Book picks similar to
Merciless by Bryan Smith


horror
night-worms
extreme-horror
nightworms

Sons of Anarchy: Bratva


Christopher Golden - 2014
    Yet Jax Teller, SAMCRO's V.P., has another problem to deal with. He just learned that his Irish half-sister Trinity has been in the U.S. for months entangled with Russian BRATVA gangsters. Now that she’s abruptly gone missing, he’s sure the brewing Mafia war is connected to her disappearance. Jax heads to Nevada with Chibs and Opie, to search for her and seek revenge. Trinity may be half-Irish, but she’s also half-Teller, and where Tellers go, trouble follows.

Halloween Fiend


C.V. Hunt - 2019
    It’s haunted every night by a creature the townsfolk refer to as Halloween. Once the sun sets each day, Halloween emerges to collect its treats: a small, live offering from each household. The residents comply because no one wants to be the target of Halloween’s tricks. But the nightmare of residing in Strang is nothing compared to the yearly ritual Halloween demands of the citizens on All Hallows’ Eve.

The Cipher


Kathe Koja - 1991
    She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...

The Chill


Scott Carson - 2020
    Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...

The Bone Collection: Four Novellas


Kathy Reichs - 2016
    "The Bone Collection" presents her trademark artistry in this collection of thrilling short fiction. In "First Bones, " a prequel to Reichs s first novel, "DejaDead," she at last reveals the tale of how Tempe became a forensic anthropologist. In this never-before-published story, Tempe recalls the case that lured her from a promising career in academia into the grim but addictive world of criminal investigation. (It all began with a visit from a pair of detectives and a John Doe recovered from an arson scene in a trailer.) The collection is rounded out with three more stories that take Tempe from the low country of the Florida Everglades, where she makes a grisly discovery in the stomach of an eighteen-foot Burmese python, to the heights of Mount Everest, where a frozen corpse is unearthed. No matter where she goes, Tempe s cases make for the most gripping reading. Praise for Kathy Reichs and the Temperance Brennan series Nobody does forensics thrillers like Kathy Reichs. She s the real deal. David Baldacci Kathy Reichs writes smart no, make that brilliant mysteries that are as realistic as nonfiction and as fast-paced as the best thrillers about Jack Reacher or Alex Cross. James Patterson Every minute in the morgue with Tempe is golden. "The New York Times Book Review""

The Shadow Man


Helen Sarah Fields - 2021
    But he doesn’t keep them safe.Elspeth, Meggy and Xavier are locked in a flat. They don’t know where they are, and they don’t know why they’re there. They only know that the shadow man has taken them, and he won’t let them go. Desperate to escape, the three of them must find a way out of their living hell, even if it means uncovering a very dark truth. Because the shadow man isn’t a nightmare. He’s all too real. And he’s watching. Helen Fields is back with a heart-pounding new book, perfect for fans of Cara Hunter and Stuart MacBride.

Fairest Flesh


K.P. Kulski - 2020
    Part fairytale, part historical novel, and steeped in an atmosphere of horrific dread, Fairest Flesh is the debut novel from author K.P. Kulski. Lady Báthory by way of Brothers Grimm, a notorious monster is given startling new agency in this stunning novel of brutal power and tragic witchcraft.

After Anna


Alex Lake - 2015
    A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless. The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved. But the biggest mystery is yet to come: one week after she was abducted, their daughter is returned. She has no memory of where she has been. And this, for her mother, is just the beginning of the nightmare.

Bitter Orange


Claire Fuller - 2018
    The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she's distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors’ private lives.To Frances' surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled.But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.

