This fantastically spooky horror book, published by James Patterson’s brand-new children’s imprint, with a plot motivated by the Jack the Ripper murders and a shocking, terrifying ending. Audrey Rose Wadsworth, age 17, was born a lord’s daughter and had a life of wealth and pleasure ahead of her. She does, however, conduct a clandestine secret life in between the social teas and silk dress fittings.
Audrey frequently eludes her strict father’s orders and defies social norms to visit her uncle’s lab to learn about the horrific field of forensic medicine. When Audrey is drawn into the investigation of a serial killer while working on a spate of brutally murdered corpses, she is forced to confront her safe haven. This breathtaking, #1 New York Times bestselling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco will be tough to forget due to the story’s stunning turns and turns, which are complemented by actual, ominous vintage images.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Roses have both petals and thorns, my dark flower. You needn’t believe something weak because it appears delicate. Show the world your bravery.”
“Fear is a hungry beast. The more you feed it, the more it grows.”
“Wield your assets like a blade, Cousin. No man has invented a corset for our brains. Let them think they rule the world. It’s a queen who sits on that throne. Never forget that.”
“There’s nothing better than a little danger dashed with some romance.”
“I was determined to be both pretty and fierce, as Mother had said I could be. Just because I was interested in a man’s job didn’t mean I had to give up being girly. Who defined those roles anyhow?”
A terrible crime. An unclear investigation. King has written one of his most frightening and compulsively readable stories at a time when his brand has never been stronger.
The dismembered body of an eleven-year-old kid is discovered in a town park. Fingerprints and eyewitness account definitely identify one of Flint City’s most well-liked residents. Terry Maitland is a spouse, father of two kids, Little League coach, English teacher, and English teacher. Maitland previously coached Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son made the arrest. Maitland has a plausible explanation, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to the fingerprints, witnesses, and other available proof. Their argument looks unbeatable. King’s compelling narrative picks up speed as the investigation deepens and frightening revelations start to surface, creating intense tension and nearly intolerable suspense. Although Terry Maitland appears like a kind guy, is there another side to him? You’ll be shocked by the response in the way that only Stephen King can.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you can’t let go of the past, the mistakes you’ve made will eat you alive.”
― Stephen King, The Outsider
“Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We’re still helping each other.”
― Stephen King, The Outsider
“People had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.”
― Stephen King, The Outsider
“People are blind to explanations that lie outside their perception of reality.”
― Stephen King, The Outsider
“Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world,”
― Stephen King, The Outsider
Mark Stone is on the phone with a friend when he is shocked by a chorus of strange screaming. A horrible accident takes his friend’s life seconds later. When this occurs multiple times in a row—screams followed by an early death—he feels forced to act.
Mark embarks on a mission to figure out what is behind the screams and possibly prevent death from calling on its next victim, despite his failure as a husband and his own wounded faith. When his estranged wife is abducted and he hears her screams from her cell phone, his hunt becomes more personal and urgent.
This town is filled with spirals, it seems. The small Japanese coastal village of Kurouzu-cho, which is shrouded in fog, is cursed. Teenager Kirie Goshima’s withdrawn boyfriend Shuichi Saito claims that their town is not haunted by an individual or being but rather by a pattern called uzumaki, the spiral, which is the hypnotic hidden shape of the universe. This peculiar horror manga masterpiece is now available in a single volume. Embark on a terrifying downward spiral!
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Spirals…. this town is contaminated with spirals.”
John Wayne Cleaver is risky, and he is aware of this. He has worked hard his entire life to fall short of his potential. Despite his obsession with serial killers, he is not genuinely interested in becoming one. He, therefore, adheres to strict standards he has established for himself in order to protect himself and the people around him, living his everyday life as though it were a form of personal religion that could deliver him from eternal punishment.
John is accustomed to seeing dead bodies. Actually, he enjoys them. They do not ask for or anticipate the empathy he is unable to provide. Perhaps this is what gives him the objectivity to see that the body the police have just discovered behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat is different and to understand what that difference signifies.
Now, for the very first time, John must deal with a threat that is external to himself, one that he is powerless to stop, one that threatens everyone and everything he would adore if he could only. The first book of a trilogy by Dan Wells will keep you up at night and then haunt your dreams.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It doesn’t matter what other people think when you’re right – John Cleaver”
“I’m a good person,” I said, “because I know what good people are supposed to act like, and I copy them.”
“Fear is about things that you can’t control. The future or the dark, or someone trying to kill you. You don’t get scared of yourself because you always know what you’re going to do.”
