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A book list of delightfully disturbing stories with equally unsettling book covers!

Happy Spooky September, Everyone!

My previous post covered a challenge I’m taking part in this Sept-Oct, Readers Imbibing Peril @PerilReaders, it’s a brilliant way for fans of the more twisted stories to share their love of the dark side of reading.
And since I enjoyed doing the last ‘Book Covers to Love’ post so much.. I thought I would share with you some of the books that caught my eye in my hunt for creepy content.

Now.. I haven’t read any of these (they are a part of the never-ending TBR) but if you’re looking for some great Fall reads? These may just have you leaving the lights on.

Enjoy!

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(Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Any purchases made through my links may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.)

Hellminth by S. Allesandro Martinez 

Rei would do anything for those she loves.

As her best friend, Abby, struggles to cope with the sudden loss of her husband, Rei and her closest girlfriends take her to a beautiful lakeside house nestled in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, hoping that a weekend of support from long-time friends will help Abby along her road of emotional recovery.

But as the young women get settled, Rei begins to notice there’s something wrong with the place. Could this peaceful, idyllic location be hiding an ancient evil below the waters of the lake? Or are the problems wholly within Abby herself, who seems to be losing her grip on reality? When unexplainable, nightmarish things occur, Rei realizes this weekend getaway may turn into their last outing.

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The Girl in the Locked Room: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn

A family moves into an old, abandoned house. Jules’s parents love the house, but Jules is frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, though, she can’t stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor—in a room with a locked door. Could it be someone who lived in the house a century earlier?

Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules is determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and help unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover—and change—the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago.

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Gilchrist: A Novel of Horror and Suspense by Christian Galacar

Two years after losing their infant son to a tragic accident, Peter Martell, a novelist with a peculiar knack for finding lost things, and his wife, Sylvia, are devastated to learn they may no longer be able to have children. In need of a fresh start, and compelled by strange dreams, the couple decide to rent a lake house in the idyllic town of Gilchrist, Massachusetts, a place where bad things might just happen for a reason. As bizarre events begin to unfold around them—a chance encounter with a gifted six-year-old boy, a series of violent deaths, and repeated sightings of a strange creature with a terrifying nature—Peter and Sylvia find themselves drawn into the chaos and soon discover that coming to Gilchrist may not have been their decision at all.

Set against a small New England town in the summer of 1966, Gilchrist is a sinister tale about the haunting origins of violence, evil, and the undying power of memory.

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Kill Creek by Scott Thomas

At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…

When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

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Floating Dragon by Peter Straub

The quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two horrors. One is natural. The hideous unstoppable creation of man’s power gone mad. The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like child’s play…

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Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake 

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn’t expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas’s life.

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Everett by Jenifer Ruff

At Everett College, perfection has a DARK side…

Beautiful and brilliant Brooke, a transfer student with a mysterious past, aims to graduate first in her class at Everett and attend medical school. Her classmates and professors are captivated by her achievements and appearance. Only Jessica, a wealthy socialite fueled by prescription pills and a huge case of snobbery, senses there’s something not quite right about the perfect student. What happens during a historic blizzard will settle their differences once and for all.

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Revelator by Daryl Gregory

In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. The 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 the Ghostdaddy.

Years later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella—now a professional bootlegger—returns for Motty’s funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine—and she’s a direct link to Stella’s buried past and her family’s destructive faith.

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The Starving by Jon Dobbin

Something evil grows in the heart of Colorado.

Bill Weston was a man of the West. He knew it – its land, its people, its stories. It was where he plied his trade, hunting men for money. His life wasn’t easy, but it was predictable. That all changed when he captured Faraway Sue and he was led on a trip through the Colorado forests. In those unknown wilds Weston was confronted by an ancient evil, bent and twisted by time and hunger. It would take everything in him to make it out alive, but what can a man do when faced with a creature out of myth and legend? Find a way to survive, or be changed forever.

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The Predator by RuNyx

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object in the field of death?

