Book picks similar to
Moriah by Daniel Mills
horror
fiction
historical-fiction
creepy
The Stopped Heart
Julie Myerson - 2016
The house hasn’t been lived in for years, but they are drawn to its original features and surprisingly large garden, which stretches down into a beautiful apple orchard. It’s idyllic, remote, picturesque: exactly what they need to put the horror of the past behind them.One hundred and fifty years earlier, a huge oak tree was felled in front of the cottage during a raging storm. Beneath it lies a young man with a shock of red hair, presumed dead—surely no one could survive such an accident. But the red-haired man is alive, and after a brief convalescence is taken in by the family living in the cottage and put to work in the fields. The children all love him, but the eldest daughter, Eliza, has her reservations. There’s something about the red-haired man that sits ill with her. A presence. An evil.Back in the present, weeks after moving to the cottage and still drowning beneath the weight of insurmountable grief, Mary Coles starts to sense there’s something in the house. Children’s whispers, footsteps from above, half-caught glimpses of figures in the garden. A young man with a shock of red hair wandering through the orchard.Has Mary’s grief turned to madness? Or have the events that took place so long ago finally come back to haunt her…?
The Ghost Hunters
Neil Spring - 2013
Equal parts brilliant and charming, neurotic and manipulative, Harry has devoted his life to exposing the truth behind England’s many ‘false hauntings’, and never has he left a case unsolved, nor a fraud unexposed.So when Harry and Sarah are invited to Borley Rectory – a house so haunted that objects frequently fly through the air unbidden, and locals avoid the grounds for fear of facing the spectral nun that walks there – they’re sure that this case will be just like any other. But when night falls and still no artifice can be found, the ghost hunters are forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: the ghost of Borley Rectory may be real. And, if so, they’re about to make its most intimate acquaintance.
The Judge's House
Bram Stoker - 1891
He finds the place infested with rats, but it suits his purposes... until one of the rats grows too bold, and the scholar realizes the horror he's stumbled into.
Houdini Heart
Ki Longfellow - 2011
Once caught in its pages, there's no escaping Longfellow's terrible tale. Weeks ago, she was one of Hollywood's biggest writers, wed to one of its greatest stars. The doting mother of their golden child. But now? She's alone, tortured by a horrifying secret no woman could bear. Pursued by those she can't outrun, anguished by a guilt she can't endure, and driven close to madness, she flees to the one place she's ever called home: a small town in Vermont where River House still stands. To a child, the splendid hotel was mysterious and magical and all its glamorous guests knew delicious secrets. Cocooned in its walls, she will write one last book. Her atonement? Or her suicide note? But life is never as you dream it, and River House isn't what she'd always imagined it was. Intense, literary, and harrowing, Houdini Heart is a tale of bone-chilling horror, emotional torment, and psychological terror. Gripped by River House, trapped in an aging hotel of mirrors only Houdini could escape, how much can haunt a mind before it too is only a thing once imagined? "A haunting and disturbing journey through the psyche."-Erika Mailman, Author of "The Witch's Trinity"
The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield - 2006
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission. As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves. The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.
The Fall
Bethany Griffin - 2014
Until she woke up in a coffin.Ushers die young. Ushers are cursed. Ushers can never leave their house, a house that haunts and is haunted, a house that almost seems to have a mind of its own. Madeline’s life—revealed through short bursts of memory—has hinged around her desperate plan to escape, to save herself and her brother. Her only chance lies in destroying the house.In the end, can Madeline keep her own sanity and bring the house down? The Fall is a literary psychological thriller, reimagining Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Strange Man Standing Deep in the Shadows
Charlotte Montague - 2015
Poe is viewed as the ultimate doomed romantic whose last days are shrouded in sordid mystery. His life was a disaster, but his achievements in writing are amazing. He is widely recognized as father of the modern short story, inventor of the detective story and the master of horror. A Boston born writer, editor, and literary critic, he's best known for his creepy and macabre tales as well as being one of the central figures in the Romanticism movement in the United States. Accurately being dubbed as the ultimate doomed romantic, Poe was a drunk, his last days are shrouded in mystery akin to that of his short stories. During his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe didn't make a dime out of writing, but his legacy to the world is one of never-ending riches. He left behind seventy-three wonderfully gruesome stories and a novel filled with suspense and brilliantly twisted plots. Hist stories and poems are now read and revered globally. As another master of horror, Stephen King, has said, we are all "the children of Poe." Abraham Lincoln, Josef Stalin, Michael Jackson, and Bart Simpson all have one thing in common; they are fans of the nineteenth century American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe. The writer of "The Raven" has legions of such devotees across the globe. The list of authors inspired by Poe is long and varied, but his profound influence reaches much further-into music, film, and art just as much as modern day literature. There have been more than a dozen film adaptations of his story "The Fall of the House of Usher," and his works have inspired composers ranging from Claude Debussy to Lou Reed. More than 160 years after his death, Charlotte Montague has written a fascinating account of Poe's life and times, in which she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, who's unique imagination and macabre writing have changed popular culture forevermore. n the process, she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, whose macabre stories and twisted plots changed literature forever. The Oxford People series offers deep dives into the most influential people, subjects, and cultures from history. From horror-fiction legends like H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, to historical heavyweights like Houdini and JFK, to the supernatural world of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts—Oxford People encompasses it all. Other titles in this series include: Angels, Che, Creating Sherlock Holmes, Extreme Science, Gettysburg, Ghosts, Gunfighters, Houdini, HP Lovecraft, John F. Kennedy, Myths and Legends, Privates and Privateers, Roosevelt and Churchill, Royal Weddings, Skies of WWII, Tesla, Tesla vs. Edison, Vampires, Vikings, Werewolves, Women of Invention, Zombies.
