Xiahou Dun posted:

Some of those look pretty interesting and I'd be down for a trip-report when you make some progress if you don't mind.

I really like "In the Woods, We Wait" as a title. Is this the author any good? A quick google gave me that he has a recent novel out "Those Below the Treehouse" which looks like a kind of coming-of-age plant(?) zombie(?) thing maybe? So could be trash but could be trash in a good way? Anyone heard of any of these?

quote:

For generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color. Landscape paintings, trompe l’oeil quilts, decorated dolls, mixed-media assemblages, and more, all featuring the same peculiar hue, a shifting pigment somewhere between purple and pink, the color of the saltmarsh orchid, a rare and indigenous flower.
Graduate student Xavier Wentworth has been drawn to Shimmer, hoping to study the work of artists like quilter Hazel Whitby and landscape painter Shadrach Grayson in detail, having experienced something akin to an epiphany when viewing a Hazel Whitby tapestry as a child. Xavier will find that others, too, have been drawn to Shimmer, called by something more than art, something in the marsh itself, a mysterious, spectral hue.

quote:

"The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself as women have begun giving birth to babies that appear to be a primitive species of human. When rumors start of Congress rounding up and confining pregnant women, Cedar Hawk Songmaker will do anything to keep herself and her unborn baby safe."

quote:

In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. These remote hills of the Smoky Mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family’s personal god, an entity known as Ghostdaddy.

Fifteen years later, after a tragic incident had caused her to flee, Stella–now a professional moonshiner and bootleger–returns for Motty’s funeral, only to discover a mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny living on the property. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could ever imagine–and a direct link to Stella’s buried past and her family’s destructive faith.

ravenkult posted:

Have you read Lost Signals, Lost Films and the latest one, Lost Contact?

Bilirubin posted:

Thanks for this, put a few of these on my list to seek out sometime

quote:

Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping.

Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by the messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. And for some reason, Martin never takes off his sunglasses.

Unsurprisingly, no one believes their horrific tales until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these likely-insane outcasts join a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within and which are lurking in plain sight.

quote:

Who knew innocence could cause so much death?
The cure for the sick is in the Devil’s blood. He invests this magic in the children. One child’s life saved in exchange for a sacrifice. And parents are eager to sacrifice. But what happens when the Devil comes across a child he cannot find the will to return? A child he wishes to keep.
Vanilla sits in the concrete room—the one she has lived in since she can remember—and smiles when the Devil enters. She reaches her arms out, lets him cradle her against his chest, and calls him Daddy. Daddy fills her mind with nightmares of the Outside. With all its creatures, lurking, waiting to steal her from him. And she dreams of staying with him forever.
But forever is infeasible.
That is, until the Devil makes his own sacrifice.

quote:

Scott King's podcast investigates the 1995 cold case of a demon possession in a rural Yorkshire village, where a 12-year-old boy was murdered in cold blood by two children. Book six in the chilling, award-winning Six Stories series.
In 1995, the picture-perfect village of Ussalthwaite was the site of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, in a case that shocked the world.
Twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the 'Demonic Duo' who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity.
Elusive online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.
And, as episodes of his Six Stories podcast begin to air, and King himself becomes a target of media scrutiny and the public's ire, it becomes clear that whatever drove those two boys to kill is still there, lurking, and the campaign of horror has just begun...

MockingQuantum posted:

And yet There is No Antimemetics Division is some of the best horror I've read in years, and it's basically the product of online-only fiction.

TBF it's unusual in that it is very high quality, probably actually saw some editing, and the SCP community at least nominally had some expectation of quality and somewhere along the line, somebody or a group of somebodys were determining what submissions actually made whatever arbitrary quality bar they had set. I guess in that sense Antimemetics is probably the exception that proves the rule, but there's definitely some good horror fiction in online spaces that can make the jump to publishing, it just takes some digging to find.

