House Of Small Shadows

House of Small Shadows is the disturbing novel about a modern phobia – the fear of dolls and puppets – from award-winning horror author Adam Nevill. The Red House: home to the damaged genius of the late M. H. Mason, master taxidermist and puppeteer, where he lived and created some of his most disturbing works. The building and its treasure trove of antiques is long forgotten, but the time has come for his creations to rise from the darkness. Catherine Howard can't believe her luck when she's invited to value the contents of the house. When she first sees the elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals and macabre puppets, she's both thrilled and terrified. It's an opportunity to die for. But the Red House has secrets, secrets as dreadful and dark as those from Catherine's own past. At night the building comes alive with noises and movements: footsteps, and the fleeting glimpses of small shadows on the stairs. And soon the barriers between reality, sanity and nightmare begin to collapse . . . 'Adam Nevill is a fantastic storyteller, a master of slow-building tension, and he's written a fever dream of a book. House of Small Shadows is chilling, disorienting, and deeply creepy.' – Scott Smith, author of The Ruins

Orphaned, two sisters are left to find their own way. Sweet and proper, Karah's future seems secure at a glamorous Flower House. She could be pampered for the rest of her life. . . if she agrees to play their game. Nemienne, neither sweet nor proper, has fewer choices. Left with no alternative, she accepts a mysterious mage's offer of an apprenticeship. Agreeing means a home and survival, but can Nemienne trust the mage? With the arrival of a foreign bard into the quiet city, dangerous secrets are unearthed, and both sisters find themselves at the center of a plot that threatens not only to upset their newly found lives, but also to destroy their kingdom.

Sophie's world is shattered when disaster bankrupts her family. She's still reeling when she's offered an unexpected solution: Mr. Argenton, a wealthy stranger, has asked for her hand in marriage. Marrying Mr. Argenton will save her family, but it condemns Sophie to a life in Northwood, a vast and unnaturally dark mansion situated hours from civilization. Still, she has no choice but accept the offer and hope the darkness won't swallow her whole. It's a struggle to adjust to her new position as mistress over the desolate house. Mr. Argenton's relatives are cold, and Mr. Argenton himself is keeping secrets. Even worse, the house is more than it seems. Doors slam. Inhuman figures slink through the surrounding forest. A piano plays itself in the middle of the night. Blood drips a macabre warning down the walls. Day by day, Sophie is inevitably pulled towards the terrifying truth at the heart of this gothic mystery: Northwood's ancient halls are haunted, and the man she married―the man she's coming to love―is hiding an unforgiveable truth about his ancestral home...and the spirits that now haunt them both.

The wooded hills of Oxfordshire conceal the remains of the aptly named Ashdown House—a wasted pile of cinders and regret. Once home to the daughter of a king, Ashdown and its secrets will unite three women across four centuries in a tangle of intrigue, deceit and destiny… In the winter of 1662, Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, is on her deathbed. She entrusts an ancient pearl, rumored to have magic power, to her faithful cavalier William Craven for safekeeping. In his grief, William orders the construction of Ashdown Estate in her memory and places the pearl at its center. One hundred and fifty years later, notorious courtesan Lavinia Flyte hears the maids at Ashdown House whisper of a hidden treasure, and bears witness as her protector Lord Evershot—desperate to find it—burns the building to the ground. Now in the present day, a battered mirror and the diary of a Regency courtesan are the only clues Holly Ansell has to finding her brother, who has gone missing researching the mystery of Elizabeth Stuart and her alleged affair with Lord Craven. As she retraces his footsteps, Holly’s quest will soon reveal the truth about Lavinia and compel her to confront the stunning revelation about the legacy of the Winter Queen. Previously published.

When fifteen-year-old Xander and his family move into an old, abandoned house in the middle of a dense forest outside of a small California town, they discover that not only are some of the rooms portals into other places, but that malevolent forces are at work.

When Kate Vavasour wakes in the hospital, she remembers nothing of the family gathered around her, or of her life before the accident. The doctors diagnose post-traumatic amnesia and say the memories should start returning. Which they do--but these memories are not hers. They belong to Isabel Vavasour, who lived and died at Askerby Hall more than 400 years earlier. Returning to Askerby Hall to recuperate, Kate finds herself in a house full of shadows and suspicions. But before she can uncover the mysteries of the present, she must first discover the truth about the past. Was Isabel's madness real, or was her mistake trusting the one person she thought would never betray her?

"This is absorbing, headlong reading, a play on classic horror with an inventiveness of its own... As with all the best illusions, you are left feeling not tricked, but full of wonder." – The New York Times The haunting new thriller from Alex North, author of the New York Times bestseller The Whisper Man You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile--always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted that strange kind of infamy that only exists on the darkest corners of the internet--and inspired more than one copycat. Paul Adams remembers the case all too well: Crabtree--and his victim--were Paul’s friends. Paul has slowly put his life back together. But now his mother, old and suffering from dementia, has taken a turn for the worse. Though every inch of him resists, it is time to come home. It's not long before things start to go wrong. Paul learns that Detective Amanda Beck is investigating another copycat that has struck in the nearby town of Featherbank. His mother is distressed, insistent that there's something in the house. And someone is following him. Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago. It wasn't just the murder. It was the fact that afterward, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again...

For fans of Small Spaces, Coraline, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and James Howe's Bunnicula classics comes the first book in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Books of Elsewhere series. This house is keeping secrets . . . When eleven-year-old Olive and her parents move into the crumbling mansion on Linden Street and find it filled with mysterious paintings, Olive knows the place is creepy—but it isn’t until she encounters its three talking cats that she realizes there’s something darkly magical afoot. Then Olive finds a pair of antique spectacles in a dusty drawer and discovers the most peculiar thing yet: She can travel inside the house’s spooky paintings to a world that’s strangely quiet . . . and eerily sinister. But in entering Elsewhere, Olive has been ensnared in a mystery darker and more dangerous than she could have imagined, confronting a power that wants to be rid of her by any means necessary. With only the cats and an unusual boy she meets in Elsewhere on her side, it’s up to Olive to save the house from the shadows, before the lights go out for good.