Women Horror

Oh, to be a Beloved - one of those lucky people for whom nothing ever goes wrong. Everything falls into their laps without effort: happiness, beauty, good fortune, allure. Betty Stash is not a Beloved - but her little sister, the delightful Gloria, is. She's the one with the golden curls and sunny disposition and captivating smile, the one whose best friend used to be Betty's, the one whose husband should have been Betty's. Then, to everyone's surprise, Gloria inherits the family mansion. Losing what Betty considers her rightful inheritance is the final indignity.

We all have to face our demons at some point. Psychic Surveys - specialists in domestic spiritual clearance - have never been busier. Two cases prove trying: 44 Gilmore Street, home to a particularly violent spirit, and the reincarnation case of Elisha Grey. The ghost of Gilmore Street inflames public imagination, but as Ruby and the team fail repeatedly to evict the entity, faith in them wavers. It seems some demons just won't let go....

When Jake Mitchell receives a desperate call from a friend, he and his wife, Sam Casey, venture east to a small town near Hilton Head, South Carolina. The friend has no memory of the previous 24 hours, doesn't know how he ended up in a sleazy motel, nor does he recognize the dead woman lying next to him. The lowcountry is known for its history of wars, Indians, hidden treasure, voodoo, root curses, and century old secrets. Just the perfect place for Sam's talents!

Following a near death experience, 25-year old Arie Stiles decides she might as well take the job nobody else wants: a crime scene clean-up technician. It’s good money, which she could use, and death doesn’t hold a lot of mystery for her. Or so she thinks. Arie isn’t on the job long before discovering she’s been “gifted” with a new psychic talent - the ability to scry. Whether she wants to or not, Arie can read the memories of the dead in their blood.

For all those transmortis anomalies that need to be exterminated, there's Karma Marx - a woman who exorcises haunted houses, sending troublesome spirits to the ever after. What she'd really like is to banish Spider, her cheating, sleazy realtor husband, from her life. So, she makes him a deal: she'll clean one last home for him if he grants her a divorce. The only problem is that Adam, the house's former owner, isn't happy with Karma's plan. Using his poltergeist powers, he seals the place, forcing Karma, Spider, and a motley assortment of characters together....

Hollywood, 1978: Tragedy sends troubled film star Vivien Lockhart into the arms of Giovanni Moretti - and it seems her fortunes have finally changed. Until she meets his sister and learns that her new husband's past holds dark secrets. Tuscany, present day: Lucy Whittaker needs to disappear. But her new home, the crumbling Castillo Barbarossa, is far from the secluded paradise it seemed. Strange sounds come from the attic. The owner of the house will never meet her in person. The fountain in the courtyard is silent - but has never run dry.

Although Katherine Emerson survived her confrontation with a serial killer, the price she paid was high - Sael, the man she loves, left her. Now, though, she's pregnant with his child and Sael insists on doing "the right thing", which means moving her with him to the UK where he's about to start a new job. Katherine finally caves; she needs health insurance, and she's also desperate to get out of New York after a series of increasingly sinister encounters with strangers.

Eighteen years ago, when psychic Ruby Davis was a child, her mother - also a psychic - suffered a nervous breakdown. Ruby was never told why. "It won't help you to know," was the only answer she was ever given. Fast forward to the present and Ruby is earning a living from her gift, running a high street consultancy - Psychic Surveys - specialising in domestic spiritual clearance. Boasting a strong track record, business is booming. Dealing with spirits has become routine, but there is more to the paranormal than even Ruby can imagine.

Naomi Alderman's The Lessons reflects the truth that the lessons life teaches often come too late. Hidden away in an Oxford backstreet is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess keys to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous.

Mark and Maggie's annual drive east to visit family has gotten off to a rocky start. By the time they're on the road, it's late, a storm is brewing, and they are no longer speaking to one another. Adding to the stress, Maggie - recently mugged at gunpoint - is lately not herself, and Mark is at a loss about what to make of the stranger he calls his wife.

In The Bleak Midwintertells the whole story of ten-year-old Merrie Frances Callahan's 1975 abduction, and the present day murders that are somehow intricately linked to that event. SA Constance Mandalay is assigned what appears to be a 7-year-old cold case that echos the events of the 35-year-old child abduction. Unfortunately for all involved, the case heats up for a short time each year with a brutal murder that appears eerily staged, and occurs under impossible circumstances.

Panic has seized New York City. Someone is brutally murdering women, a killer the media dubs the "Sickle Man" thanks to the way he disfigures his victims. People think he's the next Son of Sam, but because the Sickle Man's viscerally seductive voice forms one strand of Love Is Red, we know how he thinks and how he feels...and that the city has never seen anything like him.

Nobody in the family talks about Ellen's grandmother Lola, who was swallowed up by the circus and emerged as a woman who tamed tigers and got away scot-free for killing her husband. When Ellen's husband Wayne beats her nearly to death, she runs to the only place she knows where a woman can completely disappear - the same Big Top that once sheltered her grandmother. Though the circus moves from one town to the next, Wayne tracks it, and Ellen, relentlessly.

When Jesse Graham almost runs over a "body" in the road one night, she is plunged into a labyrinth of secrets, lies, and murder. All Jesse wants is a simple life teaching at St. Bart's and a chance at love with Joe Riley. She realizes that plan has been thwarted when puzzling occurrences at St. Bartholomew Academy for Girls get increasingly dangerous. The danger doesn't just spring from the ghost who haunts the grounds of St. Bart's, but from a sinister presence that is not ghostly at all.

THE BLONDE WITH HALF A FACE, a neo-noir mystery set in a half-gentrified, still dangerous inner city, traces Candy Dyer's fall and rise and her ultimate revenge. BHF has three acts: 1. How Candy lost her face. 2. How she found her soul. 3. How she tasted revenge. Fast-paced, full of twists and turns, it's a Brooklyn few have seen, and lived to tell about.

From best-selling author, broadcaster, journalist and Book Club champion Judy Finnigan comes an unputdownable and wonderfully moving story of the enduring power of a mother's love. Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there; I do not sleep. Five years ago, Molly Gabriel lost her 20-year-old son, Joey, to a terrible sailing accident. His empty boat was found washed ashore on the rocks - but his body was never found. Now, Molly has returned to the sands of Cornwall haunted by his death, unable to accept he is gone.

When New England antiques dealer Annie McCormick sells a religious relic to Curt Devereaux, the charming owner of a new museum on Jarritt's Island, she could not be happier. But when the relic she delivers turns up missing and Annie learns the ghostly secret of the sinister old mansion-turned-museum, her dream adventure becomes a nightmare that puts her life...her very soul...at risk!

In Alexandra Kleeman's second book, a collection of 12 stories irresistibly seductive in their strangeness, she explores human life from beginning to end: the distress of birth into a world already formed; the brief and confusing period of "living" where we understand what is expected of us and struggle to do it; and the death-y period toward the end where we sense it is ending and will end only partially understood, at best.

For years, Heather Tradescant had dreamed of the journey she and her father would take to England, a pilgrimage to the great gardens of history. Now that her father is dead, Heather is determined to fulfill his dreams.

Kathryn Broussard has managed her life with dignity and an I-know-you-have-feelings-but-I'm-coming-through-anyway attitude. She exudes confidence and control over the land much as a reigning queen rules her court. Her main focus - Grace, her daughter. Although grown, Grace depends on her mother's razor-sharp decision-making ability for everything. All is well in the land of dysfunctional mother-daughterhood until the unthinkable happens. Kathryn dies.