I'd through Magnus Archives on the audio horror list, it also has the caveat that listening to too many in a row can make it feel very repetitive or cheesy, but one every once in a while can be pretty effective. The podcast narrator also went on to write a horror novel called Thirteen Storeys which I thought was a bit hit-or-miss in terms of the quality of the stories, but the performances were generally very good.

quote:

In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. These remote hills of the Smoky Mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family’s personal god, an entity known as Ghostdaddy.
Fifteen years later, after a tragic incident had caused her to flee, Stella–now a professional moonshiner and bootleger–returns for Motty’s funeral, only to discover a mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny living on the property. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could ever imagine–and a direct link to Stella’s buried past and her family’s destructive faith.
Haunting and wholly engrossing, summoning mesmerizing voices and giving shape to the dark, Revelator is a southern gothic tale for the ages.

quote:

For fans of Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton, a thrilling tale of an underground expedition to the deep . . . and the ultimate struggle for survival.

Milo Luttrell never expected to step inside the mouth of an ancient cave in rural Tanzania. After all, he's a historian--not an archaeologist. Summoned under the guise of a mysterious life-changing opportunity, Milo suddenly finds himself in the midst of an expedition into the largest underground system in Africa, helmed by a brash billionaire-turned-exploration guru and his elite team of cavers. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to finally solve a century-old disappearance of the famed explorer Lord Riley DeWar, an enigmatic figure who both made--and nearly ruined--Milo's fledgling career.

Determined to make the most of his second chance, Milo joins the team and begins a harrowing descent into one of Earth's last secrets: a dangerous, pitch-black realm of twisting passages and ancient fossils nearly two thousand feet underground. But when a storm hits the surface base camp, stranding the cavers and washing away supplies, all communication to the outside world is lost. As the remaining resources dwindle and members of the team begin to exhibit strange and terrifying abilities, Milo must brave the encroaching darkness to unearth the truth behind DeWar's fascination with the deep--and why he never left.

quote:

The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society whose found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

quote:

A new supernatural novel about a sinister mindfulness app with fatal consequences from the New York Times bestselling author of the "grips from the first page" (Stephen King) thriller The Chill.
Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It's easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for his first visit in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas--relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the "Sleep Songs." A woman's hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing--it's disturbing, really, more of a warning than a relaxation--but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.
So do nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance--or are they threats? And soon her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarityhas any interest in his article. Their interest is in him. Because while he might not have any memory of it, he's one of twenty people who have heard this sinister song before and the only one who is still alive.
An atmospheric and haunting thriller perfect for our times, Where They Wait proves that "horror has a new name and it's Scott Carson" (Michael Connelly, #1 New York Timesbestselling author).

anilEhilated posted:

Thanks for the recommendation, enjoyed this book a lot and I wouldn't even hear about it otherwise. Not very scary but definitely a page-turner.
Could've done without the twist ending, that was a bit too predictable to be effective.

quote:

TAKE OFF YOUR MASK

Thirty years ago, a progressive rock band called The Yellow Kings began recording what would become their first and final album. Titled "The Final Reconciliation," the album was expected to usher in a new renaissance of heavy metal, but it was shelved following a tragic concert that left all but one dead.

The sole survivor of that horrific incident was the band's lead guitarist, Aidan Cross, who's kept silent about the circumstances leading up to that ill-fated performance--until now.

For the first time since the tragedy, Aidan has granted an exclusive interview to finally put rumors to rest and address a question that has haunted the music industry for decades: What happened to The Yellow Kings?

The answer will terrify you.

Inspired by The King in Yellow mythos first established by Robert W. Chambers, and reminiscent of cosmic horror by H. P. Lovecraft, Laird Barron, and John Langan, comes The Final Reconciliation--a chilling tale of regret, the occult, and heavy metal by Todd Keisling.

Proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing - Tales from the Darkest Depths

quote:

These Harpies of Carcosa — W. H. Pugmire
The Viking in Yellow — Christine Morgan
Who Killed the King of Rock and Roll? — Edward Morris
Masque of the Queen — Stephen Mark Rainey
The Girl with the Star-Stained Soul — Lucy A. Snyder
The Penumbra of Exquisite Foulness — Tim Curran
Yield — C. J. Henderson
Homeopathy — Greg Stolze
Bedlam in Yellow — William Meikle
A Jaundiced Light at the End — Brian M. Sammons
The Yellow Film — Gary McMahon
Lights Fade — Laurel Halbany
Future Imperfect — Glynn Owen Barrass
The Mask of the Yellow Death — Robert M. Price
The Sepia Prints — Pete Rawlik
Nigredo — Cody Goodfellow
MonoChrome — T. E. Grau

quote:

A new supernatural novel about a sinister mindfulness app with fatal consequences from the New York Times bestselling author of the "grips from the first page" (Stephen King) thriller The Chill.

Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It's easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for his first visit in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas--relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the "Sleep Songs." A woman's hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing--it's disturbing, really, more of a warning than a relaxation--but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.

So do nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance--or are they threats? And soon her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him. Because while he might not have any memory of it, he's one of twenty people who have heard this sinister song before and the only one who is still alive.

An atmospheric and haunting thriller perfect for our times, Where They Wait proves that "horror has a new name and it's Scott Carson" (Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

ClydeFrog posted:

Value-brand cereal I very much appreciate all these thoughtful reviews.

In fact this thread is full of helpful forum-users write-ups.

Still laughing about dick-bees.

quote:

Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru (born 1969) is a British novelist and journalist, author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission and My Revolutions. Of mixed English and Kashmiri Pandit ancestry, he grew up in Essex. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford University, then gained an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in New York City.

quote:

From one of the most talented fiction writers at work today: two ambitious young musicians are drawn into the dark underworld of blues record collecting, haunted by the ghosts of a repressive past.

Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is glamorous and the heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.

White Tears is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery, a timely meditation on race, and a love letter to all the forgotten geniuses of American music.

quote:

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about.

Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both. But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself.

Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

quote:

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?

quote:

If everything in Amanda\'s life is so perfect, then why the mood swings, the obscene thoughts, the urge to harm the people she loves? What are those tapping sounds in the walls? And who\'s that woman following her? The mystery behind what\'s happening to Amanda in Come Closer is so frightening that it "ought to carry a warning to...readers."

quote:

Sundial is a new, twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street.

You can’t escape what’s in your blood…

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. Far from her childhood home, Sundial, hidden deep in the wild Mojave Desert.

But beneath the veneer, Rob is terrified for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind.

Running from her past has led her directly back to it — what’s buried at Sundial could never stay a secret forever, and Rob must risk one last trip out there to protect her family, and her future.

quote:

"And they’re right there reading it, so they’re practically accomplices, unless they’re one of those people who decide to leave comments telling you that shipping those two characters makes you worse than Hitler. "

MockingQuantum posted:

Thanks for this, I suspected that'd be the case but I was willing to at least do some research since The Twisted Ones felt very much like a first attempt at adult horror fic from an otherwise mostly YA writer. I was hoping that some experience and feedback might have elevated this one a bit but it sure doesn't sound like it did at all. Honestly I have so many horror books I want to read at this point I'm pretty okay with having a good reason to skip a few.

quote:

Tara and Harry Newton have just bought the beautiful Irongrove Lodge, an ideal place to raise their children, Cory and Adrienne. But they are far from the first inhabitants of this house.

Bizarre written messages, unnatural infestations and phantoms noises are just the first fruits of the gnawing spiritual hunger that possesses the ancient building; and soon, Tara and Harry will find out that to buy a house and to own it are two very different things...

Kerro posted:

Yeah that was my main issue with it as well. It's well written and I really enjoyed the read, but the subtext made me really wonder what if any point the author was trying to make given how the novel plays out.

Xiahou Dun posted:

I'm holding off on discussing the metaphor/themes of the book cause I'm only a tick over halfway through, but I think that repeatedly describing one of your antagonists as a "builder bear" was a bit of an own goal.

Am I the only one who chuckles every time that gets used?

Big Mad Drongo posted:

Another good podcast in that vein is I Am In Eskew, about a man trapped in a city that doesn't exist. It's technically one long narrative but every episode is its own disconnected short story until the halfway point or so, and even then there are standalone episodes that technically connect to the metaplot but stand alone just fine as little bits of city planning horror (they focus on events the narrator isn't seeing in places he's never been to so they never reference established details).

quote:

From the author of The Night Will Find Us comes a white-knuckled horror-thriller set across the American Southwest.
Road trips can be hell.
Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town twelve years ago, they couldn’t be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque, hoping to mend their broken relationship along the way.

