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The Scary Truth About Horror Reviews |
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These horror books were mentioned during the HWA Librarians' Day "The Scary Truth About Horror Reviews" panel, featuring Danielle Trussoni, Becky Spratford and Sadie Hartmann. Moderated by Ashley Rayner. Librarians' Day, debuting online November 2020, is a collaboration between the HWA and ARRT, and is sponsored by NoveList, LibraryReads, and Flame Tree Press. Authors mentioned: Anne Rice Agatha Christie Patricia Cornwell |
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'Salem's Lot
by Stephen King
When a writer returns to his Maine home town, he discovers that the peaceful hamlet is being overrun by vampires and sets out to curb this ancient evil before it can spread.
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Pet Sematary : A Novel
by Stephen King
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Yet despite Ludlow's tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creeds' beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing ... as is evidenced by the makeshift pet cemetary in the nearby woods. Then there are the warnings to Louis, both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there - one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. An ominous fate befalls anyone who dares to tamper with this forbidden place, as Louis is about to discover himself. As the story unfolds, so does a nightmare of the supernatural, one so relentless you might not want to continue reading but will be unable to stop.
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The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
In D.C. to shoot a film, adored film star Chris MacNeil finds her stay turning into a nightmare when her young daughter, Regan, is possessed by the devil and must endure a brutal exorcism.
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A Head Full of Ghosts
by Paul Tremblay
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of what at first seems to be acute schizophrenia, a condition which only gets worse, leading them to believe it's actually demonic possession, as they become the center of a reality TV show.
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The Tenant
by Roland Topor
The Tenant chronicles a harrowing descent into madness as Mr. Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, a suicide victim whose presence still saturates Mr. Trelkovsky's new apartment. The novel probes the depths of guilt and obsession.
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Fugue State : Stories
by Brian Evenson
Illustrated by graphic novelist Zak Sally, Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.
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Carrie
by Stephen King
An introverted girl with remarkable powers of telekinesis faces the horrors of teenage life and unleashes a few horrors of her own when she attends the high school prom.
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Flowers in the attic
by V. C. Andrews
The four Dollanganger children move to their grandparents house with their mother. But things are not as they seem. Their mother then locks them in an abandoned wing of the large house and tells them it's only for a few days.
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Where the Sidewalk Ends : The poems & drawings of Shel Silverstein
by Shel Silverstein
A boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale are only two of the characters in a collection of humorous poetry illustrated with the author's own drawings.
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The house with a clock in its walls
by John Bellairs
A boy goes to live with his magician uncle in a mansion that has a clock hidden in the walls which is ticking off the minutes until doomsday.
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Survivor Song : A Novel
by Paul Tremblay
When Massachusetts is overrun by a rabies-like virus that is incurable an hour after infection, a soft-spoken pediatrician navigates apocalyptic obstacles to get a vaccine to her eight-months pregnant friend. By the award-winning author of Growing Things.
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The Only Good Indians : A Novel
by Stephen Graham Jones
Four American Indian men, who shared a disturbing event during their youth, are hunted down years later by an entity bent on revenge that forces them to revisit the culture and traditions they left behind.
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The Ancestor : A Novel
by Danielle Trussoni
Inheriting a noble title, money and a castle in Italy, Alberta “Bert” Monte believes this sudden windfall is a dream come true until she arrives in Italy and unravels a dark legacy of ancestral treasures that is in her very genes.
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The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories
by Various
Spanning two hundred years of horror, this new collection features seventeen macabre gems, including two original tales and many others that have never or seldom been reprinted, by: Charles Birkin • John Blackburn • Michael Blumlein • Mary Cholmondeley • Hugh Fleetwood • Stephen Gregory • Gerald Kersh • Francis King • M. G. Lewis • Florence Marryat • Richard Marsh • Michael McDowell • Christopher Priest • Forrest Reid • Bernard Taylor • Hugh Walpole 'The things were there and they were hiding in the slime; waiting . . . waiting to clutch and claw and savage’ - AUNTY GREEN by John Blackburn ‘The sound that came from her throat, a small, pleading cry of terror, was cut off before she’d hardly had a chance to utter it’ - OUT OF SORTS by Bernard Taylor ‘The words filled her with an indescribable fear, and she turned to run; but her way was blocked by a figure, gigantic in stature – and its monstrous shape moved towards her, and she knew it was the incarnation of evil itself ’ - THE TERROR ON TOBIT by Charles Birkin
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Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan
by Usman T. Malik
From the winner of The British Fantasy Award From the winner of The Bram Stoker Award * A Lahori orphanage for girls is haunted by birds and eerie visions. * Two lovers are set adrift amidst rising floodwaters in 1960s Old Lahore * A woman chaperoning a school trip to the ruins of a pre-Islamic city in Sind faces ancient horrors as boys go missing and the fog rolls in. With a meticulously designed cover and beautiful black-and-white illustrations by seven different Pakistani artists, Midnight Doorways is a unique community project highlighting the scope of speculative art and literature in Pakistan.
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The Loop
by Jeremy Robert Johnson
A biotech experiment gone wrong renders a small western Oregon tourist town the epicenter of an inexplicable outbreak that causes infected patients to turn murderous, challenging a small group of outcasts to survive a violent night.
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Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus : The 1818 text
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The most celebrated horror story ever written. The dreadful tale of Victor Frankenstein, a visionary young student of natural philosophy, who discovers the secret of life. In the grip of his obsession he constructs and animates a creature from dead body parts - with catastrophic results.
