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NPR's 100 Best Horror Stories
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Frankenstein by Mary ShelleyCall Number: HORROR SHELLEY
The epic battle between man and monster reaches its greatest pitch in the famous story of Frankenstein. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor himself to the very brink.
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Dracula by Bram StokerCall Number: HORROR STOKER
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘Master’.
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The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Works by Henry JamesCall Number: HORROR JAMES
A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls...But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.
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The Great God Pan by Arthur MachenCall Number: EBOOK
When Mr. Clarke agrees to visit his friend Dr. Raymond, he is dubious about the proceedings he is to witness. In pursuit of what Raymond calls "transcendental science," the doctor intends to make a small incision in a woman's brain, allowing her to see past the world of the senses to a reality beyond imagining--a realm where, Raymond says, one can see the great god Pan. Though the experiment is an apparent failure, it will not be Clarke's last brush with the sinister beyond.
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The Monkey's Paw and Other Tales by W. W. JacobsCall Number: EBOOK
This book features Gothic narratives, stories of the macabre, and supernatural tales that are infused with the shrewd and sardonic humor for which Jacobs is justifiably famous. The stories demonstrate his masterful instinct for weaving terror and suspense into scenes of ordinary everyday life.
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The Willows by Algernon BlackwoodTwo friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible."
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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins GilmanCall Number: EBOOK GILMAN
Diagnosed by her physician husband with a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency” after the birth of her child, a woman is urged to rest for the summer in an old colonial mansion. Forbidden from doing work of any kind, she spends her days in the house’s former nursery, with its barred windows, scratched floor, and peeling yellow wallpaper. In a private journal, the woman records her growing obsession with the “horrid” wallpaper. Its strange pattern mutates in the moonlight, revealing what appears to be a human figure in the design. With nothing else to occupy her mind, the woman resolves to unlock the mystery of the wallpaper. Her quest, however, leads not to the truth, but into the darkest depths of madness.
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Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M. R. JamesWhen Professor Parkins finds an old whistle, his stay at Globe Inn takes a turn for the eerie.
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The Werewolf of Paris by Guy EndoreCall Number: EBOOK
In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across pre-Revolutionary France seeking to calm the beast within.
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I Am Legend by Richard MathesonCall Number: EBOOK
Neville is essentially the last man on earth, and the loneliness of his situation is the central part of the story. Matheson is able to communicate Neville's emotional feelings vividly, making him very real. We gradually acquire the story of the deaths of Neville's wife and daughter, essentially experiencing the pain he goes through when these memories overcome him. We watch him drink himself into a stupor as each night finds him besieged in his fortified house, surrounded by vampires, including his old friend and neighbor, calling for him to come out.
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Let Me In by John Ajvide LindqvistCall Number: HORROR AJVIDE
Twelve-year-old Oskar is obsessed by the murder that's taken place in his neighborhood. Then he meets the new girl from next door. She's a bit weird, though. And she only comes out at night--Publisher's description.
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Interview with the Vampire by Anne RiceThis is the story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life
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Minion by L. A. BanksAll Damali Richards ever wanted to do was create music and bring it to the people. Now she is a spoken word artist and the top act for Warriors of Light Records. But come nightfall, she hunts vampires and demons—predators that people tend to dismiss as myth or fantasy. Damali and her Guardian team cannot afford such delusions, especially now, when a group of rogue vampires has been killing the artists of Warriors of Light and their rival, Blood Music.
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The Hunger by Alma KatsuCall Number: MYSTERY KATSU
The ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy-- they cannot seem to escape tragedy... or the feeling that someone-- something?-- is stalking them. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along.
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Those Across the River by Christopher BuehlmanFailed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate-the Savoyard Plantation- and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.
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Bird Box by Josh MalermanCall Number: HORROR MALERMAN
Malorie tries to save two small children from a nameless evil that, if seen, will lead her to commit murder or suicide—or both.
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Feed by Mira GrantThe year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we had created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives--the dark conspiracy behind the infected.
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World War Z by Max BrooksCall Number: HORROR BROOKS
An account of the decade-long conflict between humankind and hordes of the predatory undead is told from the perspective of dozens of survivors who describe in their own words the epic human battle for survival.
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The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. CareyCall Number: SCIENCE FICTION CAREY
Not every gift is a blessing. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie is a very special girl.
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The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValleCall Number: HORROR LAVALLE
When Charles Thomas Tester delivers an occult book to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, he opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping
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The Fisherman by John LanganIn upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir.
