Book picks similar to
Primitive by David Wood


thriller
adventure
best-rated
paranormal-and-stuff

The Curiosity


Stephen P. Kiernan - 2013
    Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. As a scientist in a groundbreaking project run by the egocentric and paranoid Erastus Carthage, Kate has brought small creatures-plankton, krill, shrimp-"back to life." Never have the team's methods been attempted on a large life form.Heedless of the consequences, Carthage orders that the frozen man be brought back to the lab in Boston, and reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was-is-a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. When news of the Lazarus Project and Jeremiah Rice breaks, it ignites a media firestorm and massive protests by religious fundamentalists.Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah's new life is slipping away. With Carthage planning to exploit Jeremiah while he can, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.A gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller, Stephen Kiernan's provocative debut novel raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity-man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid plaything, as a living being: A curiosity.

The Montauk Monster


Hunter Shea - 2014
    . .On a hot summer night in Montauk, the bodies of two local bar patrons are discovered in the dunes, torn to shreds, their identities unrecognizable. . .It Breeds. . .In another part of town, a woman's backyard is invaded by four terrifying creatures that defy any kind of description. What's clear is that they're hostile--and they're ravenous. . .It Spreads. . .With every sunset the terror rises again, infecting residents with a virus no one can cure. The CDC can't help them; FEMA can't save them. But each savage attack brings Suffolk County Police Officer Gray Dalton one step closer to the shocking source of these unholy creations. Hidden on nearby Plum Island, a U.S. research facility has been running top-secret experiments. What they created was never meant to see the light of day. Now, a vacation paradise is going straight to hell.

The Last One


Alexandra Oliva - 2016
    She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing. Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated.

The Boy from Reactor 4


Orest Stelmach - 2011
    An angry, secretive man, he died when she was thirteen, leaving his past shrouded in mystery. When a stranger claims to have known her father during his early years in Eastern Europe, she agrees to meet—only to watch the man shot dead on a city sidewalk. With his last breath, he whispers a cryptic clue, one that will propel Nadia on a high-stakes treasure hunt from New York to her ancestral homeland of Ukraine. There she meets an unlikely ally: Adam, a teenage hockey prodigy who honed his skills on the abandoned cooling ponds of Chernobyl. Physically and emotionally scarred by radiation syndrome, Adam possesses a secret that could change the world—if she can keep him alive long enough to do it. A twisting tale of greed, secrets, and lies, The Boy from Reactor 4 will keep readers guessing until the final heart-stopping page.

Rattle


Fiona Cummins - 2017
    He leads two lives. In one he's just like anyone else. But in the other he is the caretaker of his family's macabre museum.Now the time has come to add to his collection. He is ready to feed his obsession, and he is on the hunt.Jakey Frith and Clara Foyle have something in common. They have what he needs.What begins is a terrifying cat-and-mouse game between the sinister collector, Jakey's father and Etta Fitzroy, a troubled detective investigating a spate of abductions.Set in London's Blackheath, Rattle by Fiona Cummins explores the seam of darkness that runs through us all; the struggle between light and shadow, redemption and revenge.It is a glimpse into the mind of a sinister psychopath. And it's also a story about not giving up hope when it seems that all hope is already lost.

The Forgotten Child


Melissa Erin Jackson - 2018
    They need her to listen.Ever since Riley Thomas, reluctant medium extraordinaire, accidentally released a malevolent spirit from a Ouija board when she was thirteen, she’s taken a hard pass on scary movies, haunted houses, and cemeteries. Twelve years later, when her best friend pressures her into spending a paranormal investigation weekend at the infamous Jordanville Ranch — former home of deceased serial killer Orin Jacobs — Riley’s still not ready to accept the fact that she can communicate with ghosts.Shortly after their arrival at the ranch, the spirit of a little boy contacts Riley; a child who went missing — and was never found — in 1973.In order to put the young boy’s spirit to rest, she has to come to grips with her ability. But how can she solve a mystery that happened a decade before she was born? Especially when someone who knows Orin’s secrets wants to keep the truth buried — no matter the cost.CW/TW: Adult language, sexual situations, discussions about sexual assault.

Dinosaur Lake


Kathryn Meyer Griffith - 1993
    Ex-cop Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for eight years and he likes his park and his life the way it’s been. Safe. Tranquil. Predictable. But he’s about to be tested in so many ways. First the earthquakes begin…people begin to go missing…then there’s some mysterious water creature that’s taken up residence in the caves below Crater Lake and it’s not only growing in size, it’s aggressive and cunning…and very hungry. And it’s decided it likes human beings. To eat.And it can come up onto land.So Henry, with the help of his wife, Ann; a young paleontologist named Justin; and a band of brave men must not only protect his park and his people from the monster but somehow find where it lives and destroy it…before it can kill again. ***

Snow Day


Dan Maurer - 2013
    Every time the snow starts to fall late in the evening before a school day, the dreams begin again for Billy Stone. They are always the same – there’s a dark tunnel, and there’s blood, lots of blood, and someone is screaming.In this chilling childhood tale, Billy, recounts the events of one unforgettable day in 1975. On that day, he and his friends played carefree in the snow, until an adventure gone awry left him far from home, staring death in the face, and running from a killer bent on keeping a horrible secret.Set in a time before Amber Alerts, when horror stories were told around camp fires instead of on the nightly news, Snow Day is a blend of nostalgia and nightmare that makes us question if the good old days were really as good as we remember.From a new voice in dark fiction comes a thriller about an idyllic childhood turned horrifying; a cautionary tale about how losing sight of the difference between feeling safe and being safe can lead to deadly consequences.

