Book picks similar to
Cellars by John Shirley
horror
paperbacks-from-hell
splatterpunk
fiction
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.
...Walkers
Gary Brandner - 1980
But she was brought back to life!That's when people began trying to kill her...nice people...the last people in the world anyone would suspect of being capable of murder--people who were already dead......Walkers: The most terrifying novel you've ever read!
Falling Angel
William Hjortsberg - 1978
For Harry Angel, a routine missing-persons case soon turns into a fiendish nightmare of voodoo and black magic, of dizzying peril and violent death. Many people feel that Falling Angel is the greatest American supernatural horror novel of the 20th century.With a new foreword by Ridley Scott, an introduction by the late James Crumley, and a new afterword by the author and a bonus short story, plus a letter from Stephen King, the first time that the letter has ever been published in its complete form.The hardcover edition is limited to just 300 copies and is signed by William Hjortsberg. Bound in cloth with a dustjacket with the original Stanislaw Zagorski wraparound dustjacket printed against a black background with spot varnish.
Valley of Lights
Stephen Gallagher - 1987
Like his feelings for Loretta, the neighbour who's more than a friend, and her daughter Georgina, so much the child he never had. Volchak finds himself on the hunt for a child killer, someone who can apparently switch bodies with ease, and who is playing games with the police. And then Georgina is taken.
Shella
Andrew Vachss - 1993
For Shella is nothing less than a tour of evil's spawning ground, conducted by one of its natural predators.He is called "Ghost" because he is so nondescript as to be invisible and because he slays with such reflexive ease that he might be one of the dead. Once he traveled with a woman who was called "Shella" -- because those who had treated her as a horrendously ill-used child had tried to make her come out of her shell. Now Shella has vanished in a wilderness of strip clubs and peep shows, and Ghost is looking for her, guided by a killer's instinct and the recognition that can only exist between two people who have been damaged past the point of no return. The result is Andrew Vachss's most compelling work to date, the thriller reimagined as a bleak romance of the damned.
The Dark Between
Sonia Gensler - 2013
While mediums dupe the grief-stricken, a group of local fringe scientists seeks to bridge the gap to the spirit world by investigating the dark corners of the human mind.Each running from a shadowed past, Kate, Asher, and Elsie take refuge within the walls of Summerfield College. But their peace is soon shattered by the discovery of a dead body nearby. Is this the work of a flesh-and-blood villain, or is something otherworldly at play? This unlikely trio must illuminate what the scientists have not, and open a window to secrets taken to the grave—or risk joining the spirit world themselves.
The Ceremonies
T.E.D. Klein - 1984
Moving into a former storage building on the farm of Sarr and Deborah Poroth, he expects to spend a productive summer free from essentially all distractions - he is quite wrong in this assumption. Meanwhile, in New York, the rather reserved Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city on a small income from her job at a library. She meets Jeremy in New York just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What Jeremy and Carol do not know is that this relationship is the work of a strange, little old man known as Mr. Rosebottom. Rosie is actually the Old One working to bring his master back after a very long absence, and Jeremy and Carol are the unsuspecting keys to his success
Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror
Douglas E. WinterClive Barker - 1988
Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror
The Horror from the Mound
Robert E. Howard - 1932
There is a secret held inside an Indian burial mound, only a few know the secret and they have been sworn to secrecy… until someone became greed, deciding that there must be treasure hidden in the mound…
Covenant
John Everson - 2004
Hiding from his past big city exposés in the quiet coastal town of Terrel, he stumbles upon a web of mysterious teen suicides that somehow connect a ring of five women. Is there really a malevolent presence inside Terrel Cliff that holds all of the town in thrall as Angelica, a fortune teller, suggests? Or is there a murderous covenant between five women to sacrifice their first-born? When Angelica is kidnapped right under his nose, Joe suspects that there is more at work in Terrel than a dark, tragic streak.Deep beneath the remains of a long-demolished lighthouse on its tragic cliff, Joe discovers Terrel's secret history and salvation. And in his desperate bid to save two women, he forges a new covenant, one that puts his own soul in deadly danger.
Blood Heritage
Sheri S. Tepper - 1986
Until a shrieking, freezing horror escapes its ancient prison. Badger Ettison does not believe in magic. But the old blood-rituals are the only way to stop the voracious evil that pursues his wife and son. Badger Ettison does not believe in terror. Now he is living it.
The Prison
Amy Cross - 2014
Now the prison is being re-opened, but as a new generation of prisoners arrive to fill the cells, something evil is waiting in the shadows. Amanda Weir doesn't remember killing her children. All she knows is that she woke up with their bloody bodies in her arms. Sentenced to life in prison, she arrives at Hardstone and tries to adjust to her new life. All she wants is to forget her old self, and to find some way to live with what she did. After all, there's no way she could be innocent... There's something else at Hardstone, however. Something lost and alone, something angry. The ghost of a little girl has been spotted several times, and the prisoners have learned a valuable lesson: whenever the ghost is seen, anyone who looks into its eyes will be dead within a matter of days. But what does the ghost want, and exactly how far has its influence spread in the lives of the prisoners? The Prison is a dark horror story about a woman who finds herself facing the truth about her own past, and about a dead little girl who refuses to accept that her life is over.
The Vampire Tapestry
Suzy McKee Charnas - 1980
He lives discrete lifetimes bounded by decades of hibernation and steals blood from labs rather than committing murder. Weyland is a monster who must form an uneasy empathy with his prey in order to survive, and The Vampire Tapestry is a story wholly unlike any you've heard before.