Book picks similar to
The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle
horror
non-fiction
paranormal
nonfiction
The Ghosts on 87th Lane: A True Story
M.L. Woelm - 2007
It still is. I began recording my experiences, hoping to one day share them. I kept waiting for the incidents to stop, so I'd have a logical conclusion to my book. So far, that hasn't happened. It may never happen. I'd like to get my story told before I become a ghost myself. The True Story of a Haunting Beginning in 1968 and spanning four decades, this true story chronicles the hair-raising experiences that nearly drove an ordinary housewife and mother to the breaking point.Not every haunted house is an old Victorian mansion, as the author and her family discovered when they bought a modest house in the suburbs. Even a post-war starter home can be a dwelling place for earthbound spirits--especially if it holds a tragic secret from the past. Eerie feelings of being watched, disembodied sobs, mysterious scratches appearing on her throat, and a child's voice crying, Mommy! convinced M. L. Woelm that she was sharing her home with ghosts. This is her story.
The Hunter
L.J. Smith - 1994
When she and her friends open the plain white box at her boyfriend Tom’s birthday party, she chills to the warning: “Entering the Shadow World can be deadly. Do so at your own risk.” Spellbound, they piece together the rooms with their darkest nightmares. Suddenly the game is real! They’re in the house of horrors, running from The Shadow Man – Julian himself, who forces them to confront their worst nightmares or be lost in a private hell. It’s Julian’s game, and Jenny is the prize he’s stalked for years. He’ll do anything to win her as she bargains desperately for her body – and soul . . .
The Troop
Nick Cutter - 2014
But when an unexpected intruder -- shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry -- stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected ... and one another.
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.
Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century
Peter Graham - 2011
Half an hour later, the girls returned alone, claiming that Pauline's mother had had an accident. But when Honora Parker was found in a pool of blood with the brick used to bludgeon her to death close at hand, Juliet and Pauline were quickly arrested, and later confessed to the killing. Their motive? A plan to escape to the United States to become writers, and Honora's determination to keep them apart. Their incredible story made shocking headlines around the world and would provide the subject for Peter Jackson's Academy Award-nominated film, Heavenly Creatures.A sensational trial followed, with speculations about the nature of the girls' relationship and possible insanity playing a key role. Among other things, Parker and Hulme were suspected of lesbianism, which was widely considered to be a mental illness at the time. This mesmerizing book offers a brilliant account of the crime and ensuing trial and shares dramatic revelations about the fates of the young women after their release from prison. With penetrating insight, this thorough analysis applies modern psychology to analyze the shocking murder that remains one of the most interesting cases of all time.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Michelle McNamara - 2018
Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.
Sundial
Catriona Ward - 2022
She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive…The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.
The Haunting of Maddy Clare
Simone St. James - 2012
Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, scarred by World War I, and obsessed with ghosts—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is haunting the barn where she committed suicide. Since Maddy hated men in life, it is Sarah's task to confront her in death. Soon Sarah is caught up in a deperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is real, she's angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Can Sarah and Alistair's assistant, the rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance—before she destroys them all?
A Certain Hunger
Chelsea G. Summers - 2019
Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.
Coldheart Canyon
Clive Barker - 2001
His fiercely loyal agent finds him just such a place in a luxurious forgotten mansion high in the Hollywood Hills. But the original owner of the mansion was a beautiful woman devoted to pleasure at any cost, and the terrible legacy of her deeds has not yet died. There are ghosts and monsters haunting Coldheart Canyon, where nothing is forbidden . . .
Legacy of Lies
Elizabeth Chandler - 2000
She had seen Scarborough House only in her dreams. Now Megan was here, visiting the grandmother she'd never met, and her newfound cousin Matt, too handsome by far, who wanted her to disappear. Grandmother was so cold, so distant. Why did she finally reach out to Megan after all these years? And why was Matt so determined to call her his "almost" cousin? For all her prophetic dreams, nothing could have prepared Megan for Matt's astonishment when he first saw her...or the reaction of perfect strangers who looked at her with fascination -- and fear... Megan thought she knew who she was. Until she came to Grandmother's house. Until she met Matt, who angered and attracted her as no boy had ever done before. Then she began having dreams again, of a life she never lived, a love she never knew...a secret that threatened to drive her to the grave.
Secrets in the Cellar
John Glatt - 2009
He seemed to be living a normal life with his wife, Rosemarie, and their family—though one daughter, Elisabeth, had decades earlier been "lost" to a religious cult. Throughout the years, three of Elisabeth's children mysteriously appeared on the Fritzls' doorstep; Josef and Rosemarie raised them as their own. But only Josef knew the truth about Elisabeth's disappearance…For twenty-seven years, Josef had imprisoned and molested Elisabeth in his man-made basement dungeon, complete with sound-proof paneling and code-protected electric locks. There, she would eventually give birth to a total of seven of Josef's children. One died in infancy—and the other three were raised alongside Elisabeth, never to see the light of day.Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth's children became seriously ill, and was taken to the hospital. It was the first time the nineteen-year-old girl had ever gone outside—and soon, the truth about her background, her family's captivity, and Josef's unspeakable crimes would come to light.John Glatt's Secrets in the Cellar is the true story of a crime that shocked the world.
Dancing with the Octopus: The Telling of a True Crime
Debora Harding - 2020
From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.
Hold Back the Tide
Melinda Salisbury - 2020
But when dark forces begin to stir in Ormscaula, Alva has to face a very different future - and question everything she thought she knew about her past...
Daughters Unto Devils
Amy Lukavics - 2015
She can leave behind the memory of the past winter; of her sickly ma giving birth to a baby sister who cries endlessly; of the terrifying visions she saw as her sanity began to slip, the victim of cabin fever; and most of all, the memories of the boy she has been secretly meeting with as a distraction from her pain. The boy whose baby she now carries. When the Verners arrive at their new home, a large cabin abandoned by its previous owners, they discover the inside covered in blood. And as the days pass, it is obvious to Amanda that something isn’t right on the prairie. She’s heard stories of lands being tainted by evil, of men losing their minds and killing their families, and there is something strange about the doctor and his son who live in the woods on the edge of the prairie. But with the guilt and shame of her sins weighing on her, Amanda can’t be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or deep within her soul.