Book picks similar to
The Tainted Souls by Shaun Hutson
horror
shaw-matt
looking-for
icky
Beast
Peter Benchley - 1991
One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal—or whether it will get him first.
The Amulet
William Meikle - 2005
Fast money, and a way to kill some time-something Derek Adams, a down-on-his-luck Glasgow private investigator, has way too much of. Recover a stolen family heirloom, and try to keep the relationship with his very beautiful-and very married-client, strictly professional. Easy. But the Johnson Amulet is no mere trinket...and Derek isn't the only person trying to find the priceless relic. Before long he's up to his armpits in bodies, femme fatales... and tentacles. The stars have aligned... An ancient evil has awakened.To save the day, Derek must take some dark pathways, and not everyone is going to make it back out into the light.
Earthcore
Scott Sigler - 2001
A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ...and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.
Stinger
Robert R. McCammon - 1988
Inferno is a town in trouble, driven to the brink by racial tension, gang violence, and a collapsing economy. But things can always get worse, and they do so with astonishing speed when an unidentified spacecraft crash lands in the desert outside of town, followed by a second craft bearing the alien being who will soon be known as Stinger. Stinger is a kind of interstellar hunter on a mission he intends to complete, whatever the cost. He brings with him an endless array of technological marvels and an infinite capacity for destruction that threaten the existence of Inferno, its inhabitants, and the larger world beyond"--Dust jacket flap.
The Pilot
Michael R. Cole - 2019
But upon arrival, they discover ravaged military equipment, a mass grave, and a platoon of hostile forces already in retreat. As the team investigates, they uncover the secret that the island has contained for centuries. For the first time, modern man will come face-to-face with a being from beyond the stars. A member of a deadly intergalactic invasive species, the beast is ravenous, cunning, lacking emotion or empathy. With his team dwindling, Seymour must fight to keep the beast from leaving the island, and to save humanity from the terrifying extraterrestrial known as The Pilot.
Dweller
Jeff Strand - 2010
His parents convinced the terrified child it was only his imagination. The next time Toby saw the creature he was a lonely, unhappy teenager without friends.But the creature would be his friend. It would be there when Toby needed someone to talk to. And it would take care of the bullies who wouldn’t leave Toby alone. After all, the creature needed to eat.And during their macabre, decades-long friendship, there will be other meals...
Long Black Coffin
Tim Curran - 2012
A street-eater and a life-taker. Like an open grave, it's hungry for death.Vic Tamberlyn committed suicide in it. His son Kurt asphyxiated in it. Maybe there's no connection, but Kurt's best friend, Johnny Breede, doesn't believe it. He begins seeing dark connections, convinced that beneath the skin of the Coffin there beats a black, terrible heart. But it's even worse than he can imagine.For the Long Black Coffin has a history. And that history will lead Johnny into a web of murder, insanity, and sexual perversion. He'll learn gruesome family secrets that connect a decade-old series of child abductions to a primordial evil that lives on in the car in the form of a sadistic teenage girl.A girl whose mother was human, but whose father was anything but.
Crystal
Susan Hill - 2012
Sent to a parish in England, he makes a decision which has consequences as momentous as his initial mistake. A poignant story of how yielding to impulse can be as devastating as leaving things alone…
City Under the Moon
Hugh Sterbakov - 2012
You want more thrill from a thriller?" - Seth Green On New Year's Eve in Manhattan, a werewolf attack sparks an epidemic. Each night the victims multiply. The disease spreads. An army grows. As authorities scramble to contain the monsters, they discover that one man is behind them. His name is Demetrius Valenkov. And he has a message for the United States: FIND A CURE. The disease evades an international coalition of top scientists. The president must prepare an unspeakable solution. But one person has picked up Demetrius Valenkov's trail: FBI counterterrorism specialist Brianna Tildascow. Forged by tragedy, training and technology, she's the government's most efficient-and ruthless-manhunter. Assisted by a horror blogger and a squad of elite commandos, Tildascow must hunt Valenkov across the globe and uncover the sinister secret of the curse threatening mankind. Tens of thousands are infected. Time is running out. CITY UNDER THE MOON A dramatic and realistic modern adventure set against a timeless superstition, CITY UNDER THE MOON is unlike any thriller you've ever read: Four hundred and fifty pages of unrelenting action propelled by rich characters and keen detail. For more information and a sample, please visit CityUnderTheMoon.com. This is the debut novel by Hugh Sterbakov, Emmy-nominated and Annie Award-winning writer of Robot Chicken, the award-winning graphic novel Freshmen, and feature and TV scripts for Disney, Paramount, AMC, SyFy and Fox.
