Book picks similar to
Pure Evil by Jesse Bastide


horror
paranormal
supernatural
thriller

The Island


Clarissa Johal - 2015
    That's what Emma thinks about local gossip concerning her grandmother's "cursed" private island. Emma journeys to the island to ready it for sale. While out exploring, she unearths a hidden cave-a cave which holds answers to the island's dark past. There may be more to the rumors than she thought.

Edge of End


Edward Jamison - 2014
    He’s alone having no clue who and what he is, where he has come from and where he should go. There is only one way – forward when he spots a little town in the distance. Empty streets, old houses, the town seems abandoned. There’s no one to ask for help, there’s nowhere to go. Jonathan wanders the deserted town in search of any sign of life trying to bring his lost memories back, but odd visions haunt him from time to time. Soon Jonathan comes to the realization that he’s moments from death as absolutely evil dwells in the town seeking fresh souls. The seemingly dead town is only outwardly empty. Grey skies, no sun, no days and no nights. The town is stuck in time. With only one entrance and one exit, but the way leading to the exit is filled with creations that Jonathan has never envisioned, even in his worst nightmares. Who is he? Who brought him here? With a female resident – Elizabeth, Jonathan has to work his way through the horrendous town, figure out his past and find the exit.

The Red Church


Scott Nicholson - 2002
    His sermons declared the existence of God s Second Son- whose mission is to undo all of Jesus work on Earth. McFall had the church painted red to summon the First Son to defeat the Second. But when he sacrificed a child to support his rantings, his congregation hung him from the rafters of his own sanctuary...For twenty years, the red church has stood empty. Crumbling to ruin, it has become a site for Halloween pranks and the setting for ghost stories- including one about the thing that lives in the bell tower, a creature being blamed for a brutal murder that occurred in the church s graveyard...Now, Archer McFall has purchased the church to house his Temple of the Two Sons, whose zealous worshippers will stop at nothing to see the Second Son return to his rightful glory...

The Disappearance of Katie Wren


Amy Cross - 2016
     A mutilated body is pulled from the Thames. A mysterious house hides dark secrets, protected by the greatest power in the land. When her daughter Katie vanishes just a few days after arriving in London, Winifred Wren immediately heads to the city. Frantic with worry, she quickly finds herself stonewalled. Katie's apartment appears to have been ransacked, with strange symbols daubed all over the walls, but the police refuse to help. And then Winifred meets Annabelle Churchill, a down-on-her-luck journalist who claims to know the truth. Soon, Winifred learns about the horrors that lurk behind some of London's doors. A mysterious house is said to hide an ancient society, and it quickly becomes apparent that Katie has been drawn into the clutches of a cult. Dark forces are gathering, and an ancient evil is about to be invoked. Meanwhile, the crows and ravens of the city are gathering, preparing for a day that was prophesied two thousand years ago. The Disappearance of Katie Wren is a horror novel about one woman's search for her daughter, and about the secrets that lurk in one of the world's largest cities.

Dark and Deadly Things


Kelly Martin - 2017
    Her father has resorted to faking the hauntings that thrill America, but he could never fool Elise. She can see the dead. When the Halloween episode airs live on television, something goes horribly wrong. Four people end up dead, and Elise's father is the lead suspect in their murders. But Elise knows the truth. She watched the thing that crawled from the darkness. She just has to prove her father's innocence. Abel Hale was in the house when his family were slaughtered. He felt the cold breeze, heard the scraping of nails along the wall as the entity stalked them. The thing that killed the people he loved was not human. There is only one person who believes him, one person who can help him. Joining forces with Elise, they try to find the creature and stop it once and for all. There’s only one problem. How do you kill a ghost?

Mindbenders


Ted Krever - 2011
    Before his first mission, the Soviet Union collapses and he disappears.We meet him twenty years later in the Everglades, keeping as far from people as he can get, until his best friend–his only friend–is murdered and he is forced to assemble a team of people like him to fight the international conspiracy behind the murder.“A dead-on thriller for the decade . . . . I can’t imagine anyone reading this and not wanting more” — Thomas F. Monteleone, author of the NY Times bestseller The Blood of the Lamb and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel“Ted Krever has been a writer to watch, now he’s a writer to read. Do not miss MINDBENDERS.” -F. Paul Wilson“Ted Krever is a great storyteller but more importantly, the stories he creates and writes are ones that I want to read. In this ADD era, where even e-mails are considered too long, Ted’s work commands my attention. It is definitely worthy of yours, too.” -David Leaf, biographer and award-winner writer/director/producer of such films as ‘The Night James Brown Saved Boston,’ ‘The US Vs. John Lennon’ and ‘ BEAUTIFUL DREAMER: Brian Wilson and The Story of SMiLE.’

