Book picks similar to
Stranger Things - The Companion by Nick Blake
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horror
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The Corpse Whisperer (An Allie Nighthawk Mystery, #1)
H.R. Boldwood - 2018
“If you raise deadheads, you’d better be able to put ‘em down. Nobody said it was pretty. But in this day, when vampires aren’t just for breakfast anymore, and the dead are disposable pawns for necromancers, someone has to ante up. Looks like I won the lotto. Imagine my delight. You should thank me, really, because the world is batshit crazy.” When the zombie population spikes and no one knows why, it’s up to Allie to solve the mystery. But there’s a hitch. She’s stuck babysitting Leo Abruzzi, a zombie-bitten gangster who’s turning state’s evidence. But the mob and a powerful necromancer will stop at nothing to take Leo and Allie down. Allie Nighthawk is Anita Blake on steroids, with a fondness for leather and Jack on the rocks. She has a healthy dose of Stephanie Plum and Rachel Morgan in her, too, though she’d never admit it. The battle between good and evil just got wicked fun.
Small Town Monsters
Diana Rodriguez Wallach - 2021
Not to mention she's the family outcast, lacking her parents' innate abilities, and is terrified of the occult things lurking in their basement.Maxwell Oliver is supposed to be enjoying the summer before his senior year, spending his days thinking about parties and friends. Instead he's taking care of his little sister while his mom slowly becomes someone he doesn't recognize. Soon he suspects that what he thought was grief over his father's death might be something more...sinister.When Maxwell and Vera join forces, they come face to face with deeply disturbing true stories of cults, death worship, and the very nature that drives people to evil.
Dreamland
Robert L. Anderson - 2015
Her mother taught her the three rules of walking: Never interfere. Never be seen. Never walk the same person’s dream more than once. Dea has never questioned her mother, not about the rules, not about the clocks or the mirrors, not about moving from place to place to be one step ahead of the unseen monsters that Dea’s mother is certain are right behind them.Then a mysterious new boy, Connor, comes to town and Dea finally starts to feel normal. As Connor breaks down the walls that she’s had up for so long, he gets closer to learning her secret. For the first time she wonders if that’s so bad. But when Dea breaks the rules, the boundary between worlds begins to deteriorate. How can she know what’s real and what’s not?
What We Harvest
Ann Fraistat - 2022
Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren’s family farm. Until five months ago.That’s when the quicksilver mercury blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow’s End one by one. It began by consuming the crops--thick, silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals. Infected livestock and wild creatures alike staggered off into the woods by day—only to return at night, their eyes, fogged white, leering from the trees.Then, the blight came for the neighbors.Wren is among the last locals standing. And the blight has finally come for her, too. Now, the only one she can turn to is the last person she wants to call: her ex, Derek. They haven’t spoken in months, but Wren and Derek still have one thing in common—Hollow’s End means everything to them. Only there’s much they don’t know about their hometown and its renowned miracle crops. And they’re about to discover that miracles aren’t free.Their ancestors have an awful lot to pay for, and Wren and Derek are the only ones left to settle old debts.
The Gates
John Connolly - 2009
The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe. A gap in which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out...Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it?Bursting with imagination, The Gates is about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy. It is about a quirky and eccentric boy who is impossible not to love, and the unlikely cast of characters who give him the strength to stand up to a demonic power.John Connolly manages to re-create the magical and scary world of childhood that we've all left behind but so love to visit. And for those of you who thought you knew everything you could about particle physics and the universe, think again. This novel makes anything seem possible.
The Boy Who Couldn't Die
William Sleator - 2004
Terrified, he seeks out a plump, middle-aged psychic named Cherie Buttercup, who grants him invulnerability from death in exchange for his soul. Eager to test his new powers, Ken talks his family into a vacation in the Caribbean, where he can swim with sharks. There he is entranced with Sabine, a young scuba instructor, and shares his story with her. When Ken begins to have vivid dreams of secret murders, he and Sabine realize that Cherie Buttercup is using his soul as a zombie to do her will. But the dreams also give clues as to where his soul is hidden--so the pair set out to retrieve it.- Patty Campbell (Amazon.com review)
Bone Music
Christopher Rice - 2018
If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her.Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.
One Word Kill
Mark Lawrence - 2019
And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.Challenge accepted.
