by @Foo, curator of HOWLS Book Club nominees for March 2024’s “Let’s Celebrate Joseph” category
Everyone deserves self compassion and celebration. So with that, let us help inflate my own ego and pick from books that spell out my name (Joseph).
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them–for a price.
Until something goes wrong. . . .
In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller. (StoryGraph)
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J is for the way, Dr. Grant…looks at me.
Bookshop* | StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
Off Season by Jack Ketchum
September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River–off season–awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall….
And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface…and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive. (StoryGraph)
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O is for the way, Ketchum writes dark shit.
Bookshop* | StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he’s hearing the private thoughts of the people around him-and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom’s existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave. (StoryGraph)
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S is for the way, the dead speak to us.
Bookshop* | StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
Elsewhere by William Peter Blatty
An incredible haunted house novel from William Peter Blatty, the legendary author of The Exorcist! Disturbing, unsettling, chilling, and laced with a nasty streak of dark humor, Elsewhere is a must-have for all fans of dark fiction! Sure to become a time-honored classic in the genre! (StoryGraph)
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E is for the way, The Exorcist shook me to my core, why not read another Blatty novel.
StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body, strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.
At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease.
But then they found the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined… (StoryGraph)
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P is for, well…I don’t have a clever line for this one.
StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
The House Next Door by Darcy Coates
I live next to a haunted house.
I began to suspect something was wrong with the gothic building when its family fled in the middle of the night, the children screaming, the mother crying. They never came back to pack up their furniture.
No family stays long. Animals avoid the place. Once, I thought I saw a woman’s silhouette pacing through the upstairs room… but that seems impossible; no one was living there at the time.
A new occupant, Anna, has just moved in. I paid her a visit to warn her about the building. I didn’t expect us to become friends, but we did. And now that Marwick House is waking up, she’s asked me to stay with her.
I never intended to become involved with the building or its vengeful, dead inhabitant. But now I have to save Anna… before it’s too late for the both of us. (StoryGraph)
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H is for the way, this house is haunted as hell.
Bookshop* | StoryGraph | Goodreads | Amazon
And The Winner Is…
Out of these five books, HOWLers voted to read Phantoms by Dean Koontz. The website editor mixed up the weeks so we just finished this book, but you can still swing in and chat about it with us by joining the Discord!
Our Kickstarter for Howls from the Scene of the Crime, our upcoming crime horror anthology, is live now! Back us on Kickstarter!
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