Book picks similar to
Quiet Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror by Jasper Bark
horror
novellas
cosmic-horror
novella
When We Join Jesus In Hell
Lee Thompson - 2012
But during the past eight years, he's transformed into somebody he no longer knows—a weak, pitiful, and passionless office drone.Barely hanging onto the last thread of his self-respect, he returns home one night to discover Hell has truly crossed its threshold.And Hell has lessons to teach him through what fragments remain.Slivers of dark light.Knowledge in blood.Forgiveness, clarity and redemption in commitment.
The Lodge
Chris Coppel - 2020
After the report of an accidental death at the lodge, Andrew, a young constable from the nearest town, drives up through a growing blizzard. Snowbound, Andrew and the guests take cover at the lodge as the terrifying ordeal unfolds. These animals have souls. Souls that won't rest until they've had revenge... But will the hunters become the hunted?
Husk
Rachel Autumn Deering - 2016
Kevin Brooks returns to his rural Kentucky hometown after a three-year-long tour of duty in Afghanistan. He has lost the grandparents who raised him, his lifelong best friend, and his trust in the government he once proudly served. When Kevin meets a kind, young girl named Samantha, he thinks his luck might have finally taken a turn for the better. But something else has its eye on Kevin. Something dark and brooding and mean. Something that knows Kevin better than he knows himself.
In the Shadow of Spindrift House
Mira Grant - 2019
The natural world is a place of curves and softened edges, of gentle mists and welcoming spirals. Nature remembers deviation; nature does not forgive.For Harlowe Upton-Jones, life has never been a straight line. Shipped off to live with her paternal grandparents after a mysterious cult killed her mother and father, she has grown up chasing the question behind the curve, becoming part of a tight-knit teen detective agency. But “teen” is a limited time offer, and when her friends start looking for adult professions, it’s up to Harlowe to find them one last case so that they can go out in a blaze of glory.Welcome to Spindrift House.The stories and legends surrounding the decrepit property are countless and contradictory, but one thing is clear: there are people willing to pay a great deal to determine the legal ownership of the house. When Harlowe and her friends agree to investigate the mystery behind the manor, they do so on the assumption that they’ll be going down in history as the ones who determined who built Spindrift House—and why. The house has secrets. They have the skills. They have a plan. They have everything they need to solve the mystery.Everything they need except for time. Because Spindrift House keeps its secrets for a reason, and it has no intention of letting them go.Nature abhors a straight line.Here’s where the story bends.
Pine
Francine Toon - 2020
The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men. Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she's gone. In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren's mother a decade ago. Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father's turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it's no longer clear who she can trust. In spare, haunting prose, Francine Toon creates an unshakeable atmosphere of desolation and dread. In a place that feels like the end of the world, she unites the gloom of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.
The Ghost Club: Newly Found Tales of Victorian Terror
William Meikle - 2017
In here you'll find Verne and Wells, Tolstoy and Checkov, Stevenson and Oliphant, Kipling, Twain, Haggard and Blavatsky alongside their hosts.Come, join us for dinner and a story:
Robert Louis Stevenson - Wee Davie Makes a Friend
Rudyard Kipling - The High Bungalow
Leo Tolstoy - The Immortal Memory
Bram Stoker - The House of the Dead
Mark Twain - Once a Jackass
Herbert George Wells - Farside
Margaret Oliphant - To the Manor Born
Oscar Wilde - The Angry Ghost
Henry Rider Haggard - The Black Ziggurat
Helena P Blavatsky - Born of Ether
Henry James - The Scrimshaw Set
Anton Checkov - At the Molenzki Junction
Jules Verne - To the Moon and Beyond
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Curious Affair on the Embankment
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths. Interview with the author:So what makes this short story collection so special?Meikle: I love the idea that all these famous writers knew each other, and met for a meal, a drink, a smoke and some storytelling in an old London club / bar setting. It chimes almost exactly with my own idea of a good time. It's special to me in that it's a culmination of the past half dozen or so years of writing. Before this collection there were the Carnacki stories, the Holmes stories, the Challenger stories, and the collaborations with M Wayne Miller in numerous deluxe hardcovers. THE GHOST CLUB feels like an endpiece to all of that, a last celebration of everything I love about the era and the storytellers. Plus it's the most ambitious piece of work I've undertaken in my writing so far, the cause of much worrying and fretting on my part, so seeing the lovely blurbs and comments from writers I have long admired makes it extra special to me.Why should horror fans give Victorian Terror a try?Meikle: It's where we come from. The Victorian era storytelling tradition was the launching point for horror, and also for crime fiction, for science fiction, for fantasy and for much of how we see the world today. It gave us Sherlock Holmes, Dr Jeckyll, Dracula, the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo, and all manner of ghosts, spooks and spectres that still fill our entertainment of choice today. It's my way of paying homage to that tradition. This is who I am.How did you choose which authors to use in this book?Meikle: Initially all I knew was that Doyle and Stoker were founder members of the club in London. Then I found out that Henry James was in London at the same time as them and it started to come together.