“I used to have a list of people I was going to kill one day. It was against my rules now, but sometimes I really missed that list.”
“I simply felt alone, one leaf sitting miles away from a giant, communal pile.”
Intruders discreetly murder Luke Ellis’s parents in the middle of the night in a home on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis before putting him in a black SUV. Less than two minutes are needed for the procedure. Luke will awaken at The Institute in a room that is virtually identical to his own, save for the absence of a window. Other children with exceptional abilities—telekinesis and telepathy—who arrived at this location similarly to Luke can be found behind other doors outside of his door, including Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. Everybody is in the front half. Luke discovers that some people advanced to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” as Kalisha puts it. You don’t check out; you just check-in.
The director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are brutally committed to drawing out of these kids the power of their extraordinary abilities in this most evil of institutions. This place has no morals. You receive tokens for the vending machines if you comply. If you don’t, the penalty is severe. Luke grows more and more frantic to leave and obtain assistance as each fresh victim vanishes into Back Half. However, nobody has ever managed to leave the Institute.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Great events turn on small hinges.”
“He wanted to tell Luke that he loved him. But there were no words, and maybe no need of them. Or telepathy. Sometimes a hug was telepathy.”
“this life we think we’re living isn’t real. It’s just a shadow play, and I for one will be glad when the lights go out on it. In the dark, all the shadows disappear.”
“Between midnight and four, everyone should have permission to speak freely.”
“It came to him, with the force of a revelation, that you had to have been imprisoned to fully understand what freedom was.”
Ali, age 13, discovers a strange picture in the attic just before summer officially starts. She is aware that it contains her mother Claire and her aunt Dulcie’s two children. But who is the third individual, the one who has been erased from the scene?
While on vacation in Maine with Dulcie and Emma, 4, in the home where Ali’s mother’s family used to spend the summer, Ali assumes she’ll learn the truth. Thoughts of leisure are quickly dashed when the girls encounter Sissy, an ugly and spiteful youngster who has a negative impression of Emma.
The strangest part is that Sissy constantly brings up Teresa, a young girl who drowned in odd circumstances when Claire and Dulcie were children and whose body was never discovered. Ali initially believes Sissy is merely making up a ghost story to terrify her, but she quickly learns the real cause behind Sissy’s irrational anger. In this brand-new spooky story that is destined to send chills down her readers’ spines, Mary Downing Hahn is at her most menacing.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The water is DEEP AND DARK AND DANGEROUS”
“To everyone who enjoys ghost stories”
“Sissy tilted her chair back so far I was sure she’d fall on her head any second. Not that I cared. Maybe she’d leave if she hurt herself.”
“The bones came out, the bones came out, the bones came out.”
“Sometimes nothing is the scariest thing of all,”
A junior high school class is sent to a barren island where, as part of a brutal authoritarian program, they are issued with weapons and forced to murder one another until just one survives. This is the basis for Koushun Takami’s infamous high-octane thriller. Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the twenty-first century and a strong allegory of what it meant to be youthful and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog society. It was first criticized as violent exploitation when it was published in Japan, where it went on to become an instant hit. Battle Royale, a current Japanese pulp classic that was adapted into the contentious blockbuster film of the same name, is now available in English for the first time.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Loving someone always requires you to not love others.”
“By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.”
“It’s not a bad thing to be loved.”
“Now, once again, 2 students left. But of course they’re a part of you now.”
“To memorize something, it’s best to write it down.”
In this Southern-inspired supernatural thriller set in the 1990s, Dracula and Fried Green Tomatoes collide with Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes as a women’s book club fights to save their suburban community from a strange and attractive stranger who turns out to be a bloodsucking demon.
Patricia Campbell always envisioned a large life, but after giving up her nursing job to wedding a successful doctor and have children, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. Her to-do list is never truly completed, her kids are ungrateful, her spouse is distant, and the days are long. Her book club, which consists of a group of Charleston mothers who are solely connected by their love of true-crime and suspenseful fiction, is the one item she has to look forward to. The FBI’s recent siege of Waco is more likely to come up in these discussions than the ups and downs of marriage and parenting.
However, when a creative and compassionate stranger moves into the area, rumors about the newcomer start to circulate at book club meetings. Although Patricia is initially drawn to him, she begins to suspect the newcomer of being involved when other neighborhood kids go missing. She starts her own inquiry, presuming he is a Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. The information she finds is even scarier, and soon she and her book club are the only ones standing between the community’s unknowing residents and the monster they’ve let into their homes.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.”