Middlegame
Seanan McGuire - 2019
Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Love and Decay Omnibus: Season Two (Episodes 1-12)
Rachel Higginson - 2015
Reagan Willow didn’t think it was possible to feel safe during the Zombie Apocalypse. She didn’t think it was possible to fall in love or find happiness either. But Hendrix Parker has changed all of that for her. Hendrix and Reagan have overcome incredible obstacles to be together and keep their loved ones safe. Through it all, they’ve had each other to rely on. But nothing is certain at the end of the world and even their unshakable love is at risk. So are their lives. Zombies are the least of their problems, as Reagan and friends fight to survive the horrors that wait for them around every corner. They will go up against the undead, a ruthless dictator and the one boy that will do anything to possess her. Love and Decay, Season Two Omnibus is a compilation of twelve novellas in a Dystopian Romance about Zombies, the end of the world and finding someone to share it with.
Providence
Caroline Kepnes - 2018
When Jon is finally ready to confess his feelings, he's suddenly kidnapped by his substitute teacher who is obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and has a plot to save humanity.Mourning the disappearance of Jon and facing the reality he may never return, Chloe tries to navigate the rites of entering young adulthood and "fit in" with the popular crowd, but thoughts of Jon are never far away. When Jon finally escapes, he discovers he now has an uncontrollable power that endangers anyone he has intense feelings for. He runs away to protect Chloe and find the answers to his new identity—but he's soon being tracked by a detective who is fascinated by a series of vigilante killings that appear connected. Whisking us on a journey through New England and crashing these characters' lives together in the most unexpected ways, Kepnes explores the complex relationship between love and identity, unrequited passion and obsession, self-preservation and self-destruction, and how the lines are often blurred between the two.
The Twelve-Fingered Boy
John Hornor Jacobs - 2013
He’s good at dealing contraband candy, and three meals a day is more than his drunk mother provided. In juvie, the rules never change and everyone is the same. In juvie, Shreve has life figured out.So when he’s assigned a strangely silent and vulnerable new cellmate, Jack, Shreve takes the younger boy under his wing. But all Shreve’s plans and schemes unravel when he discovers Jack is different. For one thing, Jack has six fingers per hand. For another thing, he just might have superpowers.Soon Jack has drawn the attention of the cellblock bullies as well as the mysterious and chilling Mr. Quincrux—who claims to be from the Department of Health and Human Services. But when Shreve feels Quincrux invade his mind and shuffle through his darkest memories, he knows Quincrux’s interest in Jack is far more sinister. Mr. Quincrux means to take Jack away. For what purposes, no one knows.But Shreve has another plan: escape.
TAT
Razz Popo - 2017
Who hasn't? Well, I was right there when the spaceships crashed. I saw the lasers, felt the heat of the explosions and the clumps of dirt spank my face. And I saw the aliens. Then came the orb and the tats, and with them, the powers. For a few days afterward, I was on cloud 99. And then it all went downhill. First, I was fighting for the lives of strangers. Then I was fighting for my own. Now, I'm fighting for all of the above, and the lives of everyone I love. TAT is a novel for lovers of aliens, super-powers, and more action than is safe for a non-augmented human. Think you know pretty much what's inside? You don't. Think you can predict what's going to happen? You can't. Think you will be bored? You won't.
Treachery and Treason
Laura Anne GilmanKaren Haber - 2000
RosenmanBy the Time the Witchblood Blooms • (2000) • short story by Anne BishopA Family Affair • (2000) • novelette by William C. DietzSuspended • (2000) • novelette by Michelle R. GaweBorders • (2000) • short story by Nancy Jane MooreKiss Me, You Fool • (1993) • short story by Del Stone, Jr.Round Dragon, Angry Tiger • (2000) • novelette by Steven PiziksThe Judas Lesson • (2000) • short story by Jerry OltionThe Fine Art of Betrayal • (2000) • novelette by Karen HaberFrozen • (2000) • short story by Tom CoolThe Traitor • (2000) • short story by Lois TiltonWhat's in a Name? • (2000) • short story by Douglas SmithRena 733 • (2000) • short story by Lisa SilverthorneChalk Circle • (2000) • short story by Greg McElhattonTrue Love in the Day After Tomorrow • (2000) • novelette by Scott EdelmanThe Divi • (2000) • short story by Irene RadfordHer Fair and Unpolluted Flesh • (2000) • novelette by K. D. WentworthPerfidy • (2000) • short fiction by Dennis L. McKiernanThe Passenger • (2000) • short story by Julie E. Czerneda