Book picks similar to
The Frighteners by Stephen Laws


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The Road King Chronicles: Blue Ridge Run


Harry Harrigan - 2015
    After twenty-three years and three combat tours with the 75th Ranger Regiment, he’s got a Silver Star, a titanium knee and a plan to see America on his Road King motorcycle. No more patrols, no more firefights. Nothing more dangerous than passing the old work van rumbling along in front of him as he rides toward Hunter-Stewart and the sunset of his career in the Army. But just as he twists the throttle to pass, a woman’s bare foot smears a bloody print on the van’s back window. Roman turns back to help, triggering a chain of events that puts his brother Virgil and two old friends in the crosshairs of a murderer. Saving them sends Roman on a desperate ride from Savannah to DC, where he discovers that the past he has been trying to forget has not forgotten him. It’s been waiting patiently, holding his secret like a time bomb.

The Scream


John Skipp - 1987
    Hell. Two great tastes that taste great together. Long before Elvis gyrated on the Sullivan Show or the Beatles toiled the smoky red-light bars of Hamburg, music has been sowing the seeds of liberation. Or damnation. With each new generation the edge of rebellion pushed farther. Rhythms quickened. Volume increased. Lyrics coarsened. The rules continued to be broken, until it seemed that there were no rules at all. And as waves of teens cranked it up and poured it on, parents built walls of accusation to explain their offspring's seeming corruption. Sex and drugs, demon worship and violence are the effects. Music is the cause. Or so the self-styled guardians of morality would have us believe. Meet The Scream. Just your average everyday mega-cult band. Their music is otherworldly. Their words are disturbing. Their message is unholy. Their fans are legion. And they're not kidding. They're killing. Themselves. Each other. Everyone. Their gospel screams from the lips of babes. Their backbeat has a body count. And their encore is just the warm-up act to madness beyond belief. It emerged from a war-torn jungle, where insanity was just another word for survival. It arrived in America with an insatiable lust for power and the means to fulfill it. In the amplified roar of arena applause there beats the heart of absolute darkness.

Bulldog Drummond Collection, Volume 1


Sapper - 1926
    A collection of four books in the "Bulldog Drummond" series, written by "Sapper", (a pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeale) in the early 1920s.The stories follow the adventures of Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, D.S.O., M.C., a wealthy former WWI officer of the Loamshire Regiment, who, after the war, spends his new-found leisure time as a private detective.Drummond is a James Bond-like figure and a rougher version of the adventurers depicted by the likes of John Buchan and Rider Haggard.Included in this volume: Book One: Bulldog Drummond; Book Two: The Black Gang; Book Three: The Third Round; Book Four: The Final Count.

Here There Are Monsters


Amelinda Bérubé - 2019
    Moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over.In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones.Then Deirdre disappears.And when something awful comes scratching at Skye's window in the middle of the night, claiming she's the only one who can save Deirdre, Skye knows she will stop at nothing to bring her sister home.

Typhoon


Mark Joseph - 1991
    Caught in the crossfire, the Americans must decide who the real enemy is, in this very real post-Cold War thriller.

The Elementals


Michael McDowell - 1981
    Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty...except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them...and about all the ways to make them die.

Secrets in the Sky


Pauline Wiles - 2015
    From caving trips to rooftop pranks, it appeared nothing could hold her back, especially once she landed a dream job promising travel all over the world.But Sophie’s jet-setting lifestyle is not what it seems and she’s been spending more time in the quiet English village of Saffron Sweeting than she cares to admit. When her beloved Great Aunt Wol dies suddenly, Sophie loses one of the few people who truly know her. As friends, family and an old flame gather for the funeral, questions soon follow. Worse, Sophie finds herself increasingly attracted to the man most likely to expose her secrets. Can she manage to guard her past, yet finally follow her long-held dream?Featuring both new and familiar characters, this stand-alone romantic comedy is set two years before Saving Saffron Sweeting. With side helpings of British tea, cake and wit, Secrets in the Sky explores how finding the courage to be yourself can be the toughest challenge of all.

The Loveliest Dead


Ray Garton - 2005
    The secrets of the past are reaching out from beyond the grave and the horror begins before the Kellars have finished unpacking.

Terror in the Shadows: Volume II


Emma Salam - 2019
    A party girl’s addiction gives birth to a monster within. Man’s best friend must fend off a woman’s greatest nightmare…Scare Street is proud to present eleven chilling tales of the supernatural, in one monstrous volume. Horror authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy, and many more unite to bring you a terrifying collection of short stories, each one guaranteed to haunt your dreams. And each one more chilling than the last.Once you start reading you won’t be able to stop. Because when these authors sink their teeth into you, it’s already too late.The only way to escape from these nightmares… is to wake up screaming.

The Beguiled


Thomas Cullinan - 1966
    Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for what they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?

Famous Tales of Mystery and Horror


Edgar Allan Poe - 1980
    Librarian note: There is a later printing with a different cover using the same ISBN available on Goodreads here.This collection contains five stories:    The Telltale Heart (1843)    The Masque of the Red Death (1842)    The Oblong Box (1844)    The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) (A Chevalier Dupin story)    The Purloined Letter (1844) (A Chevalier Dupin story)

What Lies Below


Helen Phifer - 2020
    Will Madeleine Hart discover the horrors hidden below, before it's too late?Bestselling writer Madeleine Hart has run away from her life in London and abusive ex Connor. Crumbling Lakeview Hall in the Armboth Valley, abandoned decades earlier, is the perfect Lakeland hideaway for Maddy to make a fresh start, finish her book and disappear from the world.But strange things start to happen. The house is too big and the fear that Connor has tracked her down soon becomes a terrifying reality. Enlisting the help of Seth, who runs the village pub to help solve the mystery of what's happening in the unloved mansion, she doesn't realise that the past and the present are about to collide in a fight to survive.

The Lake


Natasha Preston - 2021
    They're excited to be back this year as CITs (counselors in training). Esme loves the little girls in her cabin and thinks it's funny how scared they are of everything--spiders, the surly head counselor, the dark, boys . . . even swimming in the lake! It reminds her a little of how she and Kayla used to be, once. Before . . . it happened.Because Esme and Kayla did something bad when they were campers. Afterwards, the girls agreed to keep it secret. They've moved on--or so they say--and this summer is going to be great. Two months of sun, s'mores, and flirting with the cute boy counselors. But then they get a note. THE LAKE NEVER FORGETS. And the secret they've kept buried for so many years is about to resurface.

The Unblemished


Conrad Williams - 2006
    Follow the frantic journey of a mother whose daughter is infected with the stuff of nightmare, and look through the eyes of Bo Mulvey, a man upon whom the fate and survival of the entire human race depends. This apocalyptic novel set in London is an epic tale of history and destiny, desperation and desire, and atrocity and atonement.

Dark Orbit


Carolyn Ives Gilman - 2015
    When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she’s been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.