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Dracula
by Bram Stoker
The classic horror tale of the powerful, centuries-old vampire follows his bloodthirsty trail from the mountains of Central Europe to England, until Dr. Van Helsing comes up with a way to end his reign of terror.
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The Luminous Dead : A Novel
by Caitlin Starling
"When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she'd be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck - enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother - meant she'd get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre's body with drugs or withholding critical information to "ensure the smooth operation" of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre's falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash - and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies - missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em's motivations - drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, her control giving way to paranoia and anger, Gyre severs her connection with Em and the outside world. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive - she must confront the ghosts in her own head. But how come she can't shake the feeling she's being followed?"--Publisher description
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Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel follows the experiences of a courageous socialite in 1950s Mexico who is drawn into the treacherous secrets of an isolated mansion. By the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow.
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Along the Path of Torment
by Chandler Morrison
Ty Seward is a sick man. Anorexic, sexually aberrant, and haunted by a ghostly apparition residing in his closet. Living in the shadow of an in-remission cancer he fully expects to return, Ty bitterly earns his meager living by working as an assistant to his uncle, a business-and-media mogul who runs a lucrative child prostitution ring catering to the Hollywood elite. When Ty’s line of work introduces him to a precocious teenage girl who seems to possess a shrewdly keen insight into his inner machinations, he is forced to confront his hidden demons and repressed trauma, embarking on a bleak and harrowing odyssey of self-discovery in the decomposing City of Angels.
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Castaways
by Brian Keene
When a group of people come to a lush, deserted island to compete on a popular reality TV show, they soon discover that they are being eliminated from the game permanently and violently when they fall victim to the monstrous half-human creatures that live in the jungle. .
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Lovecraft Country : A Novel
by Matt Ruff
Blends multiple genres in a visceral exploration of the Jim Crow era and its legacy, tracing the story of young Army vet Atticus Turner, who in 1954 Chicago travels with his publisher uncle and childhood friend to search for his missing father only to encounter human and supernatural terrors at the estate of a descendant of slave owners.
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Ring Shout : or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the end times
by P. Djèlí Clark
A dark-fantasy, historical novella from the award-winning author of The Black God’s Drums follows a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter as they fight a supernatural Ku Klux Klan in Macon, Georgia in the early 20th century.
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Tiny Nightmares : Very short tales of horror
by Lincoln Michel
"In this playful, inventive collection, leading literary and horror writers spin chilling tales in only a few pages. Each slim, fast-moving story brings to life the kind of monsters readers love to fear, from brokenhearted vampires to Uber-taking serial killers and mind-reading witches. But what also makes Tiny Nightmares so bloodcurdling-and unforgettable-are the real-world horrors that writers such as Samantha Hunt, Brian Evenson, Jac Jemc, Stephen Graham Jones, Lilliam Rivera, Kevin Brockmeier, and Rion Amilcar Scott weave into their fictions, exploring how global warming, racism, social media addiction, and homelessness are just as frightening as, say, a vampire's fangs sinking into your neck."
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The Rust Maidens
by Gwendolyn Kiste
It’s the summer of 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio, and Phoebe Shaw and her best friend Jacqueline have just graduated high school, only to confront an ugly, uncertain future. Across the city, abandoned factories populate the skyline; meanwhile at the shore, one strong spark, and the Cuyahoga River might catch fire. But none of that compares to what’s happening in their own west side neighborhood. The girls Phoebe and Jacqueline have grown up with are changing. It starts with footprints of dark water on the sidewalk. Then, one by one, the girls’ bodies wither away, their fingernails turning to broken glass, and their bones exposed like corroded metal beneath their flesh.
As rumors spread about the grotesque transformations, soon everyone from nosy tourists to clinic doctors and government men start arriving on Denton Street, eager to catch sight of “the Rust Maidens” in metamorphosis. But even with all the onlookers, nobody can explain what’s happening or why—except perhaps the Rust Maidens themselves. Whispering in secret, they know more than they’re telling, and Phoebe realizes her former friends are quietly preparing for something that will tear their neighborhood apart.
Alternating between past and present, Phoebe struggles to unravel the mystery of the Rust Maidens—and her own unwitting role in the transformations—before she loses everything she’s held dear: her home, her best friend, and even perhaps her own body.
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Boneset and Feathers
by Gwendolyn Kiste
You don't know their fire is coming until it's too late. That's exactly the way the witchfinders like it. As an isolated enchantress, Odette knows this too well--she lost nearly her whole family to the last round of executions, barely escaping with her own life. All the magic she could conjure wasn't enough to protect her mother and sister, a burden that leaves a despondent Odette practically wishing she'd burned with the rest. Now it's five years later, and as the last witch left from her village, Odette has exiled herself to the nearby woods where she's sworn off all magic, hoping instead for quiet and for safety. But no witch has ever been permitted a peaceful life. It starts with crows tumbling out of the clouds and spectral voices on the wind that won't leave her alone. Then there are those midnight visits to the graveyard that she can't quite remember in the morning and the strange children following her everywhere she goes. Odette wants to forget magic, but her magic doesn't want to forget her. Meanwhile, the former friends she left behind in the village are cowering together, hiding from the ghostly birds they believe she's sent to torment them for abandoning her. But that's only the beginning of their problems, as Odette soon discovers their worst nightmare is about to come true--the witchfinders are returning. And this time, the decree is clear: to burn the witch that got away. With the men drawing nearer to the village, Odette must face the whispers from the dead and confront her fear of her own growing power if she wants any chance of stopping the army of witchfinders determined to rid the countryside of magic once and for all.
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