Literary Horror

Alexander Cleave, actor, has left his career and his family behind and banished himself to his childhood home. He wants to retire from life, but finds this impossible in a house brimming with presences, some ghostly, some undeniably human. Memories, anxiety for the future, and more particularly, for his beloved but troubled daughter, conspire to distract him from his dreaming retirement.

Lee Amaranth is a mystic, not a mage. In fact, he’s never cast a spell in his life...With his sister missing, however, he has no choice but to go on a search that leads him to the locked gates of Primhaven University, a school forbidden to those untouched by arcane potential...Luckily, if he plays his cards right, he might just have some help. It’s up to Lee to decide who to place his trust in as he formulates a plan to fake his way through classes and exams.

Of all the ghostly lore that bedevils Sleepy Hollow, none terrifies more than the galloping spectre of the Headless Horseman. Few in the haunted glen are as susceptible to the tale as the superstitious schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. But just as bewitching - and bewildering - to Ichabod is the elusive coquette Katrina Van Tassel. On an autumn eve, Ichabod attends a harvest party, hoping to finally woo the woman of his dreams. Instead, he sees his worst nightmares come true.

The outbreak tore the US in two. The East remains a safe haven. The West has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other: He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

In the dawning years of the 20th century, Bessie Daniels leaves her home town of Hot Springs and travels east over the mountains to live with her new husband Fletcher Elliott in the Broad River section of North Carolina. In 1906, they purchase 400 acres of the old Zachariah Solomon Plantation which includes a small house with a shack beside it, a branch of Cedar Creek and a row of dilapidated slave cabins... And ghosts.

Ashley was just trying to get through a tough day when the world turned upside down. A terrifying virus appears, quickly becoming a pandemic that leaves its victims, not dead, but far worse. Attacked by zombies, Ashley discovers that she is a "Wild-Card" - immune to the virus - and she is recruited to fight back and try to control the outbreak.

For more than 100 years, creative souls have traveled to the Bosco estate to live and work under its captivating spell. Novelist Ellis Brooks is writing a book based on the dark events that took place during the summer of 1893. All she knows is that the wealthy Milo Latham brought in a psychic medium to help his wife contact their three dead children - only to have the seance turn deadly and his remaining child abducted. As Ellis uncovers the Latham family's dark secrets, a series of bizarre accidents occurs.

As a forensic psychiatrist at New York's leading institution of its kind, Dr. Lily Dominick has evaluated the mental states of some of the country's most dangerous psychotics. But the strangely compelling client she interviewed today - a man with no name, accused of the most twisted crime - struck her as somehow different from the others, despite the two impossible claims he made.

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, torn apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances: in their house, on the roadway, in the market. Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family's vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life, that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye.

Poison-tongued film critic Reginald Wright is known for his creative insults and intolerance for the garbage culture, insufferable rudeness, and thoughtless racism of predictably common people. Now, against his better judgment, and with a marriage in crisis, he’s attempting a getaway in the Poconos that quickly fulfills his every low expectation. In fact, it’s becoming a nightmare. And that’s just what Reginald needs to wake up.

A startlingly remarkable novel set in 1984 where a group of teenagers begin to discover powerful secrets about themselves, and learn that the only way to create their own future is to break away from previous generations.They call it the plague. A generation of children born with extreme genetic mutations. They call it a home. But it's a place of neglect and forced labor. They call him a freak. But Dog is just a boy who wants to be treated as normal. They call them dangerous. They might be right.

When occult enthusiast Sir Giles Tumulty comes into possession of a stone known as the Crown of Solomon, he is amazed at its startling powers. It can replicate itself infinitely, and can transport its holder to any place or time. Sir Giles and his nephew Reginald, an opportunistic businessman, conspire to exploit their new treasure. Seeking to enlist honest Lord Arglay in their plans, Arglay quickly realizes what is at stake. Unlimited power should not fall into the wrong hands...and it already had....

Brian Evenson's fifth story collection constructs a human landscape as unearthly as it is mundane. Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to listeners of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it.

Continuing to mark 100 years since Mervyn Peake’s birth, Naxos AudioBooks releases the second novel in the cycle series. Gormenghast follows protagonist Titus (now the 77th earl of Gormenghast) from the age of seven to 17 and describes his desire to break free from the physical and psychological constraints of the castle. Meanwhile, the Machiavellian Steerpike continues his dastardly rise to power. But will he succeed?

David Binder is a young, successful writer living in Chicago and suffering from writer's block. He stares at the blank page, and the blank page stares back - until inspiration strikes in the form of a ghost story that captivated him as a child. With his pregnant wife and young daughter in tow, he sets out to explore the myth of Virginia Beale, Faery Queen of the Haunted Dell.

Night falls. It came like a malignant shadow with seductive promises of power. And somewhere in the night...a small girl smiled as her mother burned...asylum inmates slaughtered their attendants...in slimy tunnels once-human creatures gathered. Madness raged as the lights began to fade and humanity was attacked by an ancient, unstoppable evil.

Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, 10-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire.

Was Frankenstein Author Mary Shelley Cursed? Mind-body and past life regression expert Dr. Shelley Kaehr shares her extensive research into the life of Mary Shelley and discusses parallels between Shelley’s personal history and the fictional details portrayed in her masterpiece, Frankenstein. Dr. Kaehr discusses the power of our intentions and asks readers to decide whether forces of darkness cursed Mary Shelley or if a sad upbringing and unfortunate circumstances sealed her fate.

Among the ancient artifacts concealed in a London Victorian mansion lies an ornate human-sized sarcophagus which houses the body of an ancient Egyptian sorceress dead for centuries...or is she?

The fourth of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, Lord of the Horizon, the sequel to Eyes of Horus, is set in Egypt at the close of the dark XIth dynasty and is a profound commentary on the power of fear and the unlimited ability of light to shatter it. Lord of the Horizon is the story of Ra-ab Hotep, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx. Ra-ab is 21 as the story begins. The dawn for which Ra-ab and the Watchers of the Horizon fought in Eyes of Horus has come, but to "Send Fear into Exile", as the Watchers' password promised, proves difficult.