OBD Little Books of Horror - Adult

"Left alone for the weekend while her husband and two children are visiting her in-laws, the narrator of Killing Stella recounts the addition of her friend's daughter, Stella, into their already tense and tumultuous household. Staring out the window at her garden, she worries about the baby bird in the linden tree, about her husband, Richard (who flits from one adulterous affair to an- other), about her son's gloomy demeanor and her daughter's obliviousness,...

"In this beautiful, evocative, and often surreal retelling of Bran Stoker's Dracula, a fearsome enemy arrives from the east, bringing with it horrors the likes of which have never been seen in the British Empire. Standing opposed are Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray and her stalwart companions, united in a cabal that eclipses gender, nationality, and station until the day that they can achieve victory. As Mina struggles to find her place as Whitby School's...

"Human Sacrifices is a short story collection by Ecuadorian author María Fernanda Ampuero that explores the horrors of inequality, exploitation, marginalization, and violence against working-class women and children under capitalism"-- Provided by publisher.

"The old keeper of the keys is dead, and the creature who ate her is the volatile Lady of the Capricious House - Anatema, an enormous humanoid spider with a taste for laudanum and human brides. Dalia, the old keeper's protegee, must take up her duties, locking and unlocking the little drawers in which Anatema keeps her memories. And if she can unravel the crime that led to her predecessor's death, Dalia might just be able to survive long enough to...

A young woman's seasonal job working a sugar beet harvest takes a surreal turn in this surprising and vivid debut. "Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming...

"October 1983. When single mom Eleanor Mazinski goes out a for a much-needed date night, she leaves her two young children-sweet, innocent six-year-old Ben and precocious, defiant twelve-year-old Mira-in the capable hands of their sitter, Amy. The quiet seventeen-year-old is good at looking after children, despite her anxiety disorder. She also loves movies, especially horror flicks. Amy likes their predictability; it calms the panic that threatens...

"'One of her generation's most intriguing authors' (Entertainment Weekly), Daisy Johnson is the youngest writer to have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Now she returns with Sisters, a haunting story about two sisters caught in a powerful emotional web and wrestling to understand where one ends and the other begins. Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a...

"A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She's not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English...

"The author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave. Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper,...

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret takes 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 an afterword by Jonathan Lethem.