But when a strange accident befalls Nell at an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert, she begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. As their journey through the desolate American Southwest reveals the grotesque change happening within his sister, one thing becomes clear to Jonah: It’s not only Nell in there anymore.

Pursued by a mysterious stranger who knows far more about Nell’s worsening condition than they let on, the siblings race to find a way to help Nell and escape the desert before they’re met with a violent, bloody end. But there are far worse things lurking in the desert ahead… some of them just beneath the skin.

quote:

You can’t escape what’s in your blood…
All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert.

And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive…The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.

quote:

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

quote:

-Move over True Detective. A rich, gothic story of murder and mystery, A God in The Shed is quite possibly one of the most enthralling novels I've read in the last ten years. Dubeau is a force to be reckoned with.- --Jerry Smith, Fangoria Magazine and Blumhouse.com
The village of Saint-Ferdinand has all the trappings of a quiet life: farmhouses stretching from one main street, a small police precinct, a few diners and cafes, and a grocery store. Though if an out-of-towner stopped in, they would notice one unusual thing--a cemetery far too large and much too full for such a small town, lined with the victims of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer, who has eluded police for nearly two decades. It's not until after Inspector Stephen Crowley finally catches the killer that the town discovers even darker forces are at play.
When a dark spirit reveals itself to Venus McKenzie, one of Saint-Ferdinand's teenage residents, she learns that this creature's power has a long history with her town--and that the serial murders merely scratch the surface of a past burdened by evil secrets. (less)

quote:

Ghost story, murder mystery, love letter to American music--White Tears is all of this and more, a thrilling investigation of race and appropriation in society today. Seth is a shy, awkward twentysomething. Carter is more glamorous, the heir to a great American fortune. But they share an obsession with music--especially the blues. One day, Seth discovers that he's accidentally recorded an unknown blues singer in a park.

Carter puts the file online, claiming it's a 1920s recording by a made-up musician named Charlie Shaw. But when a music collector tells them that their recording is genuine--that there really was a singer named Charlie Shaw--the two white boys, along with Carter's sister, find themselves in over their heads, delving deeper and deeper into America's dark, vengeful heart. White Tears is a literary thriller and a meditation on art--who owns it, who can consume it, and who profits from it.

quote:

Catherine's last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top TV network saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and a few therapists later, things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself -- to catalogue the late M. H. Mason's wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she'll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting bloody scenes from the Great War. Catherine can't believe her luck when Mason's elderly niece invites her to stay at Red House itself, where she maintains the collection until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle's "Art." Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but Mason's damaged visions begin to raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she'd hoped therapy had finally erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge and some truths seem too terrible to be real... in The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill.

Xiahou Dun posted:

I told you, hoss. Knifepoint owns.

Tell me when you get to "fields".

ravenkult posted:

Knifepoint Horror is interesting also because I feel like these stories would absolutely not work in text form (and afaik before the podcast some of them were self published to little acclaim) but are fantastic as audio.

Untrustable posted:

I checked this out, and the first three novels are currently available in one collection on Kindle for 99 cents. Picked it up.

quote:

You Have What I Need by Ian Rogers
The Midway by Fran Wilde
Wet Red Grin by Gemma Files
The Virgin Jimmy Peck by Daryl Gregory
The Ghost of a Flea by Priya Sharma
The Atrocity Exhibitionists by Brian Hodge
“The Father of Modern Gynecology”: J. Marion Syms, M.D. (1813–1883) by Joyce Carol Oates
Here Comes Your Man by Indrapramit Das
Siolaigh by Siobhan Carroll
What Is Love But the Quiet Moments After Dinner? by Richard Kadrey
The Island by Norman Partridge
Flaming Teeth by Garry Kilworth
Strandling by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Special One by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ
Devil by Glen Hirshberg
Crick Crack Rattle Tap by A. C. Wise
Children of the Night by Stephen Graham Jones
The Smell of Waiting by Kaaron Warren
Now Voyager by Livia Llewellyn
The Last Drop by Carole Johnstone
Three Mothers Mountain by Nathan Ballingrud
Widow-Light by Margo Lanagan
Sweet Potato by Joe R. Lansdale
Knock, Knock by Brian Evenson
What Is Meat with No God? by Cassandra Khaw
Bitten by Himself by Laird Barron
Burial by Kristi DeMeester
Beautiful Dreamer by Jeffrey Ford
Blodsuger by John Langan

MockingQuantum posted:

Excellent! Thank you for the list, I've read a few of those but there's a bunch I haven't heard of so I'll check them out.

