Book picks similar to
Moonbane by Al Sarrantonio


horror
science-fiction
storybundle
fiction

SNAFU: Heroes


Geoff Brown - 2014
    SNAFU HeroesFour tales of military horror from Jonathan Maberry, Weston Ochse, Joseph Nassise, and James A Moore.A supplemental volume to SNAFU, this book contains short stories and novellas from four of the best military horror writers in the field.From demons to horrors from the deep, the battles keep on coming.Fight or die…50,000 words to keep you on the edge of your seat.

The Camelot Papers


Peter David - 2011
    A no-nonsense, polarizing woman who favors pants suits and pursues dubious agendas involving social needs. A remarkably magnetic leader of men with a reputation as a skirt-chaser. A scheming, manipulative advisor who is constantly trying to control public perceptions. A man seen as the next, great hope for the people, except there are disputes over his background and many contend he's not what he appears to be. George W? Hillary and Bill? Karl Rove? Obama?Try Arthur Pendragon, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and Galahad.Whatever you think of the state of today's politics, The Camelot Papers shows you just how little matters have changed in the past thousand years or so. The Camelot Papers presents a fresh perspective on Arthurian legend by using modern day sensibility and combining it with a classic tale to bring a new insight into iconic characters.The story is told from a unique perspective: that of Viviana (a.k.a. the seductress Vivian in other tales), here revealed to be a bright, knowledgeable young woman who was sold into slavery and winds up behind the scenes in Castle Camelot. Just like many incendiary political tell-alls of modern day, no one is better positioned to comment on the foibles of those on high than someone who is far below. Learn here, for the first time, the down-and-dirty royal secrets that plagued Camelot as told by someone who was actually there, and adapted by acclaimed New York Times bestseller Peter David. Full of sensationalism, startling secrets and astounding revelations, The Camelot Papers is to the realm of Arthur what the Pentagon Papers is to the military: something that all those concerned would rather you didn't see... but you can see it now.

The Reddening


Adam Nevill - 2019
    Nor did it bury the horrors predating civilisation. Ancient rites, old deities and savage ways can reappear in the places you least expect.Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh's caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice. They were involved and condemned before they knew it.'The Reddening' is an epic story of folk and prehistoric horrors written by Adam Nevill, the author of 'The Ritual', 'Last Days', 'No One Gets Out Alive' and the three times winner of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel.

Bloom: Or, the unwritten memoir of Tennyson Middlebrook


Martin Kee - 2013
    The fairy tales he invented for his childhood friend Allison were only meant as a distraction from their troubled lives. For Tennyson, the stories were a whim, meant only to offer comfort in a bleak time of mass extinction and despair. The characters in his stories never even had names...But Lil’it is real, if not quite human. She is feh, a non-person, existing in a fractured world of hoarded knowledge where the simple act of writing is a crime punishable by death. At best she is property; at worst she is an exotic commodity, something to be sold off to rich, superstitious lords and bankers who would use her organs as aphrodisiacs. She lives in a cage, kept as a pet, her saliva a pathogen used to concoct potions. But when she is sold to the prince of a kingdom as a plaything, she discovers her world is much bigger, more dangerous, and far more terrifying than she had ever imagined from inside the safety of her prison.The world has been afflicted by bloom, a parasitic fungus striking down the very people who might be able to stop it. For a disease that feeds on information, the minds and memories of humanity are the perfect food.As bloom scatters the remains of his species, Tennyson becomes separated from Allison. When he learns that she may still be alive, he must decide how far he is willing to go to see the end of the world with the only woman he ever loved... even if she has no memory of him.

Sineater


Elizabeth Massie - 1992
    When Burke Campbell befriends the Sineater's son, horrible things begin to happen. The Sineater, and his family, are blamed. Can superstition be overcome? Is it superstition, or fact? Will tradition be broken...or will a family, and an Appalachian community be undone?

Foe


Iain Reid - 2018
    Not out here. We never have. In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company. Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.

