The Wages of Sin is Death!
An innocent mound of grass-covered earth. A weathered wooden door. A root cellar, shelter from violent storms, storage for the farm's produce. On Walter Sikes' farm, the root cellar hides a dark and dangerous secret. A monster slumbers there, imprisoned by powerful magics - a monster that once was Walter Sikes' eldest son.
Transformed by a madman's curse, Jesse Sikes is a killing machine. Twenty years ago he cut a bloody swath through the small town of Gideon - until his mother struck him down with her own occult powers. Now Eleanor Sikes is dying. The bonds that hold the monster are weakening.
Soon Jesse will be free.
No one in Gideon will be safe.
WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?
It was a legend in Fear County... a hideous, flesh-eating creature - part snake, part earthbound demon - that feasted on the blood of innocent children in the cold black heart of the Tennessee backwoods.
But ten-year-old Jeb Sweeny knows the horrible stories are true. His best friend Mandy just up and disappeared. He also knows that no one has ever had the courage to go after the monster and put an end to its raging, bestial hunger.
Until now.
But Evil is well guarded. And for young Jeb Sweeny, who is about to cross over into the forbidden land of Fear County and the lair of the unknown, passage through the gates of Hell comes with a terrible price. Everlasting...FEAR!
Are you safe in your house?
Look around you. Is your world familiar? Comfortable? Does it seem the same today as it was yesterday? It isn't.
Something is loose in your world that wasn't there before. Some terrible.
It is born of the devil, nurtured in evil, and set loose to do its vile work. It moves its foul form with a sleek, sudden malevolent grace. It comes, it touches, it takes over. Then the horror begins. An aging surgeon, a captured fugitive, a pregnant mother, an innocent hospital worker - each is its victim, driven by a grotesque impulse to acts of murder, mayhem, nymphomania, infanticide, cannibalism... Can it be stopped? Perhaps... But the battle will be waged by a few brave, desperate souls on the edge of Hell, while Satan awaits the triumph of his cherished...DARKLINGS.
From the silence of the grave...
Jeff and Mindy McKay are young, attractive and willing to stop at nothing to have it all - even if it means murdering Mindy's little sister, Jenny, to collect her part of an enormous inheritance. With Jenny out of the way, Jeff and Mindy can begin to enjoy luxury beyond their wildest dreams...
Then one day, months after Mindy and Jeff have buried the little girl, they answer a knock at the door. Standing there, staring at them with frightening blank eyes, is Jenny. She has returned -to their house, to their lives - to exact a revenge that goes beyond death.
EVIL OMEN
After her husband died, Athena Monroe often wondered why she stayed in the dilapidated old farmhouse, buried deep in the harsh, blighted New Jersey pine barrens. Perhaps it was because her mysteriously afflicted young son seemed to feel such strong ties to the area's primeval swaps and stunted forests - such an affinity for the pines. She didn't guess that his psychic connection was with something evil - until ranting fits and night terrors gripped him in a vise of horror. Athena was afraid her inability to really love the boy was now causing his strange behavior, but the old-timers in the region recognized something more sinister. To them it was an omen of things to come - a sign that the monstrous Jersey Devil was about to reappear...
A black magician screaming curses of hatred...
A fiery object hurtling from the sky...
A patch of earth where no blade of grass will grow...
Centuries have passed since that terrible night of reckoning, but still the dark shadow hangs over a Scottish valley.
Bob Coyle believes that his home town is menaced by a new centre for disposing of nuclear waste - a lethally dangerous project he calls 'Holocaust'. Yet his efforts to alert the people fall upon deaf - or angry - ears. For them the center means new-found prosperity.
But a series of strange deaths and brutal killings at last starts to bring home the danger... and if Coyle's worst fears are realized, countless millions will die in agony.
Then the terrible curse of Balzur will be fulfilled.
The Reckoning by Ruby Jean Jensen
THE NIGHT THE CHILDREN CAME HOME
It all started the night of Dalton Walsh's revival meeting... when the earth beneath his tent trembled with a kind of vengeance. It was as if some force from beyond knew about the terrible crimes that had transpired in this little town and finally wanted to reveal the evil that lived there.
Then the sightings began. All those lost, almost forgotten children; kids who hadn't aged a day in all the years since their disappearance - like the teenage boy who still wore the same clothes he'd last been seen in, or the golden-haired little girl who still clutched that same doll.
Reverend Dalton didn't know why the children had picked this moment to come home, but he did know one thing; now was the time for a terrible truth to finally be revealed. Now was the time for...THE RECKONING.
