If You Like Stephen King

“Best known for his horror novels, Stephen King (also using the pseudonym Richard Bachman, a more gruesome voice) writes in many genres: dark fantasy, science fiction, psychological suspense, and others. No matter the genre, his fast-paced, character-driven stories are told in conversational language and feature well-developed characters. His appealing heroes and terrible villains arise from our innermost fears into the everyday world, which becomes increasingly twisted. Whether focused on the real-world horrors of abuse or on supernatural terrors, good-vs.-evil is King’s most common theme: The protagonist must rise to meet the challenge of the horrific.” NoveList Description

If You Like Stephen King, You Might Like…

Bad Man

Dathan Auerbach

Reddit horror sensation Dathan Auerbach delivers a devilishly dark novel about a young boy who goes missing, and the brother who won't stop looking for him. Eric disappeared when he was three years old. Ben looked away for only a second at the g rocery store, but that was all it took. His brother was gone. Vanished right into the sticky air of the Florida Panhandle. They say you've got only a couple days to find a missing person. Forty-eight hours to conduct searches, knock on doors, and talk to witnesses. Two days to tear the world apart if there's any chance of putting yours back together. That's your window. That window closed five years ago, leaving Ben's life in ruins. He still looks for his brother. Still searches, while his stepmother sits and waits and whispers for Eric, refusing to leave the house that Ben's father can no longer afford. Now twenty and desperate for work, Ben takes a night stock job at the only place that will have him: the store that blinked Eric out of existence. Ben can feel that there's something wrong there. With the people. With his boss. With the graffitied baler that shudders and moans and beckons. There's something wrong with the air itself. He knows he's in the right place now. That the store has much to tell him. So he keeps searching. Keeps looking for his baby brother, while missing the most important message of all. That he should have stopped looking.

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Blaze

Richard Bachman

Once upon a time, a fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"), but this last gripping Bach man novel resurfaced after being hidden away for decades -- an unforgettable crime story tinged with sadness and suspense. Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., was always a small-time delinquent. None too bright either, thanks to the beatings he got as a kid. Then Blaze met George Rackley, a seasoned pro with a hundred cons and one big idea. The kidnapping should go off without a hitch, with George as the brains behind their dangerous scheme. But there's only one problem: by the time the deal goes down, Blaze's partner in crime is dead. Or is he? Includes a previously uncollected story, "Memory" -- the riveting opening to Stephen King's new Scribner hardcover novel, Duma Key.

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Mister B. Gone

Clive Barker

You hold in your hands not a book at all, but a terrifying embodiment of purest evil. Can you feel the electric tingle in your fingers as you are absorbed by the demon Jakabok's tale of his unintentional ascent from the depths of the Inferno? Do you sense the cold dread worming its way into your bloodstream, your sinews, the marrow of your bones as you read more deeply into his earthly education and unspeakable acts? The filth you now grasp has been waiting patiently for you for nearly six hundred years. And now, before you are completely in its thrall, you would do well to follow the foul creature's admonition and destroy this abomination of ink and paper before you turn a single leaf and are lost forever. You have been warned.

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Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury

Two boys' lives are changed forever when a sinister travelling carnival stops at their Illinois town.

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Nazareth Hill

Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell has been hailed as a master of the psychological novel; his ability to convey the twists and turns of the human mind is unparalleled in modern fiction. Through the struggles, failures, and triumphs of Campbell's characters, we se e the best and the worst of the human race. In Nazareth Hill, Campbell focuses on a small, highly dysfunctional family--a teenage girl and her father. The emotional turmoil of the girl's adolescence is matched by her father's midlife crisis, and as the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that this battle is only one stage in a centuries-old war between authority and rebellion, suspicion and innocence. "Shocking surprises, alarming horrors, and believable characters--all expertly blended in a fresh, deft shocker." - Kirkus Reviews At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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Dark Echo

F. G. Cottam

Dark Echo is an unlucky boat. Despite this knowledge, Martin Stannard falls under her spell and prepares to sail her across the Atlantic with his wealthy father. But his lover Suzanne begins exploring the yacht's past. What she finds is terrifyi ng. Because this boat isn't just unlucky, it's evil. It was built for Henry Spalding, a soldier and sorcerer who committed suicide yet still casts his malevolent spell nearly a century after his death. Suzanne must uncover his last, terrible secret before Dark Echo destroys the man she loves.

