Book picks similar to
The Variant by Justin M. Woodward


horror
fantasy-shelf
mystery-suspense
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A House of Ghosts: A Riveting Haunted House Mystery Boxset


Mason Dean - 2021
    Struggling with writer’s block and a tight deadline for his new novel, David Pragmore suggests a retreat away from Hartford to his wife, Susan, in order to find fresh inspiration. The publishers want David’s new book to shine in the horror genre, so when David reads about the odd manor with a haunted past, it seems like the perfect place to recapture his muse. But David and Susan quickly discover that some stories aren’t meant to be told.The Haunting of Saxton MansionAuthor Rob Hooper and his wife, Janet, are looking for a quiet place to live. The grandiose, isolated Victorian-style relic is everything they could want. A mysterious, widowed owner offers them a deal that can’t be passed up. But they quickly discover that some things are too good to be true.

Life of the Dead - The Complete Collection


Tony Urban - 2019
    Over 1,200 pages of reading! As a plague ravages America and leaves chaos in its wake there's no time to prepare, no chance for last words, messages home, or tearful goodbyes. For the men and women immune to the virus, they have 2 options. Survive or die trying.

The John Connolly Collection #2: The White Road, The Black Angel, and The Unquiet


John Connolly - 2012
    It's a case that nobody wants to touch, deeply rooted in old evil—and old evil is Charlie Parker's specialty. He's about to enter a living nightmare, a dreamscape of sorrow haunted by the murderous specter of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the sinister complicity of both friends and enemies in Larousse's brutal death. Soon, all will face a final reckoning in an unearthly realm where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road. THE BLACK ANGELWhen a young woman disappears from the streets of New York City, ties of friendship and blood inevitably draw ingenious, tortured detective Charlie Parker into the search. Soon he discovers links to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel—considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins. THE UNQUIETDaniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing. His daughter insists that he killed himself after allegations surfaced surrounding the harm done to patients in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge—and private investigator Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay’s disappearance to be revealed, and those who will go to any length—no matter the cost—to keep a deep, dark secret about a local town hidden.

2042: The Great Cataclysm


Melisande Mason - 2011
    Australian oceanographer Nick Torrens working for the US government finds a massive new fault line in Pacific Ocean. These tectonic plates are about to subduct causing a global chain reaction of undersea earthquakes. A nuclear dump in the Bering sea threatens to escalate the disaster by creating huge underwater explosions, triggering the eruption of dormant volcanoes in the region, leading to the destruction of the North Pole. New islands rise from the seabed displacing the oceans creating huge tsunami and unprecedented sea levels that no amount of dykes can hold back. International press bans for seven days are ordered to allow governments to prepare evacuation plans before major panic begins. The CIA tries to prevent Nick from releasing the news prematurely. It’s a race against time as Nick escapes the CIA and has only a few days to return to Australia before all international flights are grounded. He joins his family and they are forced to experience the event when they are trapped by looters in a skyscraper on the oceanfront as massive tidal waves approach. The devastation is total and climates are changed as the earth tilts on it’s axis and people struggle to survive.

Creatures


Gareth Ellis - 2018
    Little did Stanley know that his work at Viruson Technologies, creating a vaccine for a newly discovered virus would have such an impact on himself and the rest of the world. Ten years on, Matt lives in Stanley’s home town of Highfield, UK. Life is hard. Mutated Creatures have begun to appear and terrorise the world and its inhabitants. It’s now up to Matt, his friend Sarah, and Ben, the baddest guy in town, to put an end to the Creatures and to find out what really happened to Stanley Figgis.

PRIMAL 2055 - Escape


Jack Silkstone - 2017
    A possession of Sakkin Industries, she is being honed into a surgical weapon, trained to infiltrate and exterminate. Slowly, day-by-day, they try to erode her humanity and replace it with blind obedience and determination. For operative Eight Two, Sakkin is a second chance at life. Rescued from a massacred village, she's given a new home among their deadly trainees at the Institute. But as she's indoctrinated, the brutal training reveals she’s not like them. Conflicted, she’s torn between graduating to join Sakkin's elite ranks or lashing out against the injustice they bring to the world. Part 1 in a new series, 2055 - Escape follows on from the PRIMAL books of hard-hitting global vigilantes. It gives a glimpse into a not so distant future where security conglomerates protect the privileged few, Lascar has evolved into a sophisticated humanitarian aid outfit, and a shadow war is looming.

The Chateau Hauntings: A Riveting Haunted House Mystery Boxset


James Hunt - 2021
    The estate is in disrepair, but one couple is determined to restore the estate to its former glory. But when strange accidents begin to become more dangerous, putting their crew’s lives at risk, the fixer-upper couple realize they might have bitten off more than they could chew.The Haunting of Calhoun MansionThree murders. One night. No convictions.Nicole Harper, a hospice nurse with a floundering marriage, is assigned a new patient in the remote Northwestern wilderness. But when Nic meets her new patient, she discovers the old woman's family history is as troubling as her medical condition.The Haunting of the Holloway FamilyA job opportunity has brought the Holloway family to a small desert town on the Arizona/California border in the middle of nowhere. But what is thought as a godsend soon devolves into a parent’s worst nightmare.

