Book picks similar to
Headhunter by Tim Curran
horror
tim-curran
novella
vietnam
Something Came Through
Joe Hart - 2019
In “Down In The Valley” a young fire service member discovers the horrifying truth regarding the missing persons in the lonely state park his fire tower watches over. A man whose entire life has been haunted by a hideous childhood event gets a second chance to make things right in “You Can Never Go Back”. And a young woman’s tragic mistake while driving and texting literally comes back to haunt her in “More”. Written in Hart’s hypnotic and unnerving style, Something Came Through features ten new terrifying stories that peel back the surface of everyday life to expose the darkness waiting beneath.
Wylding Hall
Elizabeth Hand - 2015
There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?
Z-WORLD
B.V. Larson - 2010
Bizarre monsters of blended flesh shamble in the streets. The world has shifted. Guns don't always work anymore, and the dead don't always die. Corpses lie everywhere--and many of them are still dangerous...Gannon is one of the last living humans in Redmoor. Most of the other residents have shifted into something else. "They are coming, Gannon. The flying ones."Do you want to have nightmares? Z-WORLD is a novel of Fantasy and Horror by bestselling author B. V. Larson.
The Wendigo
Algernon Blackwood - 1910
An influential novella by one of the most best-known writers of fantasy and horror, set in a place and time Blackwood knew well.
Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad
M.R. James - 1904
When Professor Parkins finds an old whistle, his stay at Globe Inn takes a turn for the eerie.
Dreams the Ragman
Greg F. Gifune - 2011
But as an alcoholic ravaged with senility, his grandfather’s stories were dismissed as delusions.When years later, murder comes to Derrick’s small hometown, he and his best friend Caleb—both teenage outcasts—discover that the killer is a hobo dressed in rags who rides the rails in and out of town when committing his crimes. They dub him “The Ragman” unaware of just how accurate that nickname may be, but the murders are never solved.As time passes, Derrick weds and settles into a troubled marriage while Caleb moves to New York City and spirals into drug addiction and madness. Thirty years later, in a dying seaside resort town, the killings have begun again. Has The Ragman returned, or is something even more sinister taking place?As Derrick and Caleb meet at the scene of the latest grisly murders, they soon find themselves confronted with an unsolved mystery that has haunted them for decades and an eternal evil they may never be able to escape. The rain falls, darkness descends, a train’s whistle blows, and the Ragman begins to dream…
The Nightmare Room
Chris Sorensen - 2018
New York audiobook narrator Peter Larson and his wife Hannah head to his hometown of Maple City to help Peter's ailing father and to put a recent tragedy behind them. Though the small, Midwestern town seems the idyllic place to start afresh, Peter and Hannah will soon learn that evil currents flow beneath its surface. They move into an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town—a house purchased by Peter's father at auction and kept secret until now—and start to settle into their new life. But as Peter sets up his recording studio in a small basement room, disturbing things begin to occur—mysterious voices haunt audio tracks, malevolent shadows creep about the house. And when an insidious presence emerges from the woodwork, Peter must face old demons in order to save his family and himself.
Hail! Hail!
Harry Turtledove - 2018
Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?
Seed
Ania Ahlborn - 2011
His childhood is his darkest secret, but after a near fatal accident along a deserted road, the darkness he was sure he’d escaped rears its ugly head… and smiles.But this time, he isn’t the only one who sees the soulless eyes of his past. This time, his six-year-old daughter Charlie leans into his ear and whispers: Daddy, I saw it too.And then she begins to change.Faced with reliving the nightmares of his childhood, Jack watches his daughter spiral into the shadows that had nearly consumed him twenty years before. But Charlie isn’t the only one who’s changing. Jack never outran the darkness. It’s been with him all along. And it’s hungrier than ever. A new breed of dark fiction: the subtlety of Seed will haunt you, and the end will wickedly satisfy.
Please Remain Calm
Courtney Summers - 2015
Rhys is determined to reunite with Sloane until he discovers people who might need him more--people who offer him the closest he'll get to everything he's lost, if they can just hold on long enough. Rhys thinks he has what it takes to survive and find the girl he lost, but in a world overrun by the dead, there are no guarantees and the next leg of his journey will test him in unimaginable ways ...
Failure
John Everson - 2008
Cindy just plain doesn't care; she'll get on her knees for anyone beneath the football field bleachers to score a nickel bag hit. And Sal is a frustrated goon with a hook nose and an attitude so sour he can't nail a girl even with the lure of free dope and a getaway car.When these three desperate teens meet Aaron, a failed practitioner of the dark arts who offers them the best high they've ever smoked in exchange for some kinky sex play inside his pentagram, things can only go from bad to worse. Aaron hopes to ensnare and re-birth the spirit of a late witch, to capture her power from beyond the grave for his own.Soon, they'll all learn the darkest, bloodiest, most terrifying definition of Failure.Originally released as a limited edition hardcover chapbook from Delirium Books in 2006, this updated 2013 Dark Arts Books e-book edition of John Everson's novelette Failure features new cover art and an Afterword by the author.
Bedbugs
Ben H. Winters - 2011
ft., 2BR 2BA, eat-in kitchen, one block to parks and playgrounds. No broker’s fee.Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment.Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. And the elderly handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the basement. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up.Big mistake. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs... or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad—until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.
A Witch by Chance: A Written Fireside Short Story
Lori ConnellyZara Stoneley - 2014
Ivy Mitchell’s life is changed forever after she follows her cat, Karma, into an old house, where she stumbles upon a strange book that not only unleashes her destiny, but attracts a smoking hot, mysterious stranger named Chance with wicked powers of his own. Ivy was born a witch, but an important decision awaits. Make the wrong choice and more than her powers are at risk. A story in nine parts, each written by a different writer in her own individual style: Lori Connelly, Aileen Harkwood, Zara Stoneley, Kari Lemor, Sarah Lefebve, Carmel Harrington, Teresa F. Morgan, Lynn Marie Hulsman, and Jane Lark.Length: 4300 words
The Wanderer in Unknown Realms
John Connolly - 2013
But when he’s sent to investigate the disappearance of Lionel Maudling, the owner of a grand country house whose heir may be accused for his death, he encounters a home that will lead him to nightmares he could have never imagined. Maudling’s estate houses countless books of every sort—histories, dramas, scientific treatises. But none seems to offer Soter any hint to Maudling’s whereabouts, until he’s led to an arcane London bookseller where the reclusive scholar made his last purchase. What Soter finds at the end of a twisted maze of clues is a book like no other, with a legacy that will put everything he knows in danger…An inventive horror novella from internationally bestselling author John Connolly, this is a story of madness, of obsession, and of books’ power to change the world.
Dweller
Jeff Strand - 2010
His parents convinced the terrified child it was only his imagination. The next time Toby saw the creature he was a lonely, unhappy teenager without friends.But the creature would be his friend. It would be there when Toby needed someone to talk to. And it would take care of the bullies who wouldn’t leave Toby alone. After all, the creature needed to eat.And during their macabre, decades-long friendship, there will be other meals...