Book picks similar to
Shadow Child by Joseph A. Citro
horror
supernatural
vermont
folk-horror
We Are Monsters
Brian Kirk - 2015
When a troubled psychiatrist loses funding to perform clinical trials on an experimental cure for schizophrenia, he begins testing it on his asylum's criminally insane, triggering a series of side effects that opens the mind of his hospital's most dangerous patient, setting his inner demons free. Flame Tree Press is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.
The Hunger
Alma Katsu - 2018
Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history. While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"
December Park
Ronald Malfi - 2014
Newspapers call the abductor the Piper because he has come to lead children away, while kids whisper darker names for him in the school halls. Angelo Mazzone and his friends discover a link to the dead girl and take up the search for the killer, vowing to stop the Piper's reign of terror. Their teenage pledge becomes a journey of self-discovery and an odyssey into the darkness of their own hometown.
The Dead House
Dawn Kurtagich - 2015
Three people were killed and one pupil, Carly Johnson, disappeared. Now a diary has been found in the ruins of the school. The diary belongs to Kaitlyn Johnson, Carly’s identical twin sister. But Carly didn’t have a twin . . . Re-opened police records, psychiatric reports, transcripts of video footage and fragments of diary reveal a web of deceit and intrigue, violence and murder, raising a whole lot more questions than it answers.Who was Kaitlyn and why did she only appear at night? Did she really exist or was she a figment of a disturbed mind? What were the illicit rituals taking place at the school? And just what did happen at Elmbridge in the events leading up to ‘the Johnson Incident’?
Deep Black Sea
David M. Salkin - 2014
When they bring aboard the bacteria that enables certain animals to survive in the seven-hundred degree poisonous water of the black smoker, they have no idea that one of the researchers plans on using them as his test subjects.
Shadows in the Asylum: The Case Files of Dr. Charles Marsh
D.A. Stern - 2005
Charles Marsh arrived at the Kriegmoor Psychiatric Institute in Bayfield, Wisconsin, anxious to take on his new duties, eager to distance himself from the scandal that had forced him to resign his previous post. Among the patients assigned to Marsh at this time was a young woman named Kari Hansen, a college student who had suffered a nervous collapse during a school-sponsored anthropology dig a year previously. Subsequently, Ms. Hansen began experiencing what hospital records referred to as a series of vivid hallucinations; her own words described visions of an alien intelligence, a heretofore unknown kind of life form which appeared to her as shadows, often of indeterminate shape, occasionally taking on the form of man. Dr. Marsh came to believe these shadows were real.Shadows in the Asylum collects, for the first time anywhere, Ms. Hansen's patient records, as well as records belonging to a number of Dr. Marsh's other patients and the related historical evidence that led the doctor to his astonishing conclusions to present a bizarre story of insanity that blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Push
Claire Wallis - 2014
Everything is whirling around me, drawing the air out of my lungs and filling me with the best kind of turmoil. Every time his tongue slides against mine, a prickle in my gut tells me how right we are together. How much I need David. How much I need us.I hope the cyclone never stops.Emma Searfoss has spent a lifetime trying to escape her abusive stepfather. It's why she moved far away from home. It's why she's kept no ties with her remaining family. And it's why she's got a major rage problem. When her neighbor shows up to fix the kitchen in her new apartment, his enigmatic charm calms the fire in her. David is cool and collected, and he makes Emma feel safe for the first time ever. But David has his own chilling past—his six previous girlfriends have all disappeared without a trace. Emma's walking a dangerous line, but David's pull is intoxicating. And impossible to resist…This is a new adult romance with mature content for readers 17 and up.
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe - 1846
From the eerie incantations of “The Raven” to the persistent fright of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his stories and poems are unforgettable explorations of the darker side of life that still offer lessons and insight into human behavior today, making them an integral component of just about any library. This Canterbury Classics edition of Edgar Allan Poe collects some of his best-known work--from “Annabel Lee” to “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Lenore” to “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and many, many more. With an impressive leather cover, specially designed endpapers, and other all-new enhancements, as well as an essay by a Poe scholar, Edgar Allan Poe is the perfect introduction for new readers and the perfect resource for devoted fans. Poe's writings were truly original--and this unique book is the perfect look at his uncommon genius.
