Psychological Horror Thriller

"What are the possibilities of my strength? That is a thought I have never had before. What if some morning as the old woman stood at the head of the staircase she were suddenly to feel a weight thrusting against the back of her legs? What if she were to lunge forward, grasping at the air, striking her thin skull against the edge of a stair? What would become of me if she were found unmoving at the bottom of the stairway?" Such are the thoughts of Baxter, a sociopathic bull terrier on the hunt for the perfect master.

Thirty-four years ago, on October 31, poor Hannah Talbott took part in a scavenger hunt gone violently wrong. The mean girls made sure of it. To this day, for a haunted local mother, the most unsettling Halloween costume of all is an urban legend they call Hannah-Beast. It’s a reminder of the past she can’t forget. Especially tonight when it’s come back, so close to home.

Gowns. Champagne. Murder. Hollywood, but make it French, for twelve days straight, as the red carpet rolls out to the riviera for the Cannes Film Festival. The most famous people are all here to celebrate themselves, while the rest of the world watches in awe. And with a heavy dose of envy, at...

"A shocking collision made all the more satisfying by Murphy’s brilliant twists...Clear your schedule—you won’t be putting this down until that last, mesmerizing page.” —Carter Wilson, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of Tell Me What You Did One quiet neighborhood...

Joanna Flynn was lucky to be alive. But when the doctors told her she would suffer no lasting effects from the near-fatal accident, they were wrong. For that night the nightmares about Caroline began. As the dreams become more torturous, Joanna sets out to investigate this mysterious woman - a journey that takes her 3,000 miles from home to a picturesque town where everybody seems to have a conflicting opinion of the woman who haunts her dreams.

“Psychological thriller writing at its best. Cancel appointments and give up on sleep. It’s that kind of book.” —Jeffery Deaver For years, Sarah Farber and her best friend, Jennifer, kept what they called the Never List: a list of actions to be avoided at all costs, for safety’s sake...

The authorities claim the serial killer doesn’t exist. Only Darcy has the unwavering courage to follow his deadly trail. One dead girl at a popular campsite. A second woman’s corpse tossed along a running trail. And unexplainable spider bites on both victims. After the medical examiner concludes both women died from venomous spider bites, the police want to close the case. Then a third woman goes missing, and Darcy discovers a dangerous man linked to the three victims. Is a murderer stalking the darkness?

The night holds dangerous secrets. And a girl who cried wolf is caught in a murderer’s crosshairs. Only 12 hours have passed since Violet saw her teenage boyfriend. Now his body lies in the morgue, riddled with stab wounds. And the evidence points to a mythical serial killer Violet invented to scare her friends...The Halloween Man.

Edgar Allan Poe proposed that “the boundary line between instinct and reason is of a very shadowy nature” (1840). With its 21 stories of serial killers and sociopaths, fixations and fetishes, breakdowns and bad decisions crafted by authors as diverse as their writing styles, Shadowy Natures leads fans of psychological horror down dark and treacherous roads to destinations they will be too unsettled to leave.

Caitlin Nylo gave up everything to turn her father’s game company into a worldwide success. Along the way, she lost her mother, her marriage, and she barely sees her children. She’s rich, driven, and brilliant. But she’s also alone. After her eccentric father passes away, Caitlin is furious when she learns that instead of leaving the company and its fortunes to her, he has chosen to make his heirs compete in one last game: a scavenger hunt with a multi-billion-dollar inheritance waiting at the end.

At the height of an unnamed war, a soldier is confined for striking an officer. Referred to as George Smith in official papers and records, the prisoner comes under the observation of Army psychiatrist Philip Outerbridge, who asks the young man to put his story down on paper. The result is a shocking tale of abuse, violence, and twisted love, a personal history as dark and troubling as any the doctor has ever encountered. Believing the patient to be dangerously psychotic, Dr. Outerbridge must dig deeper into his psyche.

Psychopathic instincts drive Khedlar into his unpredicted hell and the carnage he is driven to orchestrate. Through the looking glass of sanity and insanity, Khedlar battles with his mind and conscience in a world where madness is normality and fractured projections of the past are all he has left.

An eerie horror debut about a little boy who recovers from a mysterious illness and inherits an imaginary friend who makes him do violent things... Kids have imaginary friends. Rachel knows this. So when her young son, Billy, miraculously recovers from a horrible flu that has proven fatal for...

He predicted the exact minute of their deaths. Then he vanished. Twenty years later, a voicemail from a childhood friend shatters the silence of the night—and with it, the boundaries of reality. Elijah always knew the time. Not the hour of day, but the hour of death. As a boy, he whispered it into notebooks, chalkboards, and nightmares. And when he died, he left behind a message recorded after his own death... As time unravels and clocks begin to tick backward, one man is pulled into the same curse Elijah carried for decades.

A man wakes locked in a cage, in a very dark place. One by one, the ghosts of his family appear to him. They share a message of healing, but not all is what it seems. A hitman is paid to eliminate the CEO of a powerful company, but when he makes a big bet with a local bookie, he realizes there’s much more to his current job than he ever knew. Can he survive the secrets he uncovers after seeing the man he killed alive and well?

Twelve-year-old Maddie Thompson and her friend Lana share a love of horror stories and wild imaginings. But Lana insists they are too old for pretending. It’s time for a different game: serving Him, a figure she sees lurking in the dark, mysterious and demanding. According to Lana, she and Maddie must obey Him or else suffer the consequences. Maddie doesn’t want to lose her most important friendship, even if it means luring an innocent girl into the woods—as a sacrifice for Him.

Four students travel to Ravencliffe, an eerie abandoned hotel perched on steep cliffs on the Welsh coast. After a series of unexplained accidents, only three of them leave. The fourth, Leo, disappears, and is never seen again. A decade on, the friends have lost contact. Oscar is fame-hungry, making public appearances and selling his story. Richard sank into alcoholism and is only just recovering. Bex just wants to forget – until one last opportunity to go back offers the chance to find out what really happened to Leo.

Herman isn’t like other teens his age. He isn’t like the academic elite, the geeky students who get all the grades and are adored by their teachers. He isn’t like the extroverts, the socially adept and popular kids who never want for anything and always have a shoulder to cry on. And he isn’t like the bullies, the ones who taunt and beat him on a daily basis. Herman isn’t like any of his peers, or indeed anyone he knows. The person Herman identifies with the most, the person he idolizes and yearns to be, is The Butcher, a brutal and prolific serial killer.

Ever since Lucy was two, she’s been on the run alongside her mother. She’s never understood the reason for a lifetime of paranoia, aliases, and lies. All she understands are the rules: never lock eyes with strangers, never let down your guard, and always be ready to move on. Finally, after thirteen years and eleven states, their next hideaway seems perfect. An isolated, fortresslike place in the New Hampshire woods is the new home they share with its owner, a gentlemanly pianist, and his lonely daughter, Gretchen. But Gretchen and her father have secrets of their own.

Marguerite Antonia Caludio grew up in the looming shadow of her mother, a beautiful, talented flamenco dancer. But Anastasia had been taken down by breast cancer when Marguerite was only 14, and Marguerite's grandparents succumbed to grief only scant months later. Now, Marguerite lives along in the same three-bedroom apartment, maintaining the shrine to all which has been lost.