Once upon a time, there was a writer named David J. Schow. One of his specialties was the tale of unsettlement, unease, looming fear, straight-up gross-out, unnerving spookiness, gallows-humor black satire, heart-rending loss, the conte cruel, the ironies of fate, and the seductive sorcery of the otherworldly—in a word, horror. This was by no means his only specialty. He wrote short stories, then novels, then TV, then movies, fiction and non.

DJStories covers four decades of his work. Thirty stories cover the entire spectrum of what you may find frightening: Monsters. Lovers. Spirits. Allies. Killers. The earthly and unearthly. The insane and the too-sane. The dead, the living and the in-between. Fictional folks who just might have an impact on your real, waking life. This story does not have a happy ending.