The Wicked Ones: Children of the Lost
J.Z. Foster - 2018
FosterYou know, the best thing about nightmares is that they're not real. It's all just in your head, and as soon as you wake up, pop!
It's all gone. You're safe.
It's not like they could crawl out, creeping from your mind with long, slender fingers and milky yellow eyes sunken into heads with pointed horns bursting out.
That'd just be insane.
Daniel Tanner's life is insane. A mysterious disease came to claim his son, seemingly pulling him into the grave with cold fingers named misery and hopelessness.Now a stranger has come calling with an even stranger tale of monsters—horrible things that take children in the middle of the night and leave their own, things that crawled out of the fairy tales our barbarous ancestors used to tell, things that they tried to warn us about.
We didn't listen.
Because monsters aren't real, are they? There's no reason to fear the dark, no reason at all to believe the old tales about creatures with a taste for human meat.
That would be insane... wouldn't it?
Shutter
Courtney Alameda - 2015
As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual: the corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film. She's aided by her crew: Oliver, a techno-whiz and the boy who developed her camera's technology; Jude, who can predict death; and Ryder, the boy Micheline has known and loved forever.When a routine ghost hunt goes awry, Micheline and the boys are infected with a curse known as a soulchain.As the ghostly chains spread through their bodies, Micheline learns that if she doesn't exorcise her entity in seven days or less, she and her friends will die. Now pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, Leonard Helsing, she must track and destroy an entity more powerful than anything she's faced before . . . or die trying.Lock, stock, and lens, she’s in for one hell of a week.
Moondeath
Rick Hautala - 1981
But when darkness falls and the full moon rises, an uneasy feeling filters through the air; an unnerving foreboding that causes the skin to prickle and the body to tense.Because faintly, from across the water, a low moaning howl begins to rise and a massive black shadow with burning green eyes stalks the night. It is part man, part beast -- a victim of the past, a creature of evil -- who hungers for flesh, thirsts for blood, and lives to kill ... again and again and again...
TRANSFORMED
David Burkett - 2019
Hours later, five gang members are slaughtered in ways that defy explanation. The scenes and autopsy details lead detectives Lucy Granger and Ronnie Connors toward a startling and unbelievable conclusion. As bodies continue to pile up, it becomes clear that they are facing an opponent unlike anyone . . . or anything . . . they have ever faced before. From the author of CREATURES, comes a new concept in horror. TRANSFORMED takes you on a white-knuckle ride that will keep you reading well into the night.
Slithers
W.W. Mortensen - 2017
On a remote country road, heading out to a weekend party, Tobe West and his friends pick up two hitchhikers. It seems like the right thing to do. No-one could have predicted the freak car accident that is about to change their lives. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, Tobe and the others are faced with a landscape suddenly unfamiliar, in a universe that has come loose from its moorings. Strange things slither in the woods, and spectral lights hover just off the road. A petrol station, shining brightly in a world otherwise dark and frightening, promises safe haven, but Tobe learns the biggest threat lies within the very people he’s trying to protect. As reality breaks down and dangers multiply, Tobe must uncover the hidden agenda of one of the survivors... and keep the others safe from something lurking in the darkness. Something that is hunting them all. If they are to survive the night, Tobe must face the horrifying truth—that nothing is as it seems, and that they are all part of a larger plan, part of someone else's unfinished business...
Predator: Hunters
Chris Warner - 2018
Now a group of survivors of those visits have begun a hunt of their own. This is the year that humanity turns the tables on the Predators!When Enoch Nakai is recruited by a privately funded group of former soldiers, drug runners, and FBI agents to investigate the killers from beyond the stars, he sees it as a chance to strike back at the creatures who derailed his life. But the team's destination--a South Pacific island paradise--hides a terror no one expects!