Book picks similar to
Kink by Crowley Barns
horror
extreme-horror
paranormal
audible
Bacchanal
Veronica Henry - 2021
But the carnival’s newest act, a peculiar young woman with latent magical powers, may hold the key to defeating it. Her time has come.Abandoned by her family, alone on the wrong side of the color line with little to call her own, Eliza Meeks is coming to terms with what she does have. It’s a gift for communicating with animals. To some, she’s a magical tender. To others, a she-devil. To a talent prospector, she’s a crowd-drawing oddity. And the Bacchanal Carnival is Eliza’s ticket out of the swamp trap of Baton Rouge.Among fortune-tellers, carnies, barkers, and folks even stranger than herself, Eliza finds a new home. But the Bacchanal is no ordinary carnival. An ancient demon has a home there too. She hides behind an iridescent disguise. She feeds on innocent souls. And she’s met her match in Eliza, who’s only beginning to understand the purpose of her own burgeoning powers.Only then can Eliza save her friends, find her family, and fight the sway of a primordial demon preying upon the human world. Rolling across a consuming dust bowl landscape, Eliza may have found her destiny.
After Life
Rhian Ellis - 2000
This ominous opening begins a tale of secrets and lies, visions, and hovering spirits. At its center is Naomi Ash, a young woman who has come of age on the frigid banks of a western New York lake community called Train Line. Here she grows up and falls in love in a town where mediums, spiritualists, and professional clairvoyants hold "psychic fairs" to help make ends meet. When the skeleton of Peter, Naomi's ex-lover, surfaces, the mystery of his death must be uncovered. In the process, Naomi, now a clairvoyant herself, unveils a world where the secrets of the dead cannot stay buried and where her past must confront her precarious present.
The Missing Years
Lexie Elliott - 2019
The other half belongs to a man who disappeared without a trace twenty-seven years ago—her father.Leaving London behind to settle the inheritance from her mother’s estate, Ailsa returns to her childhood home, nestled amongst the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, joined by the half-sister who’s almost a stranger to her.Ailsa can’t escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her—as if her past hungers to consume her. She also can’t ignore how the neighbourhood animals refuse to set one foot within the gates of the garden.When the first nighttime intruder shows up, Ailsa fears that the manor’s careless rugged beauty could cost her everything.
Disturb Not the Dream
Paula Trachtman - 1980
Mulberry is a three-story Victorian in the Hamptons, the perfect summer retreat for the Bradley family. Forty years ago a family was murdered in the house. Now, the bloodstains have been washed away, and the grisly killings are just a chilling local legend. But something unseen still waits in the shadowed hallways and antique furnished bedrooms. For psychiatrist Bert Bradley, his wife Alice, budding teens Stacey and Richard, and innocent five year old Lissie, the summer begins with days at the beach and neighborhood cocktail parties. But all is not right in Mulberry. The cellar door won’t stay closed. Lissie wakes screaming with night terrors. Strange, vivid dreams spread like a contagion to all the Bradleys. The sins of the past have never left Mulberry; they are slowly spinning a web around the unsuspecting family. Shocking secrets will soon be revealed and the innocent will be drawn inexorably towards a night of terrifying bloodshed. DISTURB NOT THE DREAM
A Subtle Agency
Graeme Rodaughan - 2016
Whoever acquires mastery of the reality shifting powers of the Metaframe will become the new gods of the universe."Imagine if you could change the rules of the game, what rules would you choose?"Witness to a brutal murder, eighteen year old Anton Slayne is inducted by the mysterious Mr Wu into the secret society of vampire hunters, the Order of Thoth. He soon discovers that vicious local gangsters, determined Boston police detectives, and relentless Shadowstone operatives pale into insignificance as he is drawn into the machinations of the enigmatic vampire general, Chloe Armitage.Heir to a legacy of extraordinary powers, Anton joins a team of hunters, but that is no guarantee of survival against the most powerful vampires in the world, especially when they're equipped with the latest available technology and super weapons."When mastery over your soul is at stake, survival is the least of your problems.""Like Underworld on speed, it's got all the adrenaline and action-packing shots of entertainment you could want, wrapped up in a no-nonsense narrative." - Adam Smith, Cultured VulturesBe prepared to be blown away by a high-octane, dark fantasy, action adventure thriller, that would be at home in a summer movie blockbuster.Join the heroes of the Metaframe War, buy A Subtle Agency now.
Hero
Wrath James White - 2012
A Civil Rights Activist in the Sixties and Seventies, she has spent most of her adult life attending marches, giving speeches, and lending a hand to anyone in need.But on the very evening she is to be acknowledged with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her humanitarian efforts, a stroke leaves her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Now Adelle's in the care of a ruthless hospice nurse, who sees not a hero before her, but the cause of her many hardships growing up as a child of interracial parents, someone who decides to give Adelle her very own brand of "Physical Therapy" consisting of pain and suffering, mental cruelty and torture.And now, after a lifetime of helping others, Adelle needs help, quickly, before another round of brutal treatment snuffs out her life.
