Four Summoner's Tales

Four terror-inducing novellas from acclaimed bestselling authors Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Christopher Golden, and Jonathan Maberry beginning with the premise: "A stranger comes to town, offering to raise the townsfolk's dearly departed from the deadfor a price." In Kelley Armstrong's "Suffer the Children," an acute diphtheria outbreak kills most of the children in an isolated village in nineteen-century Ontario. Then a stranger arrives and offers to bring the children back to life. He wants money, of course, an extravagant sum, but more importantly, but for each child resurrected, one villager must voluntarily offer his life... In David Liss's "The Good-Natured Man," a con man on the margins of eighteenth-century British society discovers a book that reveals the method for bringing the dead back to life. After considering just how far he would go to avoid bringing his violent father back, he realizes the real value of this book. Instead of getting people to pay him to revive their departed, he will get people to pay him notto... In "Pipers" by Christopher Golden, the Texas Border Volunteers wage a private war against drug smuggling by Mexican cartels in a modern-day South Texas town, complete with an indestructible army of the risen dead... In "Alive Day" by Jonathan Maberry, a US Army sergeant must dive into the underworld of modern-day Afghanistan to try and barter for the release of his team, never dreaming of the horrors that await him...

Kelley Armstrong is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series, Darkest Powers YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. David Liss is the author seven novels, most recently The Twelfth Enchantment. He has six previous bestselling novels, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of novels for adults and younger readers. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer.