Spooky Eerie Reads

Donna Leon's growing American fan base is hungry for more of the books from her internationally bestselling series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. Now in what many consider one of the finest in the series, Venice braces for the onslaught of "acqua alta"-the rising waters from torrential rain. But Brunetti has his own problems, beginning with the savage beating of an old friend. When a man's body is discovered, Brunetti must wade through the chaos to solve one of his deadliest cases. Full of marvelous plot twists, "Acqua Alta" is a chilling addition to Donna Leon's addictive series.

When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind. Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs.....the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves. But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia? As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left.

انبثقت تحفة روبرت لويس ستيفنسون عن ازدواجية الخير والشر في طبيعة الإنسان من أحلك أغوار لاوعيه، خلال كابوس أيقظته منه زوجته بعدما نبهتها صرخاته. وبعد أكثر من مئة عام، لم تفقد هذه الحكاية عن الدكتور جيكل الوديع والعقار الذي يطلق العنان لشخصيته الداخلية الشريرة — السيد هايد البغيض المشوّه — شيئًا من قدرتها على الصدم. ويروي سردها الواقعي على طراز تقارير الشرطة، بصورة تقشعر لها الأبدان، يأس جيكل فيما يكتسب هايد السيطرة على روحه، ويمنح صوتًا لمخاوفنا نحن من العنف والشر الكامنين في داخلنا. كُتبت قبل أن يسمّي فرويد الأنا والهو، وتُظهر كلاسيكية ستيفنسون الخالدة فهمًا لافتًا للصراعات الداخلية للشخصية، ولا تزال مادة مرعبة على نحو لا يُقاوم لأشد كوابيسنا سوءًا.

في البداية، كان هناك عشرة — تشكيلة غريبة من الغرباء دُعوا كضيوف لعطلة نهاية الأسبوع إلى جزيرة خاصة صغيرة قبالة ساحل ديفون. مضيفهم، وهو مليونير غريب الأطوار لا يعرفه أيٌّ منهم، لا أثر له. والقاسم المشترك الوحيد بين الضيوف هو ماضٍ آثم لا يرغبون في كشفه — وسرّ سيحسم مصيرهم. إذ إن كلاً منهم قد وُسِم للقتل. وتوجد في كل غرفة من غرف القصر أنشودة أطفال شهيرة مؤطرة ومعلّقة: «خرج عشرة أولاد صغار لتناول العشاء؛ اختنق أحدهم، فلم يبق منهم إلا تسعة. سهر تسعة أولاد صغار حتى وقت متأخر؛ نام أحدهم أكثر من اللازم، فلم يبق منهم إلا ثمانية. سافر ثمانية أولاد صغار في ديفون؛ قال أحدهم إنه سيبقى هناك، فلم يبق منهم إلا سبعة. كان سبعة أولاد صغار يقطعون العصي؛ قطع أحدهم نفسه إلى نصفين، فلم يبق منهم إلا ستة. كان ستة أولاد صغار يلعبون قرب خلية؛ لسعت نحلة طنانة أحدهم، فلم يبق منهم إلا خمسة. ذهب خمسة أولاد صغار إلى القانون؛ دخل أحدهم محكمة الإنصاف، فلم يبق منهم إلا أربعة. خرج أربعة أولاد صغار إلى البحر؛ ابتلع سمك رنجة حمراء أحدهم، فلم يبق منهم إلا ثلاثة. كان ثلاثة أولاد صغار يتمشون في حديقة الحيوان؛ عانق دب كبير أحدهم، فلم يبق منهم إلا اثنان. جلس ولدان صغيران تحت الشمس؛ احترق أحدهما، فلم يبق إلا واحد. بقي ولد صغير واحد وحيدًا؛ خرج وشنق نفسه، فلم يبق أحد». وحين يدركون أن جرائم القتل تقع كما تصفها الأنشودة، يتصاعد الرعب. ويسقطون ضحية واحدًا تلو الآخر. وقبل أن تنتهي عطلة نهاية الأسبوع، لن يبقى أحد. من الذي دبّر هذه الخطة الخبيثة؟ ومن الذي سيبقى ليروي الحكاية؟ لا أحد فوق الشبهة سوى الموتى.