Since I mentioned it and it was in your list, I will say that The Ceremonies by TED Klein is an interesting book and perfectly solid, but it's (I believe) an expansion of his short story The Events at Poroth Farm and... I'm gonna be honest, I think the short story is much better. The Ceremonies is great if you want a certain kind of 1970's folk/cult horror that's mostly interested in taking its time and feeling "real" (think early Stephen King, "wow he mentioned Coke by name" kind of popular fiction phenomena in the 70s). But The Events at Poroth Farm is kind of great in how well it distills the general ideas of the book into a tight, well-written package. Also for a long time The Ceremonies was kind of a pain to find because it was out of print for decades, but I think there's a new printing (with an ugly cover), or was last time I checked.

anilEhilated posted:

Not really, it's a (central horror element spoilers) werewolf story. The topic of slavery is addressed but IIRC it isn't too egregious.

zoux posted:

I mean the main antagonists are slaves turned into werewolves by their evil werewolf slaveowner. That doesn't really get revealed to the end but "slave ghosts" isn't too far off. But it's also set in the 1920s and the slave stuff is kind of a twist you find out about at the end. It's a good book though, mostly about a WWI veteran slowly going mad because of a combination of PTSD and the hosed up secret horrors going on in the town.

Xiahou Dun posted:

Most of Langan's stuff is actually in some weird semi-canon of Upstate New York gribbly ookily-spookily stuff. Like he obviously gives precisely zero shits about making it consistent, but there are overlaps between stories, allusions between them, and they all (pretty much) have the same rough setting of the Mid-Hudson Valley with the serial numbers filed off. Like there are references to the events of Fisherman scattered around in other stories and the house from House of Windows still exists in New PaltzHuguenot and there are various lizard people running around in the background of other parts of Children of the Fang.

I haven't gone full creepy red-string-corkboard about it cause why would I, but if you keep that stuff in the back of your head it's pretty consistent. Like he's incredibly faithful to local geography, to the point where I know where stuff is down to specific streets.

a foolish pianist posted:

I just read Matt Wesolowski's Six Stories, and the first 5/6 of the book is just an exceptional slow burn horror, in that indeterminate kind of way that Paul Tremblay uses in Head Full of Ghosts or Devil's Rock, and then then final act just ruins the whole thing, even making the earlier sections retroactively worse. Spoilered complaints:


The book turns from the (honestly just wonderful) slow burn horror into a lovely crime thriller, complete with a psycho-killing hallucinating antogonist who's also some kind of super criminal mastermind, and the book nearly turns into airport dadfiction. All the earlier themes (the complexities of bullying, teenage search for identity and acceptance) that are handled so intelligently just go away in service of this crazy (generically crazy, too) teenage murder genius. It's done in such a hackneyed Keyser Soze twist, too. Just argh.


It's such a frustrating read, and now I'm bummed that I bought the three volume set.

quote:

In the tumultuous summer of 1974, in the shadowy rooms of a rundown mansion in Rhode Island, renowned psychologist Dr. Piers Preis-Herald brings together a group of seven collegiate researchers to study the inner lives of man’s closest relative―the primate. They set out to teach their subject, who would eventually be known to the world as Smithy, American Sign Language. But as the summer deepens and the history of the mansion manifests, the messages signed by their research subject become increasing spectral.

Nearly twenty-five years after the Smithy Project ended in tragedy at Trevor Hall, questions remain: Was Smithy a hoax? A clever mimic? A Rorschach projection of humanity’s greatest hopes and fears? Or was he indeed what devotees of metaphysics have claimed for so long: a link between our world and the next?

sephiRoth IRA posted:

quote:

From a new star in horror fiction comes a terrifying novel of obsession, greed, and the shocking actions we’ll take to protect those we love, all set in a small town filled with dark secrets.

