Book picks similar to
Morbid Curiosity by Deborah Leblanc


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The Merciless


Danielle Vega - 2014
    No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream.   Sofia Flores knows she shouldn’t have gotten involved. When she befriended Riley, Grace, and Alexis on her first day at school, she admired them, with their perfect hair and their good-girl ways. They said they wanted to save Brooklyn. They wanted to help her. Sofia didn’t realize they believed Brooklyn was possessed.   Now, Riley and the girls are performing an exorcism on Brooklyn—but their idea of an exorcism is closer to torture than salvation. All Sofia wants is to get out of this house. But there is no way out. Sofia can’t go against the other girls . . . unless she wants to be next. . . .   In this chilling debut, Danielle Vega delivers blood-curdling suspense and terror on every page. By the shockingly twisted end, readers will be faced with the most haunting question of all: Is there evil in all of us?

Creature


John Saul - 1989
    A postcard-pretty company town. Families. Children. Sunshine. Happiness. A high school football team that never-ever loses. And something else. Something horrible ... Now, there is a new family in town. A shy, nature-loving teenager. A new hometown. A new set of bullies. Maybe the team's sports clinic can help him. Rebuild him. They won't hurt him again. They won't dare. "Saul has the instincts of a natural storyteller." -- "People"

Hometown


Matthew Keville - 2014
     It's the Fall of 1994 in the small milltown of Belford, New York. The leaves are turning, the kids are going back to school, and the heat of Summer is giving way to a cool, misty season. It happens every Fall. Only this Fall, people are disappearing into that mist. Some people are found torn apart, some people are found dead for no reason, and some people aren't found at all. Other people see strange things in the mist: ghosts and campfire stories. There's something out there in that mist. Something old. Something that has slept for a long time, but has now woken up hungry. Maybe the people of Belford could resist it, but as the terrible Fall wears on, more and more of them start...changing. Acting bizarre and violent. In the end, only a small group of teenage defenders are left to make their stand.

Shadowland


Peter Straub - 1980
    To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician.Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real.Only one of them will make it through.

The October People (Gulf Coast Paranormal Extra Book 1)


M.L. Bullock - 2018
     Will her time at the haunted Leaf Academy change all that? Award-winning photographer Jocelyn Graves gets an invitation to document the Leaf Academy, but she may get more than she bargained for in this spooky location. There's music coming from the rotting auditorium, doppelgangers have made an appearance, and there is a ghost boy who haunts the place. But is he a forgotten victim, or is he really a negative entity masquerading as a sad child? There's a mysterious saying carved into the stone above the door, and Jocelyn discovers black feathers in strange locations. The Leaf Academy is a puzzle Jocelyn needs an answer to--before the sun comes up. The photographer is about to get the shock of her life and meet an entity she will never forget. Although she will wish she could. The October People is a Gulf Coast Paranormal Extra and a standalone novella.  Read all the Gulf Coast Paranormal books and meet the entire paranormal investigation team.  Gulf Coast Paranormal Series The Ghosts of Kali Oka Road The Ghosts of the Crescent Theater A Haunting on Bloodgood Row  And so many more!  Scroll up and grab your copy of THE OCTOBER PEOPLE!

Harvest Home


Thomas Tryon - 1973
    The quiet, peaceful place was straight out of a bygone era, with well-cared-for Colonial houses, a white-steepled church fronting a broad Common. Ned and Beth Constantine chanced upon the hamlet and immediately fell in love with it. This was exactly the haven they dream of. Or so they thought.For Ned and his family, Cornwall Coombe was to become a place of ultimate horror.

Half-Made Girls


Sam Witt - 2014
    But Joe is married to one of the most powerful witches in Pitchfork, and spends almost as much time keeping an eye on her as he does dealing with occult crimes and shadowy horrors in the rest of the county. Even his children, a little girl who plays host to a rogue's gallery of strange spirits and a young man with a demonic secret, keep him on his toes. All Joe really wants is a simple life, a bottle of good whiskey, and a break from the horrors of his job. But nothing in Pitchfork County is ever simple, and the horrors just keep on coming. Someone's hung a mutilated girl on a cross in Pitchfork's most infamous church, dragging Joe into the most challenging case of his career. Joe's investigation into the ritual murder leads him through the dark underbelly of the Ozarks to the doorstep of a twisted cult of meth addicts. As Joe digs deeper into the mystery, he soon finds himself the target of the murderers and must stop them before they can summon their dark god and destroy everything he holds dear.

