Book picks similar to
Help For The Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries (1899 - 1909) by Tim Prasil
dark-humor
f-historical
f-mystery
short-stories-anthologies
Bloodlust Blonde
Steve Higgs - 2019
Oh, and she’s a boy. When a name from her past suddenly surfaces, Jane knows that she is the only one that could solve the case. With the detectives unavailable and a tearfully desperate client, there is no choice but to pretend she knows what she is doing and answer the cry for help, but is she really dressed for fighting vampires? Her client has a time-sensitive problem – she was bitten by a vampire last night and swears she can feel her canines growing. With no time to lose and a boyfriend at home making dinner, Jane begins a race against time to save the client and stop the transformation, but does the client even know what she wants? Cross-dressing isn’t always glamorous. This book is part is a long-running series that follows the cases undertaken by the Blue Moon Investigation agency. The stories do not contain cussing or graphic descriptions of sex or violence but do allude to both. There is nothing R rated but I would not let my nine-year-old niece read them.
The Family Shadow: A historical mystery with long-buried secrets and dual timeline suspense
Suzanne Winterly - 2021
A modern-day family researcher. Can she solve the century old puzzle of a racehorse trainer’s death and his wife’s disappearance?Ireland, 1891. Rosalind Thornton only wants to be a perfect mother and spouse. Happy at first to have given her husband the son he longed for, she begins to worry about his increasingly erratic spending and volatile moods. And when his body turns up in the local woods, her guilt remains in question for 130 years…2019. Fiona Foley needs to put her husband’s betrayal behind her. Offered a chance to get away and recover, the disillusioned history teacher travels to an old rambling house on the sweeping Wexford coast to assist an eccentric descendant of the Thornton family. Fending off a prying journalist intent on digging up dirt, Fiona finds herself in a race to uncover the truth.As the two women separately untangle a devastating plot, only an old journal full of riddles might be the key to solving the crime.Can Fiona figure out what really happened on the fateful night Rosalind disappeared forever?The Family Shadow is a gripping historical mystery novel. If you like long-buried secrets, dual timeline suspense, and surprising twists and turns, then you’ll love Suzanne Winterly’s evocative page-turner.
Tethered
Amy MacKinnon - 2008
She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the steadfast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another.
No One Gets Out Alive
Adam Nevill - 2014
So when she takes a new room at the right price, she believes her luck has finally turned. But 82 Edgware Road is not what it appears to be. It's not only the eerie atmosphere of the vast, neglected house, or the disturbing attitude of her new landlord, Knacker McGuire, that makes her uneasy - it's the whispers behind the fireplace, the scratching beneath floors, the footsteps in the dark, and the young women weeping in neighbouring rooms. And when Knacker's cousin Fergal arrives, the danger goes vertical. But this is merely a beginning, a gateway to horrors beyond Stephanie's worst nightmares. And in a house where no one listens to the screams, will she ever get out alive?
The Lantern
Deborah Lawrenson - 2011
When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom in Switzerland, their whirlwind relationship leads them to Les Genévriers, an abandoned house set among the fragrant lavender fields of the South of France. Each enchanting day delivers happy discoveries: hidden chambers, secret vaults, a beautiful wrought-iron lantern. Deeply in love and surrounded by music, books, and the heady summer scents of the French countryside, Eve has never felt more alive.But with autumn’s arrival the days begin to cool, and so, too, does Dom. Though Eve knows he bears the emotional scars of a failed marriage—one he refuses to talk about—his silence arouses suspicion and uncertainty. The more reticent Dom is to explain, the more Eve becomes obsessed with finding answers—and with unraveling the mystery of his absent, beautiful ex-wife, Rachel.Like its owner, Les Genévriers is also changing. Bright, warm rooms have turned cold and uninviting; shadows now fall unexpectedly; and Eve senses a presence moving through the garden. Is it a ghost from the past or a manifestation of her current troubles with Dom? Can she trust Dom, or could her life be in danger?Eve does not know that Les Genévriers has been haunted before. Bénédicte Lincel, the house’s former owner, thrived as a young girl within the rich elements of the landscape: the violets hidden in the woodland, the warm wind through the almond trees. She knew the bitter taste of heartbreak and tragedy—long-buried family secrets and evil deeds that, once unearthed, will hold shocking and unexpected consequences for Eve.
Ancient Revenge
J.F. Lourens - 2011
An explosion rips the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris apart during celebratory mass, killing hundreds and revealing a hidden crypt with a most gruesome find: the crucified body of a naked young woman; twelve tombstones inscribed with a single phrase -- in domina nostra salus. CIA agent John Russell, an expert in religious crime, is summoned to investigate a wave of atrocities that surges through Europe: Bodies on cathedral towers covered in baffling tattoos; the massacre of a Cistercian monastery; the relentless execution of senior Cardinal Bishops. Sorting through the bizarre crimes, Russell and his team are plunged into a web of age-old conspiracies involving the Vatican, the Ceile De, spouses of the gods, warrior priestesses and their quest to settle a primeval score. In a race against time, Russell drags his team through Europe in a desperate struggle to prevent total cataclysm. In just four days...
Reaping a Pain in the Axe (Fear the Reaper Book 2)
Stacey Rourke - 2020
Lineage
Joe Hart - 2012
His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and the abandonment of an apathetic mother. In turn, his only refuge became his writing.A SANCTUARY, BROKENWhen Lance loses his ability to write and becomes haunted by a nightmare that he'd thought was buried, he is drawn inexplicably to a house on the shores of Lake Superior where he finds his muse once again, but something is waiting for him when he arrives.AN EVIL WITHOUT BOUNDARIESNow he must unlock the devastating secrets that the house holds and uncover the mystery of his own broken past before he loses his sanity, and perhaps his soul.
Kind Nepenthe
Matthew V. Brockmeyer - 2017
A place to commune with nature and teach her five-year-old daughter how to live off the land. Instead she discovered a nightmare.Coyote is a washed-up pot grower. Strung out on pills and dealing with dropping prices and looming legalization, he wonders if it's even worth it anymore.Diesel Dan abandoned his son for a life of methamphetamine and prison. Now he wants to make amends. He's going to be a grandfather. But his son is on the same dark road of drugs and violence that once consumed him.These characters will come together in an explosive ending that will leave you stunned and breathless. But more than just a gripping horror novel, Kind Nepenthe is a deep examination into the nature of love and greed, lost ideals, and the essence of evil in one of the last frontiers of the American West.