Book picks similar to
Slugs by Shaun Hutson
horror
fiction
shaun-hutson
paperbacks-from-hell
The Cartoonist
Sean Costello - 1990
So you go on a road trip together, have a few drinks, a final fling before the long academic haul ahead. Young and bright, you feel the future surge beneath you like a sleek stallion, under your full control.But a series of small lapses ends in tragedy and now you're faced with a terrible decision: Do you take responsibility for what you've done and risk losing everything? Or flee into the night unseen, with only God and conscience as your jury?Sixteen years ago, Scott Bowman faced this decision...Now a successful psychiatrist with a loving family, Scott endures a judgement far more harrowing than any god or man could conceive. An ancient derelict appears in his practice, an apparently senile old man with a remarkable artistic talent. Otherwise disconnected from the world around him, this strange little man quickly demonstrates an ability to foretell events through his drawings.But before long Scott is left to wonder: is this eldritch prophet predicting events? Or shaping them?PRAISE FOR THE CARTOONIST"In THE CARTOONIST, Sean Costello creates a fast-moving read that mounts in tension while mixing horror with psychological anguish." —J. B. Macabre"Sean Costello's The Cartoonist is a wonderful blend of horror, psychology, and the power of suggestion that leaves you guessing right up to the very end!" —The New Jersey Grapevine
We Sold Our Souls
Grady Hendrix - 2018
Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry's meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris's very soul.This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It's a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that's darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul...where only a girl with a guitar can save us all.
Headhunter Reimagined
Michael Slade - 1984
The Headhunter is loose on the streets of Vancouver. The psycho’s victims are everywhere - floating in the Fraser River, buried in a shallow grave, nailed to a totem pole on the university campus. All are women. All are headless.Then the taunting photographs arrive. Carefully posed shots of the women’s heads stuck on poles. The Mounties of Special X are up against a unique brand of killer. A killer whose sexual psychosis stretches back through Ecuador’s steaming jungle and a scream-filled New Orleans dungeon to a dead-of-winter manhunt in the Rocky Mountains a century ago.
The Hatching
Ezekiel Boone - 2016
Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. Something wants out. The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake.
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill - 2007
-- so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it. The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker's sanity.
The Fisherman
John Langan - 2016
Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.
Stinger
Robert R. McCammon - 1988
Inferno is a town in trouble, driven to the brink by racial tension, gang violence, and a collapsing economy. But things can always get worse, and they do so with astonishing speed when an unidentified spacecraft crash lands in the desert outside of town, followed by a second craft bearing the alien being who will soon be known as Stinger. Stinger is a kind of interstellar hunter on a mission he intends to complete, whatever the cost. He brings with him an endless array of technological marvels and an infinite capacity for destruction that threaten the existence of Inferno, its inhabitants, and the larger world beyond"--Dust jacket flap.
The Jersey Devil
Hunter Shea - 2016
Some believe it is an abomination of nature, a hybrid winged beast from hell that stalks the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey searching for prey. Others believe it is a hoax, a campfire story designed to scare children. But one man knows the truth...THE DEVIL AWAKES Sixty years ago, Boompa Willet came face to face with the Devil—and lived to tell the tale. Now, the creature’s stomping grounds are alive once again with strange sightings, disappearances, and worse. After all these years, Boompa must return to the Barrens, not to prove the legend is real but to wipe it off the face of the earth...THE BEAST MUST DIE It’ll take more than just courage to defeat the Devil. It will take four generations of the Willet clan, a lifetime of survivalist training, and all the firepower they can carry. But timing is critical. A summer music festival has attracted crowds of teenagers. The woods are filled with tender young prey. But this time, the Devil is not alone. The evil has grown into an unholy horde of mutant monstrosities. And hell has come home to New Jersey...
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
Naomi's Room
Jonathan Aycliffe - 1991
Brimming with excitement, Charles sets off with his daughter Naomi on a Christmas Eve shopping trip to London. But, by the end of the day, all Charles and his wife have left are cups of tea and police sympathy. For Naomi, their beautiful, angelic only child, has disappeared. Days later her murdered body is discovered.But is she dead?In a howling, bumping story of past and present day hell, Jonathan Aycliffe's haunting psychological masterpiece is guaranteed to make you sink to untold depths of teeth-shaking terror.
Crooked Tree
Robert C. Wilson - 1980
Why are the normally docile black bears now no longer afraid of humans? Why are they attacking, even when unprovoked? Is anyone controlling them? Can local attorney Axel Michelson, who lives on the edge of the national forest, where many of the bears live in their normal habitat, figure out the legend of the bear walk - and could it actually be true, as many Native Americans still believe?
The Mist
Stephen King - 1980
Suddenly a violent storm sweeps across the lake and ends as abruptly and unexpectedly as it had begun. Then comes the mist...creeping slowly, inexorably into town, where it settles and waits, trapping you in the supermarket with dozens of others, cut off from your families and the world. The mist is alive, seething with unearthly sounds and movements. What unleashed this terror? Was it the Arrowhead Project---the top secret government operation that everyone has noticed but no one quite understands? And what happens when the provisions have run out and you're forced to make your escape, edging blindly through the dim light?
Lupe
Gene Thompson - 1977
In San Francisco, Emily Blake and her husband David, a dermatologist, by an old Victorian in Pacific Heights and hope to start a family. Emily's happy plans are threatened when David begins an affair with a beautiful patient named Jennie. A visit to a mysterious young boy in the Mission District named Lupe starts a chain of events in motion that result in Jennie's death -- by spontaneous combustion -- a murder trial, a media circus, and demon possession.
The Bleeding Season
Greg F. Gifune - 2003
Their world was simple and happy until the day Tommy was killed. Years later, Bernard commits suicide. Within weeks of Bernard's death, several mutilated bodies are found in town. The three remaining friends attempt to solve the riddle of Bernard's suicide and come to realize that he may have been a savage ritual killer, a bleeder of young women.To find the truth about Bernard, they must delve into the darkness that cradles an unspeakable evil so terrifying it could forever trap them in the shadows of the damned and shatter the very concept of their existence.