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The Atrocity Archives by Charles StrossCall Number: SCIENCE FICTION STROSS
Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But somehow, he is...
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The Cipher by Kathe KojaNicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand - weeping not blood, but a plasma of tears...It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse... Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...
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John Dies at the End by David WongCall Number: HORROR WONG
This may be the story of John and David, a drug called soy sauce, and other-worldly beings invading the planet. Or, it may be the story of two beer-drinking friends who live in an unnamed Midwestern town and only think something horrific is going on. But the important thing is, according to the narrator, "None of this is my fault."
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Forget the Sleepless Shores: Stories by Sonya TaaffeIncludes "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts"
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Uzumaki, Volume 1 by Junji ItoCall Number: MANGA ITO
The story is set in a small town 'Kurouzu-cho' meaning 'black swirl town'. People around a high school girl, Goshima Kirie, become obsessed with swirl shapes and kill themselves in gruesome ways.
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Communion by Whitley StrieberOn December 26, 1985, at a secluded cabin in upstate New York, Whitley Strieber went siding with his wife and son, ate Christmas dinner leftovers, and went to bed early. Six hours later, he found himself suddenly awake...and forever changed. Thus begins the most astonishing true-life odyssey ever recorded -- one man's riveting account of his extraordinary experiences with visitors from"elsewhere"... how they found him, where they took him, what they did to him and why... Believe it. Or don't believe it. But read it -- for this gripping story will move you like no other... will fascinate you, terrify you, and alter the way you experience your world
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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley JacksonCall Number: HORROR JACKSON
When four seekers arrive at a notorious old mansion, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena, but Hill House is gathering its powers and will soon choose one of them to make its own.
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The House Next Door by Anne Rivers SiddonsColquitt and Walter Kennedy enjoyed a life of lazy weekends, gathering with the neighbors on their quiet, manicured street and sipping drinks on their patios. But when construction of a beautiful new home begins in the empty lot next door, their easy friendship and relaxed get-togethers are marred by strange accidents and inexplicable happenings.
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Burnt Offerings by Robert MarascoBen and Marian Rolfe are desperate to escape a stifling summer in their tiny Brooklyn apartment, so when they get the chance to rent a mansion in upstate New York for the entire season for only $900, it's an offer that's too good to refuse. There's only one catch: behind a strange and intricately carved door in a distant wing of the house lives elderly Mrs. Allardyce, and the Rolfes will be responsible for preparing her meals. But Mrs. Allardyce never seems to emerge from her room, and it soon becomes clear that something weird and terrifying is happening in the house. As the suspense builds towards a revelation of what really lies behind that locked door, the Rolfes will discover that their cheap vacation rental comes at a terrible cost . . .
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The Shining by Stephen KingCall Number: HORROR KING
Jack Torrance sees his stint as winter caretaker of a Colorado hotel as a way back from failure, his wife sees it as a chance to preserve their family, and their five-year-old son sees the evil waiting just for them.
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House of Leaves by Mark Z. DanielewskiA young family moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
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The Elementals by Michael McDowellThe McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame. But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them...and about all the ways to make them die.
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The Woman in Black by Susan HillCall Number: HORROR HILL
Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor, travels to the north of England to settle the estate of Alice Drablow, but unexpectedly encounters a series of sinster events.
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Lunar Park by Bret Easton EllisBret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is a writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father. After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’s past.
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The Bone Key by Sarah MonetteThe dead and the monstrous will not leave Kyle Murchison Booth alone, for an unwilling foray into necromancy has made him sensitive to--and attractive to--the creatures who roam the darkness of his once-safe world. Ghosts, ghouls, incubi: all have one thing in common. They know Booth for one of their own . . .
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Wylding Hall by Elizabeth HandCall Number: EBOOK
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?
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Infidel by Aaron Campbell (Artist); Jose Villarrubia (Artist); Pornsak PichetshoteA haunted house story for the 21st century, INFIDEL follows an American Muslim woman and her multi-racial neighbors who move into a building haunted by entities that feed off xenophobia.
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The Ruins by Scott SmithTwo American couples, just out of college, enjoy a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico. On an impulse, they go off with new found friends in search of one of their group--the young German, who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig. Then the searchers--moving into the wild interior--begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific "other" among them.
