FREE/BARGAIN - Horror/Supernatural

[radbaddude]

A Voice So Soft by Patrick Lacey p. 225
Amazon US $0.99

Angie Everstein, America’s newest pop queen, is sweeping the nation with her number one single “Forever with You.” When a string of murders and strange occurrences plague the country, police officer Mike Mallory believes Angie is somehow connected. Joined by a psychology professor, an amateur record producer, and Angie’s twin sister, Shawna, Mike will need to act quickly to stop the murders from spreading. Because Angie’s coming home to Salem, Massachusetts for the concert of a lifetime on Halloween night. And her fans are quite rabid.

Feral: A Novel of Werewolf Horror by Matt Serafini
Amazon US $0.99

Jack and Allen need a break. They've decided to spend the summer before their senior year of college out in Western Massachusetts. But their quest for rest and relaxation comes to an end when they arrive in Greifsfield, MA. Their friendship is tested by a mysterious beauty and her razor sharp smile, then broken when they're caught up in a rash of mysterious disappearances. How will these two friends cope with the truth behind a town that craves raw meat? And how will they survive beneath the glow of the full moon?

Werewolves are real and there's no such thing as escape. This vacation's about to get a little hairy.

[nprentiss]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

^ Norman Prentiss is a well-known and popular horror writer.

Thanks Dr. Drib. I also like bargains, and have benefited a lot from this great forum!

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by ReadingManiac

Indie authors are gaining respectability. A lot of them have higher standards than the majors these days. Thanks for sharing. I missed it but put it on my ereaderiq.

I like a lot of indie authors but there's a rule about not posting their books unless you have direct experience with them. Since I hadn't heard of Prentiss (not really my genre) and glancing at the publisher wasn't enough to say he wasn't an indie (Cemetery Dance Publications?), I wanted to cover my bases. I still think the logic works: any book that wins (or even gets short listed) for a major genre award should be eligible here.

Originally Posted by nprentiss

Thanks Dr. Drib. I also like bargains, and have benefited a lot from this great forum!

I'm going to add "Any authors that participate at MR should be eligible too."

[radbaddude]

Where Stars Wont Shine by Patrick Lacey
Amazon US $0.99

I'll be seeing you.

That's the note left behind for Ivy Longwood when infamous killer Tucker Ashton murders her boyfriend. Several years later, after Tucker vanishes from his jail cell, Ivy travels to Ashton's hometown of Marlowe, Massachusetts. Not for closure or therapy. She's being called there. Steered by forces beyond her control. What she'll find is not the quiet suburban town Marlowe once was. It's something new. Something dark. Something that answers the question: Where did Tucker Ashton go?

[BetterRead]

Horror author Iain Rob Wright has made most of his books FREE this weekend, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a blog post, he writes:

Quarantine Sucks!

My family and I have been stuck indoors for 8 days now. I was the first to get ill, so my quarantine ended yesterday which meant I could go and buy Pot Noodles and Monster Munch, but other than sporadic supply runs, my family will continue to stay indoors. My father has chronic lung disease, so seeing him for the next few months is probably out of the question.

Now, if it were just Sal and I, we would give in to a hedonistic lifestyle of Netflix, Pot Noodles, and ridiculous lay ins, but the problem is that we have a 3 and a 5 year old who are going completely out of their minds. Schools are now closed for the foreseeable future, and social distancing precludes them seeing their friends or going anywhere fun like Soft Play or the zoo.

And yet we are really lucky.

While having to suddenly parent 24hrs a day / 7 days a week with little time to work, my next book will almost certainly be delayed (sorry about that), and that will cost me money; but all things considered, I am far more secure in my job than most other people. I have friends who are worried about paying their bills, keeping their jobs, and maintaining their businesses. I have watched them turn grey almost over night. I feel for them. I spent most my life worrying about money until I eventually got my shit together (by marrying someone sensible), and it sucks.

I also have friends in cramped houses, friends with multiple children, and friends who are usually 'outdoorsy' or sociable. Needless to say, they are suffering.

Many are suffering.

We'll get through this - of course we will - but things right now are hard for us all. We need to stick together and help one another in whatever ways we can. We must help each other. So no more toilet paper hoarding, if that's you!

I'm not a doctor or a frontline nurse. I don't work at a charity or a school. There are many jobs which are heroic in nature, but I don't have one of them. I'm just a pampered writer.

The only thing I do is write books. The only thing I can do is give people books.

So that's the least I can do.

To help those stuck indoors with nothing to do, I have made all of my books free for the entire weekend. You don't have to read them right away as they will remain free to read so long as you grab them this weekend. Needless to say, this offer pertains only to the ebook versions of my books....

I won't link to twenty-odd books in an email, so I'll just say that you should visit Amazon and search for my name - or use the links below:

UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iain-Rob-Wr...198&sr=1-2-ent

US - https://www.amazon.com/Iain-Rob-Wrig...ne_cont_book_1

Anyway, as I said, my next book, Rebirth, might be a little delayed, but I am trying my best to work on it whenever I can. In the meantime, I hope you stay healthy in body and mind, and that this crisis passes us all by soon.

Prayers, good vibes, and bountiful Pot Noodles to you.

Iain

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

...glancing at the publisher wasn't enough to say he wasn't an indie (Cemetery Dance Publications?)

Cemetery Dance Publications is a highly regarded boutique publisher that specializes in publishing new horror and special limited editions. They've published work by Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Richard Laymon and on and on and on...

[ZodWallop]

More Bentley Little $0.99 treasures. Get them while they're hot. The last batch is no longer on sale.

The Revelation - Little's first novel. It won the Stoker award for best first novel. I read it... twenty years ago?

