Book picks similar to
Halloween Fiend by C.V. Hunt
horror
halloween
novella
halloween-reads
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham JonesStephen Graham Jones - 2021
She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
The Bone Weaver's Orchard
Sarah Read - 2019
That’s what they say every time one of Charley Winslow’s friends vanishes from The Old Cross School for Boys.It’s just a tall tale. That’s what they tell Charley when he sees the ragged grey figure stalking the abbey halls at night.When Charley follows his pet insects to a pool of blood behind a false wall, he could run and let those stones bury their secrets. He could assimilate, focus on his studies, and wait for his father to send for him. Or he could walk the dark tunnels of the school’s heart, scour its abandoned passages, and pick at the scab of a family’s legacy of madness and murder.With the help of Sam Forster, the school’s gardener, and Matron Grace, the staff nurse, Charley unravels Old Cross’ history and exposes a scandal stretching back to when the school was a home with a noble family and a dark secret—a secret that still haunts its halls with scraping steps, twisting its bones into a new generation of nightmares.
Dead Sea
Tim Curran - 2007
A space between spaces. When the Mara Corday, an aged freighter, enters the Graveyard of the Atlantic, nightmares become real. The crew finds themselves trapped in a realm where time doesn't exist and unimaginable horrors dwell. Lost in a becalmed sea, in a netherworld where evil manifests itself in hideous forms, the survivors of the Mara Corday have an eternity to find a way out - if they aren't killed first by the creatures stalking them.(Description from back cover of trade paperback)
Tender is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica - 2017
After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
Black and Orange
Benjamin Kane Ethridge - 2011
The stories are distortions. They were created to keep the Church of Midnight hidden from the world. Every October 31st a gateway opens to a hostile land of sacrificial magic and chaos. Since the beginning of civilization the Church of Midnight has attempted to open the gateway and unite with its other half, the Church of Morning. Each year they've come closer, waiting for the ideal sacrifice to open the gateway permanently.This year that sacrifice has come. And only two can protect it. Martin and Teresa are the nomads, battle-hardened people who lack identity and are forever road-bound on an endless mission to guard the sacrifice. Their only direction is from notes left from a mysterious person called the Messenger. Endowed with a strange telekinetic power, the nomads will use everything at their disposal to make it through the night alive. But matters have become even more complicated this year. Teresa has quickly lost ground battling cancer, while Martin has spiraled into a panic over being left alone. His mind may no longer be on the fight when it matters most... because ever on their heels is the insidious physical representation of a united church: Chaplain Cloth.***BRAM STOKER AWARD WINNER, Superior Achievement in First Novel***
The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories
Kevin Brockmeier - 2021
Kevin Brockmeier's fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive--or, as it happens, not to be.
Man, Fuck This House
Brian Asman - 2021
Sabrina's a bored and disillusioned home-maker, Hal a reverse mortgage salesman with a penchant for ill-timed sports analogies. Their two children, Damien and Michaela, are bright and precocious.At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren't what they seem.Sabrina's hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina's already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine.Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of 4596 James Circle, they're far from its only residents...
Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
Kelly LinkNalo Hopkinson - 2014
Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.Moriabe's Children / Paolo Bacigalupi --Old souls / Cassandra Clare --Ten rules for being an intergalactic smuggler (the successful kind) / Holly Black --Quick hill / M.T. Anderson --The diabolist / Nathan Ballingrud --This whole demoning thing / Patrick Ness --Wings in the morning / Sarah Rees Brennan --Left foot, right / Nalo Hopkinson --The Mercurials / G. Carl Purcell --Kitty Capulet and the invention of underwater photography / Dylan Horrocks --Son of abyss / Nik Houser --A small wild magic / Kathleen Jennings --The new boyfriend / Kelly Link --The woods hide in plain sight / Joshua Lewis --Mothers, lock up your daughters because they are terrifying / Alice Sola Kim
The Halloween Store, and Other Tales of All Hallows' Eve
Ronald Kelly - 2020
Fun and frightful decorations, ghastly costumes and masks of the season, and bags of candy galore. Then, as you travel farther into its shadowy depths, things begin to change. The air smells of damp autumn leaves and candle-scorched pumpkin. The shelves of All Hallows’ Eve fare grow darker and more disturbing. Strange and unsettling things of Halloweens past and present lurk amid the cobwebs and dust…Four trick-or-treaters purchase vintage costumes from a strip-mall shop, only to discover that they must sign a mysterious disclaimer for the Halloween celebration to come…After a man’s missing daughter is found–near death and physically altered–he must once again face a horrifying monster from his own childhood…A teenage girl hitches a ride after a Halloween rock & roll concert, only to learn that her favorite singing idol has made a pact with the Devil himself…Three kids receive unusual treats during a Halloween stop at their favorite teacher’s house…During a random visit to his hometown, a businessman treats a young boy to the joy and excitement of a Halloween festival, only to find that things are not what they first appeared to be…A rash of ghoulish jack-o’-lanterns leads a small-town sheriff to the doorstep of one of the most notorious serial killers of all time…An advertisement in the back of an old comic book prompts two friends to place an order that they soon come to regret…Seven horrific tales and two nostalgic essays… hand-picked for your Trick-or-Treat bag. With the arrival of a 2020 Halloween, there is no telling what terrifying treats and petrifying prizes may await you!
Starve Acre
Andrew Michael Hurley - 2019
Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place.Juliette, convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree.Starve Acre is a devastating new novel by the author of the prize-winning bestseller The Loney. It is a novel about the way in which grief splits the world in two and how, in searching for hope, we can so easily unearth horror.
This House Is Haunted
John Boyne - 2013
Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall on a dark and chilling night. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands push her from behind into the path of an approaching train. She is only saved by the vigilance of a passing doctor.When she finally arrives, shaken, at the hall she is greeted by the two children in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There are no parents, no adults at all, and no one to represent her mysterious employer. The children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, a second terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.From the moment she rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence which lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realises that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past…
The Chill
Scott Carson - 2020
Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...
When Things Get Dark
Ellen DatlowStephen Graham Jones - 2021
Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand and more. A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by, and in tribute to, Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, will bring together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, and Genevieve Valentine.
I Remember You
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - 2010
But they soon realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide, the shocking truth becomes horribly clear.In the vein of Stephen King and John Ajvide Lindqvist, this horrifying thriller, partly based on a true story, is the scariest novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, who has captivated the attention of readers around the world with her mystery series featuring attorney Thora Gudmundsdottir. Now, Yrsa will stun readers once again with this out-of-this-world ghost story that will leave you shivering.
The Bear Who Wouldn't Leave
J.H. Moncrieff - 2015
He soon learns he was right to be wary. Edgar is no ordinary toy, and he doesn’t like being rejected. When Josh banishes him to the closet, terrible things begin to happen.Desperate to be rid of the bear, Josh engages the help of a friend. As the boys’ efforts rebound on them with horrifying results, Josh is forced to accept the truth—Edgar will always get even.