Farewell to Dreams


C.J. Lyons - 2014
    But even Dr. Angela Rossi will admit that five months is far too long, especially when accompanied by other worrisome symptoms: night sweats, tremors, muscle spasms, fevers. Then a dead nun speaks to her while Angela is holding the nun’s heart in her hand. “Find the girl,” the nun commands—although no one else in the trauma room can hear, the words drilling directly into Angela’s brain. “Save the girl.”Falling into catatonic states where she freezes in the middle of a resuscitation and hears dead nuns talking to her? Not good. Maybe she should check herself into her own hospital…except a lost girl’s life depends on Angela.Because the girl IS real. The threat to her is deadly.Aided by a police detective fallen from grace, Angela searches the midnight catacombs beneath the city, facing down a ruthless gangleader and stumbling onto a serial killer’s lair. Her desperate quest to save the girl leads her to the one thing she least expected to find: a last chance for love.As her symptoms escalate in bizarre and disturbing ways, Angie realizes exactly how serious her illness is. She might be dying, but she’s finally choosing how to live…

The Anubis Gates


Tim Powers - 1983
    But while attending a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810, he becomes marooned in Regency London, where dark and dangerous forces know about the gates in time.Caught up in the intrigue between rival bands of beggars, pursued by Egyptian sorcerers, and befriended by Coleridge, Doyle somehow survives and learns more about the mysterious Ashbless than he could ever have imagined possible...

Shapeshifter


J.F. Gonzalez - 2003
    He thought he had it under control. He thought he had kept it secret from everybody. Until Bernard Roberts, a powerful, influential man, came into his life. Bernard knows about the curse that runs through Mark's veins. He knows how Mark's parents were killed eight years ago. He knows Mark was officially cleared in their deaths, but is holding the card that could cast Mark as a serious suspect in their murders. And if Mark wants Bernard to keep these things secret he must do what Bernard tells him. He must use his curse to kill. For Mark is a Shapeshifter, a werewolf, who must yield to the primal instinct buried deep within him on every lunar cycle...

The Humans


Matt Haig - 2013
    . .The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adams’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s latest novel.Our hero, Professor Andrew Martin, is dead before the book even begins. As it turns out, though, he wasn’t a very nice man--as the alien imposter who now occupies his body discovers. Sent to Earth to destroy evidence that Andrew had solved a major mathematical problem, the alien soon finds himself learning more about the professor, his family, and “the humans” than he ever expected. When he begins to fall for his own wife and son--who have no idea he’s not the real Andrew--the alien must choose between completing his mission and returning home or finding a new home right here on Earth.

Fledgling


Octavia E. Butler - 2005
    Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.

Enter the Janitor


Josh Vogt - 2015
    But when she ducks into the ladies’ room at the library, she’s put in the crossfire between an elderly janitor and a ravenous muck-monster that emerges from the sink. Dani’s previously unknown power manifests in self-defense, and she floods and burns down the library—at the same time. Enter Ben, the janitor, who works for the Cleaners, a supernatural sanitation company that keeps reality tidy and safe...and a company Dani now works for as well, whether she wants to or not. This puts a significant crimp in her dream to attend med school and become a doctor. Nor is Ben happy, since it’s his duty to help Dani adapt to the job and learn to control her chaotic talent before it kills them both. Dani barely has time to try on her new company uniform before she and Ben are hunted down by a cult that wants to cleanse all life from the planet, and believes her power provides the means to do so. While fighting to survive the cult’s increasingly violent recruitment attempts, the pair must battle dust devils, navigate a maze of mystical sewers, face down trash golems—and scrub the occasional toilet.

The Dark World


Henry Kuttner - 1946
    In the Dark World, Bond opposes the machinations of the dread lord Ganelon and his terrible retinue of werewolves, wizards, and witches, but all is not as it seems in this shadowy mirror of the real world, and Bond discovers that a part of him feels more at home here than he ever has on Earth.

Paradox Bound


Peter Clines - 2017
    Okay, maybe a lot obsessed. But come on, how often do you meet someone who’s driving a hundred-year-old car, clad in Revolutionary-War era clothes, wielding an oddly modified flintlock rifle—someone who pauses just long enough to reveal strange things about you and your world before disappearing in a cloud of gunfire and a squeal of tires?So when the traveler finally reappears in his life, Eli is determined that this time he’s not going to let her go without getting some answers. But his determination soon leads him into a strange, dangerous world and a chase not just across the country but through a hundred years of history—with nothing less than America’s past, present, and future at stake.

Fragment


Warren Fahy - 2009
    . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards. The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost. International Thriller Writers nominee Best First Novel