More like Vespers
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- Rosemary Reilly
series2 books1967
completed
similar byhorror+3 more
Rosemary's Baby follows a young wife in a Gothic Manhattan apartment building who grows increasingly convinced that her elderly neighbors, and even her own husband, are part of a conspiracy surrounding her pregnancy. Ira Levin returned to the character thirty years later in the 1997 sequel Son of Rosemary. Together the two novels form a short, self-contained horror series about faith, control, and motherhood.
- In the Night Room
Peter Straubstandalone novel2004
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
In the Night Room is a 2004 horror-thriller novel by American author Peter Straub, a sequel to his 2003 book Lost Boy, Lost Girl. The work was first published in hardback on October 26, 2004, through Random House and it won the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Novel. Straub encountered some difficulties while writing In the Night Room and had written several different passages for the work before growing bored with each version before writing it using the same technique he used for its predecessor in which he "reached down inside the book and turned it inside out."
- Hideaway
Dean R. Koontzstandalone novel1992
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
After being resuscitated from clinical death, a man finds himself telepathically linked with a psychopathic serial murderer who has also been resuscitated from clinical death; and the psychopath decides to target the man and his family.
- Shane Schofield
series5 books1998
similar bycontemporarythriller & suspenseour world
Shane 'Scarecrow' Schofield is a US Marine captain who leads his unit through single-location, high-body-count action thrillers set in an Antarctic ice station, a disputed Pacific island, and a maximum-security prison built into a mountain, among others. Matthew Reilly's series opens with Ice Station (1998) and keeps escalating its set-pieces across Area 7, Scarecrow, Hell Island, and Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves. It's fast, gleefully over-the-top military action rather than realistic technothriller territory.
- Nemesis Saga
series8 books2012
similar bycontemporaryour worldthriller & suspense
The Nemesis Saga is a series of six kaiju thriller novels written by American author Jeremy Robinson, featuring the massive Goddess of Vengeance Nemesis. Robinson noted that various classic kaiju films especially those featuring Godzilla and Gamera were big influences on the series.
- Bad Ronald
Jack Vancestandalone novel1973
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
A family with three daughters move into an old house, not realising that there's a secret room with a psychopathic teenager.
- The Fury
series4 books1976
similar bycontemporarythriller & suspense+2 more
John Farris's The Fury centers on a teenage girl and boy with escalating psychic and telekinetic powers who become targets of a covert government program trying to weaponize them. The 1976 novel, adapted into Brian De Palma's 1978 film, gave rise to a string of later sequels following the same family's psychic bloodline across decades. Farris writes it as paranoid conspiracy thriller as much as horror, with the powers themselves treated as a violent, destabilizing force.
- Jerusalem's Lot
series3 books1975
similar bycontemporaryhorrorour world
Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.
- Effective Engineering Solutions
series37 books1995
similar bycontemporarythriller & suspense+1 more
The Ice Limit follows a team hired by an eccentric billionaire to recover what looks like the largest meteorite ever found, off a remote island near Cape Horn, only to discover, as they flee across the Antarctic seas aboard a retrofitted tanker, that they've actually excavated something alive. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child wrote it as a standalone techno-thriller in 2000; it later fed into their separate Gideon Crew series rather than getting a direct sequel of its own.
- Bod Owens
series3 books2007
similar byour worldcontemporary+1 more
The Graveyard Book follows Nobody "Bod" Owens, a toddler who escapes the murder of his family and is raised among the ghosts of an old English graveyard, absorbing their otherworldly customs while a threat from his past waits beyond the gates. Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and illustrator P. Craig Russell later adapted it into a two-volume graphic novel. Bod's story spans the original novel and that graphic-novel retelling rather than continuing in a prose sequel.
- After Midnight
Richard Laymonstandalone novel1997
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
A young woman descends into an ever-escalating nightmare of murder and madness when her only defense against an intruder is a Civil War saber.
- Good Girls Don't Die
Christina Henrystandalone novel2023
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
Celia wakes up in a house that’s supposed to be hers. There’s a little girl who claims to be her daughter and a man who claims to be her husband, but Celia knows this family—and this life—is not hers… Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend’s boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. No one else believes Allie, but she is sure that something about this trip is very, very wrong… Maggie just wants to be home with her daughter, but she’s in a dangerous situation and she doesn’t know who put her there or why. She’ll have to fight with everything she has to survive… Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.
- The Wicked Heart
Christopher Pikestandalone novel1993
similar byour worldcontemporaryhorrorthriller & suspense
He did not want to kill. Dusty Shame was a high school senior, and a serial killer. Already he has murdered three young women, and he has more planned. Yet Dusty did not want to hurt anybody. There was something inside him, or perhaps outside him, that compelled him to kill. Sheila Hardolt has lost her best friend to Dusty's insane attacks. It will be her task to probe the clues Dusty has left at the site of each of his murders. Clues that will point her into the past -- to a time when a large portion of mankind lost all sense of decency. There she will find the seed of Dusty's evil compulsion, the Wicked Heart, and the reason why it did not die the first time it was destroyed.
- White Shark
Peter Benchleystandalone novel1994
similar byour worldcontemporarythriller & suspense+1 more
White Shark is a 1994 novel by author Peter Benchley, famous for Jaws, The Island, Beast, and The Deep. White Shark is similar to Jaws but does not feature a shark, let alone a white shark, despite what the title suggests; the phrase is the codename of a weapon. To avoid confusion and to capitalize on the miniseries adaptation, the book was republished as Creature in 1997.
- Little Tall Island / In the Path of the Eclipse
series4 books1989
similar bycontemporaryhorror+2 more
Stephen King set three otherwise separate books on or near the fictional Little Tall Island off the coast of Maine: Gerald's Game, about a woman handcuffed to a bed after her husband's fatal heart attack; Dolores Claiborne, a housekeeper's decades-spanning confession narrated in a single unbroken monologue; and Storm of the Century, a novelization of King's own miniseries about a stranger who arrives during a historic blizzard demanding a terrible price from the town. The first two novels share a real total solar eclipse as a pivotal, connecting event despite having otherwise unrelated plots and characters.
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaimanstandalone novel2013
similar byour worldcontemporary+1 more
A seven year old farm boy becomes friends with an eleven year old neighbor girl, who he discovers is ancient and powerful and intervenes when a nonhuman entity attempts to make a home in earthly reality.
- Awakened (James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth)
series3 books2018
similar bycontemporaryhorrorour world+1 more