“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”
“Think of us what you will,” she thought, “we made mistakes, and probably scarred our children for life, and we froze sandwiches, and forgot car pool, and got divorced. But when the time came, we went the distance.”
“Being a teenager isn’t a number, ” Maryellen said. “It’s the age when you stop liking them.”
“I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.”
Something Wicked This Way Comes, one of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most widely read books, now has a new preface and information about its extensive cultural and genre impact.
Step inside for those who still have dreams and memories and for those who haven’t yet felt the captivating power of its dark poetry. The program is about to start. Every life touched by Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show will be destroyed when it arrives in Green Town, Illinois. A little after midnight, the carnival arrives, bringing a week early Halloween. All are drawn in by the enticing prospect of fantasies and youth reclaimed by the harsh siren voice of the calliope.
Two buddies who will soon be all too aware of the high price of wishes will learn the truth behind its smoke, mazes, and mirrors from two boys. that conjures up nightmares. The literary masterwork Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury has lasted in the mind and heart like few other books have. It is a timeless masterpiece in the American canon, one that is spooky and thrilling.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, and it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, darkness. Nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawns just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slowly. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had the strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot’s face. It’s a long way back to the sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time…”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Amelia Bedelia follows every instruction given to her by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, even dressing the chicken and dusting the furniture. However, nothing ever quite works out as planned.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Oh, Amelia Bedelia, your first day of work, and I can’t be here. But I made an alist for you. You do just what the list says,”
“She was very angry. She opened her mouth. Mrs. Rogers meant to tell Amelia Bedelia she was fired. But before she could get the words out, Mr. Rogers put something in her mouth. ”
“Such a grand house. These must be rich folks. But I must get to work. Here I stand just looking. And me with a whole list of things to do. I think I’ll make a surprise for them. I’ll make lemon meringue pie. I do make good pies.”
“Now i must dress the chicken. I wonder if she wants the chicken or the chicken?”
“Mrs. Rogers learned to say unjust the furniture, sunlight the lights, and close the drapes, and things like that. ”
A young woman has whisked away to a house on top of a mountain of blood-red clay when her heart is captivated by a beguiling stranger. This is a place full of mysteries that will torment her forever.
The truth about Crimson Peak lies between desire and evil, between mystery and madness. from the renowned filmmaker Guillermo del Toro.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“…perhaps we only notice things when the time comes for us to pay attention to them. When they need us to see them…”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“None so deaf as those that will not hear; none so blind as those that will not see.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“Well, I like him. There’s a darkness to him. But does he make it all the way through?”
She shrugged. “It’s entirely up to him.”
“What do you mean?” He smiled quizzically at her.
“Characters talk to you. Transform. Make choices,” she replied.
“Choices,” he echoed.
“Of who they become.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“The fly that should be dead and the dog that should be dead in the house that should be dead, and the bride, who would be dead soon.
It watched approvingly, appreciating the complexities—and fragilities—of life.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
“She needed sunshine and clean air, not rot and decay and breezes that smelled of clay.”
― Nancy Holder, Crimson Peak
Noem Taboada travels to High Place, a remote house in the Mexican countryside, after receiving a desperate letter from her recently married cousin pleading for help to save her from an unknown fate. She is unsure of what she will discover because Noem knows little about the area and her cousin’s husband, a charming Englishman, is a stranger.
The gorgeous debutante Noem is another unlikely hero; her elegant clothes and flawless red lipstick are more appropriate for cocktail parties than for an amateur detective. She is fearless, yet she is also strong, intelligent, and willpower: Not even in the house, which starts to haunt Noem’s dreams with sights of blood and doom. Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both scary and intriguing; not of his father, the old patriarch who seems to be charmed by Noem; and not even of her cousin.
The family’s youngest kid is her lone ally in this hostile home. He is quiet and kind, and he appears to want to help Noem, but he could possibly be concealing sinister information about his family’s past. Because the High Place’s walls conceal a wealth of information. The family was shielded from prying eyes by their opulent wealth and defunct mining company, but when Noem looks further, she discovers tales of brutality and madness. And because Noem is so enthralled by the horrifying yet alluring environment of High Place, it might eventually be difficult for her to ever leave this mysterious home.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Books, moonlight, melodrama.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“A woman who is not liked is a bitch, and a bitch can hardly do anything: all avenues are closed to her.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“The world might indeed be a cursed circle; the snake swallowed its tail and there could be no end, only an eternal ruination, and endless devouring.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
“…she was trapped between competing desires, a desire for a more meaningful connection, and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
It can be difficult to work at a retail job in a remote, dead-end location. The lengthy hours, the defenseless clients. The monstrous eldritch horror lurking beneath the structure… Jack works as the sole full-time employee at the 24-hour gas station on the outskirts of town, and he has essentially seen it all. But when he makes the decision to start an online blog to record the strange things that happen on a daily basis, he unintentionally draws the attention of a lot more conspiracy theorists than just a handful. Jack will exert every effort to remain out of the way and mind his own business despite the fact that the death toll is constantly rising and that everyone around him is experiencing the effects of a dark, ancient force in their dreams.
