Book picks similar to
Fear Me by Tim Curran


horror
novella
darkfuse
fiction

Suicide Forest


Jeremy Bates - 2014
    Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning--and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.

Niceville


Carsten Stroud - 2012
    . .  A boy literally disappears from Main Street.  A security camera captures the moment of his instant, inexplicable vanishing. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong: four cops are gunned down; a TV news helicopter is shot and spins crazily out of the sky, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across twenty different lives over the course of just thirty-six hours.Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves struggling to make sense not only of the disappearance and the robbery but also of a shadow world, where time has a different rhythm and where justice is elusive.  . . .Something is wrong in Niceville, where evil lives far longer than men do.Compulsively readable, and populated with characters who leap off the page, Niceville will draw you in, excite you, amaze you, horrify you, and, when it finally lets you go, make you sorry you have to leave.Read the first thirty-five pages.  Find out why Harlan Coben calls Carsten Stroud the master of “the nerve-jangling thrill ride.”

The Memory Game


Sharon Sant - 2013
    The only person who can see and hear him is the girl he spent his schooldays bullying. Bethany is the most hated girl at school. She hides away, alone with her secrets until, one day, the ghost of a boy killed in a hit-and-run starts to haunt her. Together, they find that the end is only the beginning…

A Penny For Your Thoughts


Robert Ford - 2019
    He has let go of old habits, especially the ones that turned him into an addict and helped land him in prison.On a hike along the Lowback Trail, Joe stumbles on one of the town's oldest secrets--buried long ago, if not forgotten.It's an unusual but safe enough treasure--a jar of old pennies. What interests Joe isn't the pennies themselves, but the pieces of paper taped to every coin--a child's handwritten wish on each one.When the first few wishes come true, they are simple things. Fun. Harmless.Except as time goes on, Joe realizes they aren't really wishes at all...they're exchanges, and the bill was racking up.Nothing is free in life. Sooner or later, you always pay.

The Hour Before Dark


Douglas Clegg - 2002
    But this murder was no crime of human ferocity. What butchered Nemo's father may in fact be something far more terrifying...Something Nemo and his younger brother, Bruno, and sister, Brooke, have known since childhood.There are secrets buried on Burnley Island.Within the rooms of Hawthorn, beautiful Brooke Raglan has begun to go mad. She sees faces at the windows and wanders the night, trying to find what she believes is a monster.Bruno Raglan has wiped the memory of a terrible event from his mind. Now he compulsively picks apart Hawthorn and discovers that within its walls lies a forbidden secret.As he unravels the mysteries of his past and a terrible night of his childhood, Nemo witnesses something unimaginable, and sees the true face of evil while Burnley Island comes to know the unspeakable horror that grows in the darkness."Here comes a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a chopper to chop off your head."

Forsaken: A Novel of Art, Evil and Insanity


Andrew Van Wey - 2011
    Two kids, a dog, and a tenure track professorship teaching art at the local university. Your name is Daniel Rineheart. You’ve got it all....BUT ALL DREAMS MUST END.For this autumn heralds the arrival of a mysterious painting. No name. No date. No signature or frame. A disturbing work of grotesque perfection: two children with cruel eyes, a window onto an endless field, and a dying tree on top of a hill.A work of art... that changes with each viewing.SO BEGINS THE NIGHTMARE......Where wretched children crawl from a canvas prison to stalk the quiet halls of this happy home....Where painted clocks tick-tock away in the dark hours before dawn, and a missing dog whimpers from between the walls....Where all answers lead to a dark artist and an impossible creation, a cursed canvas with a twisted past......AND A HORROR THAT WILL DEVOUR ALL.Curl up, if you dare, with a dark novel readers are calling: “Beautifully written” — “A Must Read!” — “Stunning” — “The Scariest book EVER!” FORSKEN is an intelligent blend of ghost story, suburban supernatural thriller, haunted house, and mystery. Perfectly written for fans of early Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub, it’s a terrifying tale of secrets and lies, of nightmares made flesh; where the scariest stories are the ones that coldly whisper into your ear until madness and death are a welcome rest.Lock your door.
Turn on the lights.
Do NOT read FORSAKEN late at night.

The Hoard


Alan Ryker - 2012
    A new breed…a new evil… Hidden deep beneath its landfill lair of trash and filth, a strange new organism has come to life.  When an accidental fire drives it out, the mysterious creature escapes across the drought-blasted Kansas prairie and finds the home of elderly hoarder Anna Grish.  In desperate need of shelter, it burrows in, concealed amidst the squalor and mess.When Adult Protective Services force Anna to vacate her junk-riddled home, she moves in with her son and his family.  But there is something wrong with Anna, something more than her declining mental condition and severe hoarding disorder.  Something sinister has taken hold of her, and it’s not only getting stronger, it’s spreading.  Amidst the wide-open Kansas plains, with endless blue sky above and flat, open vista stretching from one horizon to the next, there is nowhere to hide from…THE HOARD.

The October Man


Ben Aaronovitch - 2019
    So when a man is found dead with his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth.Fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything.Enter Investigator Tobias Winter, whose aim is to get in, deal with the problem, and get out with the minimum of fuss, personal danger and paperwork. With the help of frighteningly enthusiastic local cop, Vanessa Sommer, he’s quick to link the first victim to a group of ordinary middle aged men – and to realise they may have accidentally reawakened a bloody conflict from a previous century. But the rot is still spreading, literally and with the suspect list extending to people born before Frederick the Great solving the case may mean unearthing the city’s secret magical history.. . . so long as that history doesn’t kill them first.

The Tangleroot Palace


Marjorie M. Liu - 2021
    In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.Sympathy for the bones --The briar and the rose --The light and the fury --The last dignity of man --Where the heart lives --After the blood --Tangleroot palace

The Boy in the Smoke


Maureen Johnson - 2014
    But someone stopped him along the way, sending his life in a new and decidedly strange direction–leading him to London, to two new friends, and to a world of shadows and mystery.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath


H.P. Lovecraft - 1943
    P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) published by Arkham House posthumously in 1943 in the collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, it was completed on January 22, 1927 and was unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing. The Dream-Quest combines elements of horror and fantasy into an epic tale that illustrates the scope and wonder of humankind's ability to dream.The dream-quest of unknown Kadath --Celephais --The silver key --Through the gates of the silver key --The white ship --The strange high house in the mist

Rules for Vanishing


Kate Alice Marshall - 2019
    Who is brave enough to find her--and who won't make it out of the woods?It's been exactly one year since Sara's sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn't know whether her former friends no longer like her...or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to "play the game" and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca--before she's lost forever. And even though she's hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends--and their cameras--following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side.

Summer of Night


Dan Simmons - 1991
    But then a dark cloud threatens the bright promise of summer vacation: on the last day of school, their classmate Tubby Cooke vanishes. Soon, the group discovers stories of other children who once disappeared from Elm Haven. And there are other strange things happening in town: unexplained holes in the ground, a stranger dressed as a World War I soldier, and a rendering-plant truck that seems to be following the five boys. The friends realize that there is a terrible evil lurking in Elm Haven...and they must be the ones to stop it.

Dead Inside


Chandler Morrison - 2015
    Along the way, lines will be crossed, taboos will be violated, and common decency will take an extended leave of absence. This is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Or anyone who enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey. A young hospital security guard with a disturbingly unique taste in women. A maternity doctor with a horrifically unusual appetite. When the two of them meet, they embark on a journey of self-discovery as they shatter societal norms while engaging in destructive and abhorrent behavior. As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither of them seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive...and that it might not always be a good thing.

In The Land Of The Dead


Jonathan Maberry - 2011