is just a beer. Forget about the Alamo. Here are a trio of Texas tales of terror spun from the fevered brain of a nightmare-riding cowboy.

Texas Jack Page, on the eve of his 48th birthday, emptied his last seven cartons of books, placing them volume by volume across his front door - a one-man human cask of Amontillado interring himself inside a shining silver Airstream trailer sized aluminum tomb of tomes.

"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.

Tommy has come home from the city to visit his dad for one last time. He is determined to get to the bottom of all of the secrets that his dad has kept for hidden behind a smokescreen of storytelling and charm. It turns out that some secrets are best left untold.

So how does a kelpie, an ex-assassin high school librarian, Santa Claus, the Flying Dutchman, and the Krampus wind up going toe-to-toe with a Martian Expeditionary Force in a highly unidentifiable flying gravy bowl? Why don't you grab this audiobook and hear for yourself?

A short story involving a Celtic water spirit (the kelpie), an assassin, a librarian, a ghost, and a Santa-mugging street gang - a wild weird paranormal romance shoot-em-up story - written for listeners who hate to listen to romance.

Lucas Sawyer and his wife, Tamsen, find themselves marooned in the heart of a mid-19th century wilderness forest. They are rescued by Jonah Duvall, a mysterious woodsman abiding in this strange valley with his wife, Jezebel, and thier son, Cord. Brooding over all stands the Devil Tree - a huge evil jackpine that has summoned them to this valley to feed upon their collective emotions and their unnatural offspring. Part earth spirit, part elder demon - the tree is farming them.