Book picks similar to
Johnny Gruesome by Gregory Lamberson
horror
fiction
zombies
bram-stoker-nominee
Freak Show (Horror Writers of America)
F. Paul Wilson - 1992
Cupp, Kathryn Ptacek, Douglas Borton, Morgan Fields, Richard Lee Byers, and others.
Kipling's Choice
Geert Spillebeen - 2002
Although Rudyard would go on to win England’s highest accolades, he never got over this lost opportunity to serve his country. When World War I broke out, John, like his father before him, wanted to fight for his country. When his military application was threatened for the same reason as his father’s—poor eyesight—Rudyard took matters into his own hands. Determined not to let history repeat itself, the elder Kipling applied all his influence to get his son a commission. The teenager who had lived his life in comfort and whose greatest concern had been pleasing his father now faced a much greater challenge—staying alive in his first battle.Geert Spillebeen’s moving fictionalized account follows the true story of John Kipling, a young man whose desire to live up to the family name threatens his very survival. It also draws attention to the senseless suffering and loss of life in this and every war.
Mr. Suicide
Nicole Cushing - 2015
How many times in your life have you wanted to slap someone? Really, literally strike them? You can’t even begin to count the times. Hundreds. Thousands. You’re not exaggerating. You’re not engaging in… whatchamacallit? Hyperbole? You’re not engaging in hyperbole. Maybe the impulse flashed through your brain for only a moment, like lightning, when someone tried to skip ahead of you in line at the cafeteria. Hell, at more than one point in your life you’ve wanted to kill someone; really, literally kill someone. That’s not just an expression. Not hyperbole. Then it was gone and replaced by the civilized thought: You can’t do that. Not out in public. But you’ve had the thought… From Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Nicole Cushing comes Mr. Suicide, a novel of the Great Dark Mouth.
Deep in the Darkness
Michael Laimo - 2004
But Ashbourough has a deep, dark secret . . . and it's living in the woods behind his home. "One of the best and most refreshing horror novels you're likely to read this year."
Journey from Peppermint Street
Meindert DeJong - 1968
It was alive with ten hundred thousand fireflies darting in the night and frogs booming at them. But Grandpa said it was dangerous, too - they had to keep on the path - when SPLASH Grandpa fell in! Aunt Hinka came to the rescue in her little boat just in time! Oh, what a menacing and magical journey it was from Peppermint Street.
In Silent Graves
Gary A. Braunbeck - 2000
He is a newscaster with a rising career. He has a beautiful wife, Denise, and a new baby on the way. But in just a few short hours Robert's world is turned upside down. And the torment only gets worse when his daughter's body is stolen from the morgue by a strange, disfigured man....Robert is about to begin a journey into a world of nightmare, an unimaginable world of mystery, horror and revelation. He will learn, from both the living and the dead, secrets about this world and things beyond this world. Though his journey will be grotesque, terrifying and heartbreaking, he will not be allowed to stop. But can he survive with his mind intact? Can he survive at all?
Knight's Wyrd
Debra Doyle - 1992
“Strong main characters and a smoothly written plot make this a hard book to put down. Like many fantasies this one is full of magic which keeps the characters and plot moving.”-VOYA
Little Deaths
Ellen DatlowKathe Koja - 1994
A gasp of pleasure. The exquisite danger of nakedness...In Little Deaths some of the most gifted writers inside and outside the horror genre have come together to peer into this realm of desire and dread, love and violence, tenderness and shame in a stunning collection that takes its title from the French phrase for orgasm: le petit mort.The lady of situations / Stephen Dedman --Hungry skin / Lucy Taylor --Becky lives / Harry Crews --The swing / Nicholas Royle --Lover doll / Wayne Allen Sallee --The careful geometry of love / Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg --The pain barrier / Joel Lane --Ménage à trois / Richard Christian Matheson. On Amen's shore / Clive Barker --Fever blisters / Joyce Carol Oates --An outside interest / Ruth Rendell --And Salome danced / Kelley Eskridge --That old school tie / Jack Womack --Ice palace / Douglas Clegg --Serial monogamist / Pat Cadigan --Dying in Bangkok / Dan Simmons
This Symbiotic Fascination
Charlee Jacob - 1997
She fantasizes about her dream lover--but the man she meets is a nightmare. Arcan Tyler is a rapist and murderer, possessed by animal spirit forces. If they are unleashed, he will cease to be human. For now, Arcan is all too human, and finds something new and rare in Tawne. But love among these creatures is not romantic: it is parasitic.
The Kind One
Tom Epperson - 2008
According to the fellas, he used to pull all kinds of shoot-ups and shenanigans...but damned if he can't remember a thing from before last year, when he got hit over the head with a lead pipe. Sadistic mobster Bud Seitz known to friends and enemies alike as "The Kind One" seems to have big plans for him, but truthfully, Danny can't stomach the dirty work. His aim is off, the other wiseguys laugh at him, and he'd gladly trade in the drunken parties and the endless broads for a day at the movies with his colorful and mysterious neighbor Dulwich and eleven-year-old Sophie, whose deadbeat mother delivers an endless stream of emotional and physical abuse. But when Bud's beautiful girlfriend Darla begs Danny to help her escape the Kind One's dark, brutal world, Danny must confront a dangerous test of loyalty that could irrevocably change his future and his past forever.
Wet Work
Philip Nutman - 1993
And there was Wet Work." --Tim Sullivan, Screenwriter and director. THE STORY: Dominic Corvino covert assassin, the CIA s top "wet work" specialist.Nick Packard a rookie cop about to undergo his baptism of fire on the Washington DC mean streets. Two different men whose destinies are about to collide as Armageddon unfolds... When a routine hit on a pair of rogue DEA agents goes horribly wrong in Panama, Corvino discovers not only has his team been betrayed from within, but he, too, is marked for death. For Packard, his first day on the job rapidly descends into Hell on Earth when a domestic disturbance turns into a blood-soaked nightmare. As a plague sweeps across the globe, turning normally non-lethal diseases fatal, the dead begin to revive. Violence-crazed and hungry for flesh, they are everywhere. And as their troops increase in size and appetite a new order is steadily established from coast to coast... A new order that leaves no room for the living.
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.
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
Joe Hill - 2013
The show's about to begin. Step right up for the Circus of the Dead: where YOU are the concessions. #CircusoftheDead
Headstone City
Tom Piccirilli - 2006
Instead he ran down a cop and lost her and his freedom. Every day in prison, Johnny knew that Angie Monticelli's family blamed him for her death, and that going home would be suicide. But Johnny has unfinished business with his former friend turned mob boss, Vinny Monticelli.Now Johnny has returned to converse with the doomed and the dead—and wait for Vinny to make his move. Survivors of a long-ago freak accident, the two men share access to alternate realities no one else can know—and to a past and present that will all become the same in a city only one of them can leave alive…