Book picks similar to
Weed Species by Jack Ketchum


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Mouse Trap


Carlton Mellick III - 2019
    Described as one of the top 40 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian and "one of the most original novelists working today" by extreme horror legend Edward Lee, Mellick returns with a quiet, apocalyptic tale of young unrequited love in a dying world.It's the last school trip young Emily will ever get to go on. Not because it's the end of the school year, but because the world is coming to an end. Teachers, parents, and other students have been slowly dying off over the past several months, killed in mysterious traps that have been appearing across the countryside. Nobody knows where the traps come from or who put them there, but they seem to be designed to exterminate the entirety of the human race.Emily thought it was going to be an ordinary trip to the local amusement park, but what was supposed to be a normal afternoon of bumper cars and roller coasters has turned into a fight for survival after their teacher is horrifically killed in front of them, leaving the small children to fend for themselves in a life or death game of mouse and mouse trap. There appears to be a hope for salvation when eighth grader Clyde Donner, a boy Emily has had a crush on ever since she was a little girl, enters their lives and promises that all the children will be safe as long as they do exactly as he says. But when it appears that Clyde does not have everyone's best interests in mind, it's up to Emily to put her feelings aside in order to ensure the safety of those younger and more vulnerable than her.Mouse Trap is an intense, suspense-filled thrill ride for fans of Mellick's more disturbing YA stories such as Sweet Story, Quicksand House, and The Terrible Thing That Happens.

Doll House


John Hunt - 2017
    She will be on her own, in a new place hopeful to meet new friends. On the night she moves in, she is taken off the street by two masked men. She is placed in a room which is little more than a cell. A pink cell. A room made for a doll. She is now part of their collection.

The Wine-Dark Sea


Robert Aickman - 1988
    Unlike much of the current form, full of blood, monsters and melodrama, Aickman's stories achieve a quieter, more subtle and, in several ways, more lasting sense of disquiet. His lucid, finely tuned prose moves imperceptibly from the small crises and celebrations of ordinary life into another sphere. In these 11 stories, the occasion may be a walking tour of Northern England, a birthday present of a Victorian dollhouse or a stay at a Swedish sanatorium for insomniacs, but it simultaneously traps the characters with dread and opens them up to a new awareness of a greater, deeper and more dangerous world. A remarkable collection by an author who deserves to be better known.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Witching Hour Theatre


Jonathan Janz - 2005
    It's the one exciting thing in Larry Wilson's life, not counting the lovely brunette who works the concession stand. Settling in, he loses himself in the atmosphere of the old place: the crowd, the screams, the popcorn and the blood. But when the second feature ends, only thirteen moviegoers remain. Among them, a woman of nineteen with a fondness for piercings and the macabre, a cop and his wife, a trio of bad-tempered bullies, and a solitary figure sitting silently in the shadows of the back row. On this endless October night, Witching Hour Theatre will become Larry's worst nightmare. For the movie on the screen is growing stranger by the minute. His fellow theatergoers are disappearing one by one. And the figure from the shadows is advancing.

Suffer the Flesh


Monica J. O'Rourke - 2002
    Kidnapped off the Manhattan streets and whisked away from the safe, normal world she once knew, she finds herself the victim of one reprehensible man's vision. Forced to witness the depravities of the seedy underworld where lust, rape, torture and mutilation are a way of life, stripped of clothing, pride, and spirit, Zoey must play their games, bear their torture -- but for how long? Somehow she must learn to survive the daily perversions . . . but how can Zoey survive? How could anyone? Somewhere between ecstasy and pain -- learn to SUFFER THE FLESH.

Blood Related


William Cook - 2012
    Headless corpses, their bodies mutilated and posed, have been turning up all over the industrial district near the docks. Young female prostitutes had been the killer's victims of choice, but now other districts are reporting the gruesome discovery of decapitated bodies. It seems the killer has expanded his territory as more 'nice girls' feel the wrath of his terrible rage.Meet the Cunninghams... A family bound by evil and the blood they have spilled. The large lodging-house they live in and operate on Artaud Avenue reeks of death, and the sins that remain trapped beneath the floorboards.Ray Truman's search for a killer leads him to the Cunningham's house of horrors. What he finds there will ultimately lead him to regret ever meeting Caleb Cunningham and the deviant family that spawned him. The hunter becomes the hunted, as Truman digs deeper into the abyss that is the horrifying mind of the most dangerous psychopath he has ever met.

Wild Night Is Calling


J.A. Konrath - 2011
    Summer. Late at night.Two teenage girls are picked up by two boys, who invite them back to their place to party.But an innocent mistake turns the party into a nightmare, where nothing is what it seems...Wild Night Is Calling is a 6000 word short story by thriller writer J.A. Konrath (Shaken, Trapped) and romantic suspense writer Ann Voss Peterson (A Cop in Her Stocking, Seized By The Sheik).Peterson wrote the first half. Konrath wrote the second half.This ebook, specially formatted for Nook with an active table of contents, also contains an excerpt from Konrath and Peterson's collaborative spy thriller, FLEE, coming out this Spring.

