Good Reads - Fiction

From Hauntings to Vampires: Horror Fiction in the 90's

F/BAUM
Baum, Thomas - Out of Body - 1997, 214p.
Convicted and jailed for a rape he didn't commit, Denton Hake is determined to rebuild his life now that he is paroled. Things are looking up, until disturbing memories of his father's suicide return to haunt him, and he begins to experience out of body incidents, just as he has in the past. Once again accused of a crime he did not commit, he must use the information gained during these occurrences to find the real culprit and prove his innocence. The supernatural entwines with real detective work in this chilling, cinematic, and suspenseful story. (MT)

F/BLAYLOCK
Blaylock, James P. - The Rainy Season - 1999, 356p.
The stones sheltering human memories from times long past are washed from the depths of the Ainsworth well only during southern California's rare heavy rains. Those holding the stones in their hands experience these past moments in great and unsettling detail. Awaiting the rains are those who understand and wish to possess the vast powers of the stones: a priest, a madwoman, an obsessed antiques dealer, his greedy assistant, and a young girl. All have their own reasons for recovering these talismans, and they anxiously await the rains in this contemporary ghost story. (SO)

F/BRITE
Brite, Poppy Z. - Lost Souls - 1992, 355p.
Nothing, the hero of this cult vampire classic, runs from a home and society that don't understand him. On his way to freedom, he discovers his real father and the secret of his heritage. The elegant writing vividly evokes the steamy decadence of New Orlean's French Quarter and the violence of the lives of the Undead. (JS)

F/CARD
Card, Orson Scott - Homebody - 1998, 291p.
After builder Don Lark's daughter and ex-wife are killed in a car accident, his life falls apart. To rebuild it and himself, he starts renovating old houses and buys an old mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina. The house offers surprises, including a secret tenant, Sylvie, who has lived there since her college days. However, the house itself hides a tragic, haunted past and possesses horrifying powers. Don soon realizes that as his repairs progress and the house gets stronger, the friendly old ladies next door grow weak and fearful. As he and Sylvie fall in love, they begin to understand that they must set the past straight for the house before it will relinquish its secret power. (LM)

F/DUE
Due, Tananarive - My Soul To Keep - 1997, 346p.
Her husband is loving, generous, and thoughtful. Her daughter is a delight. Add in a great career, a sustaining faith, and a warm and supportive family, and Jessica's life is perfect—until she learns her husband's secret. David is immortal. Four hundred years have passed since he became one of the brotherhood of the living blood. Does eternal life mean endless opportunities to grow and learn, or does it mean loss, isolation, never-ending grief, and possibly madness? (LL)

F/GRANT
Grant, Charles - Symphony - 1997, 302p.
Focusing on bizarre occurrences in the small town of Maple Landing, New Jersey, this story of the pale horseman Death, the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, sets the stage for Grant's Millennium Quartet. After his miraculous recovery from pneumonia, Episcopalian minister Casey Chisholm is unexplainably able to control the local fauna and raise the dead. Meanwhile, a mysterious driver in a Lincoln Continental with a haunting silver horse hood ornament collects criminals who represent evil incarnate and approaches Maple Landing to launch the final destruction of the world. (MT)

F/HAMILTON
Hamilton, Laurell K. - Guilty Pleasures - 1993, 266p.
Anita Blake is the best vampire hunter in St. Louis and has the scars to prove it. She is asked by the master vampire Nikolaos to find out who's been killing the most powerful vampires in town. Anita's investigation takes her into the vampire world where she encounters zombies and huge rats, and her dreams are haunted by a vampire named Jean-Claude. (LB)

F/HYNES
Hynes, James - Publish and Perish - 1997, 335p.
Three novellas about academia, linked by the pompous professors who inhabit this milieu. Queen of the Jungle relates the tale of a cat determined to have revenge on his unfaithful master. In 99, cultural anthropologist Gregory Eyck embarrasses himself at a conference in the United States and so goes to England to become a BBC personality. However, after some success there, his life takes a strange twist when he visits Salisbury and Stonehenge. Casting the Runes tells what might happen to a hateful professor who casts spells on graduate students and plagiarizes their work. (LM)

F/KIHN
Kihn, Greg - Horror Show - 1996, 350p.
Neophyte journalist Clint Stockbern interviews the legendary horror movie director Landis Woodley, a figure very like Ed Wood of Science Fiction B-movie fame. Through flashbacks, Woodley reveals his deepest secrets: tales of the movie that became his greatest success, filmed in a crypt with real corpses, and of a Halloween party gone awry, with disastrous results and an incredible evil unleashed. Unfortunately, for the cast of that movie and those who survived the party, a curse still haunts them, and Woodley remains the only survivor. For now. Black humor and lurking horror combine in this cinematic paean to the horror movie classics of 50's. (JS)

