Greetings page turners and finger scrolls, we shall continue the journey of horrific nightmares and tantalizing terrors to entice your mind’s creativity of picturing the stories these writers conjured.
April 2, 2026
Monumental by Adam Nevill
Summary: Disaster strikes quickly and without warning. What should have been a glorious weekend of kayaking and camping, in a secluded beauty spot, is transformed by a scream. The first crisis, initiating a deadly momentum that accelerates as the valley reveals itself to Marcus and his five companions. They’re trespassing on strictly private land. There’s only one way out. An escape route closed until the next high tide fills the estuary. In twelve hours’ time. Recreation becomes survival. Marooned, unable to summon help, harassed by dire and worsening circumstances, the ties that bind the expedition are stretched taut. If they snap, vital cooperation will unravel and the group members’ damning secrets will be revealed.
Only the most courageous and committed have any chance against the area’s inhabitants. But is any mind strong enough to endure a confrontation with the most hideous revelation of all? An ancient evil that coils beneath the valley’s sinister folklore.
Print Length: 387 pages
ISBN-10: 106844701X
ISBN-13: 978-1068447020
Publisher: Ritual Limited
https://www.amazon.com/Monumental-Novel-Terror-Author-Ritual/dp/106844701X/
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APRIL 7, 2026
Blood Trail by Matt Query & Harrison Query
Summary: Clark Rickert was once the most prolific big game poacher throughout the Rocky Mountain west but when he lost both his son and his wife, he turned away from hunting. Now a game warden working for the very law enforcement officers that once pursued him so aggressively, Clark is overwhelmingly successful at his job. So, when there’s a string of disappearances in rural Montana, Clark is selected to join a task force on an operation targeting a mysterious, violent cult in the area. As he works to uncover the truth, Clark begins to be plagued by visions and starts to realize that there is a deeper purpose to his assignment, and the cult might up to something far more terrifying than anyone could have guessed.
Print Length: 400 Pages
ISBN-13: 1668024233
ISBN-13: 978-1668024256
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Trail-Novel-Matt-Query/dp/1668024233/
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The Boatman by Alex Grecian
Summary: Shortly after cruise ship the Maria Calypso embarks on its latest voyage, the passengers and crew notice someone in pursuit: An elegant figure wearing a white suit who somehow keeps pace in his rowboat. No matter how hard the crew pushes the engines, they can’t escape The Boatman … and it isn’t long before sinister and mysterious events begin to unfold on the Maria Calypso. What will it cost to learn the true nature of the man who hunts them―and will the price to keep on living prove to be too dear?
Print Length: 150 Pages
ISBN-10: 1967846235
ISBN-13: 978-1967846238
Publisher: Bad Hand Books
https://www.amazon.com/Boatman-Alex-Grecian/dp/1967846235/
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Bodies of Work by Clay McLeod Chapman
Summary: At sixty-six years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Some call him feeble-minded. He is a janitor at the local church, a groundskeeper by default, and that’s it. No friends, no family. When he’s done with work, he returns home—a remote, single room apartment located above a garage—and that is where his true work begins. Winston Kemper is a collector of voices, and his magnum opus—The Butterfly Girls—is a sprawling epic of untapped imagination. It has no single canvas, no particular frame. It is everywhere—scribbled on the walls, the floor, and countless notebooks. Winston is creating a fantasia which exists in words, images and blood. As part of his ‘art’ he has been murdering forgotten women. Poor souls who slip through the cracks of society, who no one’s looking for. Mothers, sisters, daughters to someone, but no more. Winston takes their lives, their voices. But now he can hear them. They whisper to him. They talk of revenge. Winston Kemper might not believe in ghosts, but he is about to learn they are very real. And they are very, very angry.
Print Length: 176 pages
ISBN-10: 1835415938
ISBN-13: 978-1835415931
Publisher: Titan Books
https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-Work-Clay-McLeod-Chapman/dp/1835415938/
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The Counting Game by Sinéad Nolan
Summary: Southwest Ireland, 1995: Two children go into the woods. Only one comes out. When thirteen-year-old Saoirse Kellough goes missing, panic grips a rural Irish community. Saoirse is not the first girl to disappear in the forest, rumored by locals to be haunted, and the only witness—her troubled younger brother, Jack—refuses to speak. Saoirse went missing when they were playing the Counting Game, a ritual believed to ward off evil, and Jack has sworn to protect the forest’s secrets. Freya Hemmings, a psychotherapist still healing from a loss of her own, is brought in to help investigators break Jack’s silence. As the race to find Saoirse alive accelerates, the search threatens to unravel a family facing the unthinkable. Everyone is a suspect, and the closer Freya and Jack become, the more danger they find themselves in.
