Book picks similar to
Terror Train by A. Henry KeeneJustin Hunter


horror
short-stories
anthologies
ghost-stories

All-Night Terror


Adam Cesare - 2013
    Don't look for help, your weaker friends will be too scared to attend, but you’re in for the nightmare of your life. Sit down in front of the TV and prepare for a late-night odyssey of wicked shocks as a horror movie marathon becomes a bloodbath before your very eyes. It starts when a disgruntled cable host seizes control of a television station, determined to give his viewers an evening they won’t soon forget. One where monsters of all shapes and sizes rise up against mankind. One where deranged killers prowl the night for a variety of victims. And one where cinema itself haunts its creators and creations. Join modern horror stars Adam Cesare (Tribesmen, Zero Lives Remaining) and Matt Serafini (Feral, Island Red) as they bring you ten tales of fear that will have you shivering between the pages. All NIGHT TERROR—good to the last slash.

Shoveling Smoke


Margaret Maron - 1997
    Sigrid Harald and the winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Margaret Maron writes with sensitivity about how time and place influence people and events, and how the domestic situation can breed both warmth and quiet despair. Shoveling Smoke contains 22 of Margaret Maron's best short stories, including all of the short cases of Sigrid Harald and Deborah Knott. The book concludes with a new story about Deborah Knott and a checklist of Margaret Maron's mystery novels and short stories. Introduction and prefaces to each story by the author.

Short & Shivery: Thirty Chilling Tales


Robert D. San Souci - 1987
    Those who are found the next day, if they are still alive, will have gone mad.”  Chills and thrills to make your flesh crawl with fear! Turn the lights down low and grab your favorite reading chair. But first, you’d better check behind you. . . .   Ghosts, monsters, murders, and madmen! These thirty stories have been collected for your reading displeasure from all over the globe, and represent the world’s best scary stories and frightening folktales, featuring famous authors such as Washington Irving and the Brothers Grimm. Welcome to a chilling world of hair-raising tales!

Japanese Ghost Stories


Lafcadio Hearn - 2019
    Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods. Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in Ireland, to create these chilling tales. They are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.

Carnacki, the Ghost Finder


William Hope Hodgson - 1913
    Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder is a collection of supernatural detective short stories by author William Hope Hodgson.

Beast


Anna Willett - 2020
    They supplement their income by selling pics of themselves as stock photos online.The abandoned Red Water Hotel is the perfect location for a shoot. But when they enter the decrepit building, Dursha begins to feel a strange presence. Jackie dismisses her concerns and they head further in.Strange moths have clustered, and the light filtering through has an eerie shimmer. The young women see a telephone number scrawled on the wall.By now Dursha is totally creeped out. But Jackie is already calling it...THE WIDOWDan decides to go to a party held by an old friend. It’s a no-good group, but it might help him put his worries aside. His life is spiralling and he has a serious toothache to add to his woes.At the party he strikes up a conversation with an enigmatic man who has excellent whiskey, and promises him a quick way to make money.In all honesty, Dan just wants enough cash to pay for a dentist, but he journeys with his new friend to a house deep in the country. The hazy plan is to rob it of a known stash of money.It sounded good in theory, but now his friend is nowhere to be seen and Dan is stuck inside the house, face to face with the widow who lives there...

The Two Sams


Glen Hirshberg - 2003
    "Dancing Men" depicts one of the creepiest rites of passage in recent memory, when a boy visits his deranged grandfather in the New Mexico desert. In "Mr. Dark's Carnival," a college professor confronts his own dark places in the form of a mysterious haunted house steeped in the folklore of grisly badlands justice. "Struwwelpeter" introduces us to a brilliant, treacherous adolescent whose violent tendencies and reckless mischief reach a sinister pinnacle as Halloween descends on a rundown, Pacific Northwest fishing village. Tormented by his guilty conscience, a young man plumbs the depths of atonement as he and his favorite cousin commune with the almighty Hawaiian surf in "Shipwreck Beach." With The Two Sams author Glen Hirshberg uses his remarkable gift for capturing mood and atmosphere to suggest the possibility that the most troubling ghosts of all are not the ones that hover above us and walk through walls, but those that linger in our memories and haunt our souls.

The Haunted Looking Glass


Edward Gorey - 1959
    It includes stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and L. P. Hartley, among other masters of the fine art of making the flesh creep, all accompanied by Gorey's inimitable illustrations.ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, "The Empty House"W.F. HARVEY, "August Heat"CHARLES DICKENS, "The Signalman"L.P. HARTLEY, "A Visitor from Down Under"R.H. MALDEN, "The Thirteenth Tree"ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, "The Body-Snatcher"E. NESBIT, "Man-Size in Marble"BRAM STOKER, "The Judge's House"TOM HOOD, "The Shadow of a Shade"W.W. JACOBS, "The Monkey's Paw,"WILKIE COLLINS, "The Dream Woman"M.R. JAMES, "Casting the Runes"

Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque


Joyce Carol Oates - 1994
    Haunted, a collection of sixteen tales that range from classic ghost stories to portrayals of chilling psychological terror, raises the genre to the level of fine literature - complex, multi-layered, and gripping fiction that is very scary indeed. In the title story, "Haunted, " the pubescent Melissa and her best friend, the sexually precocious Mary Lou, ignore "no trespassing" signs to explore forbidden houses. But the deserted Minton farm is one place where they should not have gone, and years later Melissa is tormented by her memories of its malevolence...and the murder of Mary Lou. In the novella, "The Model, " a sexual threat seems to underlie the interaction between young Sybil Blake and "Mr. Starr, " who asks her to be his model, but the truth about her own identity, and his, shows that the danger is lurking in a different part of the heart. The "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly, " a macabre reworking of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw, " resurrects the evil of Miss Jessel and Quint, who are up to their old tricks with the children, Miles and Flora, but with new, perverse, and brilliant revelations. The tales in this collection plunge the reader into nightmare worlds where violence slips in unexpectedly, where reality turns into a funhouse mirror, and where American culture goes awry in shocking, provocative ways. Joyce Carol Oates is a master storyteller of the dark side. She writes with skillfully controlled prose, tightly woven plots, and deep psychological insight that m her fictional horror worthy to set alongside the stories of Edgar Allan Poe - and far above all the rest.Haunted --The doll --The bingo master --The white cat --The model --Extenuating circumstances --Don't you trust me --The guilty party --The premonition --Phase change --Poor Bibi --Thanksgiving --Blind --The radio astronomer --Accursed inhabitants of the House of Bly --Martyrdom

Seven Stories


Brian James Freeman - 2010
    His destination today is Pier 13, the ocean front amusement park his family visited every summer when he was a child, and his purpose for coming here is simple: he wants to understand why so many people have been dying in such violent acts... but that might not be the only answer he finds at the old docks.Running Rain:In the year since their son was the first victim of a serial killer known as the The Riverside Strangler, a devastated husband and wife have tried to pretend life can somehow be normal again... but the secrets they're keeping from each other are pushing their relationship to the brink. To make matters worse, The Riverside Strangler was never caught, and now the husband is obsessed with running along the river at night, searching for the truth about why his son died: a truth he may not really want to know...Answering the Call:A young man's very unusual job is taking a heavy toll on him. He stays in homes during the owner's funeral. Someone needs to be there to answer the phone, receive deliveries, and deter thieves who might have seen the obituary in the newspaper and decided this would be a good time for a break-in. The young man has seen a lot of strange things over the years in the homes of the dead, and sometimes his job is truly a matter of life and death...The Punishment Room:Assuming Michael manages to escape the Punishment Room with his sanity and his life, he isn't sure if he'll be able to go on living with the knowledge of what he did to survive... but then again, that's a dilemma he wouldn't mind confronting, given the finality of the alternative.What They Left Behind:There's something lurking in the basement of the old Timlico office building. This thing is evil, the result of the tragic fire that killed dozens of Timlico employees and sent that business spiraling into bankruptcy -- or maybe the thing was the cause of the fire. Scott and a few friends will learn more about this thing before the day is over, including some very bad news for everyone: the thing in the basement is still hungry.A Dreamlike State:Daniel is driving back to his hometown for the first time in six years because his father is dying, but he knows there's more than a sick patriarch waiting for him in the house where he grew up. He has a heart full of questions, and all of his childhood ghosts are patiently waiting for him... and they have a few questions of their own.Where Sunlight Sleeps:A grieving father and his young son, both dealing with their loss in their own ways. A Saturday ritual, retracing the last steps of the woman they loved more than any other. A search for the place where the sunlight sleeps, where bad feelings can be released. And a trip down a memory lane lined with jagged edges and vicious traps that just won't let them go.(The only short story currently listed on Amazon that is missing from this bundle is "The Silent Attic," which is an experimental piece closely related to "A Dreamlike Sleep." If you like "A Dreamlike Sleep", be sure to download "The Silent Attic" to see another glimpse of that same world.)

The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories


Michael SimsW.W. Jacobs - 2014
    Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula's Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity's oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising, often legendary cast, from Charles Dickens and Margaret Oliphant to Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W.F. Harvey. Amelia Edwards' chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce (“The Moonlit Road”), Elizabeth Gaskell, (“The Old Nurse's Story”) and W. W. Jacobs (“The Monkey's Paw”) will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Michael Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Gothic Tales


Elizabeth Gaskell - 2000
    'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelganger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the pieces in this volume form a start contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.Laura Kranzler's introduction discusses how Gaskell's tales, with their ghostly doublings and transgressive passions, show the Gothic underside of female identity, domestic relations and male authority. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading and explanatory notes.

Twice the Chill: Two SHORT Horror Stories


Rachel A Olson - 2016
    Bey had spent his entire life running through the woods and never once saw anything to convince him there were creatures worth fearing. When his littler sister, Chensei, whines about the trip home at night, Bey only mocks her. Until she disappears beyond the treeline. I, PONTIANAK Everyone hates and fears monsters, except for when you’re the monster. I never asked for it, and honestly I can’t say I’ve really enjoyed it. But I am what I am, and I can’t change it. Hell, I can’t even control it. My name used to be Anastasia, and I am a Pontianak.

Shadows Over Innistrad


Kimberly J. Kreines - 2016
    

Fruiting Bodies, and Other Fungi


Brian Lumley - 1993
    Brian Lumley's monsters are never commonplace! In the award-winning 'Fruiting Bodies', for example, the terror doesn't stalk the night but moves almost imperceptibly underfoot, or through the woodwork... or in other places! 'The Pit-Yakker' is a tale of industrial decay, of a love that might have been, a hatred stillborn, and a scar to disfigure the landscape of the mind forever.And as for 'The Man Who Felt Pain'... well, don't we all? Yes, but not everyone else's!This Witch's Dozen of fine tales of terror can only add to the acclaim rightly accorded the man who gave you the brilliant Necroscope series, and its direct sequel, Brian Lumley's Vampire World.