Book picks similar to
Keeper of the Children by William H. Hallahan


horror
paperbacks-from-hell
fiction
danse-macabre

The Third Level


Jack Finney - 1948
    Contents:The Third LevelSuch Interesting NeighborsI’m ScaredCousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective CellarOf Missing PersonsSomething in a CloudThere Is a Tide...Behind the NewsQuit Zoomin’ Those Hands Through the AirA Dash of SpringSecond ChanceContents of the Dead Man’s Pockets

Darker Than You Think


Jack Williamson - 1940
    Inexorably drawn into investigating a rash of grisly deaths, he soon finds himself embroiled in something far beyond mortal understanding.Doggedly pursuing his investigations, he meets the mysterious and seductive April Bell and starts having disturbing, tantalizing dreams in which he does terrible things--things that are stranger and wilder than his worst nightmares. then his friends being dying one by one and he slowly realizes that an unspeakable evil has been unleashed.As Barbee's world crumbles around him in a dizzying blizzard of madness, the intoxicating, dangerous April pushes Barbee ever closer to the answer to the question "Who is the Child of Night?"When Barbee finds out, he'll wish he'd never been born.

When Darkness Loves Us


Elizabeth Engstrom - 1985
    When a careless exploration leaves her trapped underground, she learns to live again in the absence of everything she once knew. Even driven by love and light, Sally Ann finds the deepest darkness within herself in When Darkness Loves Us.Beauty Is... - Old Martha Mannes has been a part of Morgan, Illinois since her birth. The whole town knows her as the dim-witted woman who was born without a nose, but Martha's mind wasn't always a blank slate. Unlocking the monster buried deep in her memories may bring back the sparkling child she once was... or it may send those around her crashing down into the nightmares of a little girl gone wrong.

The Nest


Gregory A. Douglas - 1980
    No one ever imagined that conditions were perfect for multiple breeding, that it was a warm womb, fetid, moist and with food so plentiful that everything crawling, creeping and slithering could gorge to satiation. Then the change in poison control was made and the huge mutants began to leave their nest - in search of human flesh...

The Dark Country


Dennis Etchison - 1982
    Dick and Thomas Harris, Etchinson's award-winning fiction is justly known for its creepy ambiance.

The Shapes Of Midnight


Joseph Payne Brennan - 1953
    Hear me! Or don't. For there are those obsessed with uncovering the witcheries that fester in man's foul heart. There are those who would invoke the awful powers that yet remain in Earth's cursed places. Joseph Payne Brenna is such a one. This is his book. Dare you make it yours? (back cover copy)Introduction by Stephen King.Contents:Diary of a Werewolf The Corpse of Charlie Rull Canavan’s Back Yard The Pavilion House of Memory The Willow Platform Who Was He?DisappearanceThe Horror at Chilton CastleThe Impulse to KillThe House on Hazel StreetSlime

Golgotha Falls


Frank De Felitta - 1984
    Lovell, priest of the Church of the Eternal Sorrows, fell prey to isolation and despair and entered a dark night of madness, necrophilia and suicide. Then, in 1978, a Jesuit priest was sent to reconsecrate the church but found himself seized in the foul grip of bestiality. Now Father Malcolm, a saintly priest, has arrived to do battle with the forces of Satan that have possessed the church, while two brilliant scientists of the paranormal from Harvard University have traveled to the site to investigate a century's worth of bizarre happenings. None of them are prepared for what they will encounter – an evil dating back to the dawn of time that could bring about the end of days . . .

Vampyrrhic


Simon Clark - 1999
    For untold years they have remained hidden, coming out only to feed and seen only by their unfortunate victims. Now the truth of their vile existence is about to be revealed--but will anyone believe it? (July)

Dead & Buried


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - 1980
    Was he imagining things? Or was something evil preying on the sleepy town of Porter's Bluff, something as shadowy as the faceless killers who roamed the land?

The Manse


Lisa W. Cantrell - 1987
    Vampires, werewolves, ghouls and ghosts - not to mention Frankenstein's monster - stalk the premises. Bats and spiders drop upon the unwary. At every turn a new fright awaits - all in fun, of course.Happy HalloweenBut the Manse's history of horror is ancient and terrible - more awful than the innocent Trick-or-Treaters can imagine. For twelve years it has been biding its time, feeding on the fear its unsuspecting visitors so willingly offered...Happy HalloweenUntil tonight. Tomight is the Thirteenth Annual House of Horrors.It will be the last.Tonight, at the Witching Hour, all Hell will break loose.Happy Halloween

Earth Has Been Found


D.F. Jones - 1979
     Alien horror becomes a living nightmare as the xenos, meaning “strangers”, inflict mayhem on earth. International distress alerts are sent out when planes first seem to disappear, disturbing concepts of space and time and leaving a trail of death and disillusionment. This bizarre series of “cosmic skyjackings” is shrouded in secrecy by a baffled and frightened military. Intense surveillance fails to reveal the cause of a seemingly hostile yet invisible enemy. Aircraft continue to disappear, plucked out of the sky without warning, only to reappear months later, thousands of miles off course. National and global security is under threat and the ICARUS committee is formed to investigate. Military officials, the government and the FBI work alongside physician Mark Freedman and Soviet scientists to uncover the supernatural mystery that lies behind these unexplainable events. Earth has been found by a horde of creatures that not even the wildest imagination could invent – sinister parasitic creatures that took to their human hosts with deadly speed and bloodthirsty precision. The terror that unfolds has terrifying consequences for all involved, and the invasion reveals something much more frightening and final than ever suspected. Earth Has Been Found is a gripping and chilling first contact sci fi novel, from classic science fiction author D. F. Jones.

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.

To the Devil a Daughter (Molly Fountain, #1)


Dennis Wheatley - 1953
    She sent for a wartime secret service colleague to come and help. What they discovered was horrifying beyond anything they could have imagined.Dennis Wheatley returned in this audiobook to his black magic theme which he had made so much his own with his famous best seller The Devil Rides Out. In the cumulative shock of its revelations, the use of arcane knowledge, the mounting suspense, and acceleration to a fearful climax, he out-does even that earlier achievement. This is, by any standards, a terrific story.

Creekers


Edward Lee - 1994
    Centuries old, driven by rage and lust for revenge, these deformed and shadowy outcasts are planning a harvest of terror and death. From the author of The Chosen.

The Nightrunners


Joe R. Lansdale - 1987
    A '66 Chevy bears down on the countryside, with a carful of vicious teenagers and evil of Biblical proportions, in this terrifying morality tale of sex and violence.