The Ridge


Michael Koryta - 2011
    For years the lighthouse has been considered no more than an eccentric local landmark-until its builder is found dead at the top of the light, and his belongings reveal a troubling local history.For deputy sheriff Kevin Kimble, the lighthouse-keeper's death is disturbing and personal. Years ago, Kimble was shot while on duty. Somehow the death suggests a connection between the lighthouse and the most terrifying moment of his life. Audrey Clark is in the midst of moving her large-cat sanctuary onto land adjacent to the lighthouse. Sixty-seven tigers, lions, leopards, and one legendary black panther are about to have a new home there. Her husband, the sanctuary's founder, died scouting the new property, and Audrey is determined to see his vision through. As strange occurrences multiply at the Ridge, the animals grow ever more restless, and Kimble and Audrey try to understand what evil forces are moving through this ancient landscape, just past the divide between dark and light. The Ridge is the new thriller from international bestseller Michael Koryta, further evidence of why Dean Koontz has said "Michael Koryta's work resonates into deeper strata than does most of what I read" and why Michael Connelly has named him "one of the best of the best."

My Best Friend's Exorcism


Grady Hendrix - 2016
    But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behavior start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favorite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

The Omen


David Seltzer - 1976
    Reissue.

Full Throttle


Joe Hill - 2019
    . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.

The Devil in Silver


Victor LaValle - 2012
    It also has a very, very old one.   Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He’s not mentally ill, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can’t quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he’s visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who’s been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group’s enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?  The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle’s radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it’s a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons.

Monolith


Shaun Hutson - 2015
    A stunning creation of glass and concrete that will be a new landmark on London's skyline. And people are dying because of it...Dozens of mysterious unexplained accidents have claimed the lives of workmen during the construction and journalist Jessica Anderson is convinced that the owner of the building, a billionaire Russian businessman, knows more about the accidents than he is revealing.Enlisting the help of a former colleague, Jess tries to investigate the shadowy industrialist but finds that far harder than she imagined. Protected by a private security force and cocooned by his entourage, this powerful man proves to be as elusive as anyone she has ever known. He values his privacy and seems willing to go to any ends to protect it. But what is he hiding?As she delves into his background she discovers that one of his ancestors lived in London during the 1930's on the same site where the Crystal Tower was constructed and death and destruction surrounded that ancestor too. Is there a link between these two men? Jess is convinced there is and when a series of horrific attacks and murders take place, perpetrated against men who want to stop the Russians next building project, she finds herself plunged into a maelstrom of fear and events that threaten not just her life but her very sanity... Something from the darkest reaches of myth and superstition has been unleashed upon a modern world and it seems no one can stop it...

Speed Dating with the Dead


Scott Nicholson - 2010
    . .a man’s promise to his late wife that he’d summon her spirit . . . a daughter whose imagination goes to dark places . . .and demonic evil lurking in the remote hotel’s basement, just waiting to be awoken.When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team Spirit Seekers International to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged.And when people start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels can’t be trusted, and demons don’t like to play alone..........

Innocents Lost


Michael McBride - 2010
    Her father, FBI Special Agent Phil Preston of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, devotes his life to finding her and discovers a pattern in a recent string of abductions. Dr. Les Grant leads a group of graduate students into the Wyoming wilderness in search of an unidentified Native American medicine wheel photographed by an anonymous hiker. Instead, they stumble upon a macabre tableau of suffering. Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge finds himself right at the heart of the mystery when twenty-seven bodies are disinterred in the Wind River Range at the westernmost edge of his jurisdiction, with the promise of more to come. All the while, an unknown evil is summoning the men to its killing grounds, where the remains of the lost innocents are left to rot...and a fate far worse than death awaits them.