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Rebecca by Daphne Du MaurierCall Number: LARGE PRINT FICTION DUMAURIE
After a whirlwind romance and a honeymoon in Italy, the innocent young heroine and the dashing Maxim de Winter return to his country estate, Manderley. But the unsettling memory of Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, still lingers within. The timid bride must overcome her husband's oppressive silences and the sullen hostility of the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, to confront the emotional horror of the past.
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"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol OatesSulky teenager Connie is tired of being compared to her perfect older sister. She wants to hang around with the older kids; she wants to talk to boys. What she gets is an encounter with one of horror's great monsters — Arnold Friend and his creepy gold car. Joyce Carol Oates has said this story was inspired by a real-life serial killer, but everything beyond that has been debated endlessly — is it a feminist fable? An allegory for the changes America was going through in the 1960s? Both? And what do those numbers on the side of Arnold's car mean?
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The Red Tree by Caitlín R. KiernanSarah Crowe left Atlanta--and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship--to live in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant--an anthropologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. Tied to local legends of supernatural magic, as well as documented accidents and murders, the gnarled tree takes root in Sarah's imagination, prompting her to write her own account of its unsavory history. And as the oak continues to possess her dreams and nearly almost all her waking thoughts, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago...
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Swan Song by Robert McCammonCall Number: HORROR MCCAMMON
In a wasteland born of rage and fear, populated by monstrous creatures and marauding armies, earth's last survivors have been drawn into the final battle between good and evil, that will decide the fate of humanity: Sister, who discovers a strange and transformative glass artifact in the destroyed Manhattan streets... Joshua Hutchins, the pro wrestler who takes refuge from the nuclear fallout at a Nebraska gas station... and Swan, a young girl possessing special powers, who travels along Josh to a Missouri town where healing and recovery can begin with Swan's gift. But the ancient force behind earth's devastation is scouring the walking wounded for recruits for its relentless army, beginning with Swan herself.
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Her Smoke Rose up Forever by James TiptreeIncludes "The Screwfly Solution"
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Come Closer by Sara GranIf 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?
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Furnace by Livia LlewellynPerhaps we should put a content warning here: Poll judge Ruthanna Emrys says Livia Llewellyn's work is "occasionally X-rated, with a dash of Y, Z and WTFBBQ." However, she adds, "I'm a hard scare and it scares me." The stories in Furnace are surreal and gorgeously written, shot through with equal parts lust and confusion, dripping with bright blood. Read with care.
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The Bloody Chamber by Angela CarterIn The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.
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Through the Woods by Emily CarrollCall Number: GRAPHIC NOVEL THROUGH
Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House”—though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.” You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancee may not be what she seems in “The Nesting Place.” And of course you must revisit the horror of “His Face All Red,” the breakout webcomic hit that has been gorgeously translated to the printed page.
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Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil GaimanCall Number: GRAPHIC NOVEL SANDMAN
A wizard attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. Fearful for his safety, the wizard kept him imprisoned in a glass bottle for decades. After his escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On the way, Morpheus encounters Lucifer and demons from Hell, the Justice League, and John Constantine, the Hellblazer.
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Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria MachadoCall Number: FICTION MACHADO
Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. She bends genres to shape startling stories that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
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White is for Witching by Helen OyeyemiTeenage Miranda Silver is tormented by a craving for things that aren't food, like chalk and plastic, and as this early novel by Helen Oyeyemi opens, she is dealing with her mother's death and the malevolent spirits in her house. Lush and incantatory, packed with twins, strange hungers and hauntings, White is for Witching is a cornucopia of creepy scares.
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Goblin Market, the Prince's Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Georgina RossettiCall Number: EBOOK
This omnibus collection brings Christina Rossetti's best-known works together in one volume. The "Goblin Market" is a cautionary poem about two sisters who are tempted by evil goblins with delicious fruit when they go to draw water from their well. It also features "The Prince's Progress," and works such as "Song" and "Dream Land," as well as devotionals--all filled with rich imagery and deft phrasing.
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Experimental Film by Gemma FilesExperimental Film is a contemporary ghost story in which former Canadian film history teacher Lois Cairns-jobless and depressed in the wake of her son's autism diagnosis-accidentally discovers the existence of lost early 20th century Ontario filmmaker Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb. By deciding to investigate how Mrs. Whitcomb's obsessions might have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs. Whitcomb's films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband and herself in danger.
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The Collector by John FowlesWithdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.
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The Terror by Dan SimmonsCall Number: HORROR SIMMONS
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.
