Archives de catégorie : Horror

ALWAYS THE FIRST TO DIE de R.J. Jacobs

The Guest List with a 90s slasher edge that begs the question: who will survive when your most famous horror movie comes to life? This book offers a fascinating and immersive look at what it would be like to be on the set of a classic 90s slasher. Perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Lucy Foley.

ALWAYS THE FIRST TO DIE
by R.J. Jacobs
Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2022

After her husband’s death, Lexi has refused to return to the Pinecrest Estate on the Florida Keys, too many hard memories on the tiny strip of land. Memories of meeting her husband as a teenager on the set of an iconic horror movie shot at the dilapidated manor house. Of being cast as an extra, of watching herself get killed on screen. And of scoffing at the rumors of the Pinecrest Estate “curse,” until she witnessed a cast member die that very summer. But when her daughter insists on visiting her grandfather, legendary horror movie director Rick Plummer, Lexi finally agrees. That’s when a Category Four hurricane changes course, and hits the southern coast.
Unable to get through to her daughter, Lexi drives to the Keys in the wake of the storm. What she finds is an island without cell service, without power, and with limited police presence. A desolate bit of land, with only a few remaining behind: the horror director, the starlet once cast as the final girl, the young teenager searching for clues of her father, the mother determined to get off the island, and…the person picking them off one-by-one.

R. J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans. He’s the author of And Then You Were Gone and Somewhere in the Dark, published by Crooked Lane.

THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE de Caitlin Starling

From the Bram Stoker-nominated author of The Luminous Dead comes a new gothic fantasy horror in which Ninth House meets Mexican Gothic.

THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE
by Caitlin Starling
St. Martin’s Press, December 2021

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.
Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man―one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.
Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Caitlin Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.

“A magnificent ode to gothic horror… I loved every moment… Brilliant!” –Erin Craig, author of House of Salt and Sorrows

“A delicious Gothic romance…. It has to walk the line between romance and horror and not flinch away from either. The Death of Jane Lawrence is up to this task…. By the time the book reached that point of no return, I was so invested that I would have followed Jane into the very depths of hell.” ―NPR.org

“Inspired by Crimson Peak, the horror in this gothic set in an alternate postwar England subtly increases as the novel progresses, unease seeping into the pages.” ―Buzzfeed

Caitlin Starling writes horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavors. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, won the LOHF Best Debut Award and was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards. She is also the author of the gothic horror tale Yellow Jessamine, as well as a novella in the Vampire: The Masquerade audio collection, Walk Among Us. Her nonfiction has appeared in Nightmare and Uncanny. Starling also works in narrative design, and has been paid to invent body parts. She’s always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia.

GHOSTLIGHT de Kenneth Oppel

One teen’s summer job scaring tourists with ghost stories takes a terrifying turn when he accidentally summons the spirit of a dead girl—and she has demands. . . . The award-winning author of Airborn delivers a roller-coaster ride of a story about the wakeful and wicked dead.

GHOSTLIGHT
by Kenneth Oppel
Knopf, September 2022
(via Writers House)

Rebecca Strand was just sixteen when she and her father fell to their deaths from the top of the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse in 1839. Just how they fell—or were they pushed?—remains a mystery. And their ghosts haunt the lighthouse to this day. . .
Gabe tells this story every day when he gives the ghost tour on Toronto Island. He tries to make it scary enough to satisfy the tourists, but he doesn’t actually believe in ghosts—until he finds himself face to face with Rebecca Strand. The true story of her death is far more terrifying than any ghost tale Gabe has told. Rebecca reveals that her father was a member of the Order, a secret society devoted to protecting the world from “the wakeful and wicked dead”—malevolent spirits like Viker, the ghost responsible for their deaths. But the Order has disappeared, and Viker’s ghost is growing ever stronger. Now Gabe and his friends must find a way to stop Viker before they all become lost souls. . . .

Kenneth Oppel was born in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of his childhood in Victoria, B.C. and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is one of the most highly regarded authors of middle-grade fiction writing today. Some of his best-known titles are The Inkling, The Nest, Airborn, a 2005 Printz Honor Book, and Silverwing.

THE WOODS ARE ALWAYS WATCHING de Stephanie Perkins

Another blood-chilling contemporary horror novel, the perfect companion to her New York Times bestseller There’s Someone Inside Your House, available now on Netflix.

THE WOODS ARE ALWAYS WATCHING
by Stephanie Perkins
Dutton, August 2021

Best friends Neena and Josie spent high school as outsiders, but at least they had each other. Now, with college and a two-thousand-mile separation looming on the horizon, they have one last chance to be together—a three-day hike deep into the woods of the Pisgah National Forest. Simmering tensions lead to a detour off the trail and straight into a waking nightmare … and then into something far worse. Something that will test them in horrifying ways.
Stephanie Perkins, the bestselling author of There’s Someone Inside Your House, returns with a heart-stopping, gut-wrenching novel about friendship, survival, and navigating unmarked paths even as evil watches from the shadows.

Stephanie Perkins is the New York Times bestselling author and anthology editor of multiple books, including There’s Someone Inside Your House, Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door, and Isla and the Happily Ever After. She has always worked with books—first as a bookseller, then as a librarian, and now as a novelist. Stephanie lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband. Every room of their house is painted a different color of the rainbow.

THE GIRLS ARE NEVER GONE de Sarah Glenn Marsh

The Conjuring meets Sadie when seventeen-year-old podcaster Dare takes an internship in a haunted house and finds herself in a life-or-death struggle against an evil spirit.

THE GIRLS ARE NEVER GONE
by Sarah Glenn Marsh
Razorbill, September 2021

Seventeen-year-old Dare Chase is the star of a popular ghost-hunting YouTube channel—or she was, until her boyfriend and channel co-creator dumps her right after junior year. Dare’s determined to prove she can find success on her own, and thanks to a tip from a fan, she knows just where to start: the Arrington Estate. Arrington is known for its dark past, notably the mysterious death of Atheleen Bell, a teenager who drowned in the lake thirty years prior—and whose body was inexplicably skeletal when it was recovered only hours after her death. Along with the rumors of ghosts on the premises, this is the perfect subject for Dare’s new paranormal investigative podcast. Dare herself doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more to Atheleen’s death, so she accepts an internship working to turn the old house into a museum. As she digs deeper into the mystery with the help of Quinn, the new homeowner’s daughter, and as her podcast gets more popular, it becomes clear that someone—or something—doesn’t want Dare getting too close to the truth. Soon, Dare will have to reckon with the possibility that ghosts could be more real than she thinks. Because there’s something lurking in the lake…and it hasn’t finished with her yet.

Sarah Glenn Marsh writes young adult novels and children’s picture books. When she’s not writing, Sarah enjoys ceramics, ghost hunting, traveling, and all things nerdy. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and their menagerie: four rescued sighthounds, three birds, and many fish. She is the author of the Fear the Drowning Deep series and the Reign of the Fallen series.