He is only a gas station employee, after all. It’s not like he’s getting paid enough to fight the nightmare aberrations that plague his neighborhood. Additionally, he is already working hard to control the mystifying lawn gnomes, mutant raccoons, and the endearing phantom cowboy who resides in the restroom. Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One is a love letter to the forefathers of classic horror written for a generation that grew up in the era of cell phones and WiFi. It is based on the award-winning creepypasta by GasStationJack.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“the smoke detector may or may not be an old frisbee.”
“Hey, I have a question for you.” “Yes, there’s a weed in the tea.” “No, I already knew that. I had a question about the internet.”
“If the gas station were a planet, it would be Pluto. If the gas station were a vowel, it would be Y. If the gas station were an X-Man, it would be Wolverine.”
“gas station had already cut so many corners on safety that it was practically a circle,”
“All the roads are covered in trees. But they aren’t, you know, fallen. The trees are growing in the middle of the street. Cracking right up through the pavement.”
In this chilling tale of love and betrayal, naivety and treachery, and the smothering force of parental love, Dollanganger series author V.C. Andrews has developed an intriguing new group of characters. To be just as good as her sister, Audrina Adare aspired. She was aware that her father also couldn’t love her as much as he did her sister. Her sibling was very unique and perfect, yet she passed away. She will now have to confront the perilous, scary secret that everyone is aware of. everybody but…
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What is normal? Normal is only ordinary; mediocre. Life belongs to the rare, exceptional individual who dares to be different.”
“All pain seemed to come with lots of blood, and lots of mental anguish, too. I already knew about that. Maybe that was the worst kind of pain because nobody knew about it but you.”
“There were shadows in the corners and whispers on the stairs and time was irrelevant as honesty.”
“Blood ties are not supposed to be chains.”
“Shadows in the house put shadows in the mind.”
A shadowy laboratory, a malicious scientist, and a hidden past. In this gripping prequel to the popular television series Stranger Things, if you believe you know the real story behind Eleven’s mother, get ready to have your world turned inside out. The horror of war is still fresh in the minds of American youth both at home and abroad in the summer of 1969. Terry Ives is a student at a peaceful college in the middle of Indiana, far from the front lines of the Vietnam War and the explosive demonstrations in Washington.
But Terry isn’t willing to stand by and observe as the world changes. She agrees to be a test subject for the MKUltra project after hearing about an important government experiment in the little town of Hawkins. Unmarked vans, a secret laboratory tucked away in the woods, drugs that affect perception given by covert researchers, and a mystery Terry, a young and restless Terry, is anxious to solve.
But a conspiracy bigger than she could have ever imagined lies behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory—and the penetrating gaze of its director, Dr. Martin Brenner. She’ll need the assistance of her fellow test subjects, including one so strange that no one is aware of her existence: a young woman with enigmatic superhuman abilities and a number instead of a name: 008. Terry Ives and Martin Brenner have started a fresh sort of war—one in which the human mind serves as the front line—amid the escalating tensions of the new decade.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Monsters,’ she said., ‘of course my brain has them.’ As long as they stayed in there, everything would be all right. Wouldn’t it?”
“When it’s our government involved, I think you’ll find our rights are often to be determined.”
“Knees were an unpleasant place to have the nervous sweats.”
“We can put a man on the moon, but they still haven’t figured out how to get out of ’Nam.”
“What people believed didn’t matter. The truth did.”
A weird laboratory. A nefarious scientist. A hidden past. If you believe you know what happened to Eleven’s mother, get ready to have your world flipped around in this fascinating prequel to the smash program Stranger Things. It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of war reverberates through America’s young, both at home and abroad. Terry Ives, a student at a tranquil college campus in Indiana’s heartland, couldn’t be further from the front lines of Vietnam or the explosive rallies in Washington. But the world is shifting and Terry isn’t willing to stand by and observe.