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The Passage

Justin Cronin

A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop.

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Wayward

Blake Crouch

Ethan Burke, one of the few who knows what lies beyond the borders of Wayward Pines, settles uncomfortably into his role as sheriff.

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Neverwhere

Neil Gaiman

The #1 New York Times bestselling author's ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel featuring his "preferred text"—and including his special Neverwhere tale "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" Published in 1997 , Neil Gaiman's darkly hypnotic first novel, Neverwhere, heralded the arrival of a major talent and became a touchstone of urban fantasy. Over the years, a number of versions were produced both in the U.S. and the U.K. Now Gaiman's preferred edition of his classic novel reconciles these works and reinstates a number of scenes cut from the original published books. Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he discovers a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her—an act of kindness that plunges him into a world he never dreamed existed. Slipping through the cracks of reality, Richard lands in the Neverwhere—a London of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth. The Neverwhere is home to Door, the mysterious girl Richard helped in the London Above. Door, a noblewoman whose family has been murdered, is on a quest to find the agent that slaughtered her family and thwart the destruction of this underworld kingdom. If Richard is ever to return to his former life, he must join the journey to save Door's world—and find a way to survive. A hallucinatory fantasia of mystery, mythology, and terror that "draws equally from George Lucas, Monty Python, Doctor Who, and John Milton" (USA Today), Neverwhere is an "Alice in Wonderland with a punk edge" (Poppy Z. Brite), "that is both the stuff of dreams and nightmares" (San Diego Union-Tribune).

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NOS4A2

Joe Hill

The spine-tingling, bone-chilling novel of supernatural suspense from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Horns—now an AMC original series starring Zachary Quinto, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Ashleigh Cummings. "A masterwor k of horror."— Time Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. The journey across the highway of Charlie's twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor. Then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble...and finds her way to Charlie. That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie's evil is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx hasn't stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won't slow down until he's taken his revenge. He's after something very special—something Vic can never replace. As a life-and-death battle of wills builds, Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all—or die trying.

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Heart-Shaped Box with Bonus Material

Joe Hill

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses o f his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . . For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more? But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing. And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . . A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.

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Horns

Joe Hill

After his childhood sweetheart is brutally killed and suspicion falls on him, Ig Parrish goes on a drinking binge and wakes up with horns on his head, hate in his heart and an incredible new power, a power he uses in the name of vengeance, only to le arn that, when it comes to revenge, the devil is in the details. By the best-selling author of Heart-Shaped Box. 250,000 first printing.

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77 Shadow Street

Dean Ray Koontz

The affluent occupants of luxury apartments, housed in a 200-year-old mansion with a checkered past, enter into a terrifying waking nightmare when the haunted house reawakens, leaving no one safe from its grip.

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Watchers

Dean Koontz

A deadly hunt towards evil... Watchers is an unmissable thriller from bestselling author Dean Koontz, exploring conspiracy theories alongside a gripping struggle for survival. Perfect for fans of Stephen King and Richard Laymon. 'A winner. Give this one a straight 10 right across the board' - The San Francisco Examiner They escape from a secret government: two mutant creatures, both changed utterly from the animals they once were. And no one who encounters them will ever be the same again: a lonely widower; a ruthless assassin; a beautiful woman; a government agent. Drawn together in a deadly hunt, all four are inexorably propelled towards an evil beyond human imagining. What readers are saying about Watchers: 'This book is a tour de force! An utterly fantastic read with great plot and characterisation' 'A dazzling combination of suspense, horror, and romance' 'The best book I have ever read'

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Odd Thomas

Dean Koontz

Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz’s dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours. “The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different. A stranger comes to Pico Mundo, accompanied by a horde of hyena-like shades who herald an imminent catastrophe. Aided by his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Odd will race against time to thwart the gathering evil. His account of these shattering hours, in which past and present, fate and destiny, converge, is a testament by which to live—an unforgettable fable for our time destined to rank among Dean Koontz’s most enduring works.

