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Since Cherie Priest burst onto the speculative fiction scene, she's built a huge following through novels that have earned her accolades and the titles "The Queen of Horror" and "The High Priestess of Steampunk" at various times. A nominee for the Nebula, Hugo, and Goodreads Choice Awards and a winner of the Locus Award, Priest is also a master of the short form.

In her first collection of short fiction, Holy Terror: Stories by Cherie Priest, readers will be taken on haunting journeys that showcase Priest's unparalleled range. In an early story, "The October Devotion," William Miller's predicted mid-19th century apocalypse ends up with a girl discovering what might or might not be Lovecraftian salvation in the forest. A soldier brings a dragon home from World War II to east Tennessee in "The Immigrant." Two stories here take place in Priest's beloved Clockwork Century universe: "Reluctance," in which a teen veteran with a war injury lands his dirigible in a town that seems empty, only to end up in a race against time and zombies, and the novella "Clementine," following the adventures of Maria Isabella Boyd and Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey. Another novella, The Wreck of the Mary Byrd, weaves the story of a disappearing boat in 1870 in the words of the captain and some of the passengers... as well as an unforgettable villain. And there's so much more.

Holy Terror also features an introduction from New York Times' bestselling author Kevin Hearne, extensive notes on each story from Priest, and an exclusive new novelette, "Talking in Circles" that is sure to become a fan favorite. Get ready to hide under the covers, crack this volume open, and take a delicious trip to the dark side.

Best friends, big fans, a mysterious webcomic, and a long-lost girl collide in this riveting novel, perfect for fans of both Cory Doctorow and Sarah Dessen, & illustrated throughout with comics.

Once upon a time, two best friends created a princess together. Libby drew the pictures, May wrote the tales, and their heroine, Princess X, slayed all the dragons and scaled all the mountains their imaginations could conjure.

Once upon a few years later, Libby was in the car with her mom, driving across the Ballard Bridge on a rainy night. When the car went over the side, Libby passed away, and Princess X died with her.

Once upon a now: May is sixteen and lonely, wandering the streets of Seattle, when she sees a sticker slapped in a corner window. Princess X? When May looks around, she sees the Princess everywhere: Stickers. Patches. Graffiti. There's an entire underground culture, focused around a webcomic at IAmPrincessX.com. The more May explores the webcomic, the more she sees disturbing similarities between Libby's story and Princess X online. And that means that only one person could have started this phenomenon - her best friend, Libby, who lives.

Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo, she's become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member. But in the aftermath of a bloody battle, a dying cultist makes claims that cause Indigo to question her own origin and memories.

Nora's parents were killed when she was nineteen years old. She took the life insurance money and went off to explore the world, leading to her becoming a student of meditation and strange magic in a mountaintop monastery in Nepal...a history that many would realize sounds suspiciously like the origins of several comic book characters. As Nora starts to pick apart her memory, it begins to unravel. Her parents are dead, but the rest is a series of lies. Where did she get the power inside her?

In a brilliant collaboration by New York Times and critically acclaimed coauthors Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James A. Moore, and Mark Morris join forces to bring you a crime-solving novel like you've never read before.

Denise Farber has just moved back to New Orleans with her mom and step-dad. They left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and have finally returned, wagering the last of their family's money on fixing up an old, rundown house and converting it to a bed and breakfast.

Nothing seems to work around the place, which doesn't seem too weird to Denise. The unexplained noises are a little more out of the ordinary, but again, nothing too unusual. But when floors collapse, deadly objects rain down, and she hears creepy voices, it's clear to Denise that something more sinister lurks hidden here.

A violent storm washes a mysterious house onto a rural Pacific Northwest beach, stopping the heart of the only woman who knows what it means. Her grandson, Simon Culpepper, vanishes in the aftermath, leaving two of his childhood friends to comb the small, isolated island for answers - but decades have passed since Melissa and Leo were close, if they were ever close at all.

Now they'll have to put aside old rivalries and grudges if they want to find or save the man who brought them together in the first place - and on the way they'll learn a great deal about the sinister house on the beach, the man who built it, and the evil he's bringing back to Marrowstone Island.

Chuck Dutton built Music City Salvage with patience and expertise, stripping historic properties and reselling their bones. Inventory is running low, so he's thrilled when Augusta Withrow appears in his office offering salvage rights to her entire property. This could be a gold mine, so he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project.

