Horror Reads

A #1 New York Times Bestselling AuthorIn the middle of the night, in a house in suburban Minneapolis, intruders murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. Other kids with special talents -- telekinesis and telepathy -- are also here. Some, like Luke, are in Front Half, while others graduated to Back Half. In this most sinister of institutions, the director and her staff attempt to extract from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

In 1924, a young mother, Hattie Breckenridge, is hanged from a tree in her yard by the town mob, accused of a crime that was actually committed by her daughter. Nearly a century later, a young married couple, Helen and Nate abandon the comforts of suburbia to begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams on the same forty-four acres of rural land where Hattie once lived. When they discover that this charming property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by Hattie's story and the tragic legend of her descendants, three generations of "Breckenridge women," each of whom died amid suspicion, and who seem to still be seeking something elusive and dangerous in the present day.

Christopher Golden's chilling exploration of what happens when the original Pandora's Box is discovered in an ancient subterranean city, stirring international conflict and exposing the archaeological team to curses, whispers, and the terror of a legendary plague.

The ghost story has long been a staple of world literature, but many of the genre's greatest tales have been forgotten, overshadowed in many cases by their authors' bestselling work in other genres. In this spine-tingling anthology, little known stories from literary titans like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are collected alongside overlooked works from masters of horror fiction like Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James.

Boys are being trained at one school for geniuses, girls at another. And neither knows the other exists--until now. The innovative author of Bird Box invites you into a tantalizing world of secrets and lies.

Pendle Hill Young Fleetwood Shuttleworth is with child again. As the mistress of Gawthorpe Hall, she is anxious to provide her husband with an heir. But none of her previous pregnancies have come to term. Then she discovers a hidden letter from her physician that warns her husband that she will not survive another pregnancy. Distraught over the frightening revelation, Fleetwood wanders the woods of Pendle Hill, where she meets a young local woman named Alice Gray. A midwife, Alice promises Fleetwood she can help her deliver a healthy baby. But soon Alice is drawn into the frenzied accusations of witchcraft sweeping the countryside.

In a world where violence is omnipresent and civilization is crumbling, a man with the ability to anticipate violence is drawn into the complex machinations of a group of survivors.

Miriam has beaten off serial killers, psychics, and won a major battle in her struggle against her nemesis, but this is a long war and the Trespasser only fights dirty. It's usually Miriam-against-the-world, but not this time. She holds the power to break the curse and the Trespasser's influence in the world. It's her fight to lose, and she's learning to work with a team. Wendig builds Miriam Black's story towards a razor's edge, with all of her past poised to push her into the abyss.

The latest from legendary master storyteller Stephen King, a riveting, extraordinarily eerie, and moving story about a man whose mysterious affliction brings a small town together--a timely, upbeat tale about finding common ground despite deep-rooted differences. Although Scott Carey doesn't look any different, he's been steadily losing weight.

Charlie is a Husker on the prowl in the New Hampshire wilderness when he falls in love with one of them: a girl named Jill. Loving Jill means leaving the Husk clan, with its gruesome cannibalistic rituals, and that will be far more difficult - and dangerous - than Charlie could have foreseen. It's only in New York City that the secret to ending his terrible cravings may reveal itself - if it doesn't kill him and everything he has grown to love first.

Jane Hawk--rogue FBI agent and the country's #1 fugitive--confronts her worst nightmare when her enemies strike shockingly close to home in the explosive new thriller from Dean Koontz, bestselling author of The Silent Corner. Jane Hawk thinks her precious five-year-old son is hidden safely away, with vigilant, indomitable friends. But the malice and resources of her powerful adversaries are boundless and their hunters are circling ever closer to the boy, hoping to draw his mother into their trap. Jane's courage, wits, discipline, and skill will be tested as never before, as she searches for a way through an ever-contracting labyrinth of terror.

The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts gives a new twist to the home invasion horror story in a heart-palpitating novel of psychological suspense that recalls Stephen King's Misery, Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood, and Jack Ketchum's cult hit The Girl Next Door.

Carol Evers is a woman with a dark secret. She has died many times. but her many deaths are not final: They are comas,a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days. Only two people know of Carol's eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune, and--when she lapses into another coma--plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and quickly burying her. alive.

Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women. They are the last generation. One evening, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women's bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before... discover the Beauty.

On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. "Rain" explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life. Desperate to record what he has witnessed, Bram scribbles down the events that led him here ...

It begins among the Carpathian peaks, when an intrepid explorer discovers a mysterious golden box. She brings it back with her to the foggy streets of Victorian London; unaware of its dangerous power ... or that an evil beyond imagining has already taken root in the city.

A tense and gripping reimagining of one of America's most fascinating historical moments: the Donner Party with a supernatural twist. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party.

The third in Seth Patrick's genre-bending trilogy, followingReviverandLost Souls, delivers chilling twists as a forensic detective revives the dead to exhume a world-changing conspiracy. Opening withThe Reviver and continuing inLost Souls, this genre-bending series has been described asCSI meetsThe Sixth Sense. The trilogy takes place in our world, but with a chilling twist: certain people have the ability to wake the recently dead for testimony that is accepted in courts worldwide. The use of these so-called Revivers has long been a routine part of police investigation. But things are changing...something vast and dangerous is hiding in the dark, just waiting to wreak havoc on our world. The Dead Road is where it all comes to an end--maybe literally.

Young Jude Brighton has been missing for three days, and while the search for him is in full swing in the small town of Deer Valley, Oregon, the locals are starting to lose hope. They're well aware that the first forty-eight hours are critical and after that, the odds usually point to a worst-case scenario.

The eerie second installment in the Darkest Hour trilogy, where war wages on in a shadowy world and between demons and werewolves.

Since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress: learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love. The city's undead population is showing signs of life. Then helicopters appear, to return things to the way they were: stability and control, and the strong eating the weak. The plague is ancient and ambitious, and the Dead were never its only weapon.

A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned, Olivia, starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she'd been. Questioned by the police but released for lack of evidence, Nathan spent the years trying to forget. When a body is found in the same ancient woodland where they disappeared, it is first believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have horrific visions of the students, alive but trapped. Then Olivia reappears, desperate that the warrior's body be returned to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay.

Amid the terror of the Second World War, seventeen-year-old Eliza and her troubled little sister Rebecca have had their share of tragedy, having lost their mother to the Blitz and their father to suicide. Forced to leave London to work for the mysterious Mr. Brownwell at Abigale Hall, they soon learn that the worst is yet to come.

At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted, through the generations, by "her," a curse passed down through ancient blood that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak. Iris forsakes her promise to her father, to remain alone, safe from the world. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began and where it must all end.

Six terrifying tales to chill the blood from the unique imagination of Joyce Carol Oates.