Just Evil


Vickie McKeehan - 2011
    No one cared. But a stranger, bent on revenge, is out to change all that. Kit Griffin has finally overcome a painful childhood at the hands of her mother, former actress Alana Stevens. No longer living in the grasp of the cold, tyrannical woman, Kit has found a new life tucked away in little San Madrid, California, running a business she loves, surrounded by friends she considers family. For the first time her life is on track. That is, until Alana is found brutally murdered on Mother’s Day, pulling Kit back in to the dark horrors of her past. To make matters worse, the police consider her the prime suspect.Jake Boston, an old family friend and the man Kit has loved since she was a teen, is fighting his own demons as a suspect in his wife’s murder two years earlier. Despite his past, he’s determined to win Kit over once and for all. But before that can happen they need to convince the police there’s a killer working his way down a list with cold-hearted vengeance in mind. Forced to delve into Alana’s dark past, it becomes clear someone is out to settle a score. When Jake and Kit uncover a forty year old double murder that leads them straight to the door of a legal dynasty, they soon find out just how far the heirs will go to keep the past buried and eliminate all the loose ends to protect their empire. Will Jake and Kit become the next victims or will they find an unexpected guardian angel?

314


A.R. Wise - 2012
    She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared. When a reporter shows up, just days before March 14th, Alma realizes that her past is coming back to haunt her. What happened on March 14th, at 3:14, 16 years ago? No one but The Skeleton Man can remember.

The Haunting of H. G. Wells


Robert Masello - 2020
    G. Wells could not have imagined. It’s 1914. The Great War grips the world—and from the Western Front a strange story emerges…a story of St. George and a brigade of angels descending from heaven to fight beside the beleaguered British troops. But can there be any truth to it?H. G. Wells, the most celebrated writer of his day—author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man—is dispatched to find out. There, he finds an eerie wasteland inhabited by the living, the dead, and those forever stranded somewhere in between…a no-man’s-land whose unhappy souls trail him home to London, where a deadly plot, one that could turn the tide of war, is rapidly unfolding.In league with his young love, the reporter and suffragette Rebecca West, Wells must do battle with diabolical forces—secret agents and depraved occultists—to save his sanity, his country, and ultimately the world.

Half-Made Girls


Sam Witt - 2014
    But Joe is married to one of the most powerful witches in Pitchfork, and spends almost as much time keeping an eye on her as he does dealing with occult crimes and shadowy horrors in the rest of the county. Even his children, a little girl who plays host to a rogue's gallery of strange spirits and a young man with a demonic secret, keep him on his toes. All Joe really wants is a simple life, a bottle of good whiskey, and a break from the horrors of his job. But nothing in Pitchfork County is ever simple, and the horrors just keep on coming. Someone's hung a mutilated girl on a cross in Pitchfork's most infamous church, dragging Joe into the most challenging case of his career. Joe's investigation into the ritual murder leads him through the dark underbelly of the Ozarks to the doorstep of a twisted cult of meth addicts. As Joe digs deeper into the mystery, he soon finds himself the target of the murderers and must stop them before they can summon their dark god and destroy everything he holds dear.

Desecration


J.F. Penn - 2013
    Her career is on the ropes. Her daughter is dying — there are only hours left before the end, and decisions have to be made. Museum curator Blake Daniel is a man on the edge of destruction. Cursed with the ability to “read” objects — to see where they’ve come from, and the bloody histories they experience — Blake splits his time between working as a researcher at the British Museum… and binge-drinking to forget his nightmare visions.Together, these two broken souls are all that stand between London and a serial killer. A young woman has been murdered, her uterus and unborn child removed during a gala event at a college of surgeons, any of whom could have committed the crime. The only clue is a small ivory figure of a woman undergoing a Cesarean section, dating to the seventeenth century.Body modification, grave robbery, Nazi eugenics, a laboratory that specializes in extreme genetic experiments. All come together to create a mystery unlike any Jamie has experienced, and a danger greater than any Blake has ever seen in his visions. It will take all Jamie’s detective skills, and all Blake’s psychic abilities, to find the killer. To end the murders. To stop something that wants to destroy all that is good… and leave behind only DESECRATION.Desecration is the first book in a thrilling new series by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn: a blend of crime, psychological thriller — and the supernatural.

