Book picks similar to
The 13th by John Everson


horror
fiction
splatterpunk
horror-novels-novellas

Resurrection Dreams


Richard Laymon - 1988
    Vicki was the only one to stand up for him but even she had to admit he'd gone too far when he dug up a body and attempted to bring it back to life with the aid of a car battery. — Years later Vicki still has nightmares about Melvin's "joke" and now that she's back in Ellsworth, she knows she'll have to see him again. Recently released from a mental institution, Melvin is acting stranger than ever. His experiments with the dead have progressed and as soon as he can get Vicki - or rather her body - where he wants her, he can realize his most chilling dream of all...

The Backwoods


Edward Lee - 2005
    A hideous evil stalks the backwoods of a small town, leaving fear and bodies in its wake.

The Lost


Jack Ketchum - 2001
    Ray, Tim, and Jennifer were just three teenage friends hanging out in the campgrounds, drinking a little. But Tim and Jennifer didn’t know what their friend Ray had in mind. And if they’d known, they wouldn’t have thought he was serious. Then they saw what he did to the two girls at the neighboring campsite—and knew he was dead serious.Four years later, the 60s were drawing to a close. No one ever charged Ray with the murders in the campgrounds, but there was one cop determined to make him pay. Ray figured he was in the clear. Tim and Jennifer thought the worst was behind them, that the horrors were all in the past. They were wrong. The worst was yet to come.

The Bone Factory


Nate Kenyon - 2009
    Until the deaths. First a farmer was found horribly mutilated in his field. Then a little girl disappeared from her home. Deep in the woods a deputy came upon a chamber of horrors straight from a nightmare. And through it all, one child is haunted by visions of the mysterious "blue man," a madman who brings with him blood and pain and terror, a terror spawned by forces no one can understand.

Castaways


Brian Keene - 2009
    Each one hoped to be the last to leave. Now they're just hoping to stay alive. It seems the island isn't deserted after all. Contestants and crew members are disappearing, but they aren't being eliminated by the game. They're being taken by the monstrous half-human creatures that live in the jungle. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives. Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so far away. . .

Running with the Demon


Terry Brooks - 1997
    Now, in Running with the Demon, Brooks does nothing less than revitalize fantasy fiction again, inventing the complex and powerful new mythos of the Word and the Void, good versus evil still, but played out in the theater-in-the-round of the "real world" of our present. On the hottest Fourth of July weekend in decades, two men have come to Hopewell, Illinois, site of a lengthy, bitter steel strike. One is a demon, dark servant of the Void, who will use the anger and frustration of the community to attain a terrible secret goal. The other is John Ross, a Knight of the Word, a man who, while he sleeps, lives in the hell the world will become if he fails to change its course on waking. Ross has been given the ability to see the future. But does he have the power to change it?At stake is the soul of a fourteen-year-old girl mysteriously linked to both men. And the lives of the people of Hopewell. And the future of the country. This Fourth of July, while friends and families picnic in Sinnissippi Park and fireworks explode in celebration of freedom and independence, the fate of Humanity will be decided . . .A novel that weaves together family drama, fading innocence, cataclysm, and enlightenment, Running with the Demon will forever change the way you think about the fantasy novel. As believable as it is imaginative, as wondrous as it is frightening, it is a rich, exquisitely-written tale to be savored long after the last page is turned.

Coldheart Canyon


Clive Barker - 2001
    His fiercely loyal agent finds him just such a place in a luxurious forgotten mansion high in the Hollywood Hills. But the original owner of the mansion was a beautiful woman devoted to pleasure at any cost, and the terrible legacy of her deeds has not yet died. There are ghosts and monsters haunting Coldheart Canyon, where nothing is forbidden . . .

Monster Hunter International


Larry Correia - 2009
    It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit. It’s actually a pretty sweet gig, except for one little problem. An ancient entity known as the Cursed One has returned to settle a centuries old vendetta. Should the Cursed One succeed, it means the end of the world, and MHI is the only thing standing in his way. With the clock ticking towards Armageddon, Owen finds himself trapped between legions of undead minions, belligerent federal agents, a cryptic ghost who has taken up residence inside his head, and the cursed family of the woman he loves. Business is good... Welcome to Monster Hunter International.

The Killing Kind


Bryan Smith - 2010
    Roxie is the goth girl of your dreams. There's just one problem- she's batshit crazy and has a fetish for murder. After a petty insult at a gas station, she goes on a murder spree, hunting down those that pissed her off. But she's not the only monster on the road. There are others out there killing and raping. And everyone's headed to the same beach house. A desolate vacation getaway with no neighbors and no one to hear the screams. Deadite Press is proud to bring back Bryan Smith's nasty novel of murder, torture, and the darkest side of human nature-The Killing Kind

Nightfall


Stephen Leather - 2010
    He has recently inherited a mansion from a man who turns out to be his father. A father who killed himself when he was unable to reverse a deal he did with a demon - a deal that sold his son's soul.

The Uninvited #1


Mike Evans - 2016
    The Uninvited will leave you checking your doors, locking your windows and skipping the weekend camping trip. Meet the stranger, a killer who is unbiased about who it chooses to be the victim, and never tires of the killing. If Dexter and Leather face had a baby The Uninvited would be their offspring. Smart, dark, twisted and disturbing is The Uninvited

The Plant


Stephen King - 2000
    The manuscript is about magic, but it also contains photographs that seem very real. The editor writes the author a rejection slip, but because of the photographs, he also notifies the police where the author lives. This enrages the author, who sends a mysterious plant to the editor's office.The story is told in epistolary format, consisting entirely of letters, memos and correspondence.

Breathless


Dean Koontz - 2009
    That night, through the trees, under the moon, a pair of singular animals will watch Grady's isolated home, waiting to make their approach.  A few miles away, Camillia Rivers, a local veterinarian, begins to unravel the threads of a puzzle that will bring all the forces of a government in peril to her door. At a nearby farm, long-estranged identical twins come together to begin a descent into darkness…In Las Vegas, a specialist in chaos theory probes the boundaries of the unknowable…On a Seattle golf course, two men make matter-of-fact arrangements for murder…Along a highway by the sea, a vagrant scarred by the past begins a trek toward his destiny… In a novel that is at once wholly of our time and timeless, fearless and funny, Dean Koontz takes readers into the moment between one turn of the world and the next, across the border between knowing and mystery. It is a journey that will leave all who take it Breathless.

Baal


Robert R. McCammon - 1978
    A woman is ravished...and to her a child is born...unleashing an unimaginable evil upon the world!And they call him BAAL in the orphanage, where he leads the children on a rampage of violence...in California, where he appears as the head of a deadly Manson-like cult...in Kuwait, where crazed millions heed his call to murder and orgy.They call him BAAL in the Arctic's hellish wasteland, where he is tracked by the only three men with a will to stop him: Zark, the shaman; Virga, the aging professor of theology; and Michael, the powerful, mysterious stranger.

The Descent


Jeff Long - 1999
    In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old. In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave. So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them "devils" or "demons." But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them…