In this, one of the most famous of Doyle's mysteries, the tale of an ancient curse and a savage ghostly hound comes frighteningly to life. The gray towers of Baskerville Hall and the wild open country of Dartmoor will haunt the reader as Holmes and Watson seek to unravel the many secrets of the misty English bogs.

Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband. Lydia Millet’s chilling new novel is the first-person account of a young mother, Anna, escaping her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined. A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother's pink scarf. Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he's received and the disappearance of Jonas' mother - and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised - and constantly revised - by the killer.

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James that first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly magazine (January 27 - April 16, 1898). In October 1898 it appeared in The Two Magics, a book published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them. Excerpt: I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days - found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.

In this follow-up to Tana French’s runaway bestseller In the Woods, itʼs six months later and Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back—until an urgent telephone call summons her to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who was this girl?

Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the famous Orient Express in its tracks as it travels through the mountainous Balkans. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year but, by the morning, it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation. Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again. Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Goodreads.

I en fredelig pensionistby mødes fire usandsynlige venner en gang om ugen for at efterforske uopklarede mord. Men da et brutalt drab finder sted lige på deres egen dørtrin, befinder Torsdagsmordklubben sig midt i deres første aktuelle sag. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim og Ron nærmer sig måske de firs, men de har stadig et par tricks i ærmet. Kan vores utraditionelle, men brillante gruppe fange morderen, før det er for sent?

Όταν η Άλις Άσερ δολοφονείται στο Άντοβερ, ο Ηρακλής Πουαρό ήδη εξετάζει τα στοιχεία. Αλφαβητικά μιλώντας, απομένουν είκοσι πέντε γράμματα. Ένας κατά συρροή δολοφόνος κυκλοφορεί ελεύθερος. Η μακάβρια τηλεκάρτα του είναι να αφήνει τον Σιδηροδρομικό Οδηγό ABC δίπλα στο σώμα κάθε θύματος. Αλλά αν το Α είναι για την Άλις Άσερ, που ξυλοκοπήθηκε μέχρι θανάτου στο Άντοβερ, και το Β είναι για την Μπέτι Μπέρναρντ, που στραγγαλίστηκε με τη ζώνη της στην παραλία του Μπέξχιλ, ποιο θα είναι τότε το θύμα Γ; Και, το σημαντικότερο, γιατί συμβαίνει αυτό; Συχνά θεωρείται ένα από τα καλύτερα έργα της Άγκαθα Κρίστι. Σημείωση βιβλιοθηκονόμου: τα πρώτα δεκαπέντε μυθιστορήματα της σειράς Ηρακλή Πουαρό είναι: 1) Η μυστηριώδης υπόθεση στο Στάιλς, 1920· 2) Ο φόνος στο γήπεδο του γκολφ, 1923· 3) Η δολοφονία του Ρότζερ Ακρόιντ, 1926· 4) Οι τέσσερις μεγάλοι, 1927· 5) Το μυστήριο του μπλε τρένου, 1928· 6) Κίνδυνος στο Έντ Χάουζ, 1932· 7) Ο λόρδος Έτζγουερ πεθαίνει, 1933· 8) Έγκλημα στο Οριάν Εξπρές, 1934· 9) Τραγωδία σε τρεις πράξεις, 1935· 10) Θάνατος στα σύννεφα, 1935· 11) Φόνοι κατ’ αλφαβητική σειρά, 1936· 12) Φόνος στη Μεσοποταμία, 1936· 13) Χαρτιά στο τραπέζι, 1936· 14) Άλαλος μάρτυρας, 1937· και 15) Θάνατος στον Νείλο, 1937. Αυτά είναι μόνο τα μυθιστορήματα· ο Πουαρό εμφανίζεται επίσης αυτή την περίοδο σε ένα θεατρικό έργο, Μαύρος καφές, 1930, και σε δύο συλλογές διηγημάτων, Ο Πουαρό ερευνά, 1924, και Φόνος στα Μέους, 1937. Κάθε μυθιστόρημα, θεατρικό έργο και διήγημα έχει τη δική του καταχώριση στο Goodreads.