Print Length: 416 pages
ISBN-10: 1668099403
ISBN-13: 978-1668099407
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
https://www.amazon.com/Counting-Game-Novel-Sin%C3%A9ad-Nolan/dp/1668099403/
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How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession by Caitlin Blackwell Baines
Summary: What makes a house haunted? Why do some buildings conjure up a reputation for being particularly creepy, while others leave us unmoved? Barring the possibility of a looming afterlife, what are the particular features, contexts, and histories that lend a building the dreaded identity of haunted house? How to Build a Haunted House tours some of the world’s most famously spine-chilling structures in search of answers. From Medieval Scotland to Enlightenment-era London; Victorian suburbs to pre-Civil War Louisiana, Blackwell Baines, an expert in Gothic art and architecture, will explore that specific set of ingredients that captures our imaginations and contributes to our collective understanding of the eternally eerie. After all, whether a staunch sceptic or paranormal enthusiast, we all know a haunted house when we see one.
Print Length: 320 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8897100781
Publisher: Pegasus Books
https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Haunted-House-Obsession/dp/B0FCDCYCKD/
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Mrs. Jekyll by Emma Glass
Summary: Rosy Winter is dying. Her husband, Charlie—sweet but out of his depth—tries to be supportive. Her sister-in-law, Sally, is too distracted by her own problems to help. Her students, once a source of delight, are now a daily reminder of Rosy’s mortality. So, Rosy succumbs to anguish, allowing a force—murderous, sensual, feverish—to awaken and stir within her. An embodiment of her rage, a twisted joie de vivre, ripping recompense from the world around her. A powerful feminist retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic classic, Mrs. Jekyll is a brilliant, evocative, and lyrical story of one woman’s refusal to yield her passion for life, even as her body betrays her.
Print Length: 176 Pages
ISBN-10: 1454965908
ISBN-13: 978-1454965909
Publisher: Union Square & Co
https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Jekyll-Emma-Glass/dp/1454965908/
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Sarafina by Philip Fracassi
Summary: Choosing to risk execution rather than be killed in a losing war, three brothers desert their posts and begin a long, arduous journey back home. After weeks of dealing with rough terrain while evading bandits and home guard soldiers—starving, injured, and exhausted—the brothers find a miracle deep in the dark woods. A home. Living in a remote cabin is a beautiful woman, Sarafina, and her young son, Titus. Sarafina takes the soldiers in, cares for them, feeds them, offers them a place to rest. But the youngest of the brothers is wary—something is not what it seems. After discovering a mysterious creek and a strange underground cavern, he gets a strong sense that the cabin, and the fertile land surrounding it, might be harboring something nefarious, terrifying, and dangerous. What ensues is a nightmare beyond imagination, an escalation of horrors that the brothers must somehow fight to survive. With tensions high, the country divided, and loyalties put to the test, Sarafina will take readers on an epic journey of modern horror.
Print Length: 354 pages
ISBN-10: 1968043047
ISBN-13: 978-1968043049
Publisher: CLASH Books
https://www.amazon.com/Sarafina-Philip-Fracassi/dp/1968043047/
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The Seventh Sister by Dawn Kurtagich
Summary: After the tragic death of their parents, the seven Ward sisters are sent to live with their grandmother on the remote forest island of Beltane, a place suspended between time and shadow. What begins as an attempt to mend their fractured lives soon twists into a waking nightmare, where grief bleeds into childhood fantasy and ancient rites awaken a dark and eerie devotion to Daudir, the Forgotten God of the Wood. When another cruel tragedy strikes, the sisters are left to fend for themselves, learning to live with death as a constant, lurking presence. The fragile world they’ve carved splinters beneath the weight of isolation, and the forest around them grows restless… Years later, a cryptic letter summons the surviving sisters home. Drawn back into the wild embrace of their dangerous faith, they confront a truth more terrible than memory, and the dreadful secret that waits, silent and sentient, in the depths of the all-seeing trees. This lyrical and haunting folk horror explores how trauma can root itself in the soil of childhood, how love can curdle into obsession, and how gods, especially forgotten ones, never stay buried for long. But at its heart, it’s about sisters: how they fracture, survive, return, and reckon with what they’ve made together.