The Larkin siblings are known around the small town of Wofford Falls. Both are artists, but Peter Larkin, Lark to his friends, is the hometown hero. The one who went to the big city and got famous, then came back and settled down. He’s the kind of guy who becomes fast friends with almost anyone. His sister Betsy on the other hand is more… eccentric. She keeps to herself.
When Lark goes to deliver one of his latest pieces to a fabulously rich buyer, it seems like a regular transaction. Even being met at the gate of the sprawling, secluded estate by an intimidating security guard seems normal. Until the guard plays him a live feed: Betsy being abducted in real time.
Lark is informed that she’s safe for now, but her well‑being is entirely in his hands. He's given a book. Do what the book says, and Betsy will go free.
It seems simple enough. But as Lark begins to read he realizes: the book might be demonic. Its writer may be unhinged. His sister's captors are almost certainly not what they seem. And his town and those within it are... changing.
And the only way out is through.

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IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY. WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY'LL BE PREY AGAIN
The old gods have fled, and the monsters they had kept at bay for centuries now threaten to drown the city of Valentine, hunting mankind as in ancient times. In the midst of the chaos, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims, their bodies strewn throughout the city.
Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god—even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means sneaking, lying, and even spilling the blood of people she loves.
Alex and Cecil of Ace Investigations have been tasked with hunting down the killer, but as they close in—not knowing they're hunting their close friend Lilac—the detectives realize the gods may not have left willingly.
As flooding drags this city of cars and neon screaming into the jaws of sea demons and Arcadia struggles to save the people as captain of the evacuation team, Lilac’s ritual killings at last bear fruit, only to reveal her as a small piece in a larger plan. The gods’ protection costs far more than anyone has ever known, and Alex and Cecil are running out of time to discover the true culprit behind the gods’ disappearance before an ancient divine murder plot destroys them all.
Set in an alternate reality which updates mythology to near-modern day, No Gods For Drowning is part dark fantasy, part noir detective story, and unlike anything you've read before, from an author whose imagination knows no boundaries.

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The Witch in the Well is a dark Norwegian thriller from Camilla Bruce, author of You Let Me In.

When two former friends reunite after decades apart, their grudges, flawed ambitions, and shared obsession swirl into an all-too-real echo of a terrible town legend.

Centuries ago, beautiful young Ilsbeth Clark was accused of witchcraft after several children disappeared. Her acquittal did nothing to stop her fellow townsfolk from drowning her in the well where the missing children were last seen.
When author and social media influencer Elena returns to the summer paradise of her youth to get her family’s manor house ready to sell, the last thing she expected was connecting with—and feeling inspired to write about—Ilsbeth’s infamous spirit. The very historical figure that her ex-childhood friend, Cathy, has been diligently researching and writing about for years.
What begins as a fiercely competitive sense of ownership over Ilsbeth and her story soon turns both women’s worlds into something more haunted and dangerous than they could ever imagine.

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Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father’s remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not on the list. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted. Clearly just dementia whispering in his ear . . . right?
Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father’s obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward three a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven’s bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, she must race to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets—completely rewriting everything she ever knew about herself in the process.

Kestral posted:

Horror thread, I have a weirdly specific request: first-person epistolary horror with a reading level that isn't impenetrable for an inexperienced reader.

One of the teens I work with recently discovered Doki Doki Literature Club, and was telling me about how much they liked the short story hidden in that game, which is essentially the first-person confession letter of young sociopath describing the circumstances of her first murder. Since I'm always eager to get these kids to read, and they said they'd be interested in checking out other things that strike a similar chord, I'm looking for something that might work for them. The first-person epistolary format is the secret sauce here, and I also don't want to scare them off with prose that's going to make them run to the dictionary every paragraph. Honestly, even good creepypasta might fit the bill, and act as a gateway drug to more serious horror lit. Any suggestions?

ClydeFrog posted:

My reading list has so much from this thread and the majority still come from your write ups value-brand cereal.

Thank you fellow forum posters for keeping me spooked throughout 2022

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The Devil is in Scotland.

Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil’s Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it.

When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along?

Unnervingly, Hale doesn’t fit the bill of a killer. The first-person narrative that centers this novel reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger, but has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson’s world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he’s working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership.​​

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Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert's protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy.

