Chris Wooding

When the students at Mortingham Boarding Academy find a group of strange, silvery beetles on school grounds they are excited, but when the beetles attack them and a mysterious virus starts spreading, a group of mismatched students must work together to survive.

In a world similar to Victorian London, Thaniel, a seventeen-year-old hunter of deadly, demonic creatures called the wych-kin, takes in an lost, possessed girl, and becomes embroiled in a plot to unleash evil on the world.

Once you get into the story, there's no way out. Everyone's heard the rumors. If you gather the right things and say the right words, you'll be taken to Malice, a world that exists inside a horrifying comic book. It's a world that few kids know about ... and even fewer survive. Seth and Kady think it's all a silly myth. But then their friend, Luke, disappears and suddenly the rumors don't seem silly after all. Malice is real. Malice is deadly. And...

Aren has lived by the rules all his life. He's never questioned it; that's just the way things are. But then his father is executed for treason, and he and his best friend Cade are thrown into a prison mine, doomed to work until they drop. Unless they can somehow break free. But what lies beyond the prison walls is more terrifying still. Rescued by a man who hates him yet is oath-bound to protect him, pursued by inhuman forces, Aren slowly accepts...

The Lazarus Serum can save your life. Bring you back from the dead. Only thing is, you came back ... different. You're a Pale. An outcast. It's the last thing Jed wants to happen to hiim. But then, Jed's just been hit by a car ... -- cover.

In this companion volume to "Gothic! ten original dark tales" discover why we fear the undead.