When word spreads of an important federal experiment in Hawkins, she agrees to be a test subject for the study, called MKUltra. Unmarked vans, an isolated lab in the woods, mind-altering chemicals supplied by tight-lipped researchers… and a mystery that Terry, the young and restless protagonist, is desperate to solve.
But a deeper plot lurks behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory—and the penetrating gaze of its director, Dr. Martin Brenner. To face it, she’ll need the assistance of her fellow test subjects, including one so mysterious that the world is unaware she exists—a little girl with unexplained, superhuman abilities and a number instead of a name: 008.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Monsters,’ she said., ‘of course my brain has them.’ As long as they stayed in there, everything would be all right. Wouldn’t it?”
“When it’s our government involved, I think you’ll find our rights are often to be determined.”
“Knees were an unpleasant place to have the nervous sweats.”
“Men. Even the good ones make life difficult.”
“What people believed didn’t matter. The truth did.”
Devin Jones, a college student, decided to work at Joyland for the summer in the hopes of forgetting the girl who broke his heart. But he ultimately had to deal with many worse things, such as the consequences of a savage murder, the fate of a dying kid, and unsettling facts about life and death that would alter his perspective on the world forever.
A compelling tale about both love and loss, about maturing up and getting older, and about those who aren’t able to experience any of those things because they pass away before their time. It is a mystery, a horror story, and a sad coming-of-age novel all rolled into one, and it will pull even the most jaded reader to tears.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”
“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.”
“It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”
“I can’t understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there’s already so much pain in the world.”
“Passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones.”
STOP. You shouldn’t have used your bare hands to touch this flier. Don’t put it down, please. Too late now. They keep an eye on you. David Wong is my name. John is my best friend. Those are made-up names. You should consider changing yours. The information on these pages, including that on the sauce, Korrok, the invasion, and the future, may not be information you want to be aware of. It’s too late, though. You gave the book a touch. In the game you are. You have under-eye bags. Knowledge is the only defense. You must finish reading this book. everything, even the bratwurst portion. Why? Just have faith in me. The crucial fact is that the substance, called Soy Sauce, allows users to peer through a window into a different reality. I never got the chance to refuse on behalf of John. You continue to. I truly apologize for including you in this. But it is important that you remember one thing when you read about these dreadful things and the extremely dark era the world is about to enter: None of this was my fault.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.”
“And watch out for Molly. See if she does anything unusual. There’s something I don’t trust about the way she exploded and then came back from the dead like that.”
“Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.”
“When a man plans, a woman laughs.”
“You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don’t haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.”
A man-eating terror classic that inspired a Steven Spielberg film and terrified millions of beachgoers into staying out of the water. Relive the thrill of utter helplessness—or experience it for the first time!
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.”
“There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.”
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”
“He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore.”
“The great fish moved silently through the night water.”
For many years, Area X was cut off from the outside world. The final remains of human civilization have been reclaimed by nature. The first expedition reported a pure, Edenic landscape; the second resulted in mass suicide, and the third ended in a hail of gunfire as its participants turned on one another. The eleventh expedition’s participants responded as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, every single one of them had passed away from cancer. We join the twelfth expedition in Annihilation, the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy.
Four women make up the group: our narrator, a biologist; an anthropologist; a surveyor; and the psychologist who serves as de facto leader. Their goals are to map the area, keep a journal of all they see about one another and their surroundings, and, most importantly, stay out of Area X itself. They expect the unexpected when they arrive, and Area X does not disappoint. However, the shocks they brought with them and the mysteries the voyage members are holding from one another are what ultimately changes everything.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.”
“That’s how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
“Silence creates its own violence.”
“some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.”
“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”
In opulent Edwardian London, Ramses the Great has awoken once more. He became Ramses the Damned after consuming the elixir of life, destined to wander the earth forever while frantically trying to sate his unquenchable hunger. He becomes good friends with Julie Stratford, a wealthy heiress, but his cursed past drives him once more down the wrong path. Searing memories of his previous reawakening, which was ordered by his favorite Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, to torture him. And his unwavering love for her over the ages will drive him to do something that will put everyone around him in great peril.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Be Warned: I sleep as the earth sleeps beneath the night sky or the winter’s snow; and once awakened, I am servant to no man.”
“Grief, she thought. It’s a strange and a misunderstood emotion.”
“I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine”
“This was that lucid and dangerous state with drinking, when everything began to shimmer; when there was meaning in the grain of the marble; when one could make the most offensive speeches.”
“When we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true desires—what we would have when that which we do have so sorely disappoints us”