Scarecrows – Robert Westall
YA Supernatural horror
Simon is outraged that his Mum plans to remarry. He can’t bear her new fiancé or the way his mother and sister seem to have forgotten his late father.
Overwhelmed by hatred and anger he seeks solace in a nearby abandoned water mill. But another, powerful hatred lingers within its walls. And it is about to be unleashed.
“It was the night before the Fund-raising Effort that the devils came. So it seemed to Simon Wood ever after.”
Dark Harvest – Norman Partridge
Halloween horror
Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.
Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He’s willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror – and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy.
“A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there.”
Valley of the Scarecrow – Gord Rollo
Supernatural horror
During the great depression, a small backwoods community in Iowa face even more difficult times than most, having to endure the slowly fading sanity of their leader, Reverend Joshua Miller. When it is clear the man has slipped beyond the edge of reason and perhaps signed a deal with the devil, the citizens unite to stop him any way they can, breaking into the church to lash the reverend to his wooden alter cross then boarding up the windows and doors to leave him to fate and God’s judgment. The people of Oak Valley then abandoned their town to the cornfields and woods; ending the madness for what they hoped was forever.
They were wrong!
Seventy-four years later, the corn and trees have taken back the area and not much is left of the once thriving little community but Joshua Miller’s desecrated church still stands, and within its boarded up and sun-baked walls something that used to be a holy man waits for whoever is unfortunate enough to release him from his cross.
The scarecrow will walk at midnight.
“He waits. Hungry, thirsty, and full of primal rage.”
Solem: The Scarecrow – Scott Nicholson
Supernatural horror – Book 1 of Solem
When Katy Logan moves her troubled teen daughter Jett to the Appalachian community of Solom, she envisions a peaceful rural lifestyle on her new husband’s farm. But there’s more to Solom than she ever imagined.
Gordon Smith’s first wife Rebecca died under mysterious circumstances, and Katy believes her spirit is still in the house.
Gordon’s great-grandfather was a horseback preacher who vanished while on a mission one wintry night, and local lore holds that he returns from time to time seeking vengeance.
And Gordon teases Katy and Jett with a story about a wicked scarecrow that comes in from the fields at night to slake an unnatural thirst.
When the legends come to life, Katy and Jett discover the Smith family secrets cut deep. They must face the supernatural menace together or become part of Solom’s legends forever.
“Lilacs. That was probably what the dead woman had once smelled like.”
Scarecrow – Rhonda Parrish (editor)
Horror anthology – Book 3 of Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries
Hay-men, mommets, tattie bogles, kakashi, tao-tao – whether formed of straw or other materials, the tradition of scarecrows is pervasive in farming cultures around the world. The scarecrow serves as decoy, proxy, and effigy – human but not human. We create them in our image and ask them to protect our crops and by extension our very survival, but we refrain from giving them the things a creation might crave: souls, brains, free-will, love.
Fifteen authors explore what such creatures might do to gain the things they need or, more dangerously, think they want.
Within these pages, ancient enemies join together to destroy a mad mommet, a scarecrow who is a crow protects solar fields and stores long-lost family secrets, a woman falls in love with a scarecrow, and another becomes one.
Encounter scarecrows made of straw, imagination, memory, and robotics while being spirited to Oz, mythological Japan, other planets, and a neighbor’s back garden.
“I knew I was dreaming, but it was a sweet dream so I let it ride.”
Scarecrows – Mav Skye
Horror collection
Scarecrows is a collection of three tales of desperate straw men rising from their poles.
In “Marrow”, teens learn they should never tempt a tomahawk-wielding scarecrow.
In “Scars”, Lucy plays along when her lover blindfolds her and leads her into the cornfields, but then the blindfold is removed.
In “Spindled Souls”, Wallace and Anne are lovers…and scarecrows…forced to stare longingly at each other until one day all scarecrows are brought to the castle for a grisly fate.
“A gaggle of teens stalk sugar on All Hallow’s Eve.”