The Taxidermist's Daughter


Kate Mosse - 2014
    In a churchyard, villagers gather on the night when the ghosts of those who will die in the coming year are thought to be seen. Here, where the estuary leads out to the sea, superstitions still hold sway.Standing alone is the taxidermist's daughter. At 17, Constantia Gifford lives with her father in a decaying house: it is all that is left of Gifford's once world-famous museum of taxidermy. The stuffed animals that used to grace every parlour are out of fashion, leaving Gifford a disgraced and bitter man.The bell begins to toll and all eyes are fixed on the church. No one sees the gloved hand pick up a flint. As the last notes fade into the dark, a woman lies dead.While the village braces itself against rising waters and the highest tide of the season, Connie struggles to discover who is responsible, but finds herself under suspicion. Is Constantia who she seems - is she the victim of circumstances or are more sinister forces at work? And what is the secret that lies at the heart of Gifford House, hidden among the bell jars of her father's workshop?Told over one summer, The Taxidermist's Daughter is the haunting new novel from the bestselling author of Labyrinth, Sepulchre, Citadel and The Winter Ghosts.

Those Below the Tree House


Matt Hayward - 2020
    His stepdad is home, a bite on his neck, as Riverside’s only officer searches the woodlands for the aggressor. Tony is told not to cause a panic among the few kids living in Riverside’s mountaintop community, and his best friends Ben Rodgers and Lee Tally are unaware. Overnight, the condition of Tony’s stepfather worsens. His mother won’t leave the bedside. And soon, Riverside is turned upside down as residents morph into moss-covered abominations. Freaks. Joined by the local bully, the boys seek refuge in Rodgers’ tree house, trapped inside as neighbors, and even family, claw the trunk… Food and water soon runs low. With all hope lost, the boys decide to have their first of what they can before time runs out. Their first drink, their first cigarette, their first of anything at all. Like baby birds thrown from the nest, they will need to fly or fall. And time is running short. For his thirteenth birthday, Tony has learns the world has teeth. And someone else is out there, too, watching. An adult in a butcher’s apron. Waiting… Those Below the Tree House is the new supernatural coming-of-age from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of What Do Monsters Fear? and A Penny For Your Thoughts.

Killstreme


Rayne Havok - 2021
    It's an opportunity he can't refuse.

Blood Sugar


Daniel Kraus - 2019
    With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children. But as the clock ticks closer to sundown, will one of his helpers—an innocent himself, in his own streetwise way—carry out or defeat the plan?

Hark! the Herald Angels Scream


Christopher GoldenJames A. Moore - 2018
    Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. Marley untying the bandage that holds his jaws together. The hideous children--Want and Ignorance--beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The heavy ledgers Marley drags by his chains. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Bestselling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.Absinthe & angels by Kelley Armstrong --Christmas in Barcelona by Scott Smith --Fresh as the new-fallen snow by Seanan McGuire --Love me by Thomas E. Sniegoski --Not just for Christmas by Sarah Lotz --Tenets by Josh Malerman --Good deeds by Jeff Strand --It's a wonderful knife by Christopher Golden --Mistletoe and holly by James A. Moore --Snake's tail by Sarah Langan --The second floor of the Christmas hotel by Joe R. Lansdale --Farrow Street by Elizabeth Hand --Doctor Velocity: a story of the fire zone by Jonathan Maberry --Yankee swap by John M. McIlveen --Honor thy mother by Angela Slatter --Home by Tim Lebbon --Hiking through by Michael Koryta --The hangman's bride by Sarah Pinborough

Whisper Down the Lane


Clay McLeod ChapmanClay McLeod Chapman - 2021
    For him, there is only the present: a new marriage to Tamara, a first chance at fatherhood to her son Elijah, and a quiet but pleasant life as an art teacher at Elijah’s elementary school in Danvers, Virginia. Then the body of a rabbit, ritualistically murdered, appears on the school grounds with a birthday card for Richard tucked beneath it. Richard doesn’t have a birthday—but Sean does . . .Sean is a five-year-old boy who has just moved to Greenfield, Virginia, with his mother. Like most mothers of the 1980s, she’s worried about bills, childcare, putting food on the table . . . and an encroaching threat to American life that can take the face of anyone: a politician, a friendly neighbor, or even a teacher. When Sean’s school sends a letter to the parents revealing that Sean’s favorite teacher is under investigation, a white lie from Sean lights a fire that engulfs the entire nation—and Sean and his mother are left holding the match.Now, thirty years later, someone is here to remind Richard that they remember what Sean did. And though Sean doesn’t exist anymore, someone needs to pay the price for his lies.