Book picks similar to
The Frighteners by Stephen Laws


horror
paperbacks-from-hell
scary
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Death Instinct


Bentley Little - 1992
    She heard the screams. She saw the blood and the bodies. Now, 20 years later, the house is no longer vacant. Someone new has moved in. Something terrible is happening to the neighbors. And Cathy has a secret of her own...

The Fog


James Herbert - 1975
    A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled.

The Shee


Joe Donnelly - 1992
    Things at Donovan's Bar get a little raucous sometimes and the people carry their share of Ireland's tragic history, but in Kilgallan, the fights are happy, the songs are sad and the days are as rich as slow-poured, peaty beer.It happens first to the children.To little Mikey Boyle, whose auntie takes off all her clothes, takes his off too, and persuades him into the river...To sweet Marie Lally, barely sixteen, when Mike O'Hara ties the cord around her neck and slides up her nightgown...Village tragedies. Casual eruptions of horror... but at the heart of a nearby hill, something turns in its sleep.Breathes...Awakes...The Shee will put her fingers into your dreams and leave you crying for more.

Black Angel


Graham Masterton - 1991
    Only when Lieutenant Larry Foggia is assigned to the case does the true horror of the killer's motive come to light.

Headhunter Reimagined


Michael Slade - 1984
    The Headhunter is loose on the streets of Vancouver. The psycho’s victims are everywhere - floating in the Fraser River, buried in a shallow grave, nailed to a totem pole on the university campus. All are women. All are headless.Then the taunting photographs arrive. Carefully posed shots of the women’s heads stuck on poles. The Mounties of Special X are up against a unique brand of killer. A killer whose sexual psychosis stretches back through Ecuador’s steaming jungle and a scream-filled New Orleans dungeon to a dead-of-winter manhunt in the Rocky Mountains a century ago.

Button Bright


Michael Kurland - 1990
    But Button was only dimly aware of the sounds. Her consciousness had shrunk down to focus on the body that was blocking her hole— —and the warm, thick liquid that was dripping onto her hand.” Button is an 11 year old, bubbly and intelligent girl who is haunted in her dreams by a tapping sound… Living with her mother and father in Cottsborough, Vermont, Button had been trained to hide and not ever answer to her secret name, ‘Rachel’. One day, two men arrive at Button’s family home searching for her by this secret name. Refusing to give Button up, things turn violent and the men shoot her father dead. Through a narrow crack in the floor boards, Button bears witness to the murder. Eluding the two men who tried to catch her, Button uses her wits to navigate herself from Vermont to Boston and then to New York. Button has a plan to find her uncle Dromkin. When her search seems hopeless, Button is taken in by a resident of her uncle’s apartment building, Phil, who claims he can help. But when they find Dromkin sprawled on the floor with his throat cut, Button is convinced she is somehow the cause of these family murders... Will Phil be able to keep her identity hidden long enough for her to find out the truth? Praise for Michael Kurland: "A perfect tale of childhood terror." - Tom Kasey Michael Kurland grew up in New York City, attended Columbia University, spent four years in the Army, much of it in Europe, and now lives in California with his partner, novelist Linda Robertson, a dog, a cat, and an occasional visiting family of raccoons. He has been a teacher of obscure subjects to disinterested children, the editor of a magazine even more idiosyncratic than himself, a seeker of absent persons, a magical explainer, and guest lecturer at numerous unrelated events. Kurland has written a dozen or so science fiction novels, a brace of mysteries, and several books that fit into that tenuous genre known as “mainstream.” He has been nominated for an Edgar (twice) and for the American Book Award. His books have been translated into eleven other languages. His other novel with Venture Press is Psi Hunt.

Breeder


Douglas Clegg - 1990
    This House has a Name ...Rachel Adair thought Draper House in Washington, D.C, would be the perfect place for her and her husband, Hugh, to try and start a family. But as soon they moved into the century-old townhouse, the nightmares began: horrific images of the child Rachel lost; the unforgivable sins of Hugh's father; scenes of blood-curdling rituals ...and the scraping sounds of an even greater terror that lives within the walls ...

The Ninth Configuration


William Peter Blatty - 1966
    A Marine Corps psychiatrist with a crisis of faith encourages his patients to enact their fantasies as part of their therapy. However, he proves himself to be more deeply disturbed than at first appears and finally sacrifices himself to save one of his patients.

Elizabeth


Jessica Hamilton - 1976
    Her family wouldn't have believed it even if she had told them - which she had no intention of doing. Elizabeth had far different plans for them - and only God could help them. He didn't - and Elizabeth set out to prove how hellishly far she could go...

Secret for a Nightingale


Victoria Holt - 1986
    She put aside her dream of helping others when she met the dashing and sophisticated Aubrey St. Clare.But Aubrey was not at all what he seemed. Back home in London, Susanna found that the man she had married had a weakness--for opium and the occult. Even more frightening was his strange association with Dr. Damien Adair, a powerful man with a sinister hold over her husband. . . .When tragedy struck, it was Damien whom Susanna held responsible. Even as she fulfilled her ambition of becoming a nurse, following Florence Nightingale to the Crimea, it was Damien who haunted her dreams and filled her mind, who held the key to the most sinister secret of all. . . .

Suffer the Children


John Saul - 1977
    And struggle. And die. No one heard. No one saw. Just one man whose guilty heart burst in pain as he dashed himself to death in the sea. Now something peculiar is happening in Port Arbello. The children are disappearing, one by one. An evil history is repeating itself. And one strange, terrified child has ended her silence with a scream that began a hundred years ago.

Cast a Cold Eye


Alan Ryan - 1984
    Jack Quinlan, an American writer, is researching a book on the horrors of the Irish Famine. As the days pass, and the longer nights, the darkness of history parts ... only to reveal an even greater darkness in the present.

The Cellar


Richard Laymon - 1980
    Armed with video camcorders, these poor souls enter the forbidden house, never to return. The deeper they go into the house, the darker their nightmares become. Don't even think about going into the cellar.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the Merry Men & Other Stories


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1887
    Henry Jekyll discovers a monster.This spine-chilling thriller is a terrifying study of the duality of man's nature, and it is the book which established Stevenson's reputation as a writer.Also included in this volume is Stevenson's collection of short stories The Merry Men containing two other sinister tales Markheim and Thrawn Janet.

Cellars


John Shirley - 1982
    Monsters made of blood arise from drains, an invisible hellhound devours human flesh, feral children stalk the shadowy streets and make murder a terrifying game. Occult investigator Carl Lanyard risks his life, his love, and his sanity as he battles the unspeakable forces of darkness. A modern classic by a master of the macabre in a new revised edition.