The crew finds a handful of surprises right away. Firstly, the place is in unexpectedly good shape. And then there's the cemetery, about thirty fallen and overgrown graves dating to the early 1900s, Augusta insists that the cemetery is just a fake, a Halloween prank, so the city gives the go-ahead, the bulldozer revs up, and it turns up human remains. Augusta says she doesn't know whose body it is or how many others might be present and refuses to answer any more questions. Then she stops answering the phone.

But Dahlia's concerns about the corpse and Augusta's disappearance are overshadowed when she begins to realize that she and her crew are not alone, and they're not welcome at the Withrow estate. They have no idea how much danger they're in, but they're starting to get an idea. On the crew's third night in the house, a storm shuts down the only road to the property. The power goes out. Cell signals are iffy. There's nowhere to go and no one Dahlia can call for help, even if anyone would believe that she and her crew are being stalked by a murderous phantom. Something at the Withrow mansion is angry and lost, and this is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever. And it seems to be seeking permanent company.

The Family Plot is a haunted house story for the ages-atmospheric, scary, and strange, with a modern gothic sensibility to keep it fresh and interesting-from Cherie Priest, a modern master of supernatural fiction.

From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense, dark, and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre.

Take a road trip into a Southern gothic horror novel.

Titus and Melanie Bell are on their honeymoon and have reservations in the Okefenokee Swamp cabins for a canoeing trip. But shortly before they reach their destination, the road narrows into a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car.

Much later, Titus wakes up lying in the middle of the road, no bridge in sight. Melanie is missing. When he calls the police, they tell him there is no such bridge on Route 177...

Heaster Wharton is dead, and his passing might mean an end to hostilities between the Manders and the Coys. If the the elderly patriarch showed the kindness and foresight to split his land cleanly between his feuding descendants, then a truce could be arranged.

But his final request is a strange one, delivered across the country to the straggling remnants of his tribe. Representatives from both families must visit a cave at the edge of his property in the hills of Kentucky. There, he promised, they would find his last will and testament.

But there's more than paperwork waiting underground, as vindictive old Heaster was well aware.

In 1775, Daniel Boone and a band of axe-wielding frontiersmen struggled to clear a path through the Cumberland Gap into the heart of Bluegrass country, and they did not work unopposed. Hounded and harried by an astonishing monster, the axe-men overcame the beast by sheer numbers and steel. They threw its body into a nearby cave.

It was not dead. And now, it is not alone.

Crippled and outraged, for 100 years something terrible has huddled underground, dreaming of meat and revenge. But its newest callers are heavily armed, skeptical of their instructions, and predisposed to violence.

With their guns and their savage instincts, Heaster's grandchildren will not make for easy pickings.

In "Wishbones," a horrific composite creature with a long-lived past spooks some locals....

This short story was originally published in the anthology Aegri Somnia (2006), edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth. It can also be found in the anthology Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (2011), edited by Paul Tremblay, John Langan.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Raylene Pendle (AKA Cheshire Red), a vampire and world-renowned thief, doesn't usually hang with her own kind. She's too busy stealing priceless art and rare jewels. But when the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene finds him impossible to resist--even though Ian doesn't want precious artifacts. He wants her to retrieve missing government files--documents that deal with the secret biological experiments that left Ian blind. What Raylene doesn't bargain for is a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic, power-hungry scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black popping up at the most inconvenient moments, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.

Vampire thief Raylene Pendle doesn't need more complications in her life. Her Seattle home is already overrun by a band of misfits, including Ian Stott, a blind vampire, and Adrian deJesus, an ex-Navy SEAL/drag queen. But Raylene still can't resist an old pal's request: seek out and steal a bizarre set of artifacts. Also on the hunt is a brilliant but certifiably crazy sorceress determined to stomp anyone who gets in her way. But Raylene's biggest problem is that the death of Ian's vaunted patriarch appears to have made him the next target of some blood-sucking sociopaths. Now Raylene must snatch up the potent relics, solve a murder, and keep Ian safe--all while fending off a psychotic sorceress. But at least she won't be alone. A girl could do a lot worse for a partner than an ass-kicking drag queen--right?

Maria Isabella Boyd's success as a Confederate spy has made her too famous for further espionage work, and now her employment options are slim. Exiled, widowed, and on the brink of poverty...she reluctantly goes to work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago.

Adding insult to injury, her first big assignment is commissioned by the Union Army. In short, a federally sponsored transport dirigible is being violently pursued across the Rockies and Uncle Sam isn't pleased. The Clementine is carrying a top secret load of military essentials--essentials which must be delivered to Louisville, Kentucky, without delay.