Print Length: 285 pages
ISBN-10: 1662526997
ISBN-13: 978-1662526992
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
https://www.amazon.com/Seventh-Sister-Dawn-Kurtagich/dp/1662526997/
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We Call Them Witches by India-Rose Bower
Summary: Nearly everyone died the first night they came… Two years ago, monstrous beings tore through Britain, leaving few survivors. Now Sara and her family live on the run, relying on scraps of folklore and fading pagan rituals to stay safe from the eldritch creatures they call “witches”. While her mother grows increasingly paranoid, Sara longs for something more than fear. Then a strange girl appears in the garden of their current camp. Her name is Parsley, and she cannot remember where she came from or why she’s there. Despite her family’s suspicions, Sara feels drawn to her. But when Sara’s younger brother is taken by the Witches, she and Parsley must cross desolate moors full of merciless terrors to get him back. As their bond deepens, so do the dangers they face―and Sara begins to question whether anything is truly as it seems. In a world ruled by terror and myth, trust is the only thing more dangerous than the Witches themselves.
Print Length: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 1464247293
ISBN-13: 978-1464247293
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
https://www.amazon.com/We-Call-Them-Witches-Novel/dp/1464247293/
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Year of the Mer by L. D. Lewis
Summary: The fairy tale mermaid Arielle might have gotten her happily-ever-after, but her granddaughter Yemi is having a much harder time. Her father, the king of Ixia, was assassinated years ago, her mother is slowly dying of a poisoned wound, and she faces whispers and slights from her own people. Yemi has been raised as the shield of the kingdom and is soon to inherit the throne, but she cannot shake her fury at how Ixia has treated her family after all they’ve sacrificed. Only her patient mother and steadfast personal bodyguard (and fiancée), Nova, help Yemi rein in that fury…most of the time. When the kingdom’s discontented rumblings reach a fever pitch, a coup erupts and Yemi’s throne is usurped, stripping her of her family and forcing her into exile. Now, only one being has the power to help her: Ursla. Like her grandmother before her, Yemi is tempted by a deal with the sea-witch. With powerful and ancient magic behind her, Yemi could avenge her family, take back her throne, and protect the love of her life. But she should know more than anyone that there is always a price. As much as Yemi wants vengeance, Ursla has been waiting a very, very long time for her own—and it may take more fortune than Yemi possesses to keep her from losing everything all over again.
Print Length: 400 pages
ISBN-10: 1668060957
ISBN-13: 978-1668060957
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
https://www.amazon.com/Year-Mer-L-D-Lewis/dp/1668060957/
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April 8, 2026
Scream Like a Prayer by S.H. Mansouri
Summary: 1985, San Dimas, California. When eleven-year-old Samuel McCammon writes five words on the blackboard that kill his sixth-grade teacher, he starts to wonder if something is seriously wrong with his mind. A trip to the hospital reveals that nothing is physically wrong with him, but he keeps hearing fragments of a song he can’t remember and keeps seeing flashes of the demon he once saw in his mother’s bedroom mirror. Maybe there’s a reason why his parents suddenly enrolled him in a religious school, why his mother insists he takes deep breaths and prays when he gets angry, and why his father always seems to keep him at a safe distance. The only way ‘Sammy’ will ever discover the painful truth about the worst thing he ever did, is for him to finally face the demon in the mirror. Scream Like a Prayer is a coming-of-age horror story about a family held together by lies, half-truths, and violence, and the lengths to which a desperate and confused child will go to unravel it all and break the cycle forever.