Friend
Diana Henstell - 1985
A young genius desperately isolated in a world of theories and formulae few can understand. Until he meets shy and loving Samantha. The friend he never had. The love he only dreamed of. He loves her so much, he cannot let her go.And when suddenly, tragically, Samantha is lost, he makes a solemn vow -- to use his gifts of genius to keep his beloved Samantha. For just a little while longer....A modern day Frankenstein story that was the basis for a Sci-Fi horror movie of the same name by Wes Craven.
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski - 2000
No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay - 2015
As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.
Headhunter Reimagined
Michael Slade - 1984
The Headhunter is loose on the streets of Vancouver. The psycho’s victims are everywhere - floating in the Fraser River, buried in a shallow grave, nailed to a totem pole on the university campus. All are women. All are headless.Then the taunting photographs arrive. Carefully posed shots of the women’s heads stuck on poles. The Mounties of Special X are up against a unique brand of killer. A killer whose sexual psychosis stretches back through Ecuador’s steaming jungle and a scream-filled New Orleans dungeon to a dead-of-winter manhunt in the Rocky Mountains a century ago.
The Writhing: A Horror Novel
Abe Moss - 2019
Sometimes it's better not to. Sometimes the truth is downright haunting.
Alex watches from her bedroom window as the small, secluded town of Amberton sleeps: a bright, pleasant town with a dark, disturbing secret. Helen, her foster mother, is gone all hours of the night with no explanation. The neighbors, always friendly, always smiling, are also always watching. They know something Alex doesn’t. Something she shouldn’t… When three outsiders become ensnared in the town’s dark conspiracies, Alex witnesses for herself the nightmare hiding in plain sight. Together, haunted by their own pasts, these outsiders threaten to unstitch the town at its rotten seams, uncovering the gruesome truth writhing beneath the surface.
A Good and Happy Child
Justin Evans - 2007
After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself–and his young family.A psychological thriller in the tradition of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History–with shades of The Exorcist–the smart and suspenseful A Good and Happy Child leaves you questioning the things you remember and frightened of the things you’ve forgotten.From the Hardcover edition.
Mysterious Things in the Woods
Stephen Young - 2014
What really is out there in the woods? ....Sometimes the scariest thing is evidence we can plainly see, but can’t completely understand... Mysterious deaths in a forest said to be controlled by Satanists; Mountain climbers found inexplicably mutilated; large numbers of college aged men found dead in creeks; a hiker walks over the top of a hill in front of the rest of the hiking party and has vanished by the time they crest the hill, moments later; the little boy who says he was taken by a ‘shimmering woman’ in the forest; the village of native Inuits that ‘disappeared’; a child playing near their parents in a forest, disappears in the blink of an eye without making a sound; hunters found dead in strange circumstances; experienced climbers disappearing, their bodies never found; missing bodies found, placed as though deliberately intended to be found. No screams for help, no signs of the missing person; vanished into thin air. No trails or tracks left, no clothing found, no smoke, no shelters, no clues...These and many other mysterious incidents in rural locations in America, Canada, Australia, England and indeed worldwide, have sparked debate by many into what could possibly be the cause. There are many theories....and with these theories comes the visceral, primal fear that comes from the thought that we humans may be victim to a predator, that in the blink of an eye, outsmarts us very easily. Stalked as prey and snatched without warning... Never to be seen again. Or found, in the most horrible of circumstances.... Searching for explanations, this book studies the mysterious cases.... Stephen Young is an avid researcher and writer of things mysterious, paranormal, and scientific....having written for magazines and now books.. Also by Stephen Young, 'True Stories of Real Time Travellers,'