For the town of Randall, Arizona, the terror starts quietly, oddly—a senile woman in her eighties becomes pregnant.

Then the town's beloved minister mysteriously disappears, leaving his church and home hideously defiled by blasphemous obscenities scrawled in blood.

Farmers going out to their fields in the morning find their herds of goats slaughtered. Then, as the terror intensifies, the farmers themselves are massacred.

The town begins to smell of death, and the trust which has bound neighbors to one another turns to ashes.

But the relentless tide of death is only an augury of a far more unspeakable cataclysm.

A stranger arrives, an itinerant preacher with mad eyes and an elemental presence named Brother Elias. He seeks out three men: the sheriff, tough, no nonsense Jim Weldon; the new minister, a gentle God-fearing soul named Father Andrews; and Gordon Lewis, a young newlywed whose pregnant wife Marina is the unknowing center of the coming fury.

Together, these people must face an implacable force of evil as old as the world and as relentless as the desert sun...

The Influence

Everything is about to change...

When Ross Lowry moves into his cousin's guest house in the small community of Magdalena, Arizona, he expects nothing more than breathing room and a brief respite from his economic woes.
But something is not right in the desert.

After a raucous party on New Year's Eve, the luck of the attendees undergoes an immediate U-turn. The rich and successful suddenly find themselves facing catastrophic failure while the less well-off are unexpectedly flush with good fortune.

This is only the beginning...

Soon the citizens of Magdalena are experiencing unnatural desires.

Next their children begin to disappear and freakish creatures emerge from the surrounding wilderness.

The community is unraveling at a frightening pace.

But these are merely the early warning signs of a showdown with a powerful force of darkness that could obliterate the world forever, and only Ross Lowry sees the danger that lurks ahead...

The Circle

“The shrine. How does it operate? Do you just pray to it or do you have to bring it something or what?”

In this unsettling novella by Bentley Little, many strange occurrences unsettle the inhabitants of William Tell Circle:

For Helen, a knock on the door brings an unexpected visitor along with lavish gifts, and it seems all her wishes have been granted…but at what cost?

For young Frank and his friends, a fabled neighborhood shrine may answer their prayers for a girlfriend, just as their older brothers hope the same source will grant them money. But the older boys' improvised ritual turns into something horrible…

For Gil Marotta, a rescue mission to the shrine leads him into a chilling confrontation with the local witch…

The Circle tells the story of a normally quiet community, plunged into the kind of surreal nightmare only Bentley Little can deliver.

[ZodWallop]

Fun fact: Stephen King's The Stand is currently sitting at #13 on Amazon's fiction best sellers.

[ZodWallop]

Update: Sale ended before I could buy it
The Devil You Know (Felix Castor Book 1) is $2.99 at Amazon US.

Mike Carey is the writer of the The Girl With All the Gifts, the movie got good reviews and is coming to Netflix next month. He also wrote the DC/Vertigo comic series Lucifer and the John Constantine comic Hellblazer for a while. Felix Castor is sort of a take-off of Constantine, a supernatural investigator.

Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stomping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle, but there's a risk: sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him.

When Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London, what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize.

But that's business as usual: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off....

Mike's currently writing the excellent horror comic miniseries The Dollhouse Family.

[ZodWallop]

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco is on sale for $2.99 at Amazon US.

I've had this one on my wishlist for a while. Since I saw the movie from a while back. This is the first time it's been marked down.

Ben 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 summer 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 . . .

The basis for a classic 1976 film adaptation and an acknowledged influence on Stephen King’s The Shining, Burnt Offerings is one of the most original and scariest haunted house novels ever written. This edition, the first in decades, features a new introduction by award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones.

[Fbone]

Ticktock by Dean Koontz is $2.99

https://smile.amazon.com/Ticktock-No...al-text&sr=1-1

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Ticktock by Dean Koontz is $2.99

https://smile.amazon.com/Ticktock-No...al-text&sr=1-1

Oh man, I read that one and HATED it. Koontz decided to mix a horror story and screwball comedy, which works about as well as you'd think it would. I didn't know about this combo going in. The serious sounding synopsis fooled me.

Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old Vietnamese-American detective and novelist living in Southern California, and a chaser of the American Dream. He drives home his brand-new Corvette one day to discover a strange doll on his doorstep. It's a rag doll made entirely of white cloth, with no face or hair or clothes. Where the eyes should be, there are two crossed stitches of black thread. Five sets of crossed black stitches mark the mouth, and another pair form an X over the heart.

He brings it into the house. That night, he hears an odd little popping sound and looks up to see the crossed stitches over the doll's heart breaking apart. When he picks up the doll, he feels something pulsing in its chest. Another thread unravels to reveal a reptilian green eye --and not a doll's eye, because it blinks.

Tommy Phan pursues the thing as it scrambles away into his house -- and then is pursued by it as it evolves from a terrifying and vicious minikin into a hulking and formidable opponent bent on killing him.

[radbaddude]

Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Amazon US $2.99

In Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest.A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father.These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling, pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.

I have not read this but it has been frequently recommended/heralded on twitter by a lot of people in the horror lit community. I purchased at full price a little while ago but have not read it yet.

[radbaddude]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

More Bentley Little $0.99 treasures. Get them while they're hot. The last batch is no longer on sale.

Allllright! I have almost 10 Little books now I've never read on my Kindle. All thanks to @ZodWallop

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by radbaddude

Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Amazon US $2.99

I have not read this but it has been frequently recommended/heralded on twitter by a lot of people in the horror lit community. I purchased at full price a little while ago but have not read it yet.

Thanks man. That sounds quirky and unusual. I picked it up. I doubt it's horror in the tradtional sense, but I think I'll start on it right away.