Filthy Beast — William J. Donahue

Is there hope for humankind? Monsters the size of skyscrapers terrorize the mainland. Psycho-killers lurk in the shadows with glistening blades and cracked smiles. Salivating shape-shifters tap bony fingernails against first-floor windows. Reduced to the point of irrelevance, once-powerful men now cower behind reinforced doors rimmed with deadbolts.In the nine gloomy tales of Filthy Beast: Fiendish Lullabies, come face to face with undersexed fish-monsters, hard-drinking demons, superhuman ninjas, incompetent werewolves and other absurd antiheroes. Hope, it seems, has joined the endangered species list.Take two parts horror, one part dark comedy and a pinch of er*tica, let them fester in a stagnant puddle and serve chilled. That's the recipe for Filthy Beast's fiendish fables of love, death, sex and biological weaponry-humanity at its very worst.