Intelligence suggests that the unrelenting pursuer is a runaway slave who's been wanted by authorities on both sides of the Mason-Dixon for fifteen years. In that time, Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey has felonied his way back and forth across the continent, leaving a trail of broken banks, stolen war machines, and illegally distributed weaponry from sea to shining sea.

And now it s Maria's job to go get him.

He's dangerous quarry and she's a dangerous woman, but when forces conspire against them both, they take a chance and form an alliance. She joins his crew, and he uses her connections. She follows his orders. He takes her advice.

And somebody, somewhere, is going to rue the day he crossed either one of them.

The Ranger

On the island of Galveston, off the coast of southeast Texas, lies a hotel called the Jacaranda. In its single year of operation, two dozen people have died there. The locals say it's cursed. The Rangers say that's nonsense, but they know a man who might be willing to investigate. Horatio Korman crosses the water from the mainland, and hopes for the best.

The Nun

But the bodies pile up, and a hurricane is brewing up fast. One of the Jacaranda's guests sees time running out, so she seeks an authority of a different sort: a priest from El Huizache who is good at solving problems and keeping secrets. Eileen Callahan has a problem to solve, and a secret to keep. She crosses her fingers, and sends a message that could save them all.

The Padre

Juan Miguel Quintero Rios broke a promise to the Virgin, and so he was punished...but his intentions were pure, so he was also blessed. Now he walks the southwest with second sight and a tattoo across his back: ''Deo, non Fortuna''--By God, not chance. The former gunslinger crosses himself, and makes for the Jacaranda Hotel.

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy's husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she'll catch a train over the Rockies and-if the telegram can be believed-be greeted in Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father in Seattle.

Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought. Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard.

What ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated west, so Mercy can't imagine why they're so interested. Perhaps the mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has something to do with it?

Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who wants to see her father before he dies. But she'll have to survive both Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off the Dreadnought alive.

The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he's happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money's good, he doesn't think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly's first legal gig-a supply run for the Seattle Underground-will be paid for by sap money.

New Orleans is not Cly's first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early-but that was a decade ago, and he hasn't looked back since. Jo's still thinking about him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It's a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can't refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he's in for-or what she wants him to fly.

But he won't be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it.... If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River... If only it hadn't killed most of the men who'd ever set foot inside it.

Rector "Wreck'em" Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he'll be cast out out of the orphanage.

Wreck's problems don't stop there. He's been breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply--and he's also pretty sure he's being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know. Zeke Wilkes almost certainly died six months ago inside the walled city of Seattle. And it was Wreck who sent him in there.

Maybe it's only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can't take it anymore. He sneaks inside the city.

The walled-off wasteland is every bit as bad as he'd heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there are the monsters. Rector's confident that whatever attacked him was not at all human--and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold, and God help them all, it wasn't alone.

When the locals discuss the creatures, they do so in whispers. And they call them "The Inexplicables."

Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing.

Bardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help. Lincoln retired from leading the country after an attempt on his life, but is quite interested in Bardsley's immense data-processing capacities, confident that if people have the facts, they'll see reason and urge the government to end the war. Lincoln must keep Bardsley safe until he can finish his research, so he calls on his old private security staff to protect Gideon and his data.

Maria "Belle" Boyd was a retired Confederate spy, until she got a life-changing job offer from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton respects her work, despite reservations about her lingering Southern loyalties. But it's precisely those loyalties that let her go into Confederate territory to figure out who might be targeting Bardsley. Maria is a good detective, but with spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the greedy warhawks at bay?

Although she was orphaned at birth, Eden Moore is never alone. Three dead women watch from the shadows, bound to protect her from harm. But in the woods a gunman waits, convinced that Eden is destined to follow her wicked great-grandfather--an African magician with the power to curse the living and raise the dead.

Now Eden must decipher the secret of the ghostly trio before a new enemy more dangerous than the fanatical assassin destroys what is left of her family. She will sift through lies in a Georgian ante-bellum mansion and climb through the haunted ruins of a 19th century hospital, desperately seeking the truth that will save her beloved aunt from the curse that threatens her life.

The fields at Chickamauga, Georgia--America's oldest national military park--claimed 35,000 casualties during the Civil War. Any good guide will tell you that the grounds are haunted. The battlefield even has its own resident haunt, called Old Green Eyes for his tell-tale luminous gaze. It has long been said that Old Green Eyes intends no harm to those who respect the park. He is no menace, but a guardian of the dead. While he walks, the dead may sleep secure in the knowledge that their rest will be undisturbed. While Old Green Eyes patrols the battlefield, there is nothing to fear, for graves are not robbed and bones are not moved.