The Werewolf of Paris


Guy Endore - 1933
    An episodic tale, the story wanders through 19th Century France and into hotspots like the Franco-Prussian war. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came after.

The Him Deep Down: A Horror Novelette


Chad Lutzke - 2015
    But they discover something far worse than the dead that command the earth. Prepare to meet the Him Deep Down! Authors Chad Lutzke (Night as a Catalyst) and Terry M. West (What Price Gory?) team together to offer a zombie story with a different kind of bite.

The Roo


Alan Baxter - 2020
    A teenage couple fail to show up for work. When Patrick and Sheila McDonough investigate, they discover the missing persons list is growing. Before they realise what’s happening, the residents of the remote town find themselves in a fight for their lives against a foe they would never have suspected.And the dry red earth will run with blood.

Altmann's Tongue: Stories and a Novella


Brian Evenson - 1994
    A first collection.Brian Evenson has added an O. Henry Award–winning short story, "Two Brothers," to this controversial book and a new afterword, in which he describes the troubling aftermath of the book's publication in 1994.

The Violence


Delilah S. Dawson - 2022
    Now three generations of women must navigate their chilling new reality in this moving exploration of identity, cycles of abuse, and hope. Chelsea Martin appears to be the perfect housewife: married to her high school sweetheart, the mother of two daughters, keeper of an immaculate home. But Chelsea's husband has turned their house into a prison; he has been abusing her for years, cutting off her independence, autonomy, and support. She has nowhere to turn, not even to her narcissistic mother, Patricia, who is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an ideal family than she is with her daughter's actual well-being. And Chelsea is worried that her daughters will be trapped just as she is--then a mysterious illness sweeps the nation. Known as The Violence, this illness causes the infected to experience sudden, explosive bouts of animalistic rage and attack anyone in their path. But for Chelsea, the chaos and confusion the virus causes is an opportunity--and inspires a plan to liberate herself from her abuser.

Crooked House


Joe McKinney - 2012
    Read more about the novel here: http://www.darkregions.com/books/croo...From the best-selling author of Dead City, Mutated, Flesh Eater, Quarantined and more comes the all-new haunted house novel Crooked House published by Dark Regions Press to be available on Tuesday, October 23rd on the DarkRegions.com website. The book will be available in two premium signed collectible hardcover formats and a trade paperback edition.In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.Those words were true when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote them in 1851, and they were true in 1933, when a fire burned half of Crook House to the ground, taking James Crook’s wife and two sons with it. A disgraced bootlegger and former pro baseball player, James Crook returned from prison to find his house, and his life, a pile of cinders. Broken and insane, he rebuilt Crook House, putting his pain and loneliness into every timber.But Hawthorne’s words are still true today, and nobody knows that better than Dr. Robert Bell, who has just moved into Crook House as part of his hiring package from a small Texas college. He soon discovers that Crook House is more than just a new beginning for himself and Sarah and their daughter Angela. For the Bell family, Crook House is a place where the past still lives, and its horrors waiting for the next drowning man.With Crooked House, Joe McKinney brings you a chilling novel in the vein of The Shining by Stephen King, a haunted house tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned.

The Blood Beast Mutations


Carl John Lee - 2020
    A deadly pandemic throttles the globe. Democracy has crumbled. Armed gangs of militant protestors stalk the streets. Amidst this waking nightmare, a new horror develops. The virus is mutating.Dan Lewis's wife is sick. When he receives a call from the hospital, he's prepared for the worst. Or so he thought. Because that call plunges Dan into an unending spiral of insanity and depravity. Now, he must fight his way through the battle-scarred streets of New York City to find his wife, unprepared for what awaits him out there...in the shadows.Grim and terrifying, but laced with gallows humor and surprising heart, THE BLOOD BEAST MUTATIONS is an all-too-relatable story of courage and gruesome horror.

My Eyes Are Black Holes


Logan Ryan Smith - 2015
    He wants to sleep and never leave his bed or the room he lives in within a mysterious mansion on Chicago's Logan Boulevard. But, when events force him to wander, his fragile psyche and questionable memory turns a simple journey out of his room into a nightmarish odyssey, all within the confines of his labyrinthine house. It's a nightmare Jack navigates with half-opened eyes, believing his eyes harness the destructive power of black holes. Jack's tale may not be a haunted house story, but when all's said and done, the house on Logan Boulevard will be haunted—that is, if it can survive Jack's opened eyes.MY EYES ARE BLACK HOLES is a book of madness, drawing the reader into its sticky web of tangled logic, false memory, hallucination, and violence. This is a tale that leaves readers with questions and tests perspective in ways similar to a David Lynch film. Questions create mystery. Mystery creates madness. And madness is maddening.