Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Horror

February, 1929. The Regent Hotel in Birmingham is a place of deception and glamour. Behind its six-storeyed façade, guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes, while the hotel's red-jacketed staff scurry through its lavish corridors to ensure the finest service is always at hand. In the early evening, a psychoanalyst checks in under a pseudonym: Nora Dickinson. Nora is young, diligent and ambitious. Though she doesn't see herself as a liar, she is travelling with an agenda.

It's 1948, and Irene Willard has had five miscarriages. She's desperate to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and, now pregnant for the sixth time, checks in to an isolated house-cum-hospital run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure, they say, to 'rectify the maternal environment'.

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm. But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life.

A gripping gothic page-turner told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating voice. In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles.

Killingly, 1897. The female students of Mount Holyoke—an elite university in a sleepy rural town—are famous for their beauty and charm. Except for plain, quiet Agnes and Bertha, who spend their time reading, writing and wandering the dark woods of Killingly, and do not seem interested in ballgowns or young men. One autumn morning, Bertha vanishes—and the peaceful town of Killingly fractures into chaos. While a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, a private detective arrives in town and begins an investigation, discovering this quiet girl was keeping a terrible secret.

Your granddaughters are lost, Candelaria. Bianca, the brainy archaeologist, had to forfeit her life's work in Guatemala after her advisor seduced and deserted her. Paola, missing for over a decade, resurfaces in Boston as a brainwashed wellness cultist named Zoe. And Candy, the youngest, is a recovering addict who finds herself pregnant by a man she's not even sure ever existed. None of this concerns you of course, until a cataclysmic earthquake hits Boston.

Four friends have a pact: to meet up on the same day every year in their small hometown in southern Italy. Art, the charismatic leader of the group, has always been adamant about the pact. But this year, he doesn't show up. Searching for him, the friends make a worrying discovery: Art has been farming marijuana, a very dangerous activity in mafia-controlled country.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.

When Max tries to intervene to prevent an assault and it goes horribly wrong, she wants nothing more than to keep her head down and get on with her job. She does not want to answer calls for help, not even from Bryce, the Order warrior who seems willing to give her a second chance. Despite telling herself she just wants to live her quiet life, Max finds herself delving into parts of the city where no one apart from the desperate want to go, facing terrifying supernatural creatures and ghosts from her past.

All Richard Hadlow wants is a happy family and a peaceful home. Having built the perfect house deep in the Kent countryside, now all he needs is a wife. He's about to discover, however, that even the most perfectly-laid plans can go horribly and tragically wrong. The year is 1689 and England is in the grip of turmoil. A pretender is trying to take the throne, but Richard has no interest in the affairs of his country. He only cares about finding the perfect wife and giving her a perfect life. But someone–or something–at his newly-built house has other ideas.

In this small but perfectly formed collection of supernatural short stories, Sophie Hannah takes the comforting scenes of everyday life and imbues them with a frisson of fear, then a gust of terror. Why is a young woman so unnerved by the presence of a visitors book in her boyfriend's inner-city home? And whose spidery handwriting is it that fills the pages?

Struggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has learned to live a bit differently. Both his friends are used to it, the only problem is his monstrous housemates. When his ex-girlfriend comes back into his life, she threatens to shatter the finely crafted world around him. As Denis begins to rediscover the person he used to be, things turn nasty and he is forced to confront the demons that share not only his house, but also his head.

Laura and Owen buy a secluded cottage on the edge of the Peak District. Old mines riddle the hills surrounding their new home and soon after moving in, Laura starts to hear faint snatches of birdsong. Her husband, wrapped up in his new job, is rarely around. Nervous and alone, Laura fears she's developing tinnitus. Her doctor can find nothing wrong. Then an archaeological dig on a neighbouring hill unearths some disturbing finds...and Laura's life starts to become terrifying.

When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise—one of the city's oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats—she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur.

New England, 1890. Doctor John Shepherd arrives at a women's mental hospital to begin work as assistant to the owner. As Shepherd struggles to conceal his secrets, he finds the asylum has plenty of its own. Intrigued by a girl who is fascinated by books but cannot read, Shepherd embarks upon an experiment to help her. In this chilling literary thriller everyone has something to hide and no one is what they seem.

In a post-apocalyptic world where all the women have died a group of men and boys survive. The story shall be told to preserve the past. History has gone back to its aural roots and the power of words is strong. Meet Nate, the storyteller, and the new secrets he brings back from the woods. William rules the group with youth and strength, but how long can that last? What about Uncle Ted, who spends so much time out in the woods? And what of mushrooms like heads, on the graves of women? Discover the Beauty.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

In 'The Poppet' a faceless wooden doll holds the secret to a chilling curse.... In 'Hell in the Cathedral', a bunch of tourists are marooned at the mercy of a voracious sea beast.... Check out these and other nerve-shredding tales...if you dare!

The day Rowena Murray was born, 250 starlings fell like stones from the sky. Ever since, she has been marked by Death. First the visions; then her boyfriend died suddenly; now her father, too. Salvation, Rowena is told, lies to the North: in Culcrith, where her grandmother can save her from the curse. Her mother's farmhand, a young Egyptian man named Halim, is to drive her.

The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel's household is above suspicion.