FREE/BARGAIN - Horror/Supernatural

[ZodWallop]

Mary SanGiovanni (one of the old Leisure horror authors) has a book for sale at Amazon. It sounds very good, though it's also listed as the first in a series. Horror and series don't mix in my opinion, but I bought the book anyway:

Behind the Door by Mary SanGiovanni is $0.99

In the rural town of Zarepath, deep in the woods on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, stands the Door. No one knows where it came from, and no one knows where it leads. For generations, folks have come to the Door seeking solace or forgiveness. They deliver a handwritten letter asking for some emotional burden to be lifted, sealed with a mixture of wax and their own blood, and slide it beneath the Door. Three days later, their wish is answered—for better or worse.

Kari is a single mother, grieving over the suicide of her teenage daughter. She made a terrible mistake, asking the powers beyond the Door to erase the memories of her lost child. And when she opened the Door to retrieve her letter, she unleashed every sin, secret, and spirit ever trapped on the other side.

Now, it falls to occultist Kathy Ryan to seal the door before Zarepath becomes hell on earth . . .

[ZodWallop]

There's another $0.99 Mary SanGiovanni book: Savage Woods. And this one isn't listed as first in series.

Nilhollow—six-hundred-plus acres of haunted woods in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens—is the stuff of urban legend. Amid tales of tree spirits and all-powerful forest gods are frightening accounts of hikers who went insane right before taking their own lives. It is here that Julia Russo flees when her violent ex-boyfriend runs her off the road . . . here that she vanishes without a trace.

State Trooper Peter Grainger has witnessed unspeakable things that have broken other men. But he has to find Julia and can’t turn back now. Every step takes him closer to an ugliness that won’t be appeased—a centuries-old, devouring hatred rising up to eviscerate humankind. Waiting, feeding, surviving. It’s unstoppable. And its time has come.

[Dr. Drib]

^ Got them both.

Thank you!

[radbaddude]

Edward Lorn's The Sound of Broken Ribs ($0.99 USA)
https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Broken-...gateway&sr=8-3

Lei Duncan has it all: the ideal life, the perfect career, a loving husband. What more could someone ask for? It is with this in mind that Lei takes her morning run. Belinda Walsh has lost it all: her home, her husband, her mind. She thought she knew Dan, but one phone call changed all that. Now everything she’s known to be true is a lie. It is with this in mind that she goes looking for something—or someone—to destroy. When the lives of two strangers intersect, something will be born of the connection. For one of these two souls, the truth of the world will shift and morph into something powerful and dangerous. A darkness of the mind, a tear in sanity. And something will peek through that darkness, beckoned by the sound of broken ribs.




I recommend you pick this up at this price.

[ZodWallop]

Peter Straub's A Dark Matter is $2.99 at Amazon.

I haven't read A Dark Matter yet, but most of what I have read from Peter Straub (Ghost Story, Floating Dragon, Mr. X and Koko) is fantastic. Even books of his I didn't care as much for (Julia, Shadowland, The Hellfire Club) are better written than 99% of what's out there.

On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow. What happens is a mystery—all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he’ll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Mary SanGiovanni (one of the old Leisure horror authors) has a book for sale at Amazon. It sounds very good, though it's also listed as the first in a series. Horror and series don't mix in my opinion, but I bought the book anyway:

Behind the Door by Mary SanGiovanni is $0.99

I'm reading this right now and it's great. (About 23 % read.)

Thanks for the heads up.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I'm reading this right now and it's great. (About 23 % read.)

Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the mini-review. I have several Mary Sangiovanni books from the old Leisure book club and various ebooks picked up on the cheap. But I haven't read any of them yet

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Thanks for the mini-review. I have several Mary Sangiovanni books from the old Leisure book club and various ebooks picked up on the cheap. But I haven't read any of them yet

I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't even aware of her work, but that's now changed.

[ZodWallop]

Tamer Animals by Justin M. Woodward is $0.99 at Amazon. (All of his books are on sale for $0.99 a piece.)