Necroscope
Brian Lumley - 1986
And what they tell him is horrifying.In the Balkan mountains of Rumania, a terrible evil is growing. Long buried in hallowed ground, bound by earth and silver, the master vampire schemes and plots. Trapped in unlife, neither dead nor living, Thibor Ferenczy hungers for freedom and revenge.The vampire's human tool is Boris Dragosani, part of a super-secret Soviet spy agency. Dragosani is an avid pupil, eager to plumb the depthless evil of the vampire's mind. Ferenczy teaches Dragosani the awful skills of the necromancer, gives him the ability to rip secrets from the mind and bodies of the dead. Dragosani works not for Ferenczy's freedom but world domination. He will rule the world with knowledge raped from the dead.His only opponent: Harry Koegh, champion of the dead and the living.To protect Harry, the dead will do anything--even rise from their graves!
Secret Santa
Andrew Shaffer - 2020
Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre.But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her co-workers' mean-spirited pranks. The hazing reaches its peak during the company’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a demonic-looking object that she recognizes but doesn't understand. Suddenly, her coworkers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents akin to a George Romero movie, and Lussi suspects that her gift is involved. With the help of her former author, the flamboyant Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the cursed object in her possession before it destroys the company—and her soul.
Fevre Dream
George R.R. Martin - 1982
But when he meets the hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York, he is certain. For York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet. Nor does he care that he won’t earn back his investment in a decade. York has his own reasons for wanting to traverse the powerful Mississippi. And they are to be none of Marsh’s concern—no matter how bizarre, arbitrary, or capricious his actions may prove. Marsh meant to turn down York’s offer. It was too full of secrets that spelled danger. But the promise of both gold and a grand new boat that could make history crushed his resolve—coupled with the terrible force of York’s mesmerizing gaze. Not until the maiden voyage of his new sidewheeler Fevre Dream would Marsh realize he had joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare...and mankind’s most impossible dream. Here is the spellbinding tale of a vampire’s quest to unite his race with humanity, of a garrulous riverman’s dream of immortality, and of the undying legends of the steamboat era and a majestic, ancient river.
Intercepts
T.J. Payne - 2019
The government wanted to unlock hidden abilities in the human mind.They put subjects in extreme sensory deprivation.All the test subjects went violently insane.But the research continued.Today it has been perfected.Almost perfected.From the author of In My Father's Basement comes another chilling novel that's a must-read for fans of horror. "Gruesome, gripping, and terrifyingly real!"
I Am Legend
Richard Matheson - 1954
but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood.By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.How long can one man survive like this?
Kin
Kealan Patrick Burke - 2011
She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers — a family of cannibalistic lunatics — are closing in.A soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood.In snowbound Detroit, a waitress trapped in an abusive relationship gets an unexpected visit that will lead to bloodshed and send her back on the road to a past she has spent years trying to outrun.And Claire, the only survivor of the Elkwood Massacre, haunted by her dead friends, dreams of vengeance... a dream which will be realized as grief and rage turn good people into cold-blooded murderers and force alliances among strangers.It's time to return to Elkwood.In the spirit of such iconic horror classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, Kin begins at the end and studies the possible aftermath for the survivors of such traumas upon their return to the real world — the guilt, the grief, the thirst for revenge — and sets them on an unthinkable journey... back into the heart of darkness.
Night Society
Ambrose Ibsen - 2017
Nothing is off-limits in their little circle—anything, no matter how depraved, is welcome... so long as it's frightening. But when one member brings what sounds like an audio recording of an actual murder to a meeting, featuring the tortured screams and pleas of an anonymous woman, the jaded club members find themselves truly rattled. From that moment, the horrific audio—and strange visions of the recorded victim—begin to seep into their daily lives. Agonized cries and sobs are heard in otherwise empty rooms. Shadowed figures lurk in unlit corners. Somehow, the mysterious victim is reaching out to them from beyond death. Or is she? Digging deeper, they begin to suspect they're being led back to the abandoned house by something else—something that seeks to consume them, body and soul. And if they aren't careful, it'll get its way.
Ghosts of Gotham
Craig Schaefer - 2019
His latest case is an obsession—at least for an ancient and wealthy heiress: verify the authenticity of a lost Edgar Allan Poe manuscript circulating through New York City’s literary underworld. But the shrewd Regina Dunkle offers more than money. It’s a pact. Fulfill her request, and Lionel’s own notorious buried past, one he’s been running from since he was a child, will remain hidden.As Lionel’s quest begins, so do the warnings. And where rare books go, murder follows. It’s only when Lionel meets enigmatic stranger Madison Hannah, his personal usher into the city’s secret history, that he realizes he’s being guided by a force more powerful than logic…and that he isn’t just following a story. He is the story.Now that the true purpose of his mission is revealing itself in the most terrifying ways, it may finally be time for Lionel to believe in the unbelievable.