Book picks similar to
The Ridge by Lisa W. Cantrell


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The Evil in Pemberley House


Philip José Farmer - 2009
    First described in the fictional biographies Tarzan Alive: The Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer expanded his Wold Newton mythos in novels such as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Time s Last Gift, Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, The Dark Heart of Time: A Tarzan Novel, and Escape from Loki: Doc Savage's First Adventure.The Evil in Pemberley House, an addition to the Wold Newton cycle, plays with the Gothic horror tradition. Patricia Wildman, the daughter of the world-renowned adventurer and crimefighter of the 1930s and '40s, Dr. James Clarke "Doc" Wildman, is all alone in the world when she inherits the family estate in Derbyshire, England old, dark, and supposedly haunted.But Farmer, characteristically, turns convention on its ear. Is the ghost real, or a clever sham? In Patricia Wildman, Farmer creates an introspective character who struggles to reconcile the supernatural with her rational scientific upbringing, while also attempting to work through unresolved feelings about her late parents. He sets the action at Pemberley from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and ingrains the various mysteries in the Canon of the Sherlock Holmes stories.The Evil in Pemberley House is a darkly erotic novel with broad appeal to readers of pulp and popular literature, particularly followers of Doc Savage, Sherlockians, and fans of Farmer's own celebrated Wold Newton Family.

Unspoken


Sarah Rees Brennan - 2012
    a boy she’s talked to in her head ever since she was born. She wasn’t silent about her imaginary friend during her childhood, and is thus a bit of an outsider in her sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale. Still, Kami hasn’t suffered too much from not fitting in. She has a best friend, runs the school newspaper, and is only occasionally caught talking to herself. Her life is in order, just the way she likes it, despite the voice in her head.But all that changes when the Lynburns return.The Lynburn family has owned the spectacular and sinister manor that overlooks Sorry-in-the-Vale for centuries. The mysterious twin sisters who abandoned their ancestral home a generation ago are back, along with their teenage sons, Jared and Ash, one of whom is eerily familiar to Kami. Kami is not one to shy away from the unknown—in fact, she’s determined to find answers for all the questions Sorry-in-the-Vale is suddenly posing. Who is responsible for the bloody deeds in the depths of the woods? What is her own mother hiding? And now that her imaginary friend has become a real boy, does she still love him? Does she hate him? Can she trust him?

The Historian


Elizabeth Kostova - 2005
    The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of, a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself--to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.

Horrorstör


Grady Hendrix - 2014
    Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, Horrorstör delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.

Shadows


John Saul - 1992
    A secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. A school for children gifted -- or cursed -- with extraordinary minds. Children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own -- and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark plan is taking form. A plan so horrifying, no one will believe it. No one but the children. And for them it is already too late. Too late, unless one young student can resist the seductive invitation that will lead... into the Shadows.

The Monsters We Deserve


Marcus Sedgwick - 2018
    As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time. In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Humankind makes monsters; but who really creates who? This is a book about reason, the imagination, and the creative act of reading and writing. Marcus Sedgwick's ghostly, menacing novel celebrates the legacy of Mary Shelley's literary debut in its bicentenary year.

Hologram: A Haunting


James Conroyd Martin - 2014
    So begins a journey that will take them down a circuitous path fraught with the unknown—and danger. Why do the Rockwells, expecting their first child, seem at once welcomed and repelled? What does it mean when Margaret starts to dream of the family that built the house in 1910? For her the house comes alive with its own sounds, sights, thoughts, and intentions. How could the death of a child ninety years before impact their lives? And why?

Slade House


David Mitchell - 2015
    Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents — an odd brother and sister — extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late... Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

666 (31 Horrifying Tales From The Dead Book 4)


Drac Von Stoller - 2013
    It was Halloween and Samantha`s contractions were unbearable so her husband rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their new bundle of joy. Mike told the doctor and nurse to take great care of his wife. The doctor and nurse reassured Mike they would take very good care of her and not to worry. Mike waited patiently in the waiting room as the doctor and nurse delivered their beautiful baby. After a few hours the baby finally arrived and the doctor entered the waiting room and told Mike to come in the room and see his new baby. Mike entered and his wife was all smiles and said "Honey, it`s a boy!" "I think he looks like a Johnny. What do you think?" asked his wife. "Johnny sounds fine to me," replied Mike. Mike was so excited and held his baby boy in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks and said "Darling, I think he likes me." Mike stayed the night in his wife's room with their new baby, but as they were both sleeping, an unforeseen force came in their room that was about to change their lives forever, when they both woke in the morning. Morning came, and Samantha was discharged from the hospital, and time for their new baby to be raised in their new home. It wasn't until after little Johnny turned 6 years of age that things around the Delany Estate turned deadly. The first sign that Johnny had the mark of the beast was June 6. It was the 6th month, 6th day, and Johnny was 6. All the numbers represented 666.

