Book picks similar to
The Oath (Clyde Barker Paranormal Mysteries Book 3) by J.S. Donovan
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The Dwelling
Susie Moloney - 2002
Perhaps "too" much history.362 Belisle Street is a homeowner's dream. A nice neighborhood, close to schools, new hardwood floors, unique original detail. So why then, wonders real estate agent Glenn Darnley, won't this charming property stay off the market? Perhaps the clawed feet of the antique bathtub look a little too threatening. Or maybe it's the faint hospital-like smell of the room off the top of the stairs. It's possible that the haunting music that pours out from under the steps keeps the residents awake at night.In the three parts of Susie Moloney's hair-raising novel "The Dwelling," ownership of 362 Belisle changes four times -- with Glenn Darnley brokering each deal. The first occupants are a young couple, Rebecca and Daniel Mason, who have big dreams of wealth and success. It doesn't take long for them to realize that they're not welcome in their new house. After a ghostly seduction and a violent confrontation, the property is once again for sale. Next comes Barbara Parkins, a divorcee, and her unhappy young son, Petey. Lonely and looking for companionship, the two find comfort in some new, playful young friends. When the Parkins family leaves, the house is sold again. Last, ownership goes to Richie Bramley, a drunken writer and lost soul. But like the others, he can't settle down in this house -- which has a mind, and a heart, of its own.For Glenn, however, the house is a dream, always warm and welcoming. The floors gleam, and sun pours in through the windows. Owners come -- and 362 Belisle makes sure owners go. It's waiting patiently for its beloved to realize how much it loves her. It's waiting for Glenn, the very special person who can finally turn this house into a home."The Dwelling" is clever, scary, and ultimately moving. It's a novel for everyone who ever spent time looking for "just the right house."
Little Hands Clapping
Dan Rhodes - 2002
Caretaker of the museum by day, by night he enjoys the sound of silence, broken by the occasional crunch of a spider between his blackened teeth. Little Hands Clapping brings together the Old Man with the respectable Doctor Ernst Frohlicher, his greedy dog Hans and a cast of grotesque and hilarious townsfolk, all of whose lives are thrown together as the town uncovers a crime so outrageous that it will shock the world. From its sinister opening to its explosive denouement, Little Hands Clapping blends lavishly entertaining storytelling with Rhodes's macabre imagination, entrancing originality and magical touch.
Hell House
Richard Matheson - 1971
Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted - four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion...
Dystopia: Collected Stories
Richard Christian Matheson - 2000
Inescapably troubling and bizarre, these sixty stories are severe and immediate. From Siamese twin country western acts to an alcoholic Santa Claus to movie theaters used as execution chambers, to death by orgasm, to modern-day savages in Hawaii, to beds that have sexual lives of their own, to pleasure by self-mutilation, these stories are a scape of ominous excess and psychological revelation. Matheson's heralded style is, as always, both distilled and hypnotic.
Outside Wonderland
Lorna Jane Cook - 2011
The loss haunts them into adulthood. Alice is a stage actress in New York who can't commit to a relationship. When she meets Ian she's smitten, but suspects it's Ian's four-year-old son that really captivates her. Griffin and his longtime partner are settled into a contented domesticity, however Theo's insistence that they adopt a child throws Griffin into a panic. When he refuses to cooperate, the crack in their relationship widens. Dinah, the youngest, has a short, passionate love affair that leaves her pregnant and alone when she discovers the father is engaged to someone else. The three look to each other for support during this rough period but they falter. What they don't know is that their parents are watching them from a place outside time and space--worrying, reminiscing, and perhaps guiding their children as each makes their tentative way towards happiness. In luminous prose, Cook tells the story of these tender souls and a love that knows no boundaries.
Insatiable Desire
Rita Herron - 2008
He's the one man who sparks a hunger she never imagined possible--and the one man she should fear...Vincent Valtrez knows how to get inside a serial killer's mind. But with a dangerous past and a secret to keep, he wants nothing to do with this gorgeous psychic--especially since just the thought of her luscious body ignites a dark, irrepressible desire he's determined to keep at bay. When the killer they seek turns out to be demonic and otherworldly, Vincent learns his connection to the murderer is more than just hunter and prey. Will the darkness inside Vincent claim him...or will he save Clarissa--and himself--from the evil that threatens them both?
The Book That Ate My Brother
Michael Dahl - 2010
His brother has been eaten by a book!
The Returned
Seth Patrick - 2014
But the victims of the accident are not the only ones to have returned from the dead. Their arrival coincides with a series of grizzly murders which bear a chilling resemblance to the work of a serial killer from the past... A stunning page-turner filled with startlingly real characters, Seth Patrick’s THE RETURNED reveals how the choices we make can affect those we love long after we’re gone.
