Literary Horror

Evelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At 149 years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evening, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was. Can't fault a girl for having a little fun, can you?

The Barter is a ghost story and a love story, a riveting emotional tale that also explores motherhood and work and feminism. Set in present-day Texas, and at the turn of the 20th century, the novel follows two young mothers at the turning point of their lives. Bridget has given up her career as an attorney to raise her daughter, joining a cadre of stay-at-home mothers seeking fulfillment in a quiet suburb. But for Bridget, some crucial part of the exchange is absent: something she loves and needs.

For five years Edie has worked for the Elysian Society, a secretive organisation that provides a very specialised service: its clients come to reconnect with their dead loved ones by channelling them through living 'Bodies'. Edie is one such Body, perhaps the best in the team, renowned for her professionalism and discretion. But everything changes when Patrick, a distraught husband, comes to look for traces of his drowned wife in Edie....

The year is 1928. Kate Moore is looking for a way out of the poverty and violence of her childhood. When a chance encounter on a transatlantic ocean liner brings her face-to-face with the handsome heir to a Chicago fortune, she thinks she may have found her escape - as long as she can keep her past concealed.

Gabriel Woolf is unstoppable. A ruthless businessman, he has perfected the art of revenge. Ever since his mother's death, Gabriel has harbored only one wish: To take down the man who ruined their lives. But all bets are off when he meets his father's stepdaughter, Honor St. James. Beautiful and innocent, she is everything Gabriel never knew he wanted - and now there's no turning back. Honor wasn't born yesterday.

Half light. The shadow of his past was always with him. But he never knew what it was, or when it would strike next.Sent to a small coastal town to investigate drug smuggling, Kelso stumbles onto a dangerous organisation and, suddenly, more than just his life is at stake. It's his past, his future, his sanity. Through torture and drugs he discovers the terrifying secret of the The Jonah. And learns, in the most horrifying way, that it can destroy him as well as others.

Paris, 1810. Haunted by the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud has locked herself away in her shop with the death masks she was forced to make to avoid the guillotine. Philidor, a famous magician, offers her the chance to accompany him to London to assist in creating a wax automaton that will bring them both money and success. Following a disastrous performance on their opening night in which the wax on their prized spectacle melts, the eccentric duke, William Cavendish, invites them to his rambling estate, Welbeck.

Ariella Montero is seeking the true identities of her mother - and father and of herself. She's been taught literature, philosophy, science, and history, but she knows almost nothing about the real world and its complexities. Her world is one in which ghosts and vampires commune with humans, where Edgar Allan Poe and Jack Kerouac are role models, and where every time a puzzle seems solved, its last piece changes the entire picture.

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.

A chilling and deliciously dark novel about an idyllic Midwestern college town that turns out to be a panorama of depravity and a nexus of horror. For years Normandy Falls has been haunted by its strange history and the aggrieved spirits said to roam its graveyards. Despite warnings Edmund Campion is determined to pursue an advanced degree there. But Edmund soon learns he isn't immune to the impersonal trappings of fate.

In the sequel to her acclaimed debut novel, The Society of S, Susan Hubbard continues the adventures of Ariella Montero, who, in the midst of the ongoing presidential campaign, discovers that a leading contender for America's top political office just happens to be a vampire surrounded by the demons of lying, cheating, and murder.

While on routine patrol in the tinder-dry Topanga Canyon, environmental scientist Rafael Salazar expects to find animal poachers, not a dilapidated antique steamer trunk. Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret - the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Unique to this title is: A historical introduction and a study of the themes present in A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol and The Chimes. Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He was born in 1812 in Portsmouth. When his father was sent to jail because of unsettled debt, Dickens had to leave school and get a job in a factory. Dickens is believed to be the best novelist of the Victorian era and he became very popular during his lifetime. His novels are still widely read and translated.

Jane Eyre is a plain orphan girl, unloved and abused by her Aunt Reed, who is sent away to boarding school. Strong of heart and craving independence, Jane embarks upon a life of governess to a young French girl named Adele, the benefactor of the mysterious Mr. Rochester. Life at Thornfield Hall proves just as mysterious as its owner with haunting laughter and a dark secret living in the attic.

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' novel depicts Pip's development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'.

Dracula begins with the journal of Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor on the way to Transylvania to give information to the mysterious Count Dracula about his new estate in London. Dracula takes the young man prisoner, and Jonathan sees many strange and evil things in the castle before escaping and fleeing into the night. He later decides that he must have been mad.

The charismatic Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman, wishes to purchase a house in London. Assisted in this enterprise by a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, it becomes evident that there is a sinister side to the Count's plans. A small group of friends unite to prevent the success of the Count's schemes, hazarding danger to themselves for the greater good of humanity. The growing mystery is revealed through journal entries, letters, and telegrams written by the main characters.

Bram Stoker ingeniously modernized gothic folklore by moving his vampire from traditional castle ruins to modern England. With Dracula, which has been interpreted and dissected by scholars for generations, Stoker changed the vampire novel forever.

A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up.

The (black) magical season is here - and whether it's a solstice seance gone demonically wrong with the incomparable Kim Harrison, a grossly misshapen Christmas with the remarkable Lynsay Sands, a blood-chilling-and-spilling New Year's with the wonderful Marjorie M. Liu, or a super-powered Thanksgiving with the phenomenal Vicki Pettersson, one thing is for certain: in the able hands of these exceptional dark side explorers, the holidays are going to be deliciously hellish!