Book picks similar to
The Forest by Lisa Quigley


horror
night-worms
fiction
folk-horror

Palmetto


Ania Ahlborn - 2021
    A great marriage. A baby on the way. All that's missing is a house--one idyllic enough to fill the Norman Rockwell-shaped spaces in her mind. So when Kim's husband, Eddie, books a property tour of a home Kim has been eyeing online, it's love at first sight.Far too expensive for them to afford, Kim and Eddie, make an offer anyway...and score the deal of a lifetime.The house is suddenly theirs, and Kim sees it as destiny.The house is where they're supposed to raise their baby, joyful and free and full of nothing but the best memories. But homes--especially the perfect ones--are never what they seem. Before Kim and Eddie are even moved in, something begins to squirm beneath Kim's skin.Something portentous. A warning. Don't buy this house.But she ignores her misgivings.As if sensing its mother's foreboding, the baby begins to squirm beneath Kim's skin as well. Twisting. Writing. But Kim ignores that too.Blinded by the idea of storybook happiness, Kim barrels headlong into a dream that quickly proves to be anything but and unwittingly seals her family's diabolical fate.Paying homage to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, Ahlborn's Palmetto takes the classic story of wanting it all and asks: how much would you sacrifice to have what you desire? And, watching your dream become a waking nightmare, how loud would you scream?

The Ceremonies


T.E.D. Klein - 1984
    Moving into a former storage building on the farm of Sarr and Deborah Poroth, he expects to spend a productive summer free from essentially all distractions - he is quite wrong in this assumption. Meanwhile, in New York, the rather reserved Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city on a small income from her job at a library. She meets Jeremy in New York just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What Jeremy and Carol do not know is that this relationship is the work of a strange, little old man known as Mr. Rosebottom. Rosie is actually the Old One working to bring his master back after a very long absence, and Jeremy and Carol are the unsuspecting keys to his success

A Cold Place For Dying


Kristopher Triana - 2021
    Having lost his wife, Joe Whitaker is spending the day hunting deer with bow and arrow in the mountains of New England. He finds a sense of peace getting back to nature, and even leaves his phone in his truck, wanting to free himself from the everyday world for a few hours. But no sooner does he enter the woods than his peace is interrupted by Nicole, a frantic woman running barefoot through the snow. She claims she was kidnapped and had managed to escape, but the man who imprisoned her is now on her tail and won’t stop until she’s his hostage again.Joe wants to help Nicole, but when he comes across Dan, the man pursuing her, he’s told Nicole has a serious mental illness and is delusional. Dan claims he isn't her kidnapper - he’s her husband. As a snowstorm bears down on the mountain, Joe soon finds himself in a deadly triangle with a mysterious man and a panicked woman, not knowing who to trust. If he makes the wrong choice, it might just cost him his life.

Harvest Home


Thomas Tryon - 1973
    The quiet, peaceful place was straight out of a bygone era, with well-cared-for Colonial houses, a white-steepled church fronting a broad Common. Ned and Beth Constantine chanced upon the hamlet and immediately fell in love with it. This was exactly the haven they dream of. Or so they thought.For Ned and his family, Cornwall Coombe was to become a place of ultimate horror.

Paradise Club


Tim Meyer - 2021
    Sandy beaches. Crystalline waters. An all-inclusive resort with virtually everything you can think of. A true idyllic paradise. An event is taking place at Paradise Club that wasn’t on the brochure: a dangerous game pitting the hotel’s guests against a gang of bloodthirsty maniacs. Elliot Harper - family man and FBI agent - is about to find out how fast heaven can become hell when every single vacationer is forced to become a ruthless killer in order to survive. A team of killers have been unleashed, and they won't stop until every single guest is dead. Let the mayhem begin...

The Queen of the Cicadas


V. Castro - 2021
    The farm is the site of the urban legend, La Reina de Las Chicharras - The Queen of The Cicadas.In 1950s south Texas a farmworker—Milagros from San Luis Potosi, Mexico—is murdered. Her death is ignored by the town, but not the Aztec goddess of death, Mictecacíhuatl. The goddess hears the dying cries of Milagros and creates a plan for both to be physically reborn by feeding on vengeance and worship.Belinda and the new owner of the farmhouse, Hector, find themselves immersed in the legend and realize it is part of their fate as well.

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...

White Pines


Gemma Amor - 2020
    A town, built on sacred land. A secret, cloaked in tradition and lore. Welcome to White Pines.Don't get too comfortable.This is the new cosmic-folk-Celtic-cult-horror novel from Gemma Amor, the Bram Stoker Award nominated author of Dear Laura, Cruel Works of Nature and Till the Score is Paid.

Dark Harvest


Norman Partridge - 2006
    They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror - and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy...

Antioch


Jessica Leonard - 2020
    Now six women have been savagely murdered. The media dubs the killer 'Vlad the Impaler' due to the gruesome crime scenes of his victims. Clues are drying up fast and the hunt for the monster responsible is hitting a dead end.After picking up a late-night transmission on her short-wave radio, a local bookseller named Bess becomes convinced a seventh victim has already been abducted. Bess is used to spending her nights alone reading about Amelia Earhart conspiracy theories, and now a new mystery has fallen in her lap: one she might actually be able to solve.Assuming she doesn’t also wind up abducted.Antioch, a cross between Session 9 and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, is an eerie mind-bending debut horror novel guaranteed to leave you drowning in paranoia.

Those Below the Tree House


Matt Hayward - 2020
    His stepdad is home, a bite on his neck, as Riverside’s only officer searches the woodlands for the aggressor. Tony is told not to cause a panic among the few kids living in Riverside’s mountaintop community, and his best friends Ben Rodgers and Lee Tally are unaware. Overnight, the condition of Tony’s stepfather worsens. His mother won’t leave the bedside. And soon, Riverside is turned upside down as residents morph into moss-covered abominations. Freaks. Joined by the local bully, the boys seek refuge in Rodgers’ tree house, trapped inside as neighbors, and even family, claw the trunk… Food and water soon runs low. With all hope lost, the boys decide to have their first of what they can before time runs out. Their first drink, their first cigarette, their first of anything at all. Like baby birds thrown from the nest, they will need to fly or fall. And time is running short. For his thirteenth birthday, Tony has learns the world has teeth. And someone else is out there, too, watching. An adult in a butcher’s apron. Waiting… Those Below the Tree House is the new supernatural coming-of-age from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of What Do Monsters Fear? and A Penny For Your Thoughts.

The Ritual


Adam Nevill - 2011
    No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees...

Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories


Aviaq Johnston - 2019
    A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that beckons, waiting to unleash the terror behind it. A post-apocalyptic community in the far North where things aren’t quite what they seem. With chilling tales from award-winning authors Richard Van Camp, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Aviaq Johnston, and others, this collection will thrill and entertain even the most seasoned horror fan.Ages- 16+Includes some explicit content.

Cold Moon Over Babylon


Michael McDowell - 1980
    Her killer is rich and powerful, beyond the grasp of earthly law.Now, in the murky depths of the local river, a shifting, almost human shape slowly takes form. Night after night it will pursue the murderer. It will watch him from the trees. And in the chill waters of the river, it will claim him in the ultimate embrace.The cold moon rises, the awful squishing sounds begin...

Experimental Film


Gemma Files - 2015
    A. Macalla Whitcomb. By deciding to investigate how Mrs. Whitcomb's obsessions might have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs. Whitcomb's films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband and herself in danger. Experimental Film mixes painful character detail with a creeping aura of dread to produce a fictionalized "memoir" designed to play on its readers' narrative expectations and pack an existentialist punch.