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Before an untimely mental breakdown cut short his two-decade career, Giorgio De Maria distinguished himself as one of Italy's most unique and eccentric weird fiction masters. With a background in the post-war literary culture of Turin -- Italy's urbane but eerie "city of black magic" -- De Maria drew inspiration from the Turinese underbelly of occultism, secret societies and radical politics. His writing coincided with the decade of terrorist violence known to Italians as the Years of Lead; the outcome was a weird fiction suffused with panic, rage, trauma, paranoia and meditations on antisocial hubris. In 1978, he told an interviewer: "...I think that the dimension of the fantastic, as much as this may seem paradoxical, is the most fitting one to express a reality as complex as ours today." 

De Maria's debut novel, The Transgressionists (1968) portrays a cell of malicious telepaths who meet in the cafés and jazz clubs of 1960s Turin to plot world domination. After experiencing the worst of their power, an embittered office clerk resolves to join them and prove himself worthy to share in their villainy. He cultivates twisted mindfulness techniques to awaken his inner sociopath. He fights off predatory phantoms that seem maddeningly drawn to him. He prepares for the dangerous "Great Leap" which will make him into a fully-fledged Transgressionist. But could his megalomania strain relations with his fiancee? Will he sacrifice love in his quest for omnipotence?

The other works in this volume are no less surreal and startling. The Secret Death of Joseph Dzhugashvili (1976) gives us a nightmarish fantasy Soviet Union, where a dissident poet finds himself trapped in a psychological experiment conducted by Stalin himself. In "The End of Everydayism," a group of futuristic artists begin using corpses as a medium -- with violent, unforeseen results. The antihero of "General Trebisonda" is a possibly insane commander who prepares for a war crime in an eerily deserted fortress. 

Available in English for the first time, this collection contains two novellas, two short stories and a dystopian teleplay, The Appeal, which the post-cyberpunk novelist Andrea Vaccaro has lauded as "worthy of the best episodes of Black Mirror." Meanwhile, an introduction by translator Ramon Glazov offers a detailed account of De Maria's background, creative context and thoroughly unusual life.

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The Devil’s Atlas is an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined throughout history by cultures and religions around the world. Packed with colourful maps, paintings and captivating stories, the reader is taken on a compelling tour of the geography, history and supernatural populations of the afterworlds of cultures around the globe.

Whether it’s the thirteen heavens of the Aztecs, the Chinese Taoist netherworld of ‘hungry ghosts’, or the ‘Hell of the Flaming Rooster’ of Japanese Buddhist mythology (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel), The Devil’s Atlas gathers together a wonderful variety of beliefs and representations of life after death. These afterworlds are illustrated with an unprecedented collection of images, ranging from the marvellous ‘infernal cartography’ of the European Renaissance artists attempting to map the structured Hell described by Dante and the decorative Islamic depictions of Paradise to the various efforts to map the Garden of Eden and the spiritual vision paintings of nineteenth-century mediums.

The Devil’s Atlas accompanies beautiful images with a highly readable trove of surprising facts and narratives, from the more inventive torture methods awaiting sinners, to colourful eccentric catalogues of demons, angels and assorted death deities. A traveller’s guide to worlds unseen, The Devil’s Atlas is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of man’s hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.

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Eighteen stories of found footage horror. Between April and August 2021 eighteen horror writers disappeared. Gathered together for the first time, these are the stories they were writing at the time of their disappearances.

Reader caution is advised. Advance readers of this anthology have reported nausea, feelings of anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations after reading the texts included.

Table of Contents
Two Months Too Long by Holly Rae Garcia
Face Down Death Volume VIII by Josh Rountree
Junk Pickup by Fred Fischer, IV
Disappearances at Coal Hill by Nick Kolakowski
The Veiled Lady by Angela Sylvaine
Spew of News by Clay McLeod Chapman
Ghost Town Adventures by Joe Butler
Regular Saint by Donna Lynch
Walls and Floors and Bricks and Stone by Georgia Cook
Summons by Ally Wilkes
Green Magnetic Tape by Tim McGregor
Accidents, of a Sort by Kurt Fawver
A Grave Issue by Bev Vincent
The Novak Roadhouse Massacre by Alan Baxter
This Video is Unavailable by Robert Levy
Dear Penny by Jeremy Hepler
The Pall by Aristo Couvaras
A Small Hand-Built House by Ali Seay