But suddenly a different phenomenon starts puzzling and frightening visitors, causing tours to be canceled and rangers to quit their jobs. These new ghosts are no illusions carved out of the low-rolling fog. One by one, the solemn-faced spirits in ragged uniforms show themselves, and one by one, they point a determined arm off into the distance. Why do the soldiers march again, and what has become of their unblinking custodian? The spirits need a go-between, someone who can speak to them, and for them.

Eden Moore is not interested.

But the ghosts aren't taking no for an answer.

Down by the river, the first to go missing were not much lamented. Disappearances of homeless men foraging through trash or nuisance skater kids who rolled their boards along the planked piers at night were not noteworthy enough to delay the city's development projects.

But deep beneath the riverbank, the evidence of a terrible crime has been covered up twice. When a TVA dam falters and the river swells, panic rises downtown. As the Tennessee creeps over its banks, it dredges up death from its own polluted bed. Twenty-nine victims of a long-ago slaughter walk when the water rises, patrolling the banks and dragging the living down to a muddy grave. No one remembers how they died and no one knows what they want.

Some secrets are never washed away. Instead they are patient, biding their time. They wait for the water to lift them so they can prowl for the justice that was denied them ninety years ago. But in ninety years a city's shape changes, and where justice can no longer be found, vengeance may have to suffice.

The city of Chattanooga is about to learn a terrible truth about the things a river can and cannot hide.... And reluctant medium Eden Moore may be the only one who can dissuade the twenty- nine bodies from adding hundreds of its citizens to their ghastly ranks.

Not Flesh Nor Feathers is a stand-alone sequel to Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities: Exhibits, Oddities, Images, and Stories (2011), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution (2012), edited by Ann VanderMeer.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Meet Leda Foley: devoted friend, struggling travel agent, and inconsistent psychic. When Leda, sole proprietor of Foley's Flights of Fancy, impulsively re-books Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt's flight, her life changes in ways she couldn't have predicted.

After watching his original plane blow up from the safety of the airport, Grady realizes that Leda's special abilities could help him with a cold case he just can't crack.

Despite her scattershot premonitions, she agrees for a secret reason: her fiancé's murder remains unsolved. Leda's psychic abilities couldn't help the case several years before, but she's been honing her skills and drawing a crowd at her favorite bar's open-mic nights, where she performs Klairvoyant Karaoke--singing whatever song comes to mind when she holds people's personal effects. Now joined by a rag-tag group of bar patrons and pals alike, Leda and Grady set out to catch a killer--and learn how the two cases that haunt them have more in common than they ever suspected.

When psychic travel agent Leda Foley is approached by a man searching for his sister, she quickly agrees to help. The missing woman disappeared with a vintage orange car, a fat sack of her employer's cash, and a grudge against her philandering husband--a man who never even reported her missing.

Meanwhile, Seattle PD detective Grady Merritt has temporarily misplaced his dog. While he's passing out bright pink "Lost" flyers at the Mount Rainier visitor's center, the wayward pooch appears--with a human leg in his mouth.

Thanks to DNA matching, Grady soon learns that Mr Leg has something to do with Leda's new client, and soon the two cases are tangled.

Theories abound, but law enforcement is low on leads. Lucky for Grady, Leda has a few ideas that might just be crazy enough to work. They'll need one yellow dog, a fair share of teamwork, and perhaps a bit of Klairvoyant Karaoke to piece the clues together.

The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny. But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean's depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness. This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

Birmingham, Alabama is infested with malevolence. Prejudice and hatred have consumed the minds and hearts of its populace. A murderer, unimaginatively named "Harry the Hacker" by the press, has been carving up citizens with a hatchet. And from the church known as Chapelwood, an unholy gospel is being spread by a sect that worships dark gods from beyond the heavens.

This darkness calls to Lizzie Borden. It is reminiscent of an evil she had dared hoped was extinguished. The parishioners of Chapelwood plan to sacrifice a young woman to summon beings never meant to share reality with humanity. An apocalypse will follow in their wake which will scorch the earth of all life.

Unless she stops it...

George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards multi-author shared-world universe has been thrilling readers for over 25 years. Now, in addition to overseeing the ongoing publication of new Wild Cards books (like 2011's Fort Freak), Martin is also commissioning and editing new Wild Cards stories for publication on Tor.com. In Cherie Priest's "The Button Man and the Murder Tree," it's Chicago in 1971, and Raul is a button man -- a professional ender of lives that the Mob needs ended. But something's odd about his most recent assignments. And then there are those mushrooms growing out of his skin...

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.