Book picks similar to
The Root by Amy Cross


horror
fiction
single-books
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Voices in My Head


Mike Evans - 2016
    What if the devil on your shoulder could actually come out and play? Voices in my Head is just that. Meet Mikey, the sweetest five-year-old you've ever met, and his psychotic dark side Michael. When his mother changes his life forever Michael comes out to play.

The Culling


Peter Meredith - 2020
    It’s time to tear down and start again. And what better way to eradicate humanity than by unleashing the monsters inside each of us? Destroying mankind is simple compared to perfecting a new version of mankind. Just as evil resides within all of us, the hero does as well. It’s just much harder to bring out. The Chosen are those few who survive the process. They become greater in every regard. The other 98% however, become the stuff of nightmares. Wickedly cunning and ferociously strong, they are insatiable demons that make the average zombie look like it's made of sticks and string.Into this cataclysm Bryce Carter is thrown wearing nothing but a hospital gown. He dared to defy Magnus, who felt injecting him with the serum just wasn’t punishment enough. Barefoot and bleeding, Bryce has to fight his way out of a city overrun with zombies.Led by the demons, the dead sweep across the streets like a grey river, forcing him to crawl through sewers and down into the dark tunnels beneath the blood-soaked streets. He’s hounded relentlessly and growing desperate as he only has so much time. Nuclear weapons are being readied and soon the city will be nothing but dust and ash.

The Last Blog


Rob Blackwell - 2015
    14, 2010, and was never seen again. The only clues to his fate were a series of blog posts he left behind, allegedly recounting his final hours inside one of the most haunted houses in the world. But what started as an investigation into the mysterious occurrences inside Madison Manor also revealed shocking truths about Sean’s own past. “The Last Blog” is a 10,000-word short story that includes Sean’s final blog postings, as well as additional analysis and insight provided by noted supernatural expert Soren Chase. It’s the perfect treat for Halloween!

I Do Not Belong


Rick Wood - 2018
     One of them put them there. For every hour they do not figure out who, another person will die. They are all going to have to ask themselves: who does not belong?

White Anvil: Sasquatch Onslaught


Matt Betts - 2019
    The survivors fight to stay alive and regroup as the terrible storm buries them in snow. Only then do they discover the train also carried another cargo—two cars loaded with biological experiments—genetically-altered sasquatches conditioned to annihilate anything they find. Can the few remaining soldiers team with a pair of sisters and a police constable to fight the relentless beasts, icy temperatures, and escaped prisoners long enough for help to arrive? "... a fresh take on a classic legend, full of suspense and action. This one had me on the edge of my seat and loving the characters." — Michael D. Nadeau, author of The Darkness Returns (A Lythinall novel) Book 1 "Cryptid lovers rejoice, for you have found the author who will lead you to an action-packed adventure that you will ignore family to read." — Jonathan Lazar, Author of Zachariah Lars and the High Elf Mystery “For those of us who grew up on Saturday morning creature features and painstakingly tuned-in to horror hosts using our dented and bent rabbit-ear antennas, Matt Betts delivers all the goods and more. WHITE ANVIL is packed with the excitement and atmosphere, but it also has what so many stories lack: Believable characters behaving rationally as they do their best to survive in the face of unexpected terror. — Dan Stout author of Titanshade “...an action-packed adventure that you don’t want to miss.” — Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland

Level Zero: A Nightmare in Riverton Novel


Dan McDowell - 2021
    A sinister character lurks in an abandoned tunnel just beneath, manipulating Chris as he struggles to walk a fine line between his love for the dark and the macabre and a collapsing marriage.Todd Adams, a manic depressive financial advisor, awakens from a coma along with 53 others, fighting to understand unexplained phantom memories that plague them. As each work to unravel their meaning, they begin to disappear into a labyrinth beneath the hotel at the torment of a bizarre captor. Discovering mutual commonality in an unresolved past, Todd works to lead them out.Will they find the key to freedom?

