Summer

Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts

06 October 2011

THOSE ACROSS THE RIVER - Christopher Buehlman

From the back of the book: The debut novel that has everyone talking and scared.


Haunted by memories of the Great War, failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate---the Savoyard Plantation----and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But under the facade of summer socials and small-town charm, there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.


It comes from the shadowy woods across the river, where the ruins of the Savoyard Plantation still stand. Where a long-smoldering debt of blood has never been forgotten.....


Where it has been waiting for Frank Nichols....

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WOW!

I cannot get over how utterly frightening this book was to read. Perfect Southern Gothic horror with excellent pacing to draw you in to the story. I had to read this either in the daytime or at night, but surrounded by people in a lit place.


It is definitely more than a horror story. The story is the sensual relationship of Frank and Eudora, how they came to be a couple and move to Whitbrow, Georgia. They could easily let everything that happens to them overwhelm them, but they take everything in stride for as long as they can.


Atmosphere was everything throughout the book. Dark, bleak, frightening, you-do-not-want-to-go-in-those-woods atmosphere.


I feel like if I say more, it will be filled with spoilers. What I can absolutely do is definitely recommend this read-in-the-daytime horror Gothic novel.


Thank you LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com) for sending this book to me! I won this from their August Batch of Books for Early Review.


Five darkly sparkling horror diamonds....

07 March 2011

Books in the House Monday - 7 MAR 2011


A DEADLY CLICHE: Books by the Bay Mystery #2 - Ellery Adams, cozy, MPB
Pamala, Our Lady of the Books
FIRST DROP OF CRIMSON: Night Huntress World #1 - Jeaniene Frost, paranormal, MPB
INDEX TO MURDER: Miss Zukas Mystery #11 - Jo Dereske, cozy, MPB
MISS ZUKAS & THE RAVEN'S DANCE - Jo Dereske, cozy, MPB
OUT OF CIRCULATION: Miss Zukas Mystery #5 - Jo Dereske, cozy, MPB
DEAD MEN DON'T CROCHET: A Crochet Mystery #2 - Betty Hechtman, cozy, MPB
THE SHADOWY HORSES - Susanna Kearsley, archeological thriller, MPB
THE MAN IN THE MOSS - Phil Rickman, thriller, MPB
Orchard Bookstore:
EIGHT OF SWORDS - David Skibbins, mystery, MPB
DEATH AT BISHOP'S KEEP: Charles and Kate Sheridan Mystery #1 - Robin Paige, Victorian cozy, MPB
SUMMER OF NIGHT - Dan Simmons, horror, MPB, keeper shelf
From the author:
RUN - Blake Crouch, thriller, e-book
From the author:
MASTER AND APPRENTICE: Gavyn Donatti #2 - Sonya Bateman, UF, e-book, out 29 Mar 2011

03 March 2011

RUN - Blake Crouch

From the synopsis of the book: Picture this: A landscape of American genocide.....
5 days ago
A rash of bizarre murder swept the country...
Senseless. Brutal. Seemingly unconnected.
A cop walked into a nursing home and unloaded his weapons on elderly and staff alike.
A mass of school shootings.
Prison riots of unprecedented brutality.
Mind-boggling acts of violence in every state.
4 days ago
The murders increased ten-fold...
3 days ago
The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace...
2 days ago
The killers began to mobilize...
Yesterday
All the power went out...
Tonight
They're reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System. You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they've just read yours.
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epic {n}: an episode in the lives of men in which heroic deeds are performed or attempted
Don't look into the light...but if you didn't....RUN!
Good thing the young'n was in school, the house ws reasonably clean and my work was caught up...I wasn't getting to anything else until I finished.
RUN is more than a horror/thriller story, it's what happens to a family when all hell has broken loose in their environment.
Some people are affected by the lights and others aren't...the unaffected are the ones who need to run and run fast.
The Colclough family: Dee, Jack, and their two children, Cole and Naomi, are the center of this epic story. They are the unaffected and the story opens with them packing everything to flee whatever is happening and find a safe haven somewhere, somehow.
Finding out what they have inside them to keep going, finding out what exactly makes them a stronger family. And what they have inside that makes them do whatever it takes to protect each other and survive.
RUN is intense and I found myself involved with the Colcloughs and all that they experienced. I read the book quickly, in less than a day, which is, for me and an 80,000 word thriller, damn fast.
I received this e-book from the author. Thank you Blake, it was an awesome ride.
Five sparkly damn fast diamonds....