Print Length: 436 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8993688206
Publisher: Atreyu Press
https://www.amazon.com/Scream-Like-Prayer-S-H-Mansouri/dp/B0GRP17DXT/
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APRIL 10, 2026
In the Dollhouse We All Wait by Amanda M. Blake
Summary: An extreme horror novel of privilege, cruelty, and survival—splatterpunk at its most unflinching. “In the dollhouse, if you don’t play with Annie…she plays with you.” Sam Frain thinks she’s found the perfect escape: a live-in nanny position in a sprawling mansion owned by one of the wealthiest families in the country. The job seems simple: Take care of Annie Lange. Annie may look like a grown woman, but she lives inside a world built for a little girl—frilly dresses, scripted games, rigid rules, and what seems like every doll in the world. As Sam learns the true nature of Annie’s games, she’s forced into a waking nightmare of psychological domination, grotesque excess, and carefully curated cruelty. In this gilded cage where money erases morality, survival means choosing whether to resist—or become part of the performance. Blending the social unease of The Nanny Diaries with the ruthless brutality of Hostel II, In the Dollhouse We All Wait is a harrowing work of extreme horror that explores power, complicity, and the terrifying truth that the rich really are different.
Print Length: 358 pages
ISBN-10: 196853251X
ISBN-13: 978-1968532512
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
https://www.amazon.com/Dollhouse-We-All-Wait/dp/196853251X/
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April 14, 2026
The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own by Gwendolyn Kiste
Summary: Celebrated author Gwendolyn Kiste cordially invites you to explore The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. Enter a world possessed by recriminations from bygone eras, where the regrets and malice of years past still reverberate and shape our doom. Here, morally complex women and queer antiheroines swim against the current of a social structure that serves as a spectral prison in these layered stories of the weird and the Other. Known for crafting bold metafictional narratives that grapple with challenging social issues, Kiste’s unwavering voice deftly weaves a siren’s song of resilience and survival. Included among the short stories in this collection are the Bram Stoker Award-winning “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt From Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” “The Girls From the Horror Movie,” “The Sea Witch of the World’s Fair,” and other riveting new gothic tales of body horror, the supernatural, and unapologetic resistance.
Print Length: 168 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8900580043
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press
https://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Houses-She-Calls-Her/dp/B0FTL5BQT8/
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The Hive by Ronald Malfi
Summary: The residents of Mariner’s Cove are changing… In the aftermath of a violent storm, a collective obsession is rapidly developing among the people of this quaint suburban neighborhood. Random, everyday items left scattered upon the lawns, the streets, and the shoreline all seem to call out to them. There is an item for almost everyone, and each item has a certain hold over the person who finds it—a hold that soon turns into unwavering infatuation. They hide their items from each other, obsess over them, and they will do anything—anything—to protect them. The collective hum of bees’ wings… A young boy finds himself the possessor of a strange and inexplicable power. Is the arrival of this power linked to the increasingly odd and dangerous behavior of the residents of Mariner’s Cove? Has he been granted this power in order to thwart whatever is about to happen in this small, bayside community, or is there a more sinister purpose? All hail the Dragon… All eyes are on him now. The residents of Mariner’s Cove are watching. They move as one, like a solitary organism, and will do anything to succeed in their single-minded purpose. They will not be stopped.
Print Length: 608 pages
ISBN-10: 1803365676
ISBN-13: 978-1803365671
Publisher: Titan Books
https://www.amazon.com/Hive-Ronald-Malfi/dp/1803365676/
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Invasive Species: A Novel by Ellery Adams
Summary: Something’s not right in Cold Harbor—more so than usual. While this sleepy small town has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality. Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale—the one that will take her from stay-at-home mom to working woman extraordinaire. She’s eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign, where she’s expected to keep a magazine-perfect home and raise beautiful children, all while sticking to her husband’s budget. Natalie’s two best friends are facing their own demons, and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone’s problems. But Natalie’s twelve-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all. But as the rest of Cold Harbor sinks into anger, fear, and jealousy, they’ll have to confront the question: What does it really mean to be a monster?
Print Length: 352 pages
ISBN-10: 1335001530
ISBN-13: 978-1335001535
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
https://www.amazon.com/Invasive-Species-Novel-Ellery-Adams/dp/1335001530/
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Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
Summary: In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.
Print Length: 352 pages
ISBN-10: 1335001557
ISBN-13: 978-1335001559
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Gothic-Kylie-Lee-Baker/dp/1335001557/
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Morsel by Carter Keane
Summary: Lou did what the children of parents with backbreaking, poorly paying jobs are supposed to do: pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office gig with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multilevel marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment. When Lou accepts a property appraisal assignment in the rural hills of Ohio, she knows it’s her last chance to save her job and keep making rent. But she quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, her dog, and someone–or something–stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods. If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll see firsthand that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive. Morsel is The Blair Witch Project meets The Ritual, with a generous helping of The Menu, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw, and Paul Tremblay.
