Book picks similar to
The Valley by Mike Salt


horror
indie-horror
stand-alone-novel
tbr

Falling Angel


William Hjortsberg - 1978
    For Harry Angel, a routine missing-persons case soon turns into a fiendish nightmare of voodoo and black magic, of dizzying peril and violent death. Many people feel that Falling Angel is the greatest American supernatural horror novel of the 20th century.With a new foreword by Ridley Scott, an introduction by the late James Crumley, and a new afterword by the author and a bonus short story, plus a letter from Stephen King, the first time that the letter has ever been published in its complete form.The hardcover edition is limited to just 300 copies and is signed by William Hjortsberg. Bound in cloth with a dustjacket with the original Stanislaw Zagorski wraparound dustjacket printed against a black background with spot varnish.

Black Feathers


Joseph D'Lacey - 2013
    Their task is to find a dark messiah known only as the Crowman. But is he our saviour – or the final incarnation of evil?File Under: Fantasy [ The Crowman | Joined Through Time | The Last Keeper | The Journey Begins ]

Menagerie


E. Stuart Marlowe - 2014
    They belong to the world of storybooks and legends. Or so you have been led to believe. For the past twenty years, Gomer Horsenick has been building the world's strangest zoo. He and his ragtag group of men have explored the globe, collecting monsters of the sea, sand, sky and sewers. And now the zoo is ready to open. But not if Juniper Lowery can stop him. A fervent animal activist, Juniper gets wind of Gomer’s intentions and makes it her mission to set these creatures free. When her plan backfires, the monsters flee, descending upon the nearby town. A horrific nightmare of chaos and destruction ensues. It is up to Juniper and Gomer to reconcile their differences and save the city before the terror spreads.

Dead Sea


Tim Curran - 2007
    A space between spaces. When the Mara Corday, an aged freighter, enters the Graveyard of the Atlantic, nightmares become real. The crew finds themselves trapped in a realm where time doesn't exist and unimaginable horrors dwell. Lost in a becalmed sea, in a netherworld where evil manifests itself in hideous forms, the survivors of the Mara Corday have an eternity to find a way out - if they aren't killed first by the creatures stalking them.(Description from back cover of trade paperback)

Blood Sugar


Daniel Kraus - 2019
    With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children. But as the clock ticks closer to sundown, will one of his helpers—an innocent himself, in his own streetwise way—carry out or defeat the plan?

Return to Dyatlov Pass


J.H. Moncrieff - 2018
    Their mutilated bodies were discovered weeks later. Their bizarre and unexplained deaths are one of the most enduring true mysteries of our time.Nearly sixty years later, podcast host Nat McPherson ventures into the same mountains with her team, determined to finally solve the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass incident. Her plans are thwarted on the first night, when two trackers from her group are brutally slaughtered. The team’s guide, a superstitious man from a neighboring village, blames the killings on yetis, but no one believes him. As members of Nat’s team die one by one, she must figure out if there’s a murderer in their midst—or something even worse—before history repeats itself and her group becomes another casualty of the infamous Dead Mountain.

Zombie Survival Manual: From the dawn of time onwards


Sean T. Page - 2013
    Accompanied by illustrations, maps, diagrams and step-by-step instructions, this manual will be essential reading for those interested in protecting themselves, their families and society at large from the living dead.

Gast


Edward Lee - 2007
    . . AND THE HOUSE.No train has run on this railroad since the end of the Civil War - a railroad built by a servitor to perfect evil - and its rusted tracks run right behind the house. Justin Collier expects his respite in Gast, TN to be relaxing if not a bit dull, but he will find out soon enough that those same train tracks once led to a place worse than Hell.WELCOME TO THE GAST HOUSEA historical bed and breakfast or a monument to the obscene? Collier doesn't need to know the building's rich history: women raped to death for sport, slaves beheaded and threshed into the soil, and pregnant teenagers buried alive. Who or what could mitigate such horrors over 150 years ago? And what is the atrocious connection between the old railroad and the house? Each room hides a new, revolting secret. At night, he can smell the mansion's odors and hear its appalling whispers. Little girls giggle where there are no little girls, and out back, when Collier listens closely, he can hear the train's whistle and see the barely human things chained up in its clattering prison cars. Little does he know, the mansion and the railroad aren't haunted by ghosts but an unspeakable carnality and a horror as palpable as exicted human flesh.WELCOME TO A PLACE WORSE THAN HELL. . .

Red


Jack Ketchum - 1996
    He smells gun oil too, too much oil on a brand-new shotgun. These aren't hunters, they're rich kids who don't care about the river and the fish and the old man.Or his dog. Red is the name of the old man's dog, his best friend in the world. And when the boys shoot the dog -- for nothing, for simple spite -- he sees red, like a mist before his eyes. And before the whole thing is done there'll be more red. Red for blood...

77 Shadow Street


Dean R. Koontz - 2011
    I live in the Pendleton as surely as I live everywhere. I am the Pendleton’s history and its destiny. The building is my place of conception, my monument, my killing ground. . . .The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon’s dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents—among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager—the Pendleton’s magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. With each passing hour, a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton’s past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again. Soon, all those within its boundaries will be engulfed by a dark tide from which few have escaped.Dean Koontz transcends all expectations as he takes readers on a gripping journey to a place where nightmare visions become real—and where a group of singular individuals hold the key to humanity’s destiny. Welcome to 77 Shadow Street.

The Three


Sarah Lotz - 2014
    Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage. Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival.

The Cipher


Kathe Koja - 1991
    She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse...Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...

Goblin


Josh Malerman - 2017
    But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. . . .A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

The Corpse Queen


Heather Herrman - 2021
    Such a thing is not unheard of. There are only so many options for an unmarried girl in 1850s Philadelphia. Only, when Molly arrives, she discovers her aunt is very much real, exceedingly wealthy, and with secrets of her own. Secrets and wealth she intends to share--for a price.Molly's estranged aunt Ava, has built her empire by robbing graves and selling the corpses to medical students who need bodies to practice surgical procedures. And she wants Molly to help her procure the corpses. As Molly learns her aunt's trade in the dead of night and explores the mansion by day, she is both horrified and deeply intrigued by the anatomy lessons held at the old church on her aunt's property. Enigmatic Doctor LaValle's lessons are a heady mixture of knowledge and power and Molly has never wanted anything more than to join his male-only group of students. But the cost of inclusion is steep and with a murderer loose in the city, the pursuit of power and opportunity becomes a deadly dance.

The Hunger


Whitley Strieber - 1981
    Now, haunted by signs of her adoring husband's imminent demise, Miriam sets out in search of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and withstand the test of time.