X's For Eyes
Laird Barron - 2015
Alas, life is complicated in mid-1950s USA when you’re child heirs to the throne of Sword Enterprises, a corporation that has enshrined Machiavelli’s The Prince as its operating manual and whose patriarch believes, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, would be a swell company logo. Consider also those long, cruel winters at the Mountain Leopard boarding school for assassins in the Himalayas, or that Dad may be a supervillain, while an uncle occasionally slaughters his nephews and nieces for sport; and the space flight research division of Sword Enterprises “accidentally” sent a probe through a wormhole into outer darkness and contacted an alien god. Now a bloodthirsty cult and an equally vicious rival firm suspect the Tooms boys know something and will spare no expense, nor innocent life, to get their claws on them. Between the machinations of the disciples of black gods and good old corporate skullduggery, it’s winding up to be a hell of a summer vacation for the lads.
Bitter Chills
Nick HarperMarcus Hawke - 2021
Durrant, Roxie Voorhees, Spencer Hamilton, Carla Eliot, Cass Oakley, Christopher Badcock, Carmilla, Joe Clements, Marcus Hawke and Patrick Whitehurst.In this anthology, you'll find incredible stories from some of the freshest faces in horror: in 'My White Star', a bittersweet love story is told through the lens of a chilling spectral haunting; in 'The Violent Snow', a strange artefact summons more from the blizzard than bargained for; in 'Everyone to the Table', sickening wishes come true...Settle in for a cold one. These stories are hard to swallow...
Darkness Rising
Brian Moreland - 2015
When he drives out to the lake to tell an old friend that he's fallen in love with a girl named Jennifer, Marty encounters three sadistic killers who have some twisted games in store for him. But Marty has dark secrets of his own buried deep inside him. And tonight, when all the pain from the past is triggered, when those secrets are revealed, blood will flow and hell will rise.
The House On Gable Street: A Jack Nightingale Short Story
Stephen Leather - 2018
The House On Gable Street is a fast-paced supernatural story about 30,000 words long, almost a novella. Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers, an ebook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels.
To Be Devoured
Sara Tantlinger - 2019
The vultures circling outside her home taunt and invite her to come understand the secrets hiding in their banquet of decay. Fascination morphs into an obsessive need to know what the vultures know. Andi turns to Dr. Fawning, but even the therapist cannot help her comprehend the secrets she’s buried beneath anger-induced blackouts.Her girlfriend, Luna, tries to help Andi battle her inner darkness and infatuation with the vultures. However, the desire to taste dead flesh, to stitch together wings of her own and become one with the flock sends Andi down a twisted, unforgivable path. Once she understands the secrets the vultures conceal, she must decide between abandoning the birds of prey or risk turning her loved ones into nothing more than meals to be devoured.
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 Book of Paul
Richard Long - 2012
The sole repository of ancient Hermetic lore, it contains the alchemical rituals for transforming thought into substance, transmuting matter at will...and attaining eternal life.When Rose, a sex and pain addicted East Village tattoo artist has a torrid encounter with Martin, a battle-hardened loner, they discover they are unwitting pawns on opposing sides of a battle that has shaped the course of human history. At the center of the conflict is Paul, the villainous overlord of an underground feudal society, who guards the book's occult secrets in preparation for the fulfillment of an apocalyptic prophecy. The action is relentless as Rose and Martin fight to escape Paul's clutches and Martin's destiny as the chosen recipient of Paul's sinister legacy. Science and magic, mythology and technology converge in a monumental battle where the stakes couldn't be higher: control of the ultimate power in the universe--the Maelstrom.NA best-selling novel, The Book of Paul is the first of seven volumes in a sweeping mythological narrative tracing the mystical connections between Hermes Trismegistus in ancient Egypt, Sophia, the female counterpart of Christ, and the Celtic druids of Clan Kelly. "Long's prose is deft and clear, transporting the reader from one character's psyche to the next...this tale is a compelling one. A psychological thriller for readers who are bored with run-of-the-mill horror...Those who embrace the genre will eagerly anticipate a second installment in the series." - Kirkus Reviews "Intelligent, self-aware, and often amusing...hitting all the markers for sadistic, salacious, and scary. Long is doubtless going to build a large and loyal fan base composed of people just like him: literate folks with a bizarre sense of humor who prefer a bucket of blood to a bath filled with rose petals." - ForeWord Clarion Reviews "Totally absorbing! The Book of Paul is moving, profound, funny, terrifying and never lets you go. The prose is swift and sharp...at times, even poetic. Masterful storytelling. Hats off!!" - Henry Bean, writer/director of The Believer
Come Closer
Sara Gran - 2003
A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).
The Festering Ones
S.H. Cooper - 2019
Twenty years later, the events of that day continue to haunt her, and her need for answers has only grown stronger with time. After her estranged mother's death forces her to return home, old wounds are reopened and Faith finally decides to face her demons. What started as a search for closure soon pits her against a shadowy cult known as The Gathered and the eldritch beings they worship. With reality becoming more blurred by the day and the thousand eyes of an alien deity fixed on her, Faith must decide if the dark secrets of White Crow Mountain are really worth losing herself over.