Print Length: 208 pages
ISBN-10: 1250392454
ISBN-13: 978-1250392459
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
https://www.amazon.com/Morsel-Carter-Keane/dp/1250392454/
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Perdition: Stories by Brian Kubarycz
Summary: Conjuring dread without the jump scares, each story focuses not on an action but on a single arresting vision. In “The Bends,” a hunting expedition devolves into a disorienting search for a lost woman, while in “Buckets,” human bodies fall from the sky. These stories are dark and moody, but despite their darkness, they do not lack humor, though the laughter tends to come from the balconies as in “Denomination,” where a true believer seeks salvation by swallowing scripture and corn whiskey. Frightening and cerebral, these stories create an atmosphere that is equal parts psychological and visceral. Each fiction results in what can only be qualified as terror, and the air in each is “filled with the very instant of it.” Singular in theme and surprising in musicality, Perdition is a bright light that entrances the reader, but also the monstrous things lurking behind the light in the grim dark.
Print Length: 116 pages
ISBN-10: 1936097664
ISBN-13: 978-1936097661
Publisher: Baobab Press
https://www.amazon.com/Perdition-Stories-Brian-Kubarycz/dp/1936097664/
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These Familiar Walls by C. J. Dotson
Summary: In 1998, desperate loneliness pushes preteen Amber to ignore the misgivings of her family, particularly her younger sister, when she befriends the troubled new kid in the neighborhood―a boy with dead eyes, a fascination with fire, and no remorse. Their turbulent relationship is brief but creates lasting consequences. Twenty-two years later, in 2020, he resurfaces to kill Amber’s parents and is in turn betrayed by his accomplice and killed in Amber’s childhood home. After the deaths, Amber inherits the house and, in an effort to save money, moves in with her husband and two children, hoping to reclaim some sense of stability in the grief and chaos surrounding her. Instead, she finds that the familiar walls are haunted by more than just bitter memories and lockdown stress. She shifts in and out of dreamlike trances, her reflection won’t meet her gaze, and a menacing voice whispers to her from the gathering shadows. Although she tried to brush off the strange happenings as stress-fueled hallucinations, Amber is soon forced to admit that something much more real―and more dangerous―haunts her family. But Amber has deadly secrets of her own, and she must resolve these long-buried truths or lose the life she’s contrived for herself.
Print Length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1250336589
ISBN-13: 978-1250336583
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
https://www.amazon.com/These-Familiar-Walls-C-Dotson/dp/1250336589/
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Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill
Summary: Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother’s lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her. When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she’s been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas’s unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants. Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.
Print Length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1668098105
ISBN-13: 978-1668098103
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
https://www.amazon.com/Wife-Shaped-Bodies-Laura-Cranehill/dp/1668098105/
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April 15, 2026
Pieties by Marc Ruvolo
Summary: Wheaton, Illinois. 1981.
After contracting a debilitating new mystery illness doctors are calling GRID, Andrew Fineman reluctantly bids farewell to his new life in NYC, returning to the uber-religious suburb where he was born—and the control of his estranged parents. Sick, destitute, a thousand miles from his West Village circle, Andrew finds himself trapped in a home overseen by his strict, domineering father. A man who believes Andrew’s sickness may be a punishment from God. While more sympathetic, his mother appears ill as well, sleepwalking the darkened halls, her body covered in unexplained sores and bruises. At night, his father disappears for hours into the secluded, picture-perfect Japanese garden behind the house, a strange obsession he’s cultivated as long as Andrew can remember. And there’s a horrible scratching in the walls that may or may not be rats… When he spies his father in the garden with a stranger, late at night and half hidden in the stands of bamboo, Andrew begins to investigate. Before long, a series of ominous events convinces him there is something far more dangerous than mere adultery at play. Even worse, his mother may end up being the next victim… Madness creeping around every corner, Andrew wonders if these incidents are merely symptoms of his illness, or does some terrible secret truly lurk between the black surface of the koi pond and his father’s forbidden, walled-off groves of whispering bamboo?
Print Length: 146 pages
ISBN-10: 1764488415
ISBN-13: 978-1764488419
Publisher: Slashic Horror Press
https://www.amazon.com/Pieties-Expanded-Marc-Ruvolo/dp/1764488415/
