The 25 Christmas Gifts – Franklin Christopher
Christmas horror
25 gifts. 25 days. 25 chilling chapters.
Robert Lyles has given up on Christmas and on life. Since his wife’s, Clara, untimely death, the lonely widower in apartment 126 has embraced silence, shadows, and total obscurity.
This year, the holidays feel heavier than ever. He’s barely leaving his apartment. Some days, he wonders if it would be easier to end things altogether.
So when a small, wrapped gift appears outside his mailbox on December 1st, he’s stunned.
Then another arrives the next day.
And the next.
At first, the gifts seem harmless. Thoughtful, even. But they grow colder. Sharper. Crueler. Each one feels more personal than the last.
Now Robert can’t shake the feeling.
Is he being watched? Is he being studied? Or is this some twisted secret admirer or a cruel Christmas joke?
This year, Christmas doesn’t feel like a holiday. It feels like something is coming and Robert has no idea what it is.
Badlands – Jason Nickey
Psychological horror
When Jimmy meets up with his old high school friends, including a former crush, it’s a bittersweet reunion, balancing old friendships with the challenges of adulthood.
To make matters worse, Troy shows up with Paul, a new friend who seems determined to take over their plans, leading them deep into the New Mexico desert.
Jimmy already has a bad feeling, but things are about to get so much worse once they enter the Badlands.
Belsnickel: A Winter Horror – James Yates
Christmas horror
The Great Thaw stole winter for three years – and in that time the world changed.
Before then, Saint Nick rewarded the good while Belsnickel corrected the bad, keeping the world in balance.
But when the winters vanished, so did Belsnickel… and mischief flourished.
Now the frost has returned.
So has he.
On a family trip to a remote Highland retreat, Ben Baldwin expects sledges and log fires – not a vengeful winter spirit, furious and on the hunt. Cut off by the storm and surrounded by chaos. Ben makes a discovery.
Belsnickel isn’t here to judge.
He’s here to punish.
The End – Adam Cosco
Cult horror
When Eli’s beloved Selene dies under mysterious circumstances, his world fractures.
Consumed by grief, Eli stumbles into a clandestine cult that promises proof of life beyond death, a chance, however impossible, to see Selene again.
The cult’s teachings are seductive, its rituals unsettling, but hidden within their devotion lies the truth about Selene’s final days.
Was her death a tragic accident, or the fulfillment of a sinister prophecy?
Gates of Hell Unleashed – The Fear House
Horror anthology – Book 3 of Gates of Hell
20 chilling, imaginative tales.
Twice before in this epoch, the gates of hell have been opened upon the earth to release terrible nightmares, a sly whisper of evil slithering into the very air and permeating the world with decay. For the third time, a crack has appeared between the inferno and our world, and the nights grow blacker as sinister forces slip through, setting right things to wrong, bringing forth the madness of men.
Every terror imaginable comes to life as the darkness of the human soul is pulled toward iniquity. It is a time for hellspawn to feed, for the sickly souls to rise out of hiding and show what is buried inside. When you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss may decide to come for you.
Inside, you’ll find psychological terrors and supernatural horrors to dystopian futures and twisted folklore, each entry explores what happens when the boundaries between our world and the abyss grow thin.
Whether it’s a doomed Antarctic outpost, a sinister family secret, a post-apocalyptic bunker, or a simple wish gone wrong, the anthology’s stories are united by a single theme: when hell is unleashed, no one escapes unchanged.
Humbug – Luciano Marano
Christmas horror
In modern-day Seattle, Detective Stuart (Scrooge) Caine is a jaded homicide cop on the edge of burnout. Every Christmas brings another murder, but this year’s case is different.
A brilliant psychopath-dubbed “Humbug” by the press-has made a tradition of killing an entire family every December 25th.
With the investigation going cold and his career slipping away, Scrooge receives a visitation on Christmas Eve that shatters his skepticism: the ghost of his former partner, Marley, and three monstrous spirits-manifestations of history’s most notorious unsolved killers: Jack the Ripper, Zodiac, and The Cleveland Torso Murderer.
