Book picks similar to
Evil Lurking Within by Matt Shaw
horror
matt-shaw
short-stories
extreme-horror
Insanity
Susan Vaught - 2014
It is a crossways, a place where the dead and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing....When the dead husband of one of Forest's patients makes an appearance late one night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play, and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected. With her deep knowledge of mental illness and mental institutions, Susan Vaught brings readers a fascinating and completely creepy new book intertwining the stories of three young people who find themselves haunted beyond imagining in the depths of Lincoln Hospital.
The Murder of Janessa Hennley
Victor Methos - 2013
The savagery of the killer is something the small community of Kodiak Basin, Alaska has never seen before. With nowhere else to turn, the Sheriff is forced to enlist the help of the FBI.A special agent with a mysterious past...Special Agent Mickey Parsons of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit receives the Sheriff's request and flies to Alaska to help in the investigation. Parsons has the most closed cases of any special agent in Behavioral Science's history, but the mental and physical scars of the last case he handled in the field nearly six years ago has left him tired and contemplating retirement.Uncertain if he has the strength to follow a killer into the darkness again, Parsons may need the Sheriff as much as she needs him.A monster in the making...Parsons believes the Hennleys to be the killer's first victims. But the sheer brutality has him convinced he's dealing with someone more monster than man. Someone that is escalating in their sadism, and if left free, will bring terror on the community unlike any they have ever experienced.
Truly, Madly, Deadly
Hannah Jayne - 2013
When Kevin dies in a tragic car crash, Sawyer is stunned. Then she opens her locker to find a note:You’re welcome.Someone saw what he did to her. Someone knows that Sawyer and Kevin weren’t the perfect couple they seemed to be. And that someone—a killer—is now shadowing Sawyer’s every move…
The Tainted Souls
Shaun Hutson - 2020
A virus has seemingly come from no where, bringing with it a number of conspiracy theories as to its origin. Some of the theories are outlandish whilst some have an eerie ring of possible truth around them. But, as the world goes into lock down with people living in isolation only allowed out of their homes for essential journeys, people soon realise there are greater things to worry about than COVID-19. As the virus continues to get a grip of the world, mankind reveals the many monsters within.
The Hunt
Tim Lebbon - 2015
The highest stakes. Only she can bring his family back alive …Rose is the one that got away. She was the prey in a human trophy hunt organised by an elite secret organisation for super-rich clients seeking a unique thrill. She paid a terrible price. Every moment since she has been planning her revenge … And now her day has come.Chris returns from his morning run to find his wife and children missing and a stranger in his kitchen.He’s told to run.If he’s caught and killed, his family go free. If he escapes, they die.Rose is the only one who can help him, but Rose only has her sights on one conclusion. For her, Chris is bait. But The Trail have not forgotten the woman who tried to outwit them.The Trail want Rose. The hunters want Chris’s corpse. Rose wants revenge, and Chris just wants his family back.The hunt is on …
Dollhouse
Anya Allyn - 2012
A dollhouse, filled with life-sized toys. A doorway into other realms. And girls who keep disappearing...When Cassie’s best friend, Aisha, vanishes during a school hike, Cassie sets off with Aisha's boyfriend and their friend Lacey, determined to find her. Instead, the three teens fall into a carefully-laid trap—deep into the surreal nightmare and dark secrets of the Dollhouse.Now, Cassie must uncover the mysteries of the Dollhouse and her own connection to it-- before it's too late.With the horror and otherworldliness of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and the gothic romance of A Great and Terrible Beauty, Dollhouse is a tantalizing start to The Dark Carousel series.
Trance
Adam Southward - 2019
He is in control. This is his revenge—and he’s only just begun.Three university scientists are found dead in a gruesome murder-suicide, and the only suspect in the case, Victor Lazar, is quickly captured. When the spate of violent suicides follows him to prison he is moved to solitary confinement, reserved for the highest-risk inmates. And then his assigned psychologist inexplicably takes his own life.Alex Madison, a former forensic psychologist turned private therapist, is brought in to interview Victor. He suspects that Victor is controlling his victims, somehow coaxing them into a suggestive trance. It seems like science fiction, but as Alex digs deeper he uncovers a frightening reality of secret research and cruel experimentation—and the perpetrators are closer to home than he could ever have imagined.Too late, Alex learns the true extent of what Victor is capable of—and who he’s after. With everything he holds dear at risk, can Alex take control of a dangerous mind—before it takes control of him?
