Book picks similar to
The Awakening by Brett McBean


horror
coming-of-age
favorites
supernatural

Raising Stony Mayhall


Daryl Gregory - 2011
    Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda — and he begins to move.The family hides the child — whom they name Stony — rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret — until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.

A Bad Day for Voodoo


Jeff Strand - 2012
    This is gonna be awesome."Of course, you probably wouldn't believe a voodoo doll could work either. Or that it could cause someone's leg to blow clean off with one quick prick. But I've seen it. It can happen.And when there's suddenly a doll of YOU floating around out there—a doll that could be snatched by a Rottweiler and torn to shreds, or a gang of thugs ready to torch it, or any random family of cannibals (really, do you need the danger here spelled out for you?)—well, you know that's just gonna be a really bad day ...

The Girl in a Swing


Richard Adams - 1980
    He finds himself swept off of his feet and married to her, bringing her with him to live in his family home. She is his erotic dream come true; she does everything she can to bind him to her and join him in his comfortable life.Soon, however, odd things begin to happen. Things in the house are strangely damp with what looks like seawater, bodies appear under the water that aren't really there. It all winds up to a horrifying conclusion.

The Snowman's Children


Glen Hirshberg - 2002
    The incident, a result of good but woefully misguided juvenile intentions, forced his family to leave their home, and eventually forced him, at age twenty-nine, to return to his hometown in search of three old friends. Reminiscent of both To Kill a Mockingbird in its touching portrait of childhood, and the beautifully written brand of suspense that calls to mind Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Snowman's Children is an unusually controlled and original novel that establishes Hirshberg as an important new voice in American literature.

The Radleys


Matt Haig - 2010
    Except, as Peter and Helen Radley know but their children have yet to find out, the Radleys happen to be a family of abstaining vampires. When one night Clara finds herself driven to commit a bloodthirsty act, her parents decide to explain a few things.

Raven: The Balance: Book Two


Nick Shamhart - 2012
    Why should the afterlife be any different? We are given a choice when we die to move on to the Source, stay on earth and slowly evolve into more of what we were (good people become angels and bad people become demons), or a chosen few can work to keep the Balance between them. The title character Raven is such a warrior who works to maintain that balance.Malign, the demon responsible for most of the world’s cataclysmic wars, has come to the United States with an army of vampires or, more specifically, demons she has convinced to act as those fabled creatures of the night to sow discord and social unrest. Raven and the other Balance soldiers must track Malign down and in their spare time try to convince the ancient angel Metatron that he is doing more harm than good with his participation in mortal affairs. Tagging along for the ride are a motorcycle gang of millionaire philanthropists, Raven’s fellow Balance warrior Zeus’ younger angelic brother, and the demon Lucifer with his babysitter Gabriel.The novel is written in two styles. Each chapter begins in a soliloquy from the title character Raven, where she tells pieces of her back-story intertwined with philosophical musings on her family life and dealing with loss, with the following bulk of the chapter told in a third person narrative.

Imaginary Friend


Stephen Chbosky - 2019
    Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.

Dead Romantic


C.J. Skuse - 2013
    But when she's mocked at a college party, she knows there isn't a boy alive who'll ever measure up. Enter Zoe, her brilliant but strange best friend, who takes biology homework to a whole new level. She can create Camille's dream boy, Frankenstein-stylee. But can she make him love her?

Dead Religion


David Beers - 2012
    The FBI desperately needs to find him, or if he's dead, the reasons behind his attack before the Mexican government can.Agent James Allison is tasked with finding Alex Valdez, wherever that may lead.What Allison can't know, what the FBI doesn't understand, is Valdez's past.Alex Valdez was raised by parents convinced their religion, their God--discarded by European conquerors--needed to return. Convinced that their God's rightful place was in charge of this world just as it had been the Aztec civilization. From this, a small child turned into a haunted man. Married now, unable to distinguish if the God exists, and if it does, does it mean to kill him and all that he loves? Alex Valdez is a man that can no longer tell reality from dreams, with a wife who has watched her husband cut himself to shreds from that terror.Dead Religion follows both Alex Valdez and James Allison in their searches for truth. Valdez believes he knows how to stop this God while James only wants to make it home alive.In a time when miracles and Gods have been pushed to a past age, Agent Allison must walk the fine line between insanity and reality, trying to uncover the facts behind the terrific loss of life in Mexico City before the same torments find their way into his own life.

The Late Night Horror Show


Bryan Smith - 2013
    "It was a run-down old multi-plex in a seedy part of town. But it had a special late-night festival of the cheap horror movies one group of friends loved, movies filled with zombies, vampires and backwoods maniacs.How could they know it was a very special screening indeed? After the friends split up and their chosen movies began, they found themselves transported out of the life they knew and into the blood-drenched worlds of the films. Worlds where the living dead roam the countryside, the decrepit mansion of a vampire and his minions dominates the night sky, and the shrill scream of a buzz saw is always right behind you.

Last Ones Left Alive


Sarah Davis-Goff - 2019
    Beware tall buildings. Always have your knives.Growing up on a tiny island off the coast of a post-apocalyptic Ireland, Orpen's life has revolved around physical training and necessity. After Mam died, it's the only way she and her guardian Maeve have survived the ravenous skrake (zombies) who roam the wilds of the ravaged countryside, looking for prey.When Maeve is bitten and infected, Orpen knows what she should do--sink a knife into her eye socket, and quickly. Instead, she tries to save Maeve, and following rumours of a distant city on the mainland, guarded by fierce banshees, she sets off, pushing Maeve in a wheelbarrow while accompanied by their little dog, Danger. During the journey, Orpen will need to draw on all of her training and instincts as she fights repeatedly for her life. In the course of it, she will learn more about the Emergency that destroyed her homeland, and the mythical Phoenix City--and discover a startling truth about her own identity.

Jane Slayre: The Literary Classic with a Blood-Sucking Twist


Sherri Browning Erwin - 2010
    ” A timeless tale of love,  devotion . . . and the undead.Jane Slayre, our plucky demon-slaying heroine, a courageous orphan who spurns the detestable vampyre kin who raised her, sets out on the advice of her ghostly uncle to hone her skills as the fearless slayer she’s meant to be. When she takes a job as a governess at a country estate, she falls head-over-heels for her new master, Mr. Rochester, only to discover he’s hiding a violent werewolf in the attic—in the form of his first wife. Can a menagerie of bloodthirsty, flesh-eating, savage creatures-of-the-night keep a swashbuckling nineteenth-century lady from the gentleman she intends to marry? Vampyres, zombies, and werewolves transform Charlotte Brontë’s unforgettable masterpiece into an eerie paranormal adventure that will delight and terrify.

Apocalypse Now Now


Charlie Human - 2013
    As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he's making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he's going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson 'Jackie' Ronin.Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town's supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

The Gathering Storm


Robin Bridges - 2012
    Petersburg, Russia, 1888. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. No one knows. Not her family. Not the girls at her finishing school. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.An evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines—and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources . . . including two young men—George Alexandrovich, the tsar's standoffish middle son, who needs Katerina's help to safeguard Russia, even if he's repelled by her secret, and the dashing Prince Danilo, heir to the throne of Montenegro, to whom Katerina feels inexplicably drawn.The time has come for Katerina to embrace her power, but which side will she choose—and to whom will she give her heart?

Twittering from the Circus of the Dead


Joe Hill - 2013
    The show's about to begin. Step right up for the Circus of the Dead: where YOU are the concessions. #CircusoftheDead