Gloria


Bentley Little - 2021
    Gloria's mom is... different. She's younger than when she died, dressed in clothes from the 1980s. And nobody else in Gloria's family seems to recognize her.As Gloria tries to figure out the reason for her mother's reappearance ― and the odd behaviors the woman begins to exhibit ― other bizarre events occur. The changes to Gloria's world are small and subtle, at first... then they become much more startling.The freaky situation might just be connected to a mysterious shed in a small California town. The strangers who gather around the shed seem to know Gloria's name... and maybe they aren't strangers after all.With Gloria, Bentley Little presents one of his most complex and compelling novels ― one that is certain to surprise readers on every page.

Fauna


David Benton - 2018
    In a few days time the attacks become a massacre and all life on Earth moves toward a single purpose: the culling of the human race. "When Mother Nature's angry, she's a bitch! Fauna will have you gripping the edge of your seat from the first page to the last. This is a non-stop eco-thriller and cautionary tale that will leave you looking at your pets with a different eye. This is also the best book I've read all year! Read it now! But maybe lock the doors and windows first." --John Everson, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Covenant and Redemption "We should have known that decades of messing with Nature would come back to bite us -- with a vengeance... In David Benton's exciting, realistic thriller FAUNA our world has finally decided we're the problem, and it's had enough of us. How would we cope if our apocalypse had fangs and four legs and didn't shamble at all? Reminiscent of Hitchcock's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds" in approach, FAUNA will raise your neck hairs and chill you to the bone." --W.D. Gagliani, author of Savage Nights and the Nick Lupo Series "The animal kingdom runs amok in David Benton's wildly entertaining Fauna. Exciting, action-packed and disturbing in all the right ways, this man-versus-beast saga gallops at a fierce pace with bloodthirsty menace. Benton's scenes unfold with a cinematic crispness and intensity that keeps the pages turning. This book will leave bite marks!" --Brian Pinkerton, author of Anatomy of Evil "In Fauna, David Benton takes you on a globe-circling thrill ride through a gone-crazy world where the animals have taken charge and want revenge. It's equal parts fantastic escapism and white-knuckle horror--a riveting read from the first page that touches on many of the ways humankind uses things and takes them for granted." --Christian Larsen, author of The Blackening of Flesh and Losing Touch

Plague


Max Hawthorne - 2016
     “Holy --- Steve, the Taser’s not stopping him!” “It has to! Nobody can take that. Hit him again!” “Look out! Here he comes!” Ron charged again, powering his way past the jolts of pain. He smashed into the nearest intruder with bone-jarring force, grappling with him, tearing at him. The struggle intensified as the two rolled around on the alley’s blood-soaked cobblestones. The second creature joined in the battle, striking at his head with a hard stick in an effort to aid his comrade. Ron laughed. The intruders were pathetically weak. He could sense it. He snatched the light from the closer one and backhanded him across the face with it, sending him sprawling. Then he turned toward the other one. He was stumbling backward, clawing at his hip, and obviously terrified. Amused, Ron turned away and focused on the one on the ground. He took a deep whiff, smelling the hot blood that ran in rivulets from the downed newcomer’s brow, and listened to the jackhammer beating of his heart. More food. THE DEADLIEST KILLERS ARE THE ONES YOU CAN'T SEE. Three weeks have passed since the monstrous Kronosaurus imperator’s attack on Harcourt Marina stunned the world. The death toll was horrific, but Paradise Cove’s traumatized survivors soon discover they have more to worry about than just burying their dead and rebuilding their shattered lives. Accompanying the pliosaur were hordes of primeval pathogens. With their host destroyed, the Cretaceous-era bacteria are forced to find new homes for themselves. They do: tiny, bipedal life forms whose warm, iron-rich blood provides perfect growing conditions. They begin to multiply and spread, their mutagenic qualities quickly warping their unwitting host’s delicate bodies and minds. Soon, the infected are transformed into mindless beasts, consumed with a burning hunger for flesh. And like all ravening beasts, they must feed . . .