The Bell Witch: An American Haunting


Brent Monahan - 1997
    It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to rapping and gnawing sounds before it found its voices.With these voices and its supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family. This extraordinary book recounts the only documented case in U.S. history when a spirit actually caused a man's death.The local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, witnessed the strange events and recorded them for his daughter. His astonishing manuscript fell into the hands of novelist Brent Monahan, who has prepared the book for publication. Members of the Bell family have previously provided information on this fascinating case, but this book recounts the tale with novelistic vigor and verve. It is truly chilling.

Break My Heart 1,000 Times


Daniel Waters - 2012
    Instead, the ghosts aren’t disappearing—they’re gaining power. When Veronica and her friend, Kirk, decide to investigate why, they stumble upon a more sinister plot than they ever could have imagined. One of Veronica’s high school teachers is crippled by the fact that his dead daughter has never returned as a ghost, and he’s haunted by the possibility that she’s waiting to reappear within a fresh body. Veronica seems like the perfect host. And even if he’s wrong, what’s the harm in creating one more ghost?From critically acclaimed Generation Dead author Daniel Waters, comes a delectably creepy and suspenseful thriller. Break My Heart 1,000 Times will leave readers with the chills. Or is that a ghost reading over the page?

The Uncanny Valley: Tales from a Lost Town


Gregory Miller - 2011
    Told by individual inhabitants, the stories recount tales of disappearing dead deer, enchanted gardens, invisible killer dogs, and rattlesnakes that fall from the sky; each contribution adds to a composite portrait that skitters between eerie, ghoulish, and poignant. Miller is a master storyteller, clearly delighting in his mischievous creations.” Thirty-Three Tales. Thirty-Three Tellers. One Lost Town.

In the Night Wood


Dale Bailey - 2018
    Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles hopes to put his life back together with a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children's book, In the Night Wood. But soon after settling into Hollow's remote Yorkshire home, Charles learns that the past isn't dead. In the neighboring village, Charles meets a woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own lost daughter, and the ghost of a self he thought he'd put behind him. And in the primeval forest surrounding Caedmon Hollow's ancestral home, an ancient power is stirring. The horned figure of a long-forgotten king haunts Charles Hayden's dreams. And every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer. Soon enough, Charles will venture into the night wood. Soon enough he'll learn that the darkness under the trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.

Desperate Measures


Kristen McKendry - 2013
    So thinks Mormon mom extraordinaire Annie Fisher . . . that is, until she finds herself embroiled in the baffling disappearance of family friend Angus Puddicombe. Following the delivery of a puzzling message and a few startling discoveries, all signs point to—confusion. What Annie knows for sure is that Angus is in over his head, and there is no time to lose. Unaware of the danger that awaits, Annie, her trusty husband, Newton, and a vanload of kids forge ahead to unravel the mystery. Can this group of amateur sleuths get to the bottom of what’s going on before something goes horribly wrong?If you enjoyed this book, watch for The Song of Copper Creek, coming this July. Annie, Newton, and Angus make a cameo appearance!

Fear


Ronald Kelly - 1994
    a hideous, flesh-eating creature - part snake, part earthbound demon - that feasted on the blood of innocent children in the cold black heart of the Tennessee backwoods. But ten-year-old Jeb Sweeny knows the horrible stories are true. His best friend Mandy just up and disappeared. He also knows that no one has ever had the courage to go after the monster and put an end to its raging, bestial hunger. Until now. But Evil is well guarded. And for young Jeb Sweeny, who is about to cross over into the forbidden land of Fear County and the lair of the unknown, passage through the gates of Hell comes with a terrible price. Everlasting...FEAR!