Book picks similar to
The Dark Ones by Bryan Smith


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Hollow House


Greg Chapman - 2016
    and Mrs. Markham down the road. Not even Darryl, the loner at number seventy, who is abnormal himself, thinks much about it. It is just the old Kemper House, forgotten and abandoned.Until it makes itself known.When the stench of death wafts from Kemper House through Willow Street, and comes to the attention of recent resident and newspaper reporter, Ben Traynor, it starts a chain of horrors that brings Kemper House's curse into their own homes and leads others direct to its door. Kemper House not only haunts its neighbours, it infects them with an evil that traverses time and reality itself.“A truly disturbing tale of horror and twisted minds. If you live on the same street as Hollow House – MOVE!” –Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Ghostwalkers and Patient Zero"The real hauntings in Greg Chapman's compelling, unnerving Hollow House don't happen in the title structure, but in the finely-observed families surrounding it. This unusual, sometimes horrifying and sometimes tragic tale may well make you look at your own neighborhood in a whole new (dark) light. Highly recommended!" - Lisa Morton, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Castle of Los Angeles"With his debut novel, Greg Chapman takes the standard haunted house trope and puts it through a bloody ringer. Hollow House, an engrossing yet horrifying tale about that nondescript, near-to-condemned house-next-door we have all encountered at some point in our lives, joyfully reeks of the dark memories of Poe and Lovecraft. A first-rate thriller, don't read this one alone, or in the deep of night, because that creak you hear might be more than just the old bones of your house settling. Yes, it might be much more." Brian W. Matthews, author of Forever Man, Revelation, and The Conveyance."A real page-turner, packed full of powerful horror imagery..." - Mark Smith-Briggs, Chronos Award-winning author"As pure a slice of American Gothic as you will ever find, with Robert Bloch and Stephen King never far away." - Glam Adelaide Magazine"Hollow House is much more than a simple haunted house story...this is a dark and gruesome tale, with an ever-increasing creep factor." - Frank Michaels Errington, Horrible Book Reviews"Hollow House is Chapman's first novel. It promises much, and it delivers on its promises. Traditional yet unconventional, familiar in details yet eerily different and twisted, it does something entirely different with the Bad House...and makes it much Worse." - Collings Notes

Suffer the Flesh


Monica J. O'Rourke - 2002
    Kidnapped off the Manhattan streets and whisked away from the safe, normal world she once knew, she finds herself the victim of one reprehensible man's vision. Forced to witness the depravities of the seedy underworld where lust, rape, torture and mutilation are a way of life, stripped of clothing, pride, and spirit, Zoey must play their games, bear their torture -- but for how long? Somehow she must learn to survive the daily perversions . . . but how can Zoey survive? How could anyone? Somewhere between ecstasy and pain -- learn to SUFFER THE FLESH.

Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane


John SkippJack Ketchum - 2012
    Tales of their grisly conquests have kept us cowering under the covers, but still turning the pages.Psychos is the first book to collect in a single volume the scariest and most well-crafted fictional works about these deranged killers. Some of the stories are classics, the best that the genre has to offer, by renowned writers such as Neil Gaiman, Jack Ketchum, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Harris. Other selections are from the latest and most promising crop of new authors.John Skipp, who is also the editor of Zombies, Demons and Werewolves and Shapeshifters, provides fascinating insight, through two nonfiction essays, into our insatiable obsession with serial killers and how these madmen are portrayed in popular culture. Resources at the end of the book includes lists of the genre's best long-form fiction, movies, websites, and writers.

Shadow Bound


Erin Kellison - 2010
    When a demon breaches the barrier between death and life, the salvation of the world depends on the passions of a beautiful banshee just coming into her power and the man willing to use her to avenge the destruction of his family.

The Light is the Darkness


Laird Barron - 2011
    A man searches for his missing sister, while taking part in brutal modern-day gladiator fights and encountering cosmic horror on a grand scale.

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.

Stolen


Rebecca Muddiman - 2013
    But what follows is a mother’s worst nightmare: Beth is gone and Abby's world collapses around her.As DI Michael Gardner begins to investigate Abby and her family, he discovers lives built on secrets and betrayals. Under pressure from his bosses to find the missing child and to unearth the truth, Gardner finds himself struggling to stay emotionally removed from the case, and from Abby herself.After the authorities finally shelve their investigation, Abby receives a message telling her where she can find her daughter. But how can she convince those around her that the girl really is Beth when they are the very people she knows least?A gripping and haunting debut, Stolen is a richly imagined psychological thriller from an exciting new talent in crime writing.

A God in the Shed


J.-F. Dubeau - 2017
    A rich, gothic story of murder and mystery, A God in The Shed is quite possibly one of the most enthralling novels I've read in the last ten years. Dubeau is a force to be reckoned with.- --Jerry Smith, Fangoria Magazine and Blumhouse.com The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life: farmhouses stretching from one main street, a small police precinct, a few diners and cafes, and a grocery store. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing--a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It's not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play. When a dark spirit reveals itself to Venus McKenzie, one of Saint-Ferdinand's teenage residents, she learns that this creature's power has a long history with her town--and that the serial murders merely scratch the surface of a past burdened by evil secrets.

I Am Not a Serial Killer


Dan Wells - 2009
    So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he's written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don't demand or expect the empathy he's unable to offer. Perhaps that's what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there's something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can't control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.Dan Wells' debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.

Rage


Richard Bachman - 1977
    Over the course of one long, tense and unbearable hot afternoon, Charlie Decker explains what led him to this drastic sequence of events, while at the same time deconstructing the personalities of his classmates, forcing each one to justify his or her existence.

Chasing Rainbows


Mona Ingram - 2019
    Betrayed in the worst possible way, her career crumbles overnight. Taylor hides away on her father’s small ranch where she struggles to trust again, but a message in a bottle gives her second thoughts. Is the man who wrote the note too good to be true… and more importantly, does she have the courage to find out? About this series: Would you share your heartbreak, your hopes, your dreams by writing them down and sending them off in a bottle? Or if you found such a bottle, how would you react? This series takes us inside the lives of people who, in most cases, have suffered loss and are ready for a second chance. A light, slightly edgy look at life and love in today’s world of social media. The first of these stories is Chasing Rainbows.

The Voice of the Night


Dean Koontz - 1980
    Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was nervous around girls; Roy was a ladies’ man. Colin was fascinated by Roy — and Roy was fascinated with death. Then one day Roy asked his timid friend, “You ever killed anything?” And from that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine… and too irresistible to stop.Includes an afterword by the author.

Tastes Like Candy: A Slasher Novel


Ivy Tholen - 2020
    In 2020, Violet Warren and her friends are the lucky ones. Eight girls will break into the Poison Apple Carnival after hours for a scavenger hunt, then at sunrise they’ll gather for a celebration in honor of their upcoming senior year.But someone else has another game planned. Minutes after the girls sneak into the carnival, a madman in a rubber mask begins slashing his way through the group and Violet quickly realizes his motives are personal. As she watches her friends die in a series of increasingly bizarre attacks, she must fight to survive while trying to answer the question: What could she have done to earn a fast-pass for a roller coaster ride straight to hell?

The Toll


Cherie Priest - 2019
    Drive that route from east to west, and you’ll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven.But you’d better hope not.Titus and Melanie Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car . . .When, much later, a tow-truck arrives, the driver finds Titus lying in the middle of the road, but Melanie is nowhere to be found.

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.