Dreadful Skin
Cherie Priest - 2007
I've heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal. We'd see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.Jack Gabert went to India to serve his Queen. He returned to London a violently changed man, infected with an unnatural sickness that altered his body and warped his mind. Eileen Callaghan left an Irish convent with a revolver and a secret. She knows everything and nothing about Jack's curse, but she cannot rest until he's caught. His soul cannot be saved. It can only be returned to God. In the years following the American Civil War, the nun and unnatural creature stalk one another across the United States. Their dangerous game of cat and mouse leads them along great rivers, across dusty plains, and into the no man's land of the unmarked western territories. Here are three tales of the hunt. Reader, take this volume and follow these tormented souls. Learn what you can from their struggle's against each other, against God, and against themselves.
Melmoth
Sarah Perry - 2018
In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts—or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears. . . .
Servant of the Bones
Anne Rice - 1996
Azriel is a restless Jewish spirit, born almost 2500 years ago in Babylon, who can be called forth by whoever holds and understands the arcane mystery of the casket of golden bones he is tied to. Caught between heaven and earth, Azriel is forced to bear witness to the long and troubled history of Western civilisation, from the household of an ancient Greek philosopher and the deathbed of Alexander the Great, to the Mongolian Steppes and fourteenth century Strasbourg, where Jews were made scapegoats for the Black Death. And finally in the present, he is summoned to witness and avenge a brutal murder on Fifth Avenue. The dead woman is Esther, step-daughter of Gregory Belkin, fanatical messianic leader of a worldwide cult, the Temple of the Mind. Belkin is known to be the son of Holocaust victims, but he has a secret history which binds Azriel's fate to his. SERVANT OF THE BONES is as rich and terrifying, as sensual and violent as any novel by Anne Rice - an enthralling epic which conjures up more than two thousand years of Jewish history and penetrates the unfolding mysteries of evil, redemption, life and death.
A Drop of Night
Stefan Bachmann - 2016
Built in the 1780's to hide an aristocratic family and a mad duke during the French Revolution, the palace has lain hidden and forgotten ever since. Anouk, along with several other gifted teenagers, will be the first to set foot in it in over two centuries.Or so she thought.But nothing is as it seems, and the teens soon find themselves embroiled in a game far more sinister, and dangerous, than they could possibly have imagined. An evil spanning centuries is waiting for them in the depths. . .
Horror Show
Greg Kihn - 1996
When Monster Magazine reporter Clint Stockbern sets out to interview the legendary '50s horror movie director Landis Woodley, he uncovers a bizarre story of real-life horror.Flashback to Hollywood, 1957. Woodley is shooting his latest zombie movie, Cadaver, in a real morgue when he has a brainstorm that will help him pinch some pennies. But when zombie make-up effects are replaced by real corpses, a deadly curse begins to take its toll on those foolish enough to become involved with the filming of the soon-to-be cult classic, Cadaver.
Ghost on Black Mountain
Ann Hite - 2011
THEY’RE LOST FOREVER. Nellie Clay married Hobbs Pritchard without even noticing he was a spell conjured into a man, a walking, talking ghost story. But her mama knew. She saw it in her tea leaves: death. Folks told Nellie to get off the mountain while she could, to go back home before it was too late. Hobbs wasn’t nothing but trouble. He’d even killed a man. No telling what else. That mountain was haunted, and soon enough, Nellie would feel it too. One way or another, Hobbs would get what was coming to him. The ghosts would see to that. . . . Told in the stunning voices of five women whose lives are inextricably bound when a murder takes place in rural Depression-era North Carolina, Ann Hite’s unforgettable debut spans generations and conjures the best of Southern folk-lore—mystery, spirits, hoodoo, and the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian landscape.
Prosper's Demon
K.J. Parker - 2020
But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium.The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out — he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.
Revelator
Daryl Gregory - 2021
These remote hills of the Smoky Mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family's personal god, an entity known as the Ghostdaddy.Years later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella--now a professional bootlegger--returns for Motty's funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine--and she's a direct link to Stella's buried past and her family's destructive faith.Haunting and wholly engrossing, summoning mesmerizing voices and giving shape to the dark, Revelator is a southern gothic tale for the ages.