Book picks similar to
Edging by Michael Schutz


horror
thriller
gender-diversity
review-pending

Sisters of Sorrow


Axel Blackwell - 2015
    If the brutal machines don't kill Anna, her guardians' neglect and abuse probably will. The only thing this abandoned teen wants is out. But the factory is inside a stone fortress, on an island, where people are sent to be forgotten. It serves as a dumping ground -- both for orphans who are not welcome at finer institutions, and for nuns who have disgraced the Church. The walls of Saint Frances du Chantal's Orphan Asylum hum with secrets and buried scandal. In the catacombs below the factory, something long dead, something almost forgotten, stirs. It offers Anna a key, and promises freedom, if she will seek it out when she escapes. She knows her plan will endanger the other children, but Anna cannot resist the call of freedom. Her escape attempt triggers a chain reaction of chaos, shaking the orphanage to its foundation and laying bare its deadly secrets. As Anna flees into the night, she discovers that the evil nuns were the least of her worries. The swirling mist of the island hides terrors more dangerous than she could ever imagine.

Horror Within : 8 Book Boxed Set


Mark TufoJ.T. Warren - 2014
    Armand Rosamilia - Dying Days Travis Tufo - Red Sky Tony Baker - From The Ashes Eric A. Shelman - Dead Hunger Ian Woodhead - The Unwashed Dead Robert Chazz Chute - This Plague Of Days Mark Tufo - Zombie Fallout + Bonus Short Mayan Prophecy Scott Nicholson/ J.T. Warren - Meat Camp

The Lust For Blood


Charmain Marie Mitchell - 2013
    There is nothing so complicated as a human being and sometimes nothing so horrific!

Wrath Child


Erik Henry Vick - 2020
    DO NOT RESEARCH THESE EVENTS! Think of it as fiction, and nothing more.The Smith has returned, leaving a new trail of gruesome serial murders across Manhattan--all blonde, beautiful, beaten to death with a blacksmith's hammer. Gavin Gregory, an FBI agent who profiles serial killers for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, couldn't capture The Smith the first time around and wants a second stab at catching the killer. The case takes a bizarre turn when Debra Esteves, a psychiatrist from a New York mental hospital, says she knows The Smith's identity.Esteves spins a tale of disturbing horror from her past, claiming The Smith controlled one of her patients through his psychic influence. But Gavin considers himself a rational man. He believes in science over superstition and rejects her version of events.When his wife is kidnapped, Gavin has no choice but to turn to Esteves for help. Can she keep him safe from the devil hunting him long enough to free his wife from the clutches of the killer or will The Smith make him a pawn in future murders?

The Necromancer's House


Christopher Buehlman - 2013
    We know where you are. And we are coming.”The man on the screen says this in Russian.“Who are you?”The man smiles, but it’s not a pleasant smile.The image freezes.The celluloid burns exactly where his mouth is, burns in the nearly flat U of his smile. His eyes burn, too.The man fades, leaving the burning smiley face smoldering on the screen.“Oh Christ,” Andrew says.The television catches fire.Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock, able to speak with the dead through film. His house is a maze of sorcerous booby traps and escape tunnels, as yours might be if you were sitting on a treasury of Russian magic stolen from the Soviet Union thirty years ago. Andrew has long known that magic was a brutal game requiring blood sacrifice and a willingness to confront death, but his many years of peace and comfort have left him soft, more concerned with maintaining false youth than with seeing to his own defense. Now a monster straight from the pages of Russian folklore is coming for him, and frost and death are coming with her.

The Call


Peadar Ó Guilín - 2016
    And then you hear a horn and you know that whoever lives in this hell has got your scent and the hunt has already begun.Could you survive the Call?

Asylum Archives Case Study Vol. 2: True accounts from the insane


Jaron Briggs - 2017
    Giles, acclaimed filmmaker Richard Dutcher, and bestselling author Jaron Briggs, Asylum Archives is prescribed as a few milligrams of insanity!

Tidepool


Nicole Willson - 2021
    Defying her father’s orders to remain at home, she travels to Tidepool, the last place Henry is known to have visited. Residents of the small, shabby oceanside town can’t quite meet Sorrow’s eyes when she asks about her brother.When corpses wash up on shore looking as if they’ve been torn apart by something not quite human, Sorrow is ready to return to Baltimore and let her father send in the professional detectives.However, after meeting Ada Oliver, a widow whose black silk dresses and elegant manners set her apart from other Tidepool residents, Sorrow discovers Tidepool’s dark, deadly secret.With this discovery, some denizens of Tidepool—human and otherwise—are hell-bent on making sure Sorrow never leaves their forsaken town.Lovecraftian dark fantasy gets a modern treatment in this terrifying debut novel.