As the line between nightmare and reality blurs, Scrooge is forced to confront his past, his sins, and the darkness waiting for him on Christmas morning.
The Shadow Over Lone Wolf Lake – D.W. Hitz
Supernatural horror
Sometimes dead doesn’t mean dead, and sometimes family is bound by more than blood.
After the death of his cantankerous grandmother, twelve-year-old Drew Kline and his family move into her house. It boasts a vast, fantastic forest, a broad and beautiful lake, and it also happens to be Drew’s father’s childhood home and the place where his young uncle disappeared twenty-five years ago.
The night of his arrival, in the crawlspace of his bedroom, Drew discovers a miniature human skull. It’s a curiosity between him and his brother Dean, sparking a debate about whether the thing is real or some well-sculpted decoration. When he invites his friends to spend their last weekend of summer break exploring the property’s woods and his uncle’s clandestine fort, which contains a burial ground of pixie-size bodies, they inadvertently find themselves trapped in a land of the dead.
What follows forces Drew’s father to relive the horrific mystery of his uncle’s disappearance and reveals a long-held family secret that has cursed generations. If Drew and his friends want to return home, they’ll have to survive in that strange land as they fight their way back, and his father will have to confront an evil that will only be satisfied with blood.
Song Dogs – Brennan Lafaro
Western horror
Revenge has come for Rory Daggett.
When a series of unexplained fires leads to a shift in the hierarchy of Buzzard’s Edge, Rory finds himself in a battle against his most dangerous enemy yet.
With his mute adopted daughter, Alice, and Sheriff Thaddeus Locke by his side, Rory investigates the sudden flow of strange, horrific creatures into the town, all while dodging murder, mayhem, and sinister forces, both in the shadows and in plain sight.
The Stranger – Jim Donohue
Western horror
Josh Lemmings was nine years old when he saw his parents gunned down on the front porch of their ranch, and he was taken in by the kind Reverend Gatlin.
Josh isn’t nine anymore. He’s spent years growing up, growing stronger, and growing angrier.
Now, he’s ready. Ready to take on the three men who made him an orphan, and the bastard who sent them.
A dark stranger rides toward Specrtre Wyoming. Despite his appearance, he is not quite human.
But something much worse.
And his black heart is bent on vengeance.
And what of the beautiful huntress that is tracking him? A hunter of the undead, those who thirst for blood.
Human blood.
Stranger Things: One Way or Another – Caitlin Schneiderhan
Supernatural horror
Following the events of Stranger Things: Season 4, Nancy Wheeler and Robin Buckley are hot on the heels of a new mystery, and they won’t stop until they solve it.
Hawkins, Indiana, is in recovery. It’s been two months since Vecna’s earthquake tore through the town, and its residents are still reeling from the devastation. Nancy Wheeler has spent every waking minute on the hunt for Vecna, but he’s continued to elude her. How can she head to Emerson for college in the fall if Hawkins is still under the influence of the Upside Down?
When fellow classmate Joey Taft starts acting shifty at graduation, Nancy is convinced Vecna’s found his newest victim. Joined by fellow amateur sleuth Robin Buckley, Nancy doesn’t waste any time questioning Joey. What the girls discover leads them down the path of a bigger story than The Hawkins Post could ever have assigned Nancy. Why are people around town suddenly getting sick? Why is there a strange man tailing Nancy as she investigates? And, most important, does this even have anything to do with the Upside Down?
Together with Robin, Nancy embarks on a dangerous quest for the truth. The deeper the two dig, the further Nancy finds herself drawn into a web of intrigue that threatens to trap her in Hawkins forever.
Terrifier 3 – Tim Waggoner
Slasher horror movie novelization
After surviving Art the Clown’s Halloween massacre, Sienna and her brother are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives.
As the holiday season approaches, they try to embrace the Christmas spirit and leave the horrors of the past behind.
But just when they think they’re safe, Art the Clown returns, determined to turn their holiday cheer into a new nightmare.
The festive season quickly unravels as Art unleashes his twisted brand of terror, proving that no holiday is safe.
When the Bell Tolls – Across the Black Veil
Christmas horror anthology
A Christmas Carol retelling.