Bethany's Sin by Robert McCammon
EVEN GOD STAYS AWAY FROM THE VILLAGE OF BETHANY'S SIN
For Evan Reid, his wife Kay, and their small daughter Laurie, the beautiful house in the small village was too good a bargain to pass up. Bethany's Sin was a weird name, but the village was quaint and far from the noise and pollution of the city.
But Bethany's Sin was too quiet. There were no sounds at all...almost as if the night had been frightened into silence.
Evan began to notice that there were very few men in the village, and that most of them were crippled. And then there was the sound of galloping horses. Women on horses. Riding in the night.
Soon he would learn their superhuman secret. And soon he would watch in terror as first his wife, then his daughter, entered their sinister cabal.
An ancient evil rejoiced in Bethany's Sin. A horror that happened only at night...and only to men.
The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
Inch by inch, day by day, Scott Carey is getting smaller. Once an unremarkable husband and father, Scott finds himself shrinking with no end in sight. His wife and family turn into unreachable giants, the family cat becomes a predatory menace, and Scott must struggle to survive in a world that seems to be growing ever larger and more perilous--until he faces the ultimate limits of fear and existence.
Also contains several more tales by Richard Matheson including Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Button, Button and Duel.
X,Y by Michael Blumlein
TEASE ME
Frankie watched herself in the mirror as she danced in the strip joint - it was the only way to get through her act. But then the fat man came into the club, and the siren screamed, and Frankie's world shattered like a thousand shards of glass.
TALK TO ME
In the morning, she isn't Frankie anymore. She doesn't remember who she is. She knows for certain only one solid truth: that she is a man. As for Terry, her boyfriend, he cannot understand what his little sex object is trying to tell him...
PUNISH ME
Frankie, trapped and livid, slowly learns to live as a captive in a woman's skin, and learns to rule over her poor lover. She makes him work for her. She makes him wait on her. She uses her stranger's body to torture hi with his own desire.
X,Y
They are an ordinary couple in their private hell: A man and a woman in changed places; a man and a woman exploring all the cruelty and darkness and horror that once was hidden between a woman and a man.
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
"THE FAMILY" WAS EVERWHERE
For centuries mankind longed for a world without suffering or war. The family made that dream come true.
They had triumphed. Programmed, every need satisfied, they knew nothing of struggle or pain.
THEY HAD MASTERED... PERFECTED THE EARTH
But for one man, perfection was not enough. For Chip, it was a nightmare. The Family was a suffocating force of evil. His dream was to escape...and destroy!
Afterimage by Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Kevin J. Anderson
He was known as the Joan of Arc killer - a sadistic rapist who burned his victims before he murdered them.
Rebecca Tamerlane had been staring into this monster's face as he hovered over her broken body, the smell of gasoline in the air. But suddenly her body felt completely whole and surprisingly strong...only it wasn't her body.
Rescued at the last minute by a group of shapeshifters, Rebecca had been transformed into the likeness of the last image in her mind before her death. Now she was the image of her killer, with his odious identity and the police on her trail. There was no other way to save herself except to search desperately for this maniac who held the key to the magic restoration of her true body. But among the shapeshifters, a more sinister force had other ideas...
Blaze by Stephen King
Once upon a time, a fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"), but this last gripping Bachman novel resurfaced after being hidden away for decades -- an unforgettable crime story tinged with sadness and suspense.
Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., was always a small-time delinquent. None too bright either, thanks to the beatings he got as a kid. Then Blaze met George Rackley, a seasoned pro with a hundred cons and one big idea. The kidnapping should go off without a hitch, with George as the brains behind their dangerous scheme. But there's only one problem: by the time the deal goes down, Blaze's partner in crime is dead. Or is he?
Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe
FIRST THEY TOOK HIS DAUGHTER. NOW THEY'VE COME BACK FOR HIM.
On Christmas Eve four-year-old Naomi Hillenbrand disappears from her father's side in a crowded toy store; on Christmas day, her mutilated body is discovered in a field. But part of Naomi remains, unwilling or unable to leave this world. Ghostly photographs capture her playing with two other little girls dressed in Victorian garb while a sinister man in black watches...watches them all.
Charles Hillenbrand is tormented by grief. When sinister whispers in the night begin to taunt him, he tries to uncover the evil truth behind Naomi's death. But long-buried secrets await him and threaten to take him beyond the brink of sanity, to a place where he could lose his very soul.
Have you read any of these books? What do you think of them?
