Horror and Thriller

Ghost with a lantern

From ghosts to zombies throughout the years, find a curated collection of deep cuts in our collection to get you in the perfect mood this spooky season.

Even though most of Joan Samson's novel The Auctioneer takes place during the three seasons of the year that aren't winter, it possesses a bleak and chilly atmosphere that might as well be the coldest day in January.

Is your child obsessed with the creepy and macabre? Can they not get enough of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and plan on moving on to Stephen King? You’ll find that these books are terrifying while being a little more age appropriate.

Lieutenant Jacqueline 'Jack' Daniels' is a homicide detective whose personal life is perpetually in shambles. Unfortunately, fixing her life has to be put on the back-burner while she tries to deal with the maniacal killers running around her city.

 

One cannot, I think, err when choosing to read one of Joyce Carol Oates’ anthologies of stories.    This volume, Haunted:  Tales of the Grotesque, is as good as any other at introducing the reader to one of the great anthologists and short fiction writers of the last century. Winner of several  O. Henry awards for her short fiction, Oates has also received the Rea Award for Achievement in the Short Story.  Oates clearly knows her way around the shadows and mists on the dark side of the imagination.

A planet covered in darkness and filled with monsters can be a serious impediment to true love.

“...that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.”

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John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps (and its multiple subsequent film and television versions) is likely the work most closely associated with his name.

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Short stories are one of the best ways to quickly inject some pleasurable fear into your veins this time of year.

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Greetings!  I’m always up for a good scare or haunting, and when this book came sliding through my hands, I set it aside out of a sense of duty because I am the Yankee who has lived here for twenty-five years and still doesn’t know enough about the Bell Witch to sound respectable around a cracker barrel.  

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As a former high school teacher who served up Nathaniel Hawthorne to juniors via The Scarlet Letter for many years, I have a love relationship with Hawthorne’s extensive and beautiful vocabulary.  

Who doesn’t love a haunted house story? This fall, as we head towards Halloween, watch the blog for reviews of great spooky reads.

The Haunting of Hill House is one of them, and one of the best examples I know of a “page turner.” I first came to know this story as a young child....

Six Scary Stories is a collection of horror short stories, hand-picked by Stephen King. Each tale takes the mundane and turns it into something horrifying!

Nashville is a city with an easily forgettable past, or rather people would prefer to forget its past. But that doesn't change the fact that it has a rather macabre and peculiar one. In Brian Allison's recently published book "Murder & Mayhem in Nashville," he highlights some of the more gruesome tales from Nashville's past.

Ancestral homes often have a habit of feeling haunted, and when they appear in stories that mix the Southern Gothic genre with the supernatural, you can bet they probably are. 

Greetings!  I’m always up for a good scare or haunting, and when this book came sliding through my hands, I set it aside out of a sense of duty because I am the Yankee who has lived here for twenty-five years and still doesn’t know enough about the Bell Witch to sound respectable around a cracker barrel. 

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Frank's sole purpose in life is to experience the pleasures of the world, without consequence. Frank's brother just wants to be good husband, and live a quiet domestic life. Frank's actions pull his family into a horrifying world full of horror.

Unique and frightening, this anomaly of a novel combined mystery and horror to illusory, bewildering effect.

Is your tween's favorite holiday Halloween? Do they love creepy, spine-tingling reads? Are you worried they aren't ready for certain titles? Check out these titles that are varying degrees of terrifying.

Having read The Girl with All the Gifts, I was really excited to pick up the second book under Mike Carey’s new pen name. Mike Carey is very well-known in the comic book scene as the writer for the Vertigo comic book series Lucifer and 35 issues of Hellblazer (which was the basis for both the movie and television show Constantine).  He is the current ongoing writer for X-Men: Legacy and the Ultimate Fantastic Four for Marvel Comics.  These are just a few of his credentials in the world of comic books – he’s written fiction novels, as well.

First, I should say that I know this book isn’t new. It came out in 1987 when I was a delicate three-year-old child, who had not quite gotten to chapter books just yet. Misery is a psychological thriller about an author of famous Victorian-era romances who is rescued from a car crash by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. The only problem? Annie Wilkes is completely off her rocker.

You might not expect a novel about killer plants to be thoroughly lacking in over-the-top corniness, but John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids handily pulls it off.

I came across Scowler while at the library. I did not check it out at that point, because while it piqued my interest, I am always somewhat hesitant to pick up teen novels. Many teen novels that I have read have diverse plots, and are well written. However, I would quickly discover that a major part of the books’ focus are on the main characters’ love lives— a love triangle usually ensues. I like romance in small doses. When I realized this book was a Horror/Suspense novel, I quickly ran to check it out from the library.

Introducing Melanie, the smartest of a group of children being taught in an underground facility. They have a variety of teachers, some cold and calculating, others loving and caring like Mrs. Justineau. Mostly, they learn about literature and Greek myths. They are no tests. In fact, the children are all strapped into chairs, escorted by armed soldiers, and treated like animals.