Book picks similar to
The Men from Porlock by Laird Barron


horror
weird-fiction
short-stories-novellas
horror-thriller

Agents of Dreamland


Caitlín R. Kiernan - 2017
    Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation, but which haunts the Signalman.In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible—the Children of the Next Level—and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming and they will help to usher it in.A day after the events at the ranch house which disturbed the Signalman so deeply that he and his government sought out help from ‘other’ sources, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory abruptly loses contact with NASA’s interplanetary probe New Horizons. Something out beyond the orbit of Pluto has made contact.And a woman floating outside of time looks to the future and the past for answers to what can save humanity.

Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly


Dennis Detwiller - 2011
    government's 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green's leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day; but often at a shattering personal cost. "Ten years ago, everything changed. It's time you found out how. It's January 2001.The Delta Green agents code-named Cyrus and Charlie get the call: A young boy dead and buried for years has reappeared, healthy and happy, as if no time at all had passed and the disease that killed him had never been. The family thinks it's a miracle, but Delta Green has seen too many miracles turn to madness. Cyrus and Charlie must discover what horrors lurk behind this one. The mission brings them to the brink of apocalypse -- to the edge of the revelation and destruction of Delta Green -- to secrets and terrors at the heart of reality itself.

Sour Candy


Kealan Patrick Burke - 2015
    They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat together overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.

The Haunting of Creeping Fog Manor


Cat Knight - 2020
    Her instinct told her not to. It would have been better for her if she had listened. Dee didn’t know the history of the manor house, except that it was a steal a for house flipper and she really would be foolish to pass it up.  Sure a few things were on the blink, but that was to be expected.  The strange noises she put it down to ‘old houses’ and the cold spots, probably just normal –but when the house comes alive with paranormal activity Dee knows she is in trouble. As the stakes ramp up blood is drawn and the life of Dee and her friend hang in the balance.  Can Dee find the answers to Creeping Fog Manor and put the old house to rest or will the Manor claim its next victim?If you read stories in the occult, occultism, horror, supernatural and paranormal genres then add these to your reading list.

Nightmares


Matt Shaw - 2019
    He travels around the country meeting with criminals to discuss what is on their minds and assess whether they're ready for a possible parole hearing. It was once a job with meaning; to help those whom needed it the most. A belief he held right up until the moment the prisoners' crimes followed him home, stuck in his own mind. The worst of the criminals he'd met was Billy-Ray. He'd plagued his dreams and his waking hours since the moment they'd met. This monster. The one man who'd managed to convince Jamie he had been reformed from his time in prison. The one man whose own murder-spree - done after his early release from his cell - haunted Jamie the most...

Tidepool


Nicole Willson - 2021
    Defying her father’s orders to remain at home, she travels to Tidepool, the last place Henry is known to have visited. Residents of the small, shabby oceanside town can’t quite meet Sorrow’s eyes when she asks about her brother.When corpses wash up on shore looking as if they’ve been torn apart by something not quite human, Sorrow is ready to return to Baltimore and let her father send in the professional detectives.However, after meeting Ada Oliver, a widow whose black silk dresses and elegant manners set her apart from other Tidepool residents, Sorrow discovers Tidepool’s dark, deadly secret.With this discovery, some denizens of Tidepool—human and otherwise—are hell-bent on making sure Sorrow never leaves their forsaken town.Lovecraftian dark fantasy gets a modern treatment in this terrifying debut novel.

The Pilo Family Circus


Will Elliott - 2006
    You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?"Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place—peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous—where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself. When he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead!

The Lovecraft Anthology, Volume 1


H.P. LovecraftMark Stafford - 2011
    From cosmic horrors gibbering in the night to uneasy stirrings in the boundless depths beneath the seas, Lovecraft's stories have never lost their power to amaze and unnerve. This graphic anthology breathes new life into classic works of weird fiction.

The Graveyard Rats


Henry Kuttner - 1936
    they had other plans... (note: very short story!)

Lovecraft's Legacy: A Centennial Celebration of H.P. Lovecraft


Robert E. WeinbergGahan Wilson - 1990
    Lovecraft is one of the most influential modern horror writers. Lovecraft's fiction is a category unto itself. Eschewing the traditional werewolves, vampires, and ghosts of most horror fiction, he wrote of dread Elder Gods and cosmic, earth-shattering horrors. Lovecraft mined rich veins of terror uniquely his own, and wherever in the known and unknown universe his imagination sped, readers followed—fascinated, enrapt, and terrified by the scope of his dark vision.More than fifty years after his death, Lovecraft's fiction continues to influence each new generation of horror readers…and writers. Lovecraft's Legacy collects 13 stories by critically-acclaimed, award-winning horror and dark fantasy writers, including F. Paul Wilson, Brian Lumley, Gene Wolfe, and Gahan Wilson. With an introduction by Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, this splendid anthology pays well-deserved homage to the late, great master of the weird tale.

Night Train


Thomas F. Monteleone - 1984
    Now the final nightmare must explode. Now the killing frenzy must begin...

...Walkers


Gary Brandner - 1980
    But she was brought back to life!That's when people began trying to kill her...nice people...the last people in the world anyone would suspect of being capable of murder--people who were already dead......Walkers: The most terrifying novel you've ever read!

The Cthulhu Child


David Brian - 2013
    Nevertheless, it is often whispered by those who claim knowledge of such things, that a number of these Elder Gods - the lower rank and file, if you will - decided to hold this ground, so enamored were they by the cults who spilled blood in their names.Those times are all but forgotten, obscured by the shifting mists of history.Fast forward to today, and a wrong turn on a country lane is about to expose Jennifer Bueller, and her daughter Megan, to an unpleasant truth: Yes, times have changed, but ancient deities will adapt in order to thrive.Abandoned space gods, an unfaithful husband, a sociopath rapist, and a broken society with a social welfare system that presents horrors of its own; lastly, though by no means least in this eclectic collection of stories, a flash fiction homage to James Herbert, featuring his most infamous creation.

Hammers on Bone


Cassandra Khaw - 2016
    He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe


Kij Johnson - 2016
    When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her.But the journey sends her on a quest across the Dreamlands and into her own mysterious past, where some secrets were never meant to surface.