Book picks similar to
Orca by Arthur Herzog III
horror
paperbacks-from-hell
thriller
fiction
The Drive-In
Joe R. Lansdale - 1988
You're kicking back in your car with the popcorn and enjoying a good old-fashioned scary monster movie when, suddenly, the drive-in itself becomes the movie, with all its attendance thrills. And dangers.When a group of friends decided to spend a day at the world's largest Drive-In theater horror fest, they expected to see tons of bloody murders, rampaging madmen, and mayhem—but only on the screen. As a mysterious force traps all the patrons inside the Drive-In, the worst in humanity comes out. Filled with Lansdale's razor whit and black humor, The Drive-In is a darkly humorous masterpiece!
Spiderstalk
D. Nathan Hilliard - 2013
In the past year he has broken up with his fiancee, barely survived a terrible car wreck, and had his brother's family vanish while he lay unconscious in the hospital. All they left behind was a frantic call on his cell phone's voice messages, and a blurry photo of a spider. Since then he has been a crippled shell going through the motions of life with nothing but the search for his brother to keep him going. But Adam is about to discover that things can still take a turn for the worse. Much worse. His quest for his brother has brushed up against a very dark corner of the world and something has come out of that darkness with an unholy vengeance. Something unbelievable. He can't fight it, he can't hide from it, and not even the police can protect him as his world descends into chaos. His only hope lies in a mysterious pair of strangers who have appeared out of nowhere with an offer of aid. But they have their own agenda, and his survival may not be their top priority. Now Adam must keep his wits about him and learn to believe in himself again as events send him on a collision course with a monster more horrific than he ever dreamed possible.
The Aeschylus
David Barclay - 2014
Production stops. Communications cease. The Valley Oil Corporation finds itself on the brink of disaster and prepares to send an investigative team deep into the south Atlantic. Kate McCreedy, daughter of the late U.S. Vice President, is whisked into a secret board meeting shortly after inheriting a windfall of Valley Oil stock. Her father not only left her his fortune, however, but an envelope containing covert satellite images of The Aeschylus. Believing the images are linked to the developing crisis, she volunteers to join the team. Upon arrival, they discover the platform is overgrown with a massive, tentacle-like fungus, and the missing workers are nowhere to be found. Kate delves deeper into the mystery, discovering a nearby island, an abandoned military base, and a secret dating back some eighty years. It's not long before she must make a choice: assist in a corporate cover-up, or destroy her family legacy with the truth.
Floating Dragon
Peter Straub - 1982
The hideous, unstoppable creation of man's power gone mad.The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like a child's play.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Laird Koenig - 1974
Until a knock at the door shattered sanctuary.Rynn is the little girl who lives in the house at the end of the lane with her father-or so she says. No one had seen the poet, Leslie Jacobs, for a long time, and though the pungent aroma of Gauloise filled the parlor with intimations of his presence, no one was certain he was there:Not Mrs. Hallet, the real estate agent who'd rented the old house to the eminent English poet and his daughter and whose formidable manner, product of her impeccable Long Island lineage, brooked no betrayals, especially not from a thirteen-year-old...Not her son Frank, whose Halloween visit, intruding on Rynn's birthday rituals, had been more trick than treat and whose own insidious motives would soon lock them both in a perilous contest of will...Not the local policeman who came to call and, lured by what he had seen, returned...Not the shy young amateur magician who arrived on an errand-and stayed to become confidant and co-conspirator...Who was the little girl who lived in such strange seclusion at the end of the leaf-swept land? Lonely and innocent seeking shelter from a hostile world? Or consummate liar? Each for his own reason, the Hallets were determined to find out. And it was then that the terrible secrets of the house at the end of the lane emerged. Moving with swift and shocking turnabout to a profoundly disturbing denouement, here is a fine and freezing novel of suspense that probes the subtle bonds of innocence to evil.