The Informationist


Taylor Stevens - 2011
    Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle's most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she's never looked back. Until now."

The One That Got Away


Simon Wood - 2015
    But something goes terribly wrong on their way home, and the last time Zoë sees her, Holli is in the clutches of a sadistic killer. Zoë flees with her life, changed forever.A year later and still tortured with guilt, Zoë latches on to a police investigation where the crime eerily resembles her abduction. Along with a zealous detective, she retraces the steps of that fateful night in the desert, hoping that her memory will return and help them find justice for Holli. Her abductor—labeled the “Tally Man” by a fascinated media—lies in wait for Zoë. For him, she is not a survivor but simply the one that got away.With an unforgettable heroine, a chillingly disturbed psychopath, and a story that moves at breakneck speed, The One That Got Away is thriller writer Simon Wood at his finest.

Deep Down


Lee Child - 2012
    The assignment that awaits him: The army is meeting with its Capitol Hill paymasters for classified talks on a new, state-of-the-art sniper rifle for U.S. forces. But vital details about the weapon are leaking—straight from the Capitol and probably into the hands of unidentified foreign arms dealers. The prospect of any and every terrorist, mercenary, or dictator’s militia getting their hands on the latest superior firepower is unthinkable. That’s where Reacher comes in. His task: infiltrate the top-secret proceedings and smoke out the mole. His target: a quartet of high-powered Army political liaison officers—all of them fast-track women on their way to the top. According to his bosses, it’s a zero-danger mission. No need to draw a gun . . . just chat over drinks. But Reacher knows that things are rarely what they seem. And he’s learned the hard way never to underestimate an opponent. Or four. Lessons that will come in handy when he starts digging for the truth—and gets his hands a lot dirtier than he expected.

The Whispering Room


Amanda Stevens - 2009
    Feeling suffocated by her new baby, in whose eyes she sees only her dead husband, she throws herself into a high-profile murder case. Reclusive writer Lena Saunders offers Evangeline a provocative theory about the crime: it is the work of a lunatic vigilante. Lena spins the sordid story of Ruth and Rebecca Lemay, whose mother brutally murdered her male children in an insane effort to root out an "evil" gene. The girls survived and grew to adulthood--but one is carrying on her mother's grisly work.When the case takes a terrifyingly personal turn, Evangeline's whole life will depend on a crucial, impossible choice: the lesser of two evils...

Stranded


Bracken MacLeod - 2016
    Without functioning navigation or communication equipment, they are lost and completely alone. One by one, the men fall prey to a mysterious illness. Deckhand Noah Cabot is the only person unaffected by the strange force plaguing the ship and her crew, which does little to ease their growing distrust of him. Dismissing Noah's warnings of worsening conditions, the captain of the ship presses on until the sea freezes into ice and they can go no farther. When the men are ordered overboard in an attempt to break the ship free by hand, the fog clears, revealing a faint shape in the distance that may or may not be their destination. Noah leads the last of the able-bodied crew on a journey across the ice and into an uncertain future where they must fight for their lives against the elements, the ghosts of the past and, ultimately, themselves.

Damnation Code


William Massa - 2015
    Cursed relics. Paranormal terrorists. Only one man stands against the forces of darkness. After his fiancée is slain by a murderous cult, a professional soldier dedicates himself to a new mission–hunting down twisted occultists around the globe. "The Punisher meets John Constantine in this exciting, hard-hitting Supernatural Action Thriller series. "-- Amazon Reviewer. After a decade spent fighting the enemy abroad and keeping his country safe, Delta Force Operator Mark Talon is ready to put his military career behind him and settle down with the love of his life. But Talon's world crumbles when his fiancée becomes the victim of a diabolical cabal. The military man now has a new foe in his crosshairs, and this promises to be a very different war. The person responsible for his beloved's death is a Silicon Valley tycoon allied with the forces of darkness. Fusing cutting-edge computer technology with an ancient evil, the enemy here cannot be stopped by bullets alone. If Talon is to be victorious in his mission of vengeance, he will need to master a new method of warfare -- the arcane arts! He must become... the Occult Assassin. "Occult Assassin moves like a bullet exploding from Talon's 9mm Glock." -- Nicholas Sansbury Smith, best-selling author of EXTINCTION HORIZON/HELLDIVERS. "Good mix of paranormal horror and action/adventure thriller." -- Mark Lukens, best-selling author of ANCIENT ENEMY.

Afterlife


Marcus Sakey - 2017
    He wakes without a scratch. The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He’s relieved to spot other people — until he sees they’re carrying machetes.Welcome to the afterlife.Claire McCoy stands over the body of Will Brody. As head of an FBI task force, she hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. A terrorist has claimed eighteen lives and thrown the nation into panic. Against this horror, something reckless and beautiful happened. She fell in love… with Will Brody. But the line between life and death is narrower than any of us suspect — and all that matters to Will and Claire is getting back to each other.From the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance Trilogy comes a mind-bending thriller that explores our most haunting and fundamental question: What if death is just the beginning?