Book picks similar to
Beast in the Basement by Jason Arnopp


horror
short-stories
not-at-the-library
thriller

The Sad Man (Novella): A Dani Lancing Story


P.D. Viner - 2013
    As a Family Liaison Officer he is always the bearer of bad news - it is his job to tell the friends and family of victims the fate of their loved ones.But Tom is weighted down by crimes both old and new - haunted by the death of his best friend Dani, whose murder has never been solved.When a rare opportunity emerges for Tom to take the lead in a horrific murder investigation, he is determined to get justice for the victim. A young girl has been found in her own home, cut so badly - and so carefully - that she has bled to death, leaving a deliberate pool of blood in the shape of angel wings....

Theme Music


T. Marie Vandelly - 2019
    Marie Vandelly For the lucky among us, life is what you make of it, but for Dixie Wheeler, the theme music for her story was chosen by another long ago, on the day her father butchered her mother and brothers and then slashed a knife across his own throat. Only one-year-old Dixie was left alive, infamously known as Baby Blue for the song left playing in the aftermath of the slaughter. Twenty-five years later, Dixie is still desperate for a connection to the family she can’t remember, so when her childhood home goes up for sale, Dixie sets aside all reason and moves in, re-creating a macabre decor with her family’s salvaged furniture. But as the ghosts of her family seemingly begin to take up residence in the home that was once theirs, Dixie starts to question her own sanity and wonders if the evil force menacing her is that of her father, or a demon of her own making. In order to make sense of her present, Dixie becomes determined to unravel the truth of her past and seeks out the detective who originally investigated the murders. But the more she learns, the more she opens up the uncomfortable possibility that the sins of her father may belong to another, and, perhaps most tragically, to Dixie herself. As bodies begin to pile up around her, Dixie must find a way to expose the lunacy behind her family’s massacre and redeem what little remains of her soul.

Crawl


Edward Lorn - 2014
    You’ve been crippled and left for dead. There’s something in the woods. It’s coming. There’s only one thing you can do… CRAWL

The Princess Game


Soman Chainani - 2020
    To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning—but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.

Jack & Jill


Kealan Patrick Burke - 2013
    A NEW NOVELLA FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE TURTLE BOY & KIN. When they were kids, Gillian and John used to visit the local cemetery every Sunday after church. It was a curious place for children to frequent, but they had their reasons. The main attraction was the lofty hill that separated the cemetery from the elementary school, and the act of tumbling down it like Jack and Jill was a ritualistic escape from the abuse they were suffering at their father's hands. It was an escape that lasted only until John's tragic death. Now, Gillian is all grown up. Married with two children, she has managed over the years to force the trauma of her nightmarish childhood into the darkest recesses of her mind. But lately there are dreams, and in them Gillian sees impossibly vivid reenactments of the horrors she endured as a child. Nightly, she sees John die all over again, only not in the way she remembers. And something else is in those dreams, stalking her, a terrible figure with wire-hanger hands and a plastic bag wrapped around its rotten face. A monster whose reach starts to extend beyond the boundaries of sleep into the waking world, threatening everything Gillian holds dear. A monster she once called Daddy.

Penpal


Dathan Auerbach - 2012
    Before long, it was adapted into illustrations, audio recordings, and short films; and that was before it was revised and expanded into a novel!How much do you remember about your childhood?In Penpal, a man investigates the seemingly unrelated bizarre, tragic, and horrific occurrences of his childhood in an attempt to finally understand them. Beginning with only fragments of his earliest years, you'll follow the narrator as he discovers that these strange and horrible events are actually part of a single terrifying story that has shaped the entirety of his life and the lives of those around him. If you've ever stayed in the woods just a little too long after dark, if you've ever had the feeling that someone or something was trying to hurt you, if you remember the first friend you ever made and how strong that bond was, then Penpal is a story that you won't soon forget, despite how you might try.

The Girl Next Door


Jack Ketchum - 1989
    Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.

Night of the Mannequins


Stephen Graham Jones - 2020
    Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both?

Aria


Allison M. Dickson - 2011
    Unfortunately, the way home isn't as clear-cut as he'd hoped and he's forced to turn to Aria, his GPS, for an alternate route. However, Aria has something far more sinister in mind...

Throttle


Joe Hill - 2009
    Their battle is fought out on twenty miles of the most lonely road in the country, a place where the only thing worse than not knowing what you're up against, is slowing down . . .

Thorn in My Side


Karin Slaughter - 2011
    The scene is an Atlanta bar. The music is loud and the dance floor is packed. The good-looking brother picks up a girl. But when dark deeds ensue out in the parking lot, what happens next can only be described in two words: vintage Slaughter.

The Small Hand


Susan Hill - 2010
    Compelled by curiosity, he approaches the door, and, standing before the entrance feels the unmistakable sensation of a small hand creeping into his own, 'as if a child had taken hold of it'.Intrigued by the encounter, he determines to learn more, and discovers that the owner's grandson had drowned tragically many years before. At first unperturbed by the odd experience, Snow begins to be plagued by haunting dreams, panic attacks, and more frequent visits from the small hand which become increasingly threatening and sinister ...

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.

Serial


Jack Kilborn - 2009
    #2: Don't pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be raving nutcase.So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Crazy #2...

The Grownup


Gillian Flynn - 2014
    On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan's terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan's teenage stepson, doesn't help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.“The Grownup,” originally appeared as “What Do You Do?” in George R. R. Martin’s Rogues anthology.