BZRK
Michael Grant - 2012
No wars, no conflict, no hunger. And no free will. Opposing them is a guerrilla group of teens, code name BZRK, who are fighting to protect the right to be messed up, to be human.This is no ordinary war, though. Weapons are deployed on the nano-level. The battleground is the human brain. And there are no stalemates here: It’s victory . . . or madness.
The Man in the Woods
Rosemary Wells - 1984
When a high school freshman witnesses a man's crime, and follows him into the woods to investigate the case, she finds herself in the middle of an intricate web of town secrets...and a lot of danger.
The Key to Midnight
Leigh Nichols - 1979
ten years ago to sing in a Japanese nightclub. Ever since, she's been plagued with nightmares of terror. There is only one man can help her -- Alex Hunter. Ten years ago he saw her picture in the papers -- as a senator's daughter who had disappeared. Now he has to bring her memories back to her, memories of a past more terrifying than they dreamed possible...
Come Closer
Sara Gran - 2003
A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).
Lies That Bind Us
Andrew Hart - 2018
She’s flying to Crete to reunite with friends she met there five years ago and relive an idyllic vacation. Basking in the warmth of the sun, the azure sea, and the aura of antiquity, she can once again pretend—for a little while—that she belongs. Her ex-boyfriend Marcus will be among them, but even he doesn’t know the secrets she keeps hidden behind a veil of lies. None of them really know her, and that’s only part of the problem.Then again, how well does she know them?When Jan awakens in utter darkness, chained to a wall, a manacle around her wrist, her echoing screams only give her a sense of how small her cell is. As she desperately tries to reconstruct what happened and determine who is holding her prisoner, dread covers despair like a hand clamped over her mouth. Because, like the Minotaur in the labyrinth in Greek myth, her captor will be coming back for her, and all the lies will catch up to her…
Road Rash
Simon Janus - 2010
He's on the run with the proceeds of a botched bank robbery. It's all he has. His crew is dead and his getaway car just died on him. He's on foot with the cash when he comes across a two-car pileup. There's no saving the drivers, but he can save himself by stealing one of the wrecked cars. Unfortunately, he boosts the wrong set of wheels. Within an hour of driving off, he develops a rash that eats away at his flesh. No doctor can help him—only the car's original owner. If Straley wants his skin back, he must journey on the road to redemption, which ends in the heart of Central America. Road Rash first appeared in the anthology Butcher Shop Quartet 2. Simon Janus is the horror identity for the award winning thriller writer, Simon Wood. What They Are Saying About Road Rash: "Road Rash is a wild collision of crime caper and supernatural thriller that works on every level. Lightning-paced, darkly funny, deeply creepy, and highly recommended." — Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of THE DRAGON FACTORY “Simon Janus understands the darkness inside us all and nails it to the page. Fast-paced and gut-wrenching, pedal-to-the-metal thrills." — Scott Nicholson, author of THE RED CHURCH
The Breathing Method
John Escott - 1982
The years pass but no one looks any older. One night a doctor tells the story of a young woman who gives birth to a baby in the most horrible way! Evil psychic powers, obsession and the supernatural in the most ordinary, everyday places. A spine-chiller from the master of horror.
Midnight Mass
F. Paul Wilson - 1990
But with the fall of the Soviet Union, they began to spread across the continent, then the world, turning whole populations into vampires--or human cattle. Having overrun India, the far East, and the great cities of North and South America, the forces of Night are now spreading into the countryside to consolidate their conquest.In a town on the New Jersey shore, the vampires have just arrived, along with their human henchmen, the cowboys, who round up human cattle for the overlords in return for the promise of eternal life---later. For the vampires wish only a few of their own kind to rule, and feed. The rest of humanity are to be helpless herds, the source of the blood of life.Falsely accused of abuse, Father Joe is drunk in a basement waiting for the end. His superior has betrayed the local Catholic congregation and become a vampire. Sister Carole has become a formidable killer of cowboys and vampires. Dan's niece, escaped from the conquest of New York, has made her way south to find him. Brought together by Rabbi Zev Wolpin, who is shaken by the vampires' fear of the cross and holy water, they plan their resistance. Against all odds, they discover that there just might be a way for humanity to really fight back.But first they will have to kill the vampire king of New York.