19 September 2010

THE TOMB: Repairman Jack #1 / Adversary Cycle #2 - F Paul Wilson

From the back of the book: Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn't deal with appliances---he fixes situations for people, situations that too often land him in deadly danger. His latest fix is finding a stolen necklace which, unknown to him, is more than a simple piece of jewelry. Some might say it's cursed, others might call it blessed. The quest leads Jack to a rusty freighter on Manhattan's West Side docks. What he finds in its hold threatens his sanity and the city around him. But worst of all, it threatens Gia's daughter Vicky, the last surviving member of a bloodline marked for extinction.
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It's taken me a bit to work up the nerve to write a review on THE TOMB. It is such a well-written and engrossing thriller and I want to do it justice. I may leave it at the above statement and call it a day. I've been told that not all of the series has the touch of paranormal or horror that THE TOMB has. I'm glad, it was a little intense. I love thrillers and I love paranormal and horror reads, but have to pace several books between...except in October and I read them pretty much back to back, just because it's October.
I can see why F Paul Wilson has such a huge fanbase. I have become one of the legion, that's for sure.
Five shudderingly fab beans......

31 January 2010

THE STRAIN - Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan, narr Ron Perlman

From the back of the BOCD: They have always been here. Vampires. Nesting and feeding. Now, their time has come. In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months...the world.
A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK, when she suddenly stops dead. All communication channels have gone quiet. An alert goes out to Dr Eph Goodweather, head of CDC's rapid-response team that investigates biological threats. What he finds makes his blood run cold.
So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by former professor Abraham Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city---before it's too late.
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I had a difficult time with some of the scenes in this book. I admit to fastforwarding through anything that had to do with the killing of kids or animals. The writing is so well written and graphic, I got a tad nauseous with the attacks on the adult characters. I listened to them, but barely made it. *shudder*
It's an interesting take on the vampire lore, it is indeed a virus that is transmitted through the bite, but it's not a typical vampire teeth gnaw. It's a growth under the tongue that lashes out and goes to town on the victim, which turns the victim into a vampire almost immediately. The affected vamps don't like sunlight and silver can do a big ol' number on them. Killing by beheading is the best way, crosses and holy water aren't very effective with this virus.
Because of the fastforwarding scenes and fast switching from one scene to another caused me to not like the story as much as I could have. It's a good horror story, though, and worth a listen or a read.

Four vampiric virus beans....

26 October 2009

THE HARROWING - Alexandra Sokoloff

From the back of the book: Baird College's Mendenhall echoes with the footsteps of students heading home for Thanksgiving break and Robin Stone, who won't be going home, swears she can feel the creepy, hundred-year-old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its long-awaited solitude. As a massive storm approaches, four other lonely students reveal themselves to Robin: Patrick, a handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician; and Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long weekend at home for their own secret reasons.
The five unlikely companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of another presence disturbing the building's ominous silence. Are they the victims of an elaborate prank, or is the energy evidence of something genuine--something intent on using them for its own terrifying ends? Together they'll face three long days and dark nights before the world returns to find out what's become of five students nobody wants and one will miss....
*********************************
October is my month for trying to read horror and paranormal only. This is the first (and maybe only) for the month. I am glad I read this as my purse book as I know I'd have had wild-ass dreams of the extremely scary kind. I enjoy the horror novels that lets me use my imagination and not have everything spelled out in big bloody letters. That's what makes the movie Psycho remain the flick that keeps my shower curtain open after watching it every time.
Alexandra Sokoloff writes a genuinely creep me the hell out book and I can't wait to read more!
Four scare the piss out of you beans.....

18 March 2009

GHOST ROAD BLUES - Jonathan Maberry

aka, the book that wouldn't end....All I can say is I am glad Jonathan Maberry is such an amazing writer or I'd have given up a long time ago. The book is 472 pages, but felt longer and I'm not sure why. It felt like quicksand, just no progress as I read. I know I read my purse books a lot more slowly since I don't get the time I used to. So that may be part of it. I also really liked reading the fight scenes. Maberry can write a kick-ass fight scene.
I tried making it my bedside book, but I immediately began having whacked the hell out dreams afterward, so that was a quick exchange with whatever I was reading three bedside books ago....yep, that's how long this one took.
It is labeled horror and it is, but it is mostly a thriller of a small town gone bad in surprising little pockets, voices in the cranium, lynching, killers, the grotesque.
The horror is there, sneaking around the edges until well into the last fourth of the book.
The small town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania is suffering from the worst crop blight in recent history. Their claim to fame is the renowned Halloween celebration in the 'Spookiest Town in America'. Everyone is coming, including an ancient evil that everyone thought long gone. It was last seen 30 years ago and everyone thought it long dead. It's returned.
This is the first in a trilogy and I am on the lookout for the second, DEAD MAN'S SONG.

Four chilled to the bones beans....

30 August 2008

R.I.P. III Challenge...here I go again....

http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/?p=993#comment-132529

Yep, yep, yep...here I go again. Not with this particular challenge, never done this one before. No...I am going to try my hand, or eyes or ears as the case may be, to another challenge in general. This one is mellow. The rules are loose as far as listing or not listing the authors or books to be read in the challenge. It runs from 1 Sep to 31 Oct and the genres are already what I read anyway. Genres being mystery, thrillers, paranormal, horror. Yay. And only 1 to 4 books to read in that timeframe. Not like my other challenges I join and overwhelm myself with. So much so that I made up another blog to keep track. I'll post this over there, too.
So anyway, run over to Stainlesssteeldroppings and sign up!