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Intensity by Dean KoontzCall Number: EBOOK
A young woman witnesses the murder of a family by a killer and undertakes to capture him. She is Chyna Sheperd, a California psychology student staying at a friend's house when Edgler Vess, a "homicidal adventurer," arrives for a bit of fun. Chyna grabs a butcher's knife and hides in Vess' motor home where she finds more bodies, sees Vess kill again en route, is forced to flee, follows him in a stolen car, slips inside his house to find a girl prisoner--and becomes prisoner herself.
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The Girl Next Door by Jack KetchumSuburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.
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Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. BriteTo serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.
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The Best of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. LansdaleIncludes "Night They Missed the Horror Show"
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Penpal by Dathan AuerbachIn Penpal, a man investigates the seemingly unrelated bizarre, tragic, and horrific occurrences of his childhood in an attempt to finally understand them. Beginning with only fragments of his earliest years, you'll follow the narrator as he discovers that these strange and horrible events are actually part of a single terrifying story that has shaped the entirety of his life and the lives of those around him.
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NOS4A2 by Joe HillCall Number: HORROR HILL
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things. Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.” Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
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Bloodchild by Octavia E. ButlerCall Number: EBOOK
The aliens in Octavia Butler's short story are awful-looking insectoids who implant their eggs in human hosts, but that is actually not what is horrible in "Bloodchild." While there is a touch of body horror in Butler's depiction of male pregnancy, what is scary here is the queasily familial relationship between the alien Tlic and their human hosts. The Tlic see humans affectionately, as big warm convenient animals. And the humans, though troubled, mostly return that affection.
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Lord of the Flies by William GoldingCall Number: FICTION GOLDING
The classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island.
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The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret AtwoodCall Number: FICTION ATWOOD
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.
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Beloved by Toni MorrisonCall Number: FICTION MORRISON
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
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Octavia E. Butler's Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Damian Duffy & John JenningsCall Number: GRAPHIC NOVEL OCTAVIA
Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South.
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The Devil in America by Kai Ashante WilsonScant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.
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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan EllisonCall Number: EBOOK
Lots of movies, books and stories have been built on the premise of an out-of-control artificial intelligence. But except for maybe HAL 9000, none of them are as scary as AM, the supercomputer created by warring nations in Harlan Ellison's horrifying short story. AM abruptly gets tired of the war, ends it by triggering a mass genocide and spends the next century or so working out its hatred of humanity by torturing the last five remaining humans — but not letting them die.
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Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3 by Clive BarkerIn 1984, Clive Barker burst onto the scene with one of the most remarkable debuts in horror: three volumes of short stories known as the Books of Blood. It was as if a band you had never heard of released a box set instead of a first album. Never treated with much respect in the United States (his American publisher only printed them in paperback), the stories raised the bar for horror, making it sexier, queerer and more poetic. Ranging from slapstick comedy to gross-out horror to breathtaking surrealism just in the first volume alone, each story is technically perfect and philosophically unnerving.
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The October Country by Ray BradburyCall Number: HORROR BRADBURY
Explore the outer limits of the imagination with the Grand Master of American Literature, Ray Bradbury, in a dark and disquieting descent into The October Country. Readers of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, as well as fans of H. P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Bram Stoker, Stephen King,and writers of other classic horror stories, will be captivated by The October Country's nineteen astonishing tales. From drowned cities to frantic carnivals to forgotten Mexican villages, Bradbury offers an unforgettable journey into mystery, shining brief lights upon the darkest corners of the soul.
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The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff VanderMeer & Ann VanderMeerFrom Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.
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The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird BarronCall Number: HORROR BARRON
Collected here for the first time are nine terrifying tales of cosmic horror, including the World Fantasy Award-nominated novella "The Imago Sequence," the International Horror Guild Award-nominated "Proboscis," and the never-before-published "Procession of the Black Sloth." Together, these stories, each a masterstroke of craft and imaginative irony, form a shocking cycle of distorted evolution, encroaching chaos, and ravenous insectoid hive-minds hidden just beneath the seemingly benign surface of the Earth.
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Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991 by Ramsey CampbellModern horror's ultimate stylist, Ramsey Campbell started his career as a Lovecraft imitator before going off in his own direction. Specializing in the horror of cities, dirt, squalor and the general mind-shattering everyday degradations of urban life, Campbell creates a world in which there is no difference between our brutalist, lunatic buildings and their brutal and insane inhabitants. Strongest in his short stories, a massive selection of which are collected here, he writes from the point of view that our cities are haunted garbage heaps, and we're all just the ghostly, numb cadavers infesting their derelict ruins.