This one came to me through BookBub and it looks good. But reading through the reviews makes it sound like 'extreme horror' ala Edward Lee and Bryan Smith and I've found most of that stuff doesn't click with me.

I dunno. Love the cover artwork though.

IT WAS JUST A CAMPING TRIP

Down by the old Coheelee Creek Covered Bridge, four high school friends only wanted to kick back, smoke some weed and forget about their problems for a day or two. Sure, there were stories that the area was haunted, but there was no way they were true.

IT WAS JUST A LOCAL LEGEND

Decades earlier, an old goat farmer had been murdered by the Klan, hung from a tree near the bridge solely because of the color of his skin. His body was never found. Since then, numerous sightings of a strange creature--half-man and half-goat--had been reported in the surrounding woods. He was called the Goatman.

IT WAS JUST THE WORST NIGHT OF THEIR LIVES

From the moment they arrived, strange noises echoed around them... a sense that they were being watched pervaded the campsite... and that was just the beginning. When one of them vanishes and a horned monstrosity pursues the others, it becomes clear that the legends are real.

...and the truth is so much more horrific than they could ever have imagined.

[ZodWallop]

I'm not sure if this counts as horror. Rob was doing some soul-searching at the time as I remember. But Speaks the Nightbird by Robert R. McCammon is $1.99 at Amazon.

It’s 1699 in the coastal settlement of Fount Royal in the Carolinas when Rachel Howarth is sentenced to be hanged as a witch. She’s been accused of murder, deviltry, and blasphemous sexual congress, and the beleaguered, God-fearing colonial village wants her dead. But Matthew Corbett, young clerk to the traveling magistrate summoned to Fount Royal to weigh the accusations, soon finds himself persuaded in favor of the beguiling young widow.

Struck first by her beauty, Matthew believes Rachel to be too dignified, courageous, and intelligent for such obscene charges. The testimony against her is fanatical and unreliable. Clues to the crimes seem too convenient and contrived. A number of her accusers appear to gain by her execution. And, if Rachel is a witch, why hasn’t she used her powers to fly away from the gaol on the wings of a nightbird?

God and Satan are indeed at war. Something really is happening in the newly established settlement—of that Corbett is certain. As his investigation draws him into the darkness of a town gone mad, and deeper into its many secrets, Corbett realizes that time is running out for him, for Rachel, and for the hope that good could possibly win out over evil in Fount Royal.

[Dr. Drib]

A reminder that one can pick up from Kobo.uk Anne & Jeff Vandermeer's HUGE edited collectin of fantastic writings, "The Weird" (2923 pages) for only £0.99

[radbaddude]

Out Behind the Barn by Chad Lutzke
$0.99 Amazon US

The boys crept to the window and watched as Miss Maggie carried the long bundle into the barn, the weight of it stooping her aging back. Rafter lights spilled from the barn doors, and Davey saw an arm fall from the canvas-wrapped parcel. He smiled.


"She got someone!"


Both children grinned and settled in their beds, eyes fixed to the ceiling.


This was family growth.

[ZodWallop]

Brian Lumley's oddball Necroscope is $1.99 at Amazon.

ESP, vampires and spygames.

Harry Keogh is the man who can talk to the dead, the man for whom every grave willingly gives up its secrets, the one man who knows how to travel effortlessly through time and space to destroy the vampires that threaten all humanity.

In Necroscope, Harry is startled to discover that he is not the only person with unusual mental powers--Britain and the Soviet Union both maintain super-secret, psychically-powered espionage organizations. But Harry is the only person who knows about Thibor Ferenczy, a vampire long buried in the mountains of Romania--still horribly alive, in undeath--and Thibor's insane "offspring," Boris Dragosani, who rips information from the souls of the dead in a terrible, ever-lasting form of torture.

Somehow, Harry must convince Britain's E-Branch that only by working together can they locate and destroy Dragosani and his army of demonic warriors--before the half-vampire succeeds in taking over the world!

[Dr. Drib]

^ oddball?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

^ oddball?

Maybe your reading tastes are more esoteric than mine, but Lumley's mix of spies, vampires and ESP is a little oddball to me. It worked though. I think there's now something like 18 books in the series.