Best of
Gothic-Horror

2019

The Lost Ones


Anita Frank - 2019
    Some houses are never at peace. England, 1917  Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at her imposing country mansion, Greyswick – but she arrives to discover a house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion.Before long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella – sobbing in the night, little footsteps on the stairs – and as events escalate, she finds herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.Aided by a wounded war veteran, Stella sets about uncovering Greyswick’s dark and terrible secrets – secrets the dead whisper from the other side…

Voices in the Snow


Darcy Coates - 2019
    She remembers abandoned cars and children’s toys littered across the road. She remembers dark shapes in the snow and a terror she can’t explain. And then…nothing.When she wakes, aching and afraid in a stranger’s gothic home, he tells her she was in an accident. He claims he saved her. Clare wants to leave, but a vicious snowstorm has blanketed the world in white, trapping them together, and there’s nothing she can do but wait.At least the stranger seems kind…but Clare doesn’t know if she can trust him. He promised they were alone here, but she sees and hears things that convince her something else is creeping about the surrounding woods, watching. Waiting. Between the claustrophobic storm and the inescapable sense of being hunted, Clare is on edge…and increasingly certain of one thing:Her car crash wasn't an accident. Something is waiting for her to step outside the fragile safety of the house... something monstrous, something unfeeling.Something desperately hungry.

Can't Stop Cursing You, Vol. 1


Kensuke Koba - 2019
    Their mortal enemy: the Curse Detective Kiyoharu Saeyama, who uses traces of the curses left on their victims to uncover the identities of these sick killers. Let this deadly, paranormal game of psychological warfare begin!

Seven Ghosts


Chris Priestley - 2019
    As their guide leads them through grand rooms, hidden nooks and magnificent grounds, they hear the stories of seven ghosts who haunt the halls. But strange shapes and shadows follow Jake as he journeys through the house and with each tale that Jake hears, he begins to feel more uneasy. All is not as it seems and soon Jake will discover that something is very, very wrong ...Old ghosts are stirred-up for Halloween in this spine-tingling, multi-narrative horror. Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 8+

Crescent City Moon: Crescent City Series: Book 1


Nola Nash - 2019
    Even things that should - like bodies, and secrets.How do you fight an enemy you can’t see that can kill on a whim? In 1820s New Orleans, on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, Zéolie Cheval discovers the mangled body of her father murdered in his bed and a maniacal voice haunting the recesses of her mind. When the priest sent to comfort her is killed while the house is swarming with police, Zéolie becomes entangled in a web of mystery that takes her from the French Quarter, to the Ursuline Convent in the Ninth Ward, and deep into the Louisiana swamps.Officer Louis Saucier, who is losing his heart to Zéolie and his grip on logical reality, helps her find the pieces to her puzzle. The mother superior of the Ursulines offers assistance from a mediumistic nun and a voodoo priestess, blurring the lines between the spiritual and the supernatural.After opening the family crypt to find it uninhabited, Zéolie realizes that her father lied about her mother’s death – amongst other things. Now, Zéolie must to come to terms with magic she inherited from her grandmother and the price that comes with it.Step inside the magic and mystery of the 1820s French Quarter to see if an unlikely menagerie can help Zéolie take down a murderous maniac while she shields the officer she loves. Can she harness powers she didn’t know she had? Or, will she make the ultimate sacrifice?

The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft


H.P. Lovecraft - 2019
    Lovecraft Historical Society has produced an audio recording of all of Lovecraft's stories. These are not dramatizations like our Dark Adventure Radio Theatre - rather, this is an audiobook of the original stories, in all-new, never-before-heard recordings made by the HPLHS' own Andrew Leman and Sean Branney exclusively for this collection. Working from texts prepared by Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, this collection spans his entire career from his earliest surviving works of childhood to stories completed shortly before his death. All tales include original music by HPLHS composer Troy Sterling Nies. This audio bonanza features 74 stories adding up to more than fifty (50!) hours of Lovecraftian listening fun, professionally performed and recorded for your enjoyment.

Alessa's Melody: A Psychological Gothic Horror Novella


Jayson Robert Ducharme - 2019
    His fragile world falls to pieces upon the arrival of a young girl, who possesses a special and familiar talent that threatens to drive Louis over the edge.

Imperfect Commentaries


Ruthanna Emrys - 2019
    Ruthanna Emrys's collection offers readers feminist and #ownvoices Neo-Lovecraftian fiction, anthropological science fiction, and fantasies of belonging, plus miscellaneous deleted scenes, poems, and secret story origins. Readers familiar with her novels (Winter Tide and Deep Roots) will see the first appearance Aphra Marsh, an Innsmouth survivor, still recovering from her losses and making a life for herself in late-1940s San Francisco in "The Litany of Earth."

The Bone Weaver's Orchard


Sarah Read - 2019
    That’s what they say every time one of Charley Winslow’s friends vanishes from The Old Cross School for Boys.It’s just a tall tale. That’s what they tell Charley when he sees the ragged grey figure stalking the abbey halls at night.When Charley follows his pet insects to a pool of blood behind a false wall, he could run and let those stones bury their secrets. He could assimilate, focus on his studies, and wait for his father to send for him. Or he could walk the dark tunnels of the school’s heart, scour its abandoned passages, and pick at the scab of a family’s legacy of madness and murder.With the help of Sam Forster, the school’s gardener, and Matron Grace, the staff nurse, Charley unravels Old Cross’ history and exposes a scandal stretching back to when the school was a home with a noble family and a dark secret—a secret that still haunts its halls with scraping steps, twisting its bones into a new generation of nightmares.

Nothing Hidden Ever Stays


H.R. Mason - 2019
    A tangled thread of mental illness. A growing list of Ross family women dying young. The house where it all began, Desolate Ridge, holds all the secrets.Abandoned at a hospital when she was only three years old, Aubrey Ross grew up as a ward of the state, passed from one foster family to the next. Having endured years of abuse and neglect, she’s become hardened to the world around her. She’s flirted with depression and anxiety, and she’s haunted by premonitions. When a strange man approaches Aubrey with information about her past, she knows her life is about to change. Inside the envelope is the deed to a house in Ohio—her ancestral home. When Aubrey arrives in Rossdale, the town named after her family, she immediately experiences situations she cannot explain. She hears voices, sees apparitions, and has vivid visions of tragedies she can scarcely comprehend. Aubrey comes to realize she is reliving events which have happened to those who came before her. Then she meets Hank Metzger, the town’s sheriff, whose family has an eerie connection to her own. As the secrets of Desolate Ridge are unearthed, Aubrey begins to understand her destiny is tied to Hank’s in a way she cannot escape.

Bullets for the Dead: A Graveminder Collection


Melissa Marr - 2019
     In the never-before-published "Changing Guards," the former Graveminder Alicia negotiates with Mr D (Death) for replacing the Undertaker. . . but her style of negotiations requires explosives and destruction. In the never-before-published "Stronger Spirits," a sequel story to Graveminder things in the land of the dead are fracturing, leading to permanent deaths and uncovered secrets. In "Guns for the Dead," (originally published in NAKED CITY), Francis Lee Lemons gets caught in the conflict between Alicia and Mr D (Death). Francis Lee Lemons wakes up in the land of the dead, unemployed and bored, but getting in with the local crime syndicate—run by an 1800s gunslinger, Alicia—isn’t that easy. The collection also includes bonus content: "The Strength Inside" (an urban fantasy tale), the Bluebeard-inspired "Maiden Thief," and the first chapter of the Graveminder sequel novel Stay Where I Put You.