THE DARKNESS


Stephen King - 2019
    King. Do not let the lack of light stop you from discovering more adventures and stories that will keep you up at night and ignite the imagination. There is no place to hide in, THE DARKNESS!

Daphne Byrne #1


Laura Marks - 2020
    The sudden death of her father has left her alone with her irresponsible, grief-stricken mother-who becomes easy prey for a group of occultists promising to contact her dead husband. While fighting to disentangle her mother from these charlatans, Daphne begins to sense a strange, insidious presence in her own body...an entity with unspeakable appetites. What does “Brother” want? And could she even stop him if she tried?

Burn the Rabbit: Rabbit in Red Volume Two


Joe Chianakas - 2016
    He's looking forward to learning the craft, renewing last year's friendships, and above all, to seeing Jaime, and finally asking her to be his girlfriend.But before he even gets to see her, one of their own is violently attacked. JB goes on the hunt, and the students learn about his troubled past, which changes their views of him forever. As their project, they create Rabbit in Red's most terrifying and disturbing challenge yet, Hellfire, and use it to recruit a new class of horror students.Then the bodies start piling up, and the mysteries become more and more dangerous. Is this another one of JB's dark games-within-a-game, or will Rabbit in Red--and everyone in it--burn in the end

Frenzied - A Suspense Thriller


Brandon Massey - 2017
    . . WORK . . . PLAY . . . DIE . . . South Haven is the premier mixed-used community in metro Atlanta, a vibrant place where old-fashioned country living gets a modern update. There’s the town square where residents watch family movies on the lawn on warm summer nights. The corner market stocked with organic foods. The bakery with fresh coffee and Wi-Fi. The stately homes on shaded, gently winding streets. The water park where children splash, laugh, and run . . . There’s also something deadly lurking. The first incident is dismissed as an aberration: a college student goes berserk and hacks his family to chunks with a machete. But a day later, a young woman riding her bicycle is chased through the streets by her own neighbors. Then a teenager takes a deadly joyride, using his pick-up truck to mow down everyone in sight. As the incidents pile up, the only thing they share is that each person launched into an inexplicable, uncontrollable frenzy. Mark Deacon, an ex-cop and chief of South Haven’s private security force, has never seen anything like it. And it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Within twenty-four hours, South Haven is declared a quarantine zone, with every entrance barricaded and military snipers positioned outside the perimeter with orders to shoot on sight. Fearful residents huddle inside, uncertain whom to trust, anxiously watching one another for clues of where the terror might strike next. Together with Dr. Hannah Bailey, a brilliant CDC scientist dispatched to investigate the threat, Deacon teams up with a motley crew of neighbors, and they hatch a desperate plan to find out answers--and stay alive. But the spreading menace might not have arrived by accident . . . RAVES FOR BRANDON MASSEY'S SUSPENSE THRILLERS : "An intense thriller . . . a wild ride!" -Kevin O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author “A razor-sharp thriller guaranteed to keep you turning pages well into the night. Start this one on your day off—-you won't be able to put it down.” —Douglas Clegg, bestselling author of The Queen of Wolves and The Hour Before Dark "The talented Mr. Massey has the rare knack of grabbing the reader early and not letting go. Massey knows how to ratchet up the suspense." —John Lutz, New York Times bestselling author “A taut, involving, and utterly convincing thrill ride.” —Gregg Olsen, New York Times bestselling author

The Inheritance


J. Galliano - 2020
    

Soul Full of Guns


John Birmingham - 2016
    Thankfully not. Super Dave is dumpster fire of regret and disappointment for anyone who relies on him. Colonel Ekaterina Varatchevsky of the Russian GRU doesn't want to rely on him. A deep cover agent operating in the US as Karen Warat, a successful New York art dealer, Karin is gifted with superpowers courtesy of killing a Threshrend Daemonum which attacks her gallery and eats rather a large number of Manhattan's 1%. Now she doesn't have to rely on Dave any more. She has to target him. This is her story. Not told by Dave. Because you can't trust that guy.