Twisted


Andrew E. Kaufman - 2015
    Christopher Kellan spends his days at Loveland Psychiatric Hospital, overseeing a unit known as Alpha Twelve, home to the most deranged and psychotic killers imaginable. His newest patient, Donny Ray Smith, is accused of murdering ten young girls and making their bodies disappear. But during his first encounter with Donny, Christopher finds something else unsettling: the man looks familiar.The killer with a secret…Donny Ray knows things about Christopher—things he couldn’t have possibly learned at Loveland. As the psychologist delves deeper into the mysterious patient’s case, Christopher’s life whirls out of control. The contours of his mind are rapidly losing shape, and his grasp on reality is slipping even faster. Is he going mad, or is that what Donny Ray wants him to think?The terror that binds them…In this taut psychological thriller from Andrew E. Kaufman, bestselling author of The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, a tormented man must face his fear and enter the mind of a killer to find the truth…even if it costs him his sanity.

Three Incidents at Foster Manor


P.T. Phronk - 2019
    An apocalyptic storm. Whispering voices in the air. She was right to fear the worst-case scenario. Amy Burnett has been buried in her work as a security expert. She likes it that way—her dark past can’t invade her thoughts as long as she stays holed up in her office. So why the heck has she ended up at a gothic mansion’s doorstep in the middle of the night? It’s because Craig Foster summoned her there. Amy’s company built the sealed chamber in his basement, for any worrisome worst-case scenario, but now the safe room has presented a scenario of its own: Craig’s daughter is trapped inside. It should be a quick fix. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen when a stranger arrives at a remote mansion on a stormy night? An impossible mystery? A haunting? A visit from the lurking strangers in the woods? Surely not all three—that would require extraordinarily bad luck. Unfortunately, Amy’s been short on luck lately. Three Incidents at Foster Manor will keep you guessing until the end with a twist-filled, fast-paced, genre-blending mix of mystery, ghost story, thriller, and cosmic horror that will chill you to the core. This is a standalone story, but also acts as a sequel to P.T. Phronk's previous mystery, The Arborist. "Full of interesting characters, twists and scares, it will keep you off-balance all the way to the end!" —Franny "I'm always down some ghostly fun but then the fun dial twisted and wow." —Amazon Reviewer "If you like reading stories somewhat reminiscent of The Twilight Zone this is for you." —Alanna Patterson

Spare Room


Dreda Say Mitchell - 2019
    The live-in owners are a kind and welcoming couple. Everything is fine until she finds a suicide note hidden in her room. But when the couple insist this man didn’t exist and that Lisa is their first tenant, Lisa begins to doubt herself.Compelled to uncover the secrets of the man who lived in the room before her, Lisa is alarmed when increasingly disturbing incidents start to happen. Someone doesn’t want Lisa to find out the truth.As the four walls of this house and its secrets begin to close in on Lisa, she descends into a hellish hall of mirrors where she’s not sure what’s real and what’s not as she claws her way towards the truth… This room has already claimed one victim? Is it about to take another?

Drawing Blood


Poppy Z. Brite - 1993
    Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.

Dark Hollow


Brian Keene - 2006
    Women are vanishing without a trace overnight, leaving behind husbands and families. When up-and-coming novelist Adam Senft stumbles upon an unearthly scene, it plunges him and the entire town into an ancient nightmare. Folks say the woods in LeHorn's Hollow are haunted, but what waits there is far worse than any ghost. It has been summoned...and now it demands to be satisfied.

Suicide Forest


Jeremy Bates - 2014
    Legend has it that the spirits of those many suicides are still roaming, haunting deep in the ancient woods.When bad weather prevents a group of friends from climbing neighboring Mt. Fuji, they decide to spend the night camping in Aokigahara. But they get more than they bargained for when one of them is found hanged in the morning--and they realize there might be some truth to the legends after all.

Homesick


Richard Simms - 2013
    There was nobody watching her at cheerleading practice. Or as she walked home. Or when she was stopping her handsy boyfriend at second base. It was just her overactive imagination, that was all.Or was it?She had heard the stories about what went on in her house generations before her family took up residence. But that was all they were—just stories, tall tales told and retold for the singular purpose of giving gullible young girls goosebumps.Right?They had to be. If they weren’t, what could she do? Who could she tell? Where could she hide? If even half of what she had heard was true… God. The thought alone made her sick. And, scarier still, it also made her home sick!