Gideon the Ninth


Tamsyn Muir - 2019
    She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.Of course, some things are better left dead.

The Anubis Gates


Tim Powers - 1983
    But while attending a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810, he becomes marooned in Regency London, where dark and dangerous forces know about the gates in time.Caught up in the intrigue between rival bands of beggars, pursued by Egyptian sorcerers, and befriended by Coleridge, Doyle somehow survives and learns more about the mysterious Ashbless than he could ever have imagined possible...

Dead Sea


Tim Curran - 2007
    A space between spaces. When the Mara Corday, an aged freighter, enters the Graveyard of the Atlantic, nightmares become real. The crew finds themselves trapped in a realm where time doesn't exist and unimaginable horrors dwell. Lost in a becalmed sea, in a netherworld where evil manifests itself in hideous forms, the survivors of the Mara Corday have an eternity to find a way out - if they aren't killed first by the creatures stalking them.(Description from back cover of trade paperback)

Six Wakes


Mur Lafferty - 2017
    She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.Maria's vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn't the only one to die recently...

The Last to See Me


M. Dressler - 2017
    Now, no one remembers her hardworking life and her grand dreams--but she remembers. She remembers everything. Emma Rose still walks the coves and cliffs of her village, one hundred years after her death . . . and she doesn't plan on leaving.But when a determined hunter arrives with instructions to "clean" Emma Rose out of her haunt, the stately Lambry mansion, death suddenly isn't the worst fate imaginable. Emma Rose refuses to be hounded from the only place she's ever found peace, even if it means waging a war on the living . . . and the dead.Lyrical and haunting, this spellbinding American ghost story alternates between Emma Rose's life and afterlife as the past and present become entwined in a compelling tale of love, loss, and tenacity over a century in the making.

Last Days


Adam Nevill - 2012
    The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle's brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals. The shoot's locations take him to the cult's first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven't broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?

The Unquiet


Mikaela Everett - 2015
    She is the perfect sleeper-soldier. But she’s beginning to suspect she is not a good person. The two Earths are identical in almost every way. Two copies of every city, every building, even every person. But the people from the second Earth know something their duplicates do not—two versions of the same thing cannot exist. They—and their whole planet—are slowly disappearing. Lira has been trained mercilessly since childhood to learn everything she can about her duplicate, to be a ruthless sleeper-assassin who kills that other Lirael and steps seamlessly into her life.An intricate, literary stand-alone from an astonishing new voice, The Unquiet takes us deep inside the psyche of a strong teenage heroine struggling with what she has been raised to be and who she really is. Fans of eerily futuristic and beautifully crafted stories such as Never Let Me Go, Orphan Black, and Fringe will find themselves haunted by this unsettling debut.

The God Game


Danny Tobey - 2020
    Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even.But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win?And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die? Dying in a virtual world doesn’t really mean death in real life—does it?As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us.God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.

Helme House


J.R. Erickson - 2021
    However, she soon discovers that Helme House harbors dark secrets including people who have vanished from the house and never been found.As Rowan digs into the history of Helme House a series of troubling experiences soon become deadly.Helme House is the second stand-alone novel in the Troubled Spirits Series-where paranormal fiction meets true crime.Do you believe in ghosts?

The Iron Duke


Meljean Brook - 2010
    Now Rhys Trahaearn has built a merchant empire on the power - and fear - of his name. And when a dead body is dropped from an airship onto his doorstep, bringing Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth into his dangerous world, he intends to make her his next possession.But when Mina uncovers the victim's identity, she stumbles upon a conspiracy that threatens the lives of everyone in England. To save them, Mina and Rhys must race across zombie-infested wastelands and treacherous oceans-and Mina discovers the danger is not only to her countrymen, as she finds herself tempted to give up everything to the Iron Duke.

The Watchers


A.M. Shine - 2021
    Shine. You can't see them. But they can see you. This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams.Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers and why are these creatures keeping them imprisoned, keen to watch their every move?

The Body at Auercliff


Amy Cross - 2016
    Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms. A dead body. A woman. Old and rotten. And her aunt insists she has no idea where it came from. The truth lies buried in the past. For generations, the occupants of Auercliff have been tormented by the repercussions of a horrific secret. And somehow everything seems to be centered upon the mausoleum in the house's ground, where every member of the family is entombed once they die. Whose body was left to rot in one of the house's rooms? Why have successive generations of the family been plagued by a persistent scratching sound? And what really happened to Rebecca many years ago, when she found herself locked inside the Auercliff mausoleum? The Body at Auercliff is a horror story about a family and a house, and about the refusal of the past to stay buried.

Alif the Unseen


G. Willow Wilson - 2012
    He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the "Hand of God," as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

The Morbidly Obese Ninja


Carlton Mellick III - 2011
    . . you're going to need a lot of ninjas. Neo Tokyo, California is a city built so high that none of its residents have ever seen the ground. It is a place where citizens cosmetically alter their bodies to look like Japanese anime characters. It is a place where ninja battles determine the fate of corporate business ventures. It is the home of Basu - a 700 pound killing machine who uses his grotesque excess weight as a deadly weapon. In this city, there is no ninja more deadly than Basu. He's well-trained, well-armed, and well-fed. And if you work for one of his competitors, he's coming to kill you. The Morbidly Obese Ninja is like anime in written form. Dark, funny, violent, and subtly disturbing. From the award-winning author of Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, The Haunted Vagina, and Satan Burger.

The Power


Naomi Alderman - 2016
    But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power - they can cause agonising pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world.