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Bad Brains by Kathe Koja


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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...

Slither


John Halkin - 1980
    Out of the murky sewers they suddenly attacked —snapping, biting, ripping at his flesh. After the first sensationalism had died down, the newspapers lost interest ... the experts dismissed them as no more dangerous than ferrets ... people started to forget.But Matt knew different. All the time they were growing in size and numbers — and they preyed on living flesh!For when they returned — slithering out of village ponds, swimming pools, even bath pipes — the fate of the British population was sealed.And there was no more horrifying way to die ....

The Shadow over Innsmouth


H.P. Lovecraft - 1936
    P. Lovecraft. It forms part of the Cthulhu Mythos, using its motif of a malign undersea civilization. It references several shared elements of the Mythos, including place-names, mythical creatures and invocations.

Little Girls


Ronald Malfi - 2015
    It was one of many rules imposed by her cold, distant father. Now, in a final act of desperation, her father has exorcised his demons. But when Laurie returns to claim the estate with her husband and ten-year-old daughter, it’s as if the past refuses to die. She feels it lurking in the broken moldings, sees it staring from an empty picture frame, hears it laughing in the moldy greenhouse deep in the woods…At first, Laurie thinks she’s imagining things. But when she meets her daughter’s new playmate, Abigail, she can’t help but notice her uncanny resemblance to another little girl who used to live next door. Who died next door. With each passing day, Laurie’s uneasiness grows stronger, her thoughts more disturbing. Like her father, is she slowly losing her mind? Or is something truly unspeakable happening to those sweet little girls?

Dead Silence


S.A. Barnes - 2022
    Barnes’ Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.A GHOST SHIP.A SALVAGE CREW.UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

Doll House


John Hunt - 2017
    She will be on her own, in a new place hopeful to meet new friends. On the night she moves in, she is taken off the street by two masked men. She is placed in a room which is little more than a cell. A pink cell. A room made for a doll. She is now part of their collection.

Sick Bastards


Matt Shaw - 2014
    There is gore. There is bad language. There are scenes of a sexual nature. But hidden underneath it all is also a chilling story. Please do not purchase this book if you are easily shocked, disgusted or offended. This book is not for you. A family will do anything to survive after a nuclear attack has left their world in ruins. Actions which even surprise them...

Near the Bone


Christina Henry - 2021
    She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realizes that they're not alone after all.There's something in the woods that wasn't there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws.When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.

The Haunted Vagina


Carlton Mellick III - 2006
    Unfortunately, their sex life has been suffering as of late, because Steve is worried about the odd noises that have been coming from Stacy's pubic region. She says that her vagina is haunted. She doesn't think it's that big of a deal. Steve, on the other hand, completely disagrees. When a living corpse climbs out of her during an awkward night of sex, Stacy learns that her vagina is actually a doorway to another world. She persuades Steve to climb inside of her to explore this strange new place. But once inside, Steve finds it difficult to return... especially once he meets an oddly attractive woman named Fig, who lives within the lonely haunted world between Stacy's legs.

The Wine-Dark Sea


Robert Aickman - 1988
    Unlike much of the current form, full of blood, monsters and melodrama, Aickman's stories achieve a quieter, more subtle and, in several ways, more lasting sense of disquiet. His lucid, finely tuned prose moves imperceptibly from the small crises and celebrations of ordinary life into another sphere. In these 11 stories, the occasion may be a walking tour of Northern England, a birthday present of a Victorian dollhouse or a stay at a Swedish sanatorium for insomniacs, but it simultaneously traps the characters with dread and opens them up to a new awareness of a greater, deeper and more dangerous world. A remarkable collection by an author who deserves to be better known.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Human Flesh


