Book picks similar to
Weed Species by Jack Ketchum


horror
jack-ketchum
true-crime
fiction

Near the Bone


Christina Henry - 2021
    She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realizes that they're not alone after all.There's something in the woods that wasn't there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws.When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.

Snuff


Eric Enck - 2008
    The money is rolling in, despite the death count. Both men begin a vicious killing spree in their films as more and more people are demanding the best in bloody porn.When the mafia becomes involved, things couldn't be better, until one of the victims turns out to have a father more disturbing than any killer out there. Soon, the tables are turned on the filmakers as a dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues. This is a brutal novel. It's already being called one of the most disturbing efforts is literature and is being advised to come with a WARNING: label.

Harrow Lake


Kat Ellis - 2020
    The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film that put their town on the map--and there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away.And there's someone--or some thing--stalking her every move.The more Lola discovers about the town, the more terrifying it becomes. Because Lola's got secrets of her own. And if she can't find a way out of Harrow Lake, they might just be the death of her.

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell; Perfect State


Brandon Sanderson - 2015
    Who names their daughter Silence, and what does it imply? What is it like to grow up with this name? The answers built into the concept of a stout pioneer woman who ran an inn on the frontier, drawing the seediest criminals the land had to offer. She’d then track them after they left her inn and murder them for their bounties."Perfect State" sets God-Emperor Kairominas on a date. What happens when the most important man in the world is forced to have dinner with the most important woman in the world?This is a flip book with two covers.

What Moves the Dead


T. Kingfisher
    Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

Sociopaths In Love


Andersen Prunty - 2013
    They fall in love. They move in together and start a new life. They're beautiful and they have new things, expensive things, the best of everything, whatever they want. But that's only the surface. Beneath the surface is something much different. Something much darker. Theirs is a love like no other and only one of them will survive it.

No Middle Name


Lee Child - 2017
    This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume.A brand-new novella, Too Much Time, is included, as are those previously only published in ebook form: Second Son, James Penney's New Identity, Guy Walks Into a Bar, Deep Down, High Heat, Not a Drill and Small Wars. Added to these is every other Reacher short story that Child has written: Everyone Talks, Maybe They Have a Tradition, No Room at the Motel and The Picture of the Lonely Diner. Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world.

The Dropper


Ron McLarty - 2009
    Some say it's Death, Some say it's darkness, I say it's a game of light...Gutsy 17-year-old Albert "Shoe" Horn is an apprentice plumber and part-time boxer in England in 1922, but when his mother dies, he finds himself responsible for an abusive, alcoholic father and a younger brother with special needs.This marvelous novel follows the indomitable Shoe's day-to-day survival with poetic grit, cynical genius, respect, and deep affection as he navigates a world full of very real characters: the gentle giant McAvy, his slave-driving boss, the Irish louts that resurrect his temper, the tempting ladies who seek him out, his hilarious plumbing clients, and the formidable “Dropper,” who Shoe fears will take away the most true thing in his life, his brother.

The Route of Ice and Salt


José Luis Zárate - 1998
    The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews. He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides. Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship. The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.

White Fire


Brian Keene - 2018
    Previously out of print and never before available as a stand-alone, this new edition of WHITE FIRE has been revised and expanded, and is considered the Author’s Preferred Version.

Horrid


Katrina Leno - 2020
    All they want is a fresh start, but behind North Manor's doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling more alone...and more tormented.As the cold New England autumn arrives, and Jane settles in to her new home, she finds solace in old books and memories of her dad. She steadily begins making new friends, but also faces bullying from the resident "bad seed," struggling to tamp down her own worst nature in response. Jane's mom also seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but she won't reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the "storage room" her mom has kept locked isn't for storage at all — it's a little girl's bedroom, left untouched for years and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears....Is it grief? Mental illness? Or something more...horrid?

Kill Creek


Scott Thomas - 2017
    For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

I'll Bring You the Birds from Out of the Sky


Brian Hodge - 2017
    Never put a more slothful soul in a fella big enough to wrestle an ox to the ground."The Conklin Collection is haunted and haunting, powerful in its brutal simplicity. What looks like the work of a fevered imagination begins to appear more and more like the desperate attempts of a man toiling at the edge of his limits to depict what cannot be depicted…An underlying order as old as the hills, its thousand throats concealed beneath the roots and rocks, between the streams and trees, deep in the besieged mountains of Appalachia."My momma said it was their eighteenth summer when Cecil started shooting up like a weed again. That ain't normal."But the most crucial painting of all is missing. And the only place it could be is the last place that should be searched."The rest, I think they always knew deep down Cecil was the one in trouble, that something was after him already. He never should've gone over the mountain."I'll Bring You the Birds From Out of the Sky is a tale of art and obsession, of a dying heritage and cosmic horror, brought to rustic life with full-color paintings by artist Kim Parkhurst.

A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror


John Hornor Jacobs - 2019
    P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself.Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.

The Return


Rachel Harrison - 2020
    But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there, and that one day she'll come back. She's right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she's been or what happened to her.