Book picks similar to
Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven
horror
fiction
vampires
vampire
The Bog
Michael Talbot - 1986
To a small English village, it is a vast organic presence, as ancient as time itself and seething with hidden life and forbidden legends...To its victims, it is a nameless horror beyond description, a razor-toothed evil, rising up from the murky depths to feast on human prey...To archaeologist David Macauley and his family, it is the ultimate scientific mystery -- and the ultimate experiment in terror...
Dracul
Dacre Stoker - 2018
Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here...A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents' Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen--a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen--and that the nightmare they've thought long ended is only beginning.
Benighted
J.B. Priestley - 1927
They take refuge in an ancient, crumbling mansion inhabited by the strange and sinister Femm family and their brutish servant Morgan. Determined to make the best of the circumstances, the benighted travellers drink, talk, and play games to pass the time while the storm rages outside. But as the night progresses and tensions rise, dangerous and unexpected secrets emerge. On the house's top floor are two locked doors; behind one of them lies the mysterious, unseen Sir Roderick Femm, and behind the other lurks an unspeakable terror. Which is more deadly: the apocalyptic storm outside the house or the unknown horrors that await within? And will any of them survive the night?
Fiends
John Farris - 1990
Ravishing beyond words, evil beyond our darkest dreams of Satan, Her eyelids flutter.Rising from Her pit, She wakes her vampire brood -- and frees them from their ancient graves.No, no one is safe, no one -- from the unwashed Children of Eve.
The Auctioneer
Joan Samson - 1975
The story of John Moore, his wife Mim, and his mother, it is a gripping tale of greed in a small town being quietly overrun by auctioneer Perly Dunsmore. Acclaimed by writers including Stephen King, and an influence on King’s Needful Things, The Auctioneer is here reprinted for the first time in thirty years.
Hemlock Grove
Brian McGreevy - 2012
A manhunt ensues—though the authorities aren’t sure if it’s a man they should be looking for.Some suspect an escapee from the White Tower, a foreboding biotech facility owned by the Godfrey family—their personal fortune and the local economy having moved on from Pittsburgh steel—where, if rumors are true, biological experiments of the most unethical kind take place. Others turn to Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy trailer-trash kid who has told impressionable high school classmates that he’s a werewolf. Or perhaps it’s Roman, the son of the late JR Godfrey, who rules the adolescent social scene with the casual arrogance of a cold-blooded aristocrat, his superior status unquestioned despite his decidedly freakish sister, Shelley, whose monstrous medical conditions belie a sweet intelligence, and his otherworldly control freak of a mother, Olivia. At once a riveting mystery and a fascinating revelation of the grotesque and the darkness in us all, Hemlock Grove has the architecture and energy to become a classic in its own right—and Brian McGreevy the talent and ambition to enthrall us for years to come.
Some of Your Blood
Theodore Sturgeon - 1961
Inside this folder are the letters, memos and transcripts for a young soldier named George Smith, a quiet young man with a terrible past and a shocking secret. As Outerbridge conducts George's therapy, he gradually discovers the truth about George's traumatic childhood, his twisted romance with an older woman named Anna, and the unusual obsession George keeps hidden from the world. With the masterful touch that earned him the Hugo and Nebula awards, Theodore Sturgeon creates a character capable both of unsettling violence and irresistible humanity.
The Lesser Dead
Christopher Buehlman - 2014
And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody—he has spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys: womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the city’s sidewalks.The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. It’s almost too easy.Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him…or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.And neither are the rest of us.
Descending Son
Scott Shepherd - 2013
It took a desperate call from his mother to force him home to see his ailing father. As soon as he returned, Jess found himself embroiled in two suspicious deaths, emotional turmoil with his family, and a supernatural secret that involved them all—winding up in an unmarked grave in the middle of the Coachella Desert. In a tale that spreads from the California Desert to the jungles of Mexico and set in a town that time has practically forgotten, Descending Son is rooted in the sins of Jess’s past and a future that threatens his life. Sure, Jess can go home again, but there’s a heavy price to pay.
Golgotha Falls
Frank De Felitta - 1984
Lovell, priest of the Church of the Eternal Sorrows, fell prey to isolation and despair and entered a dark night of madness, necrophilia and suicide. Then, in 1978, a Jesuit priest was sent to reconsecrate the church but found himself seized in the foul grip of bestiality. Now Father Malcolm, a saintly priest, has arrived to do battle with the forces of Satan that have possessed the church, while two brilliant scientists of the paranormal from Harvard University have traveled to the site to investigate a century's worth of bizarre happenings. None of them are prepared for what they will encounter – an evil dating back to the dawn of time that could bring about the end of days . . .
The Other
Thomas Tryon - 1971
Its impeccable recreation of small-town life and its skillful handling of the theme of personality transference between thirteen-year-old twins led to widespread critical acclaim for the novel, which was successfully filmed from Thomas Tryon's own screenplay.This edition features original artwork by surrealist artist Harry O. Morris.
Unknown
Phil Price - 2015
A select few disappear, never to return.From The Falkland Islands to the Himalayas, Puerto Rico to England – humans are vanishing without trace or explanation.A young man, who’s lost everything, stumbles across an ancient secret.Can he unlock the mystery?Will he find those who need him?Can he escape the Unknown?
Ghost Train
Stephen Laws - 1985
Commuter Mark Davies has been attacked and thrown from the train. Now he must team up with Ghost Train obsessed, ex-policeman Les Chadderton, before the predator disembarks for wider pastures.
Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga
Michael McDowell - 1983
Michael McDowell was proclaimed “the finest writer of paperback originals in America” by Stephen King, and “one of the best writers of horror in this country” by Peter Straub.Now, McDowell’s masterpiece—the serial novel, Blackwater—returns to thrill and terrify a new generation of readers, with all six volumes available for the first time as a single e-book.Featuring an insightful new introduction by John Langan, Blackwater traces more than fifty years in the lives of the powerful Caskey family of Perdido, Alabama, under the influence of the mysterious and beautiful—but not quite human—Elinor Dammert.The Flood heralds the arrival of a visitor who will change the Caskey family—and the town—forever…When the town builds The Levee, it proves a vain attempt to control a horrific power that can never be contained…The House hides terrible secrets that whisper in closed rooms and scrabble at locked doors…The War reveals family secrets more deadly and devastating than anything Perdido has ever dreamed in its deepest nightmares…The Fortune brings happiness and power—but even greater terror…And finally, the mysterious saga of the Caskey family ends the only way it can—in terrible judgment and fury delivered under the cover of a relentless, earth-shattering Rain.Will Errickson (Too Much Horror Fiction) writes, “Michael McDowell has written a rich, layered historical novel with many Southern Gothic touches, filled out with memorable characters and satisfying moments of death and shock.”