In the dark underbelly of the mob, Tristan Caine has been an anomaly. As the only non-blooded member in the high circle of the Tenebrae Outfit, he is an enigma to all – his skills unparalleled, his morality questionable, and his motives unknown. He is lethal and he knows it.

As does Morana Vitalio, the genius extraordinaire daughter of the rival family. What Caine does with weapons, Morana does with computers. When a twenty-year old mystery resurfaces, Morana infiltrates Caine’s house, intent on killing him, unaware of a tie that binds them together. Hate, heat, and history clash together with unexpected sparks.

But something bigger, something worse is happening in their world. And despite their animosity, only they can fight it down.

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A God in the Shed by J. F. Dubeau

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 cafés, 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.

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Black Numbers by Dean Frank Lappi

In a land where true magic is based on the rare ability to use advanced mathematics, those who can control such powers are part of a secret organization known as the Oblate. Over the millennia, they have directed the Korpor, a violent and sexual creature, to roam the land and search for the Aleph Null, the one prophesied to control the mysterious Black Numbers, a power beyond anything ever seen in the land.

Sid’s awakening sexuality and genius-level mastery of mathematics puts him on a collision course with the Korpor and the Oblate, and he soon finds himself on the run from powerful and mysterious forces intent on controlling him and his powers. His journey propels him to the center of an ancient struggle that he cannot understand and wants no part of.

But he is not alone, for the friendships that he forges along the way help him to navigate the dark and chaotic road he must travel.

Can Sid overcome the seductive darkness known as Black Numbers?

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Wake the Wicked: Thirteen Twisted Tales by Christian Baloga

No one shakes the hive of imagination like author Christian Baloga.

In this explosive debut collection of thirteen twisted tales, we meet an alcoholic who’s obsessed with a tattoo of his dead daughter (“Digging Deep”); split Siamese twins with a sinister connection (“Poison Ivy”); two morbid magicians determined to make their final trick unforgettable (“Dusk to Dust”); an army of vengeful wasps who stop at nothing to rebuild a nest (“Unraveling the Nest”); and many more.

Genre: Bizarro Fiction, Weird Fiction, Splatterpunk, Pulp Fiction, Transgressive, Horror, Short Stories

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The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

The city of Elendhaven sulks on the edge of the ocean. Wracked by plague, abandoned by the South, stripped of industry and left to die. But not everything dies so easily. A thing without a name stalks the city, a thing shaped like a man, with a dark heart and long pale fingers yearning to wrap around throats. A monster who cannot die. His frail master sends him out on errands, twisting him with magic, crafting a plan too cruel to name, while the monster’s heart grows fonder and colder and more cunning.

These monsters of Elendhaven will have their revenge on everyone who wronged the city, even if they have to burn the world to do it.

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The Reddening by Adam Nevill

One million years of evolution didn’t change our nature.
Nor did it bury the horrors predating civilisation.
Ancient rites, old deities and savage ways can reappear in the places you least expect.

Lifestyle journalist Katrine escaped past traumas by moving to a coast renowned for seaside holidays and natural beauty. But when a vast hoard of human remains and prehistoric artefacts is discovered in nearby Brickburgh, a hideous shadow engulfs her life.

Helene, a disillusioned lone parent, lost her brother, Lincoln, six years ago. Disturbing subterranean noises he recorded prior to vanishing, draw her to Brickburgh’s caves. A site where early humans butchered each other across sixty thousand years. Upon the walls, images of their nameless gods remain.

Amidst rumours of drug plantations and new sightings of the mythical red folk, it also appears that the inquisitive have been disappearing from this remote part of the world for years. A rural idyll where outsiders are unwelcome and where an infernal power is believed to linger beneath the earth. A timeless supernormal influence that only the desperate would dream of confronting. But to save themselves and those they love, and to thwart a crimson tide of pitiless barbarity, Kat and Helene are given no choice.

They were involved and condemned before they knew it

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And that’s a wrap!

What do you think?
Did you find anything you like or have already read?

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