Nick Clausen - 2019
    A rational explanation for what happened has still not been presented. Now, for the first time, all the available written evidence is being released to the public from what is commonly know as the Freyston case.Human Flesh was originally published in Danish to great reviews, and is now available in English. This dark winter horror story will also satisfy crime lovers, as the plot is told through written evidence in a fictitious murder case. For fans of Hannibal Lecter and Pet Sematary. REVIEWS "great, mysterious and creepy ... I couldn't put it down"★★★★★ Adventures of a Book Nerd"all the planning it must have taken to put the story together is impressive. And the effect is enormous. It gave me chills and I still feel it"★★★★★ Bookish Love Affair EXCERPT “Has he had any other episodes since then?” I asked.“A bunch,” Martin said. “Most of the time he’s just gone for a couple of seconds or so. My dad has been keeping an eye on him ever since that New Year’s Eve.”“Then why do you think it’s PTSD?”“Because it always happens in the winter. I think the cold reminds him of your grandma and—” Martin broke off at this point and threw a look at me. “You know how she died, right?”I nodded.“He never told anyone around here about it,” Martin went on. “We only know the story through rumors. How did he say she died exactly?”I was kind of surprised Martin would ask me that directly. I told him she died from cold in a cabin they had come by to seek shelter.“From cold,” he repeated thoughtfully.“Yes, from cold,” I said. “What else would she have died from?”Martin bit his lip. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk anymore about it.”“It’s kind of too late now,” I said.“All right, listen. You might as well hear it from me. There are certain rumors going about. Some people think your grandpa killed your grandma.”It honestly made me laugh. “That’s ridiculous. He loved her more than anything.” When Martin didn’t reply, I crossed my arms and asked him: “Why on earth would he have killed her?”“To survive, of course. There was this whole case concerning the plane crash. Your grandpa was detained by the Canadian police for like three months before he was allowed to return home. He was the sole survivor, so no one could really confirm what he said had happened.”“Why would that need to be confirmed? He had nothing to lie about!”“The police apparently thought your grandma was murdered by someone. They never found her body, you know. I guess that’s kind of weird.”“Yeah, well, it doesn’t mean he killed her,” I told him—I probably sounded pretty angry by now, because I was.“Listen, I’m on your side,” he said. “I’m just telling you what people are saying. I’ve known your grandpa my whole life, and I don’t think for a second he could hurt anyone.

Come Closer


Sara Gran - 2003
    A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane? Described as “a new kind of psychological thriller” by George Pelecanos and “this year's scariest novel” by Time Out New York, Come Closer has become a modern classic “with a kick that will stay with the reader for days afterward” (The Dallas Morning News).

The Hollows


Mark Edwards - 2021
    Desperate to spend precious time together now that they live an ocean apart, he brings her to Hollow Falls, a cabin resort deep in the woods of Maine.From the outset there’s something a little eerie about the place—strange whispers in the trees, windchimes echoing through the forest—but when Tom meets true-crime podcasters David and Connie, he receives a chilling warning. Hollow Falls has a gruesome history: twenty years ago this week, a double slaying shut down the resort. The crime was never solved, and now the woods are overrun with murder-obsessed tourists looking to mark the grim anniversary.It’s clear that there’s something deeply disturbing going on at Hollow Falls. And as Tom’s dream trip turns into a nightmare, he and Frankie are faced with a choice: uncover the truth, or get out while they still can.

Kill Creek


Scott Thomas - 2017
    For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

This Thing Between Us


Gus Moreno - 2021
    The "world's most advanced smart speaker!" didn't interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house—who ordered industrial lye? Then there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed, and Thiago's world became unbearable. Pundits and politicians all looking to turn his wife's death into a symbol for their own agendas. A barrage of texts from her well-meaning friends about letting go and moving on. Waking to the sound of Itza talking softly to someone in the living room...The only thing left to do was get far away from Chicago. Away from everything and everyone. A secluded cabin in Colorado seemed like the perfect place to hole up with his crushing grief. But soon Thiago realizes there is no escape—not from his guilt, not from his simmering rage, and not from the evil hunting him, feeding on his grief, determined to make its way into this world.A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness and the oppressive intimacy of technology, This Thing Between Us marks the arrival of a spectacular new talent.