Book picks similar to
The Complex by Brian Keene


horror
fiction
brian-keene
splatterpunk

Ash


Jason Brant - 2013
    10:32 AM EST: An entire floor of government agents leap to their death from their office building. 12:57 PM EST: All the police officers inside a station murder each other. And the day has just begun. Lieutenant Asher Benson left Iraq with a traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and a Purple Heart. His doctors warned that the symptoms would be life altering. They had no idea. As his body healed, the thoughts of those around him began to echo through Ash’s mind, stretching the boundaries of his sanity. Five years later, Ash is drowning the voices with copious amounts of booze and self-loathing. When unidentified intelligence agents abduct him in broad daylight, Ash is thrust into a world of espionage and assassinations. A unique terrorist is operating on U.S. soil, and the government needs Ash, and the malady that has plagued him for half a decade, to find the killer. *Ash is the first book in the Asher Benson thriller series, which is full of snarky humor and nonstop action.

Handbook for the Criminally Insane


Brian Holtz - 2009
    Zombies. A serial killer. Demons. And an evil Chihuahua. Monica's fresh start may not be everything she was hoping for, but who knows? She might just end up having the time of her life -- if she can find a way to avoid the time of her death.

Come Out Tonight


Richard Laymon - 1999
    Too hot to be making love unless your romance is young, like Sherry and Duane's. It's their first time but there's just one problem - they have no condoms. Of course they could wait until tomorrow... Duane remembers the all-night Speed-D-Mart. In the usual circumstances, it's not a place anyone would want to visit at night. But these aren't usual circumstances. Duane throws on his clothes - the store is just ten minutes down the block. Now Sherry is waiting. Ten minutes has gone, so has twenty. She's not worried - what's another few minutes? Then she hears the noise from down the street. It might be a door slamming. It might be the backfire of a car. But Sherry thinks it sounds mostly like a gunshot...

Fortress Britain


Glynn James - 2012
    Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living - with 50 million beleaguered survivors facing down a world of 7 billion animated corpses.And when civilization fell, one international team of supremely elite special operators was being assembled for a nearly impossible mission, deployed out of the SAS barracks at Hereford. Supremely trained and armed, always the most skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us, now the commandos of Alpha team are humanity's last best hope for survival. Searching through the detritus of fallen Europe, scavenging pharmaceutical labs for clues to a vaccine that might bring humanity back from the brink, now they are tasked with one last desperate operation.They must cross the Atlantic aboard the world's only remaining supercarrier, insert by air into the very middle of a dead continent, and then fight their way on foot through a city of 3 million ravening dead guys. But these Zulus will not be like any zombies they have ever fought before...

The Jekyll Revelation


Robert Masello - 2016
    Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret—the identity of Jack the Ripper.Unfortunately, the journal—whose macabre tale unfolds in an alternating narrative with Rafe’s—isn’t the only relic in the trunk, and Rafe isn’t the only one to purloin a souvenir. A mysterious flask containing the last drops of the grisly potion that inspired Jekyll and Hyde and spawned London’s most infamous killer has gone missing. And it has definitely fallen into the wrong hands.

Extraction


Douglas Preston - 2012
    In New Orleans' French Quarter, the Tooth Fairy isn't a benevolent sprite who slips money under your pillow at night....he's a mysterious old recluse who must be appeased with teeth--lest he extract retribution. When young Diogenes Pendergast loses a tooth, however, his skeptical older brother Aloysius is determined to put the legend to the test...with dire consequences. *Includes a special preview chapter of Preston & Child's new full-length novel TWO GRAVES, available December 11, 2012.

The Hunger


Alma Katsu - 2018
    Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history. While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"

The Haunting of Gillespie House


Darcy Coates - 2015
    Hidden near the edge of the woods and an hour's drive from the nearest town, its dark rooms and rich furniture entice her to explore its secrets. There's even a graveyard hidden behind the house, filled with tombstones that bear an identical year of death.If only the scratching in the walls would be quiet… The house’s dark and deadly history quickly becomes tangled with Elle’s life. At the center of it is Jonathan Gillespie, the tyrannical cult leader and original owner of the house. As Elle soon learns -- just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean he’s gone.

Sick


Brett Battles - 2011
    Just a bad dream, he thinks. She's had them before. Yet he can't help but worry when she cries out again as he pads down the hallway. Stepping through her doorway, he expects to find her sitting up in bed, frightened by a nightmare.But the nightmare is his. It's real. And it's just beginning...Something is burning Ash's daughter alive. Something horrible that is spreading beyond the walls of their home, and taking no prisoners.Thirty seconds later, Ash will discover his daughter isn't the only one in his family infected, and as his world spins, coming apart at the seams, a team of armed men in biohazard suits bursts into his house.But these aren't the good guys.They haven't come to save Ash's family. They've come to separate them, to finish what they started.The problem is Ash refuses to disappear. He wants only one thing: to find those responsible.Because humanity is on the brink of execution.And man is pulling the trigger.

Apocalypticon


Clayton Smith - 2014
    Unfortunately, that "normal" includes collapsing skyscrapers, bands of bloodthirsty maniacs, and a dwindling cache of survival supplies. After watching his family, friends, and most of the non-sadistic elements of society crumble around him, Patrick decides it's time to cross one last item off his bucket list. He’s going to Disney World. This hilarious, heartfelt, gut-wrenching odyssey through post-apocalyptic America is a pilgrimage peppered with peril, as fellow survivors Patrick and Ben encounter a slew of odd characters, from zombie politicians and deranged survivalists to a milky-eyed oracle who doesn't have a lot of good news. Plus, it looks like Patrick may be hiding the real reason for their mission to the Magic Kingdom...

Hannah-Beast


Jennifer McMahon - 2018
    The mean girls made sure of it. To this day, for a haunted local mother, the most unsettling Halloween costume of all is an urban legend they call Hannah-Beast. It’s a reminder of the past she can’t forget. Especially tonight when it’s come back, so close to home.Jennifer McMahon’s Hannah-Beast is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.

Primitive


J.F. Gonzalez - 2009
    Then the bottom dropped out of civilization. The world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a dizzying downward spiral. Instead of the rat race of commuters scurrying to beat the clock, humans are now packs of animals reduced to snarling primitives. David, Tracy and their daughter Emily, along with fellow survivors, leave Los Angeles for the safety of the country where fewer people means fewer primitives. But as they venture farther away from the city, they realize an unnatural force is at work. Civilization didn't just fall apart...it was overtaken by an ancient evil that was present before the first cave paintings. Human history has no formal record of it, but the dark presence that's fueled nightmares since time began has crept out of the shadows...and its influence is growing.

Dark River Inn


J.R. Erickson - 2021
    There's only one problem. Ivy disappeared ten years ago.If you’re searching for a paranormal thriller that you’ll be reading with the lights on, grab Troubled Spirits today-the first in a series of stand-alone haunted mysteries inspired by true stories.

Dark Matter


Michelle Paver - 2010
    Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely, and desperate to change his life, so when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, but the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice: stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return--when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark...

Messenger


Edward Lee - 2004
    Would you like to become someone else? Well, someone else is about to become you. He will share your heart and your mind, he will seep into your body, he will feel all your ecstacy... And then he will take you on a slaughterfest. Occult rites. Ritualistic murder. You have become possessed. But not by a ghost. Not by a demon. It's something much worse. Just as God has a messenger, so does the devil, and that messenger is here, now, in your town. He has a message to send... The Messenger. A diabolical novel of ultimate erotic horror...