Love a story that sends a shiver down your spine? This month, BestSelling Reads concentrates on the occult and horror genres, and the many titles that blur or cross that tenuous boundary. Here are some books by BestSelling authors that will chill, you while they thrill you.
Gateway
By David C. Cassidy
Sometimes, good people do bad things.
And sometimes … really nasty things.
Jared Cole has it all. Talent. Fame. Success. But this best-selling horror novelist also has an astonishing power: he can see souls.
Returning to his sleepy hometown of Torch Falls after seven years in the grind of New York City, it seems the perfect plan to keep his secret safe and to jump-start his sagging career. But when he unwittingly opens a window—a gateway—into the soul of an epileptic child, his dream of a fresh start becomes a nightmare. A relentless and sinister evil is unleashed, twisting peaceful townsfolk into psychotic crazies and cold-blooded killers.
Can Jared close the gateway before the town becomes a graveyard?
This book makes Stephen King seem like Beatrix Potter.
Crimson Vale
By Jennifer Harlow
Lust…Murder…Madness…
Welcome to Crimson Vale.
It’s a dream come true. A vast inheritance. A beautiful mansion in the heart of the small town South. A seductive, mysterious, literal man of her dreams offering true, pure love. Ravaged in both body and mind, Jane Harrow leaps into that living dream with abandon.
Despite the voices.
Despite the visions.
Despite the warnings from both the living and the dead.
Because what Jane doesn’t know is nothing and no one are what they seem. Because demons from the past are patient. Because dreams can quickly turn into living nightmares, especially in…
Secrets of the Hanged Man
Icarus Fell Urban Fantasy Series Book 3
By Bruce Blake
Icarus Fell thought the afterlife couldn’t get any worse…until Hell came looking for him.
When you are the orphaned child of a disgraced nun, and you’re saddled with a ridiculous name like Icarus Fell, you don’t expect things can go drastically downhill.
Until death comes along and an archangel recruits you for a job you screw up so badly you nearly lose your son to a demonic priest and a fallen angel.
And then, burdened by the lives lost because of your foul ups, you travel to Hell, a detour that costs you more dearly then you could ever have imagined.
No, things couldn’t get much worse in the afterlife…unless Satan sends his lap dog to bring back the one thing he thinks belongs to him.
You.
Why couldn’t death be easy?
The Ghost Host: Episode 2
By DelSheree Gladden
It’s bad enough that Echo already has ghosts haunting her 24/7, now her past mistakes want to join the fun and come back to haunt her, too?
Moving to Georgia was supposed to be a fresh start. So far, it’s turned out to be a fresh start at more chaos. After battling Devourers for the soul of her childhood friend, Echo learns the depth of what her abilities might cost her. She’s always been pretty good at failure, which is concerning when the fate of the spiritual world is suddenly in your hands.
If that isn’t enough pressure already, Echo’s personal life is a mess. She and Malachi are both freaked out by her ability to control him and have no idea whether their relationship was ever based on more than their bond as Medium and Keeper. Kyran is keeping his distance from both of them to keep from doing something stupid, things are still tense with her parents, college is proving more than she bargained for, Agent Morton is doubting stability and brings in his son Griffin to help keep her ground-which only causes more problems between her and pretty much everyone, and Echo gets pulled into her first case: a young boy whose mysterious injuries and claims of monsters in his dreams has everyone baffled and terrified of what it might mean if he isn’t lying.
The Mannequins
By Elyse Salpeter
In the deep woods of California, there’s an old decaying mansion with a terrible secret. When any enter its doors, the house claims them, propelling them to a land in a different reality, run by a man who calls himself, the Preacher.
If you play by his rules, you live a life of luxury, but if you displease him? With a flick of his wrist, you are transformed into a living doll, a mannequin, and there is no escape… until the madman is done playing with you.
Dark Clouds: The Mandrake Ruse
A modern occult paranormal story
By Scott Bury
Matt always knew when his mother was about to arrive: the wind would swirl from every direction at once and dark clouds would mass in the sky.
He and his pretty wife, Teri, try to get out of the way, but as the Witch’s Son, Matt is drawn into a spider’s web.
He has to use his special abilities to spoil the Witch Queen’s plans—but the price for that is to be paid in blood.
Fortunately, Teri has a few special abilities of her own …