F/MCFARLAND
McFarland, Dennis - A Face At The Window - 1997, 309p.
When Cookson, Cook for short, and Ellen Selway check into their flat at the Willerton Hotel in London, there is no reason to expect a reoccurrence of Cook's, largely latent, prescient experiences. Clean and sober for many years, Cook, a husband and father, believes himself to be a solid participant in the "natural world." Soon, however, Cook is absorbed into the other life of the hotel. As Cook becomes more engrossed and entwined in the disturbed lives of three "ghosts" from the past, he gradually disengages from the present, threatening his marriage and sanity, as well as his life. (TW)

F/MOLONEY
Moloney, Susie - A Dry Spell - 1997, 385p.
Goodlands, North Dakota, is a dying town. The dry spell of the past four years has stripped the town of its spirit. Farms are going under on a weekly basis, and so for Karen Grange, the town banker, life is becoming unbearable as she forecloses on one farm after another. Desperate, she contacts a "rainmaker" who arrives on her doorstep on hot dry day. Tom Keatley then begins his struggle against the evil spirits that possess one of the town's inhabitants. Mayhem and confusion are rampant as Tom finally brings rain, and he and the spirit clash in a spectacular and violent confrontation. (SG)

F/MONOHAN
Monohan, Brent - The Bell Witch - 1997, 199p.
In a journal written for his daughter, Richard Powell, a schoolteacher in Robertson County, Tennessee, recounts his observations on the Bell Witch Haunting. Now married to Elizabeth Bell, one of the Bell Witch's victims, Richard witnessed the antics of the Bell Witch, or "Old Kate," as she was called. Taking up residence in the home of John Bell from the years 1817-1821, she intimidated, through her words and actions, all who came in contact with her. She made life especially miserable for John Bell whom she predicted she would kill. A compelling glimpse into the supernatural with a fascinating and unexpected ending. (SG)

F/MONTELEONE
Monteleone, Thomas F. - Night of Broken Souls - 1997, 390p.
A New York cabbie finds himself outside a house watching a family he's never seen before, and he has no idea how he got to Pittsburgh. A retired woman in Baltimore explodes in an unexpected rage when she finds two thugs tormenting a Jewish child in an alley. A strange woman breaks into psychiatrist Michael Keating's office and demands his help—at gunpoint. Keating discovers that all kinds of people are being plagued by blackouts and recurring nightmares of dying in Nazi concentration camps and that someone is systematically murdering these tormented dreamers. If the victims of Nazi terror are being reincarnated, could the victimizers be out there as well? (LL)

F/PASSARELLA
Passarella, J.G. - Wither - 1999, 304p.
Windale, Massachusetts embraces the fact that a witches' coven were inhabitants of the town three hundred years ago. It is now Halloween and everyone is preparing for the King Frost parade, except for Karen, Wendy, and eight-year-old Abby. For the past few months they have been having weird and frightful dreams associated with the coven. What exactly will these visions mean to the women and the town of Windale? (LB)

F/PRESTON
Preston, Douglas and Lincoln Child - Relic - 1995, 382p.
Someone or something is stalking the halls and subterranean tunnels of the New York Museum of Natural History. Visitors and staff have disappeared, only to turn up savagely mutilated. Rumors are escalating, attendance is down, and the Grand Opening Gala for Superstition, the Museum's most elaborate and expensive exhibit, is scheduled within days. The FBI and New York City police assume they are looking for a serial killer of enormous strength and cunning, but DNA tests can't even isolate a specific species. Doctoral student Margo Green suspects a link between the killings and a disastrous expedition in South America. Could this small statue of a demonic beast, one of the centerpieces of the Superstition exhibition (and the only [object], living or dead, that returned from that expedition) in some way be responsible? (TW)

F/ROVIN
Rovin, Jeff - Vespers - 1998, 308p.
Around the New York City area, bats are viciously attacking people. Dr. Nancy Joyce, an expert on bats from the Bronx Zoo, believes that some kind of mutant bat is on the loose, wreaking havoc on New York City. Can Nancy, with the help of NYPD detective Robert Gentry, find out what's really going on before New York dissolves into total chaos? (LB)

F/SAUL
Saul, John - The Right Hand of Evil - 1999, 344p.
Janet and Ted Conway and their three children move to quiet St. Albans, Louisiana, after Ted loses yet another job due to his heavy drinking. Ted's last chance comes as the result of his crazy Aunt Cora's death; she leaves him a large Victorian house and enough money to turn it into an inn. The townspeople, including the local parish priest, are unhelpful and obviously want the Conways out of town. Rumors about past generations of Conways (murder, suicide, and voodoo) permeate the town and are believed by most. Friendly fifteen-year-old Jared Conway becomes sullen, and his twin sister Kim suffers from frightening, shocking dreams. Pets disappear, and evil emanates from the supposedly haunted house. Escalating unease leads to terror—and that final horrifying confrontation with the evil from the past. (SO)

Prepared by Lora Bruggeman, Sheila Guenzer, Linda Lacy, Lynn McCullagh, Sue O'Brien, Joyce Saricks, Marianne Trautvetter, and Terri Williams, October 1999