Family Horror

When Stephen's dad says they're moving, Stephen knows it's pointless to argue. They're broke from paying Mom's hospital bills, and now the only option left is to live with Stephen's grandmother in Spencer, a backward small town that's like something out of The Twilight Zone. Population: 814.

"You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?" Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place - peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous - where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself.

When Alexis's little sister Kasey becomes obsessed with an antique doll, Alexis thinks she is just being her usual weird self. Things get weirder, though, when their house starts changing. Doors open and close by themselves; water boils on the unlit stove; and an unplugged air conditioner blasts cold air.

Nine-year-old Olivia Friel is delighted to be spending the summer at Greyfriars House, a place where her parents, their family and friends are always happy. But this year there's an underlying tension that Olivia doesn't understand. Then one night she sees something she's not meant to, and accidentally lets slip a devastating betrayal. Charlotte Friel gets a call from her ailing mother, asking something she's never asked before: for Charlotte to come home. There are things Olivia needs to tell her daughter before it's too late, secrets to be shared about forgotten relatives and a mysterious house.

Lili St. Crow staked her place among writers of dark fantasy with the release of Strange Angels, the first book featuring night hunter Dru Anderson. Here teen Dru returns, a little wiser but still beset by supernatural terrors that would have most girls her age running for cover. What else would you expect for someone with nonhuman blood coursing through her veins?

Fourteen-year-old Jeremy Barker is obsessed with zombie movies. He attends an all-boys Catholic High School where roving gangs in plaid make his days a living hell. His mother is an absentee pillhead, his older brother a self-diagnosed sex-addict, and his father an ex-Marine realtor who disappears night after night without explanation. Jeremy navigates it all with a code cobbled together from Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Planet Terror, Zombieland, and Shaun of the Dead.

For more than two centuries, Winterbourne Hall has stood atop a bluff overseeing the English countryside of Cornwall and the sea beyond. In 1947, Londoner Alice Miller accepts a post as governess at Winterbourne, looking after Captain Jonathan de Grey’s twin children. Falling under the de Greys’ spell, Alice believes the family will heal her own past sorrows. But then, the twins’ adoration becomes deceitful and taunting. Their father, ever distant, turns spiteful and cruel. The manor itself seems to lash out. Alice finds her surroundings subtly altered, her air slightly chilled.

A trip to the Pacific Northwest is interrupted by a deadly virus. Fighting to survive, fighting to reunite, Ryan Brant hasn't seen some of his family for 18 years and is flying into Seattle Washington to attend the family reunion. The Brant family is spread out across the country and all are headed to the reunion; some travel by car, some by air, and one in a high-end luxury Motor Coach. The South African Flu has brought the world to its knees, and the vaccine the CDC created has just made the situation worse, much worse.

Maggie Olsen had a pretty ordinary childhood - swimming and sleepovers, movie nights and dad jokes. But then there were the other things...the darker things...the shadow that followed her home from the cemetery and settled into the corners of her home, refusing to let her grow up in peace. Now, after three years of being away from the place she's convinced she inadvertently haunted, and after yet another family tragedy strikes, Maggie is forced to return to the sweltering heat of a Savannah summer to come to terms with her past.

Thirty-three-year-old Anne Towry is a woman who knows little about herself and even less about her family. Sent away from Whitehall Manor when she was only ten years old, Anne struggles to make sense of her life. When she receives an urgent phone call from a Dr. Cornish informing her that her mother, Seraphine, has gone missing, Anne returns to her childhood home in an attempt to figure out what went wrong.

What do you do when the family curse kicks in and Chloe finds herself in a paranormal fight for her life? Tamara decides to get to the bottom of it. She hopes to set Chloe free but cannot do it alone. A talented curse breaker, with a secretive past of her own, joins forces with them and the outcome is not what anyone expected.

Tamara Garvey lands her first book deal, but her friend's reactions aren't what she expected. They are less than supportive - even her dead best friend brushes off this momentous achievement. Question is, why? Tamara expected her life to improve, but the Dead House has a few paranormal surprises for her. Her ghostly writing is attracting disturbing spiritual activity, putting her and her family at risk.

Lex, a teenage Grim Reaper, has the power to damn souls - and it’s getting out of control. Her boyfriend, Driggs, is dead - sort of. She’s a fugitive, on the run from the maniacal new mayor of Croak and the townspeople who want to see her pay the price for her misdeeds. Uncle Mort rounds up the Junior Grims to flee Croak once again, but this time they’re joined by Grotton, the most powerful Grim of all time. Their new mission is clear: Fix his mistakes, or the Afterlife will cease to exist, along with all the souls in it.

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby is a teenage grim reaper with the bizarre ability to Damn souls. That makes her pretty scary, even to fellow Grims. But after inadvertently transferring her ability to Zara, a murderous outlaw, Lex is a pariah in Croak, the little town she calls home. To escape the townspeople’s wrath, she and her friends embark on a wild road trip to DeMyse. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, it feels like a prison to Lex.

In the eagerly anticipated conclusion to the best-selling saga of Abbey and Caspian, listeners finally learn the truth about Kristen’s untimely death, the dark destiny that links Abbey to Caspian and ties them both to the town of Sleepy Hollow, and the hard choices that Abbey must make if she is to accept Caspian’s love and their unexpected fate. Beautifully spun, emotionally gripping, and irresistibly romantic, The Hidden will leave readers breathless.

One of Canada’s most acclaimed horror writers, Gemma Files presents a mosaic of interconnected stories about interconnected families. After fleeing Scotland, five clans settled in the fictional town of Dourvale in northern Ontario. Known as the Five-Family Coven, they are the descendants of witches and witch-children, none of whom were spared persecution in their native country. Now shamans, spellcasters, singers, and thieves, the members of the Devize, Druir, Glouwer, Roke, and Rusk families survive by trading their occult powers and talents.

Ghostgirl features Charlotte Usher, a high-schooler who can't help but feel no one knows she's alive. Then her nagging fear is confirmed. One day she no longer just feels invisible - she is, in fact, dead and literally haunting the halls.

Every October, Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season - when Cara; her ex-stepbrother, Sam; and her best friend, Bea, are 17 - is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think.

Lili St. Crow’s darkly exhilarating Strange Angels novels have won a devoted readership. In the third book of the series, Crow’s unusual heroine, Dru Anderson, has been through the ringer, what with a missing mother, her father turning all undead on her, and forces of evil that just won’t seem to let her be. On the run from a predator with a taste for her blood, Dru can count on help from Graves and Christophe—but they just might do more harm than good as they battle for her affections.

Siete minutos después de la medianoche, Conor despierta y se encuentra un monstruo en la ventana. Pero no es el monstruo que él esperaba, el de la pesadilla que tiene casi todas las noches desde que su madre empezó el arduo e incansable tratamiento. No, este monstruo es algo diferente, antiguo... Y quiere lo más peligroso de todo: la verdad.