Shadow Child
Joseph A. Citro - 1987
Joseph A. Citro's widely read publications about the more haunting history, legends, and lore of New England have earned him a reputation as an expert on themes of the supernatural. In this book (first published in 1987), however, he deftly melds real-life ancient ruins, a keen eye for the social fabric of small-town Vermont, and a soaring imagination to fashion a gripping tale of a family's life-or-death struggle to save their farm from an enemy far more devastating than banks, taxes, or land developers. Eric Nolan is a man already too familiar with death. His brother's long-ago disappearance, the loss of his parents, and his wife's recent demise in an auto accident have left him near the edge physically and emotionally. In desperation he returns to his boyhood haunt, the family farm in rural Antrim, Vermont, now occupied by his cousin, Pamela, her husband, Clint, and Luke, their four-year-old son. But any solace Eric might find there is short-lived. Something terrible is going on in the woods on Pinnacle Mountain and it seems to be centered around a mysterious stone structure that, a local historian believes may be the relic of an ancient race. The mystery deepens as people begin to vanish one by one, first a village policeman, then a local hermit, a researcher, and finally Clint himself. As baffling and violent incidents continue it becomes harder to deny that a powerful and malevolent force is at work in the Green Mountains, a force that has targeted young Luke. Though it defies Eric's every rational instinct, he must ultimately confront a reality he can neither accept nor deny. As he and the others struggle to quell the rising tide of evil, the siege escalates to a brutal battle for life itself. Citro twists every shock possible out of this finely crafted gothic thriller that tests the limits of legend and belief.
Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization
Greg Cox - 2014
Entertainment Inc. (s13)© Legendary.© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.GODZILLA is a trademark of Toho Co., Ltd. The GODZILLA character and design are trademarks of and copyrighted by Toho Co., Ltd. Used with permission. All Rights Reserved.
The Reaping
Bernard Taylor - 1980
But from the moment of his arrival at the secluded country mansion strange and inexplicable events begin to transpire. Soon he is drawn into an impenetrable maze of horror, and by the time he discovers the role he is intended to play in a diabolical design, it will already be too late. For the seeds of evil have been sown, and the time to reap their wicked harvest is nigh!
The House of Thunder
Leigh Nichols - 1982
Can these be the same men? As she tries to uncover the identities of those stalking her, Susan enters a terrifying nightmare--one from which she may never escape. Previously published by Pocket under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols (1982).
And Then You Die
Iris Johansen - 1997
Instead they find every person in the village is dead, killed in a bloodless carnage. The sisters are aided only by a mysterious agent who holds the key to stopping a vicious weapon aimed at America.
Trust Me
Jeff Abbott - 2009
Luke Dantry tells people he has a job on the cutting edge of the war on terror-only he knows it's nowhere near as adrenaline-filled as he makes it sound. Luke's nightly task working for his stepfather's Washington think tank: Go undercover from the anonymous safety of his computer and infiltrate Web-based, home-grown terrorist networks, cataloging the screen names and details of a motley collection of rage-filled, mentally suspect, and mostly impotent loners he comes to call the Black Road. Now and then he encounters someone who may have the capability to make good on his threats, but Luke figures that the vast majority of his targets are simply frustrated malcontents using the Internet as an empty soapbox. When Luke is kidnapped at gunpoint, without warning, and left for dead in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, he realizes it must be related to his work, and that the Black Road is far more organized than he thought-and much closer to home than he could have ever imagined. After a daring escape, with both the terrorist group and their enemies on his heels, he must quickly assemble a complex puzzle of convoluted histories and motives, where the final pieces extend deep into his own past-and where Luke himself may hold the key to stopping the Black Road before their spectacular plans come to horrible fruition.
The Wyrm
Stephen Laws - 1987
In a small town, mysterious forces try to protect the gallows from being torn down as an evil entity possesses the bodies of the living.
The Pines
Robert Dunbar - 1989
The boy seems to have a psychic connection to something in the dark forest, something unseen... and evil. The old-timers in the region know the truth of the legendary creature that stalks the Pine Barrens. And they know the savagery it's capable of
Sounding
Hank Searls - 1982
Troubled and separated from his herd, the whale wants to fulfill his one obsessive desire to communicate with the human race and learn why they can be both vicious hunters and frolicking playmates.Far away, on a doomed Russian nuclear submarine, Lieutenant Peter Rostov, the sonar officer and a classical musician, is spending what he's sure are his last days listening to the beautiful "sounding" of the whale.In the amazing climax to this unique novel, man and whale come together and a magnificent destiny is fulfilled."Searls is remarkably eloquent. . . . you'll stand up and cheer." The Washington Post Book World
The Descent
Jeff Long - 1999
In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old. In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave. So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: that the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. Some call them "devils" or "demons." But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them…