Books for the Dog Days of Summer

If you're heading for the cottage or beach and are looking for some good books to take with you, here are a few of the 2016 horror releases that you might like to consider:

 End of Watch by Stephen King - This is the third and final book in the Bill Hodges' trilogy, the first two being Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. Brady Hartsfield, responsible for the Mercedes massacre, has spent five years in a vegetative state in a traumatic brain injury clinic. But he is now awake and possesses deadly new powers. He is planning revenge not only against Bill Hodges--the hero of the previous two novels--and his friends but against an entire city.

  Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay - A fourteen-year-old boy vanishes without a trace, and the ensuing search turns up nothing. But his ghost keeps appearing, as well as random pages from his journal. This book has been described as a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror.
 

 

  
Fellside by M.R. Carey - Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of England's Yorkshire moors. It's the kind of place where even the walls whisper. And for Jess Moulson, one of the voices belongs to a young boy who says he has a message for her.

 
Medusa's Web by Tim Powers - A haunted house in the Hollywood Hills is the backdrop for this tale of speculative fiction in which a man must uncover cult secrets to save his sister, who has fallen under the spell of the house.

  
The Fireman by Joe Hill - Please see my previous post which featured this novel.

An Interview with Joe Hill

There's an interesting interview with Joe Hill on NPR in which he talks about his latest book, The Fireman, a plague novel that he says was influenced by The Stand. Hill also talks about his happy childhood and his constant exposure to story-telling that inspired his choice of careers.

We previewed The Fireman in a previous post.

To listen to the interview, please click here.

For an early post on Hill and his father's influence on him, please click here.

The Fireman: An Upcoming May Release

Fans of Joe Hill will be pleased to know that his latest novel, The Fireman, is due for release on May 17, 2016.

Here's an excerpt from the book description:

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. . . .

 . . . The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke. 

 To view some preliminary reviews of The Fireman and to enter a Goodreads giveaway for the book,  please click here.

More New Spring Horror Releases

As promised in last week's post, here are some other horror books to look forward to:


March

Ellen Datlow (ed.) – The Doll Collection 

An illustrated anthology featuring all-original dark tales of dolls from bestselling and award-winning authors, compiled by one of the top editors in the field. Among the writers featured are
Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire, Carrie Vaughn, Pat Cadigan, Tim Lebbon, Richard Kadrey, Genevieve Valentine, and Jeffrey Ford.


April

Joe Hill – The Fireman

In a world overtaken by a deadly and dramatic new virus, the protagonist is determined to live long enough to deliver her baby. But when it only takes a spark to start a deadly blaze, she’s going to need some help from the mysterious fireman....


May

Sarah Lotz – Day Four

Four days into a five-day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the aging ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait.
That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

June

Christopher Golden – Tin Men

Economies are collapsing, environmental disasters are widespread, and war is the backdrop to life. In response the military has developed a force of elite soldiers to keep the peace. A force like nothing seen before … code-named Tin Man, soldiers are virtually transported to inhabit robot frames in war-torn countries.


Paul Tremblay – A Head Full of Ghosts 

The lives of a normal suburban New England family are torn apart when the fourteen-year-old daughter begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop her descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help....


Thanks to A Fantastical Librarian blog for the selection of new horror books. If you are interested in new science fiction releases, there are also many listed on this site.