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Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana EnríquezCall Number: FICTION ENRIQUEZ
Macabre, disturbing, and exhilarating, Things We Lost in the Fire is a collection of short stories that use fear and horror to explore multiple dimensions of life in contemporary Argentina. From women who set themselves on fire in protest of domestic violence; to a nine-year-old serial killer of babies; and from a girl who pulls out her nails and eyelids in the classroom, to hikikomori, abandoned houses, black magic, northern Argentinean superstition, disappearances, crushes, heartbreak, regret, and compassion, this is a strange, surreal, and unforgettable collection that asks vital questions of the world as we know it.
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Shadowland by Peter StraubCome back. To a dark house deep in the Vermont woods, where two friends are spending a season of horror, apprenticed to a Master Magician. Learning secrets best left unlearned. Entering a world of incalculable evil more ancient than death itself. More terrifying. And more real. Only one of them will make it through.
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A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul TremblayCall Number: HORROR TREMBLAY
When teenager Marjorie acts oddly, her parents decide she needs an exorcism and make the fateful decision to show it on reality television.
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Rosemary's Baby by Ira LevinRosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them. But by the time Rosemary discovers the horrifying truth, it may be far too late.
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The Exorcist by William Peter BlattyCall Number: HORROR BLATTY
Four decades after it first shook the nation, then the world, William Peter Blatty's thrilling masterwork of faith and demonic possession returns in an even more powerful form. Raw and profane, shocking and blood-chilling, it remains a modern parable of good and evil and perhaps the most terrifying novel ever written.
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Different Seasons by Stephen King
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Mirror Mirror by Jerome BixbyIncludes "It's a Good Life"
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The Other by Thomas TryonThe dark horse among the trinity of books that kicked off the horror revival of the late '60s and early '70s, The Other will never be as well-known as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist because it lacks a hit movie version. But just as The Exorcist owned the possession genre and Rosemary spawned a whole brood of satanic pregnancies, The Other gave us a graduating class of homicidal children and evil twins. The story of identical twins living on an idyllic farm, it slowly descends into madness involving drowned babies and hidden pitchforks. Possessing an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist and told in dense, poetic language, it's a hammer wrapped in velvet.
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The Troop by Nick CutterOnce every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip. This year, something is waiting in the darkness. Something wicked.... An intruder stumbles upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine....
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Elizabeth by Ken GreenhallThe image in the mirror of 14-year-old Elizabeth Cuttner is that of the fey and long-dead Frances, who introduces Elizabeth to her chilling world of the supernatural. Through Frances, Elizabeth learns what it is to wield power - power of a kind that is malevolent and seemingly invincible. Power that begins with the killing of her parents...
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Goosebumps (series) by R.L. StineCall Number: SERIES G
Goosebumps is a series of children's horror fiction novels by American author R. L. Stine. The stories follow child characters, who find themselves in scary situations, usually involving monsters and other supernatural elements.
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Rotters by Daniel KrausCall Number: YA FICTION KRAUS
Sixteen-year-old Joey's life takes a very strange turn when his mother's tragic death forces him to move from Chicago to rural Iowa with the father he has never known, and who is the town pariah.
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The Jumbies by Tracey BaptisteCall Number: J BAPTISTE
Eleven-year-old Corinne must call on her courage and an ancient magic to stop an evil spirit and save her island home.
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The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John BellairsCall Number: J BELLAIRS
Orphaned Lewis Barnavelt comes to live with his Uncle Jonathan and quickly learns that both his uncle and his next-door neighbor are witches on a quest to discover the terrifying clock ticking within the walls of Jonathan's house. Can the three of them save the world from certain destruction?
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Spirit Hunters by Ellen OhCall Number: TEEN OH
Harper doesn't trust her new home from the moment she steps inside, and the rumors are that the Raine family's new house is haunted. Harper isn't sure she believes those rumors, until her younger brother, Michael, starts acting strangely. The whole atmosphere gives Harper a sense of ♯j vu, but she can't remember why. She knows that the memories she's blocking will help make sense of her brother's behavior and the strange and threatening sensations she feels in this house, but will she be able to put the pieces together in time?
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Coraline by Neil GaimanCall Number: J GAIMAN pbk
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.