Seraphim


Jon Michael Kelley - 2012
    She appears to be at or near her present age of ten, but the studio's dated stamp on the back indicates that the photo was taken nearly a year before her birth. More alarming, however, is the beautiful woman standing beside Amy, a woman with whom he had an affair in the periphery of his own new marriage, during the time Amy was conceived. And the fact that this photograph has been in his wife's possession for more than a decade is perhaps the most disturbing element of all. Duncan's wife Rachel doesn't know about his affair with this woman, but he will soon tell her. And upon that revelation they will begin a journey that will take them clear across the continent, from California to Massachusetts, then ultimately in the boundless, uncharted territory of the human collective. There, a devil is waiting; the penultimate personification of evil. And he goes by the name of Mr. Gamble. "Apocalyptic in the truest sense of the word, Jon Michael Kelley's Seraphim is a stunning thriller with the very fate of the world at stake. Beautifully written, with prose as lush as it is chilling, Kelley is part poet, part prophet, but a true master of fear, through and through. This is top notch stuff of highest caliber!" -- Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance "Seraphim is a beautifully wrought tale of angels and demons that starts out strong and just gets better and better. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Jon Michael Kelley proves to be a mature, intelligent new voice in horror right out of the gate." -- Craig Saunders, author of The Love of the Dead and A Stranger's Grave "Written with the finesse of a pro, Seraphim is one hell of a frightening horror novel. With bits of dark fantasy and humor mixed in, this one has it all! Hard to believe this is Jon Michael Kelley's first novel." -- David Bernstein, author of Amongst the Dead and Tears of No Return

Handbook for the Criminally Insane


Brian Holtz - 2009
    Zombies. A serial killer. Demons. And an evil Chihuahua. Monica's fresh start may not be everything she was hoping for, but who knows? She might just end up having the time of her life -- if she can find a way to avoid the time of her death.

See


Jamie Magee - 2012
    Charlie Myers is on a life altering path that will cause the dammed to humble in silence.One night…just a few friends, how could it go so wrong? That was the question seventeen year old Charlie Myers was asking when she found herself in the ER. Outwardly nothing was wrong with Charlie, she was a vision of perfect heath, internally she was battling a raging headache…one the doctor told her she would overcome shortly, but Charlie knew something else was wrong …very wrong.Part of her had been stolen…she was missing memories. Those memories were sacred. They held the key to her sanity. They told her that the sinister whispers, the shadows that came to life before her were not as ominous as she felt they were. They held the bond with her late father, a famed musician. They caused her to forget the one talent that allowed her to face the darkness that haunted her every waking hour. They also masked a much deeper bond, the face of the one that had stolen her heart, long before the age of seventeen.Sitting in the ER with her angry mother she couldn’t figure out what she was missing, or even how. Her thoughts told her that she needed to protect Britain, a friend of hers, but that didn’t make any sense – Britain didn’t need to be protected from anyone, he was strong, young, and absurdly wealthy. Charlie also knew that even though her friend Bianca called Charlie her best friend, she didn’t trust her …she was almost sure she despised her, but she couldn’t figure out why, or understand how random thoughts were telling her that she adored both Britain and Bianca – that they were her saviors – that they brought silence to the unstoppable whispers, but the silence scared Charlie. In her mind anyone or anything that could bring silence to something that dark could not be good.Charlie wanted to stay in NY, figure out what she was missing, why, and who was behind it all, but her mother had other plans. Against her will, Charlie was sent to Salem to live with her sister, within that small town Charlie found her memories and so much more.Her story begins now.Ibsn: 9781301864768Word count: 104k

The Dark Man


Desmond Doane - 2015
    Assisting police departments by conducting paranormal investigations and uncovering buried clues now provides Ford with an ounce of redemption, but it will never be enough. What occurred on that long-ago Halloween night was unforgivable, and Ford, chasing ratings and stardom, let it happen. With Graveyard cancelled and his reputation destroyed, Ford sets out to avenge little Chelsea, and to save his own soul—if he can.