A Tale of (Two) 3 Witches
Barbra Annino - 2011
This novelette reunites Mara, Gus, Aunt Tillie and Grundleshanks the Toad (from the Toadwitch paranormal series) with Stacy Justice, the Geraghty Girls and Thor, the Great Dane, (from the Stacy Justice paranormal mystery series). As Gus, Mara and Stacy band together, they're bossed around by the cantankerous ghost of Mara's Aunt Tillie, tripped up by the spirit of Lord Grundleshanks the Poisonous Toad, backed up by Stacy's grandmother's coven, and given assistance by a local hoodoo master -- in-between episodes of Antiques Road Show, that is -- but they're still in for the Samhain of their lives. If they don't stop the stranger's nefarious plan, the only thing they can count on is that all three of their souls will be at risk! This is a quirky, paranormal adventure that combines thrills and chills with all-out spooky fun. It's a fun, fast-paced read that also works as a stand-alone to introduce new readers to the quirky paranormal world of the main characters. It includes short excerpts from the paranormal novels "Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead" and "Opal Fire."
Nella Waits
Marlys Millhiser - 1974
No one would take him from her again.Nella has been dead for thirty years. Her son, Jay, now a grown man, returns to the old homestead to claim his inheritance.Nella has been longing for this. She has waited for this. She has killed for this.Then lovely young Lynette Stewart falls in love with Jay, and Nella knows she will have to destroy her, too...
The Riverhouse
G. Norman Lippert - 2010
The cottage provides the perfect escape: small, picturesque, and lonely. There, he becomes fascinated with the history of the cottage, and that of its larger sister property, the Riverhouse, now demolished. Shane embarks on an unusual painting project: recreating the Riverhouse on canvas, as it might have looked when it was first built. As the painting develops, surprising Shane both with its style and its strange, silent strength, he finds that the image is a sort of portal, inviting him into the Riverhouse’s past. He learns of its owners, portrait artist Gustav Wilhelm, known for his arrogance as much as his genius, and of Wilhelm’s wife, the beautiful but ignored Marlena. Their story blooms in Shane’s mind like a dark rose, full of deepening mystery and harrowing secrets. Gradually, Shane comes to realize that the decades’ old drama isn’t yet finished. Ghosts haunt the cottage, particularly the intriguing Marlena, and Shane finds himself inexplicably drawn to her, despite her otherworldly hatred of his tentative new love, art agent Christiana. Eventually, Shane finds himself caught in the spiraling collision course of his own life and that of the Riverhouse, which has secretly risen from its dead foundation. He knows he should escape and yet he cannot seem to walk away. After all, he thinks, ghosts can’t harm the living. Can they?
The House Next Door
Anne Rivers Siddons - 1978
Life is made up of enjoyable work, long, lazy weekends, and the company of good neighbors. Then, to their shock, construction starts on the vacant lot next door, a wooded hillside they'd believed would always remain undeveloped. Soon, though, they come to realize that more is wrong than their diminished privacy. Surely the house can't be "haunted," yet something about it seems to destroy the goodness of every person who comes to live in it, until the entire heart of this friendly neighborhood threatens to be torn apart.
Ari
S.M. Boyce - 2016
Instead, she let her crush, Marcus Wagner, lead her into the shadows. Oops. As she predicted, they ran out screaming. But something followed her home. Since that night, Ari is haunted by something she can’t see. It watches her when she sleeps. It caresses her in the shower. It carves words into her skin and lives alongside her, never satisfied with her terror. It always wants more, and Ari begins to fear it will take her and her date back to the farmhouse… forever. For Ari and Marcus, it’s not a matter of whether or not monsters are real; It’s a life-or-death race to figure out which one is out to drag their souls to hell.
Be with Me Always: Essays
Randon Billings Noble - 2019
He wants to be haunted—he insists on it. Randon Billings Noble does too. Instead of exorcising the ghosts of her past, she hopes for their cold hands to knock at the window and to linger. Be with Me Always is a collection of essays that explore hauntedness by considering how the ghosts of our pasts cling to us. In a way, all good essays are about the things that haunt us until we have somehow embraced or understood them. Here, Noble considers the ways she has been haunted—by a near-death experience, the gaze of a nude model, thoughts of widowhood, Anne Boleyn's violent death, a book she can't stop reading, a past lover who shadows her thoughts—in essays both pleasant and bitter, traditional and lyrical, and persistently evocative and unforgettable.
The Rifters
M. Pax - 2014
The Gold Rush trickles to a fool’s quest and a string of stagecoach heists. In 1888, Earl Blacke decides to make a new start and become a better man. He escapes into the mountains, heading north. In the wilds of Oregon, a rift inside an ancient volcano opens and sends him into the future, into the present day. It also shaves forty years off his age, forty years to live over again and atone for what he’s done. Starting over is hard to do. In current day New York, Daelin Long’s dream job at a publishing house goes the way of the dinosaurs her sister chases. With no money and nowhere else to go, Daelin accepts the librarian position in her sister’s dinky town in the middle of Oregon. Nestled inside ancient volcanic peaks, the town of Settler holds onto many secrets. Residents roam the streets with weirdly fashioned devices, and odd lights pulse in the night skies. People whisper of a phantom outlaw and start dying, murdered and missing their heads. On top of it all, Daelin’s sister is missing, and Daelin doesn’t know who to trust. Earl knows more than he’s saying. He shares a notorious history with the phantom, one he’ll see remains buried. Keeping Daelin’s sister’s secrets is his only chance at redemption, and the only way to keep this world safe.