Condition Black (A novella)


Tom Barber - 2013
    Everyone around him is dead. He has no idea where he is, or who shot him and his squad down.He soon discovers he’s on one of the moons orbiting Mars, not far from the main colony and his transport back to Earth. Two members of a mining team stationed on the moon come out to investigate. They take Miller back to their base where he manages to send out a call for help.He has ninety minutes to wait for rescue.But those ninety minutes are going to feel like a lifetime.Miller quickly realises that something in the station is wrong.There seems to be more to this place than meets the eye.Strange and unsettling events suggest things are not quite as they appear.As the minutes until his rescue tick by and he begins to finally figure out what is going on, Miller is forced to confront echoes from his past as well as his deepest fears in a situation that is becoming more terrifying by the second.And he soon learns that some nightmares don’t stop when you wake up.

Dr. Vigilante III


Alberto Hazan - 2016
     Wanted by his lover for rescue from a fiend. Robert has been sent a personal message by the Owl, a serial-rapist who has been torture-killing women in New York City for months: “Find me in 72 hours or I rape-kill Sharon in the most viral video ever.” The clock is ticking. The cops are breathing down his neck. Karma is the new vigilante in the final novel of the Dr. Vigilante trilogy.

Three Incidents at Foster Manor


P.T. Phronk - 2019
    An apocalyptic storm. Whispering voices in the air. She was right to fear the worst-case scenario. Amy Burnett has been buried in her work as a security expert. She likes it that way—her dark past can’t invade her thoughts as long as she stays holed up in her office. So why the heck has she ended up at a gothic mansion’s doorstep in the middle of the night? It’s because Craig Foster summoned her there. Amy’s company built the sealed chamber in his basement, for any worrisome worst-case scenario, but now the safe room has presented a scenario of its own: Craig’s daughter is trapped inside. It should be a quick fix. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen when a stranger arrives at a remote mansion on a stormy night? An impossible mystery? A haunting? A visit from the lurking strangers in the woods? Surely not all three—that would require extraordinarily bad luck. Unfortunately, Amy’s been short on luck lately. Three Incidents at Foster Manor will keep you guessing until the end with a twist-filled, fast-paced, genre-blending mix of mystery, ghost story, thriller, and cosmic horror that will chill you to the core. This is a standalone story, but also acts as a sequel to P.T. Phronk's previous mystery, The Arborist. "Full of interesting characters, twists and scares, it will keep you off-balance all the way to the end!" —Franny "I'm always down some ghostly fun but then the fun dial twisted and wow." —Amazon Reviewer "If you like reading stories somewhat reminiscent of The Twilight Zone this is for you." —Alanna Patterson

Bedlam Boy: The Forger & The Traitor


Ian W. Sainsbury - 2020
    Sainsbury. Two short, punchy, action-packed episodes in each book.They murdered his parents, shot him in the head, and left him to die. They should have made sure.Twenty years after Tom Lewis watched his parents die, those responsible are being killed. One by one.Gentle, brain-damaged Tom, a giant of a man who can barely speak, can’t be responsible for their deaths. Can he?When Tom Lewis was shot, something new was created. Something unique. Something deadly. Something patient enough to plan revenge for twenty long years.Meet Bedlam Boy

The Old Soul


Joseph Wurtenbaugh - 2012
    As tiny and inconspicuous as it may seem, That-Which-Had-Been exhibits an unexpected and varied gift for survival, as it journeys implacably toward its ultimate destination. Along the way, it meets a rich array of ordinary human beings, some of whom assist it along its way, others who impede its progress, none of whom have any idea of its existence.From whence comes the strange, but universal, experience of deja vu? Why do some people exhibit a wisdom far beyond their age and experience - persons reincarnationists refer to as 'old souls'? Joseph Wurtenbaugh in this short story offers a fascinating and tantalizingly plausible explanation for these phenomena, presented in a natural setting that brims with adventure and exhilarating possibility. Not to be missed by anyone who enjoys science fiction or thinking outside the box.

One Dinosaur One Bullet


Dane Hatchell - 2018
    Dan Webber and his son guide wealthy hunters 100 million years back in time where Tyrannosaurs rule and Velociraptors scavenge. New understandings of physics alleviate the once-honored fear of altering the future by new actions committed in the past. But when an anomaly interferes with the time machine’s programming, Dan and the others find themselves in a life-threatening situation no one has prepared for! Paying homage to the SF classics A Gun for Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp and A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, One Dinosaur One Bullet pits six time travelers against vicious dinosaurs in the prehistoric past. One Dinosaur One Bullet is a novella 22,000 words long, available at this time for the special price of .99 cents.

The Wisdom Of Secrets: The Templar Covenant


Ami Noone - 2014
    Although they have been mentioned in the bible and traces of their existence are scattered throughout the globe, Peter Madeloy had always presumed that the myths of the possible existence of an ancient brotherhood, living on Earth for milennia, was nothing more than that, a myth. Until one day his father is brutally murdered and his mother is kidnapped. In exchange for his mother’s safe return, Peter must enter his father’s secret world, uncover the truth about his mother’s kidnappers and find the ancient artefact his father had dedicated his life to protecting. Peter enlists the help of his uncle, Daniel O'Brien, a professor of Philology and avid researcher of veiled organisations and his wife, Emily, a geneticist, to unravel a series of clues his father has left him. Together they embark on a journey that thrusts them into the centre of an ancient battle for supremacy that uncovers a truth that for them, will change the history and future of humanity simultaneously. With the enemy watching their every move Peter, Daniel and Emily must figure out his father's clues in time to save his mother and ultimately protect the world from the true secret that was unearthed from beneath King Solomon's Temple all those centuries ago.

Every Last Secret: A Riveting Kidnapping Boxset


Robert J. Walker - 2021