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The Ridge

Michael Koryta

In an isolated stretch of eastern Kentucky, on a hilltop known as Blade Ridge, stands a lighthouse that illuminates nothing but the surrounding woods. One day its builder is found dead at the top of the light, and his belongings reveal a troubling lo cal history. For deputy sheriff Kevin Kimble, the lighthouse-keeper's death is disturbing and personal. Years ago, Kimble was shot while on duty. Somehow the death suggests a connection between the lighthouse and the most terrifying moment of his life. Audrey Clark is in the midst of moving her large-cat sanctuary onto land adjacent to the lighthouse. Sixty-seven tigers, lions, leopards, and one legendary black panther are about to have a new home there. Her husband, the sanctuary's founder, died scouting the new property, and Audrey is determined to see his vision through. As strange occurrences multiply at the Ridge, the animals grow ever more restless, and Kimble and Audrey try to understand what evil forces are moving through this ancient landscape, just past the divide between dark and light.

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Let Me In

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let Me In Takes Top Honors at Tribeca Film Festival and is now an Award-winning movie in both the U.S. and Sweden! It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last---revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day. But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door---a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .Sweeping top honors at film festivals all over the globe, Let Me In has received the same kind of spectacular raves that have been lavished on the book. American and Swedish readers of vampire fiction will be thrilled! Following the success in Sweden, this movie was remade in 2010 starring Kodi Smit Mcpheem, Chloe Grace Moretz and Richard Jenkins changing its name from the Swedish Let The Right One In. The story has continued to reach new viewers in a London Musical and the book remains a vampire favorite among its readers.

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Bird Box

Josh Malerman

Josh Malerman’s debut novel BIRD BOX is a terrifying, psychological thriller that is sure to stay with you long after reading.

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Haunted

Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds h eat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.

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Nathaniel

John Saul

For a hundred years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered Nathaniel's name in wonder and fear. Some say he is a folktale, created to frighten children on cold winter nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit retumed to avenge the past. B ut soon . . . very soon . . . some will learn that Nathaniel lives still--that he is darkly, horrifyingly real. Nathaniel--he is the voice that calls to young Michael Hall across the prairie night . . . the voice that draws the boy into the shadowy depths of the old, crumbling, forbidden barn . . . that chanting, compelling voice he will follow faithfully beyond the edge of terror. From the Paperback edition.

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Summer of Night

Dan Simmons

In the summer of 1960 in Elm Haven, Illinois, five 12-year-old boys forge the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. An ancient, sinister evil lurks in the dark, and when a long-silent bell peals in the middle of the deepest night, the people know it marks the beginning of terror. Now Mike, Duane, Dale, Harlen, and Kevin must wage a fraternal war of blood against an arcane abomination.

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A Winter Haunting

Dan Simmons

A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage -- and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where h e hopes to find peace in isolation. But moving into a long-deserted farmhouse on the far outskirts of town -- the one-time residence of a strange and brilliant friend who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960 -- is only the latest in his long succession of recent mistakes. Because Dale is not alone here. He has been followed to this house of shadows by private demons who are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. And a thick, blanketing early snow is starting to fall ...

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The Abominable

Dan Simmons

ALA Reading List Award for History, Short List A thrilling tale of high-altitude death and survival set on the snowy summits of Mount Everest, from the bestselling author of The Terror It's 1924 and the race to summit the world's highest mo untain has been brought to a terrified pause by the shocking disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine high on the shoulder of Mt. Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet and veteran of the Great War, a young French Chamonix guide, and an idealistic young American -- find a way to take their shot at the top. They arrange funding from the grieving Lady Bromley, whose son also disappeared on Mt. Everest in 1924. Young Bromley must be dead, but his mother refuses to believe it and pays the trio to bring him home. Deep in Tibet and high on Everest, the three climbers -- joined by the missing boy's female cousin -- find themselves being pursued through the night by someone . . . or something. This nightmare becomes a matter of life and death at 28,000 feet - but what is pursuing them? And what is the truth behind the 1924 disappearances on Everest? As they fight their way to the top of the world, the friends uncover a secret far more abominable than any mythical creature could ever be. A pulse-pounding story of adventure and suspense, The Abominable is Dan Simmons at his spine-chilling best.

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Shadowland

Peter Straub

You have been there… if you have ever been afraid. Come 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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The Little Stranger

Sarah Waters

Soon to be a major motion picture, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson. "The #1 book of 2009...Several sleepless nights are guaranteed."—Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly One postwar summer in his h ome of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.

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