To celebrate the arrival of Halloween, we wanted to showcase the top performers in our spooky genres. This means sharing the top 13 titles across the horror and paranormal genres with D2D and Smashwords. These are the top performers from the last month!
They Move Below
Horror lives in the shadows. It exists under the earth’s surface in ancient caves. Below the vast sea’s undulating waves. Under dense forest cover. Within a storm’s thick, rolling clouds. And downstairs in our homes, when we hear the knife drawer rattle in the night. Even our minds and bodies harbour the alien under the skin, the childhood nightmares in our subconscious.
Darkness hides things, no matter how much we strain our eyes. And sometimes those things are looking back at us.
Helpmeet
It’s 1900, and Louise Wilk is taking her dying husband from Manhattan to the upstate orchard estate where he grew up. Dr. Edward Wilk is wasting away from a mysterious affliction acquired in a strange encounter: but Louise soon realizes that her husband’s worsening condition may not be a disease at all, but a transformative phase of existence that will draw her in as much more than a witness.
Dangerous Deals
by Angela White, Book 21 of the Life After War series
Safe Haven is now recovering, healing, and growing. Births are nearing and deaths are becoming rare. Jennifer and her crew did an amazing job while Angela was gone. And that’s the problem. Jennifer doesn’t want to give up leadership now that the boss is back. Will the most powerful byzan on the planet step back or will she fight the second most powerful descendant for control of everything?
Downward Cycle
by JK Franks, Book 1 of the Catalyst series
A massive CME wipes out the power grid and sets off a global nightmare. No electricity. No cars or phones. The country is plunged into instant chaos.
When a sudden, blackout slams the world into a survival state, Reclusive survivor Scott Montgomery must lead a handful of friends to move beyond what was lost and focus on survival. With society collapsing before their eyes, they’ll have to risk everything to protect their home and the people they love.
Sour Candy
At first glance, Phil Pendleton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.
What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.
Dead of Winter
by Darcy Coates
Eight strangers. One killer. Nowhere left to run.
When Christa joins a tour group heading deep into the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains, she’s hopeful this will be her chance to put the ghosts of her past to rest. But when a bitterly cold snowstorm sweeps the region, the small group is forced to take shelter in an abandoned hunting cabin. Despite the uncomfortably claustrophobic quarters and rapidly dropping temperature, Christa believes they’ll be safe as they wait out the storm.
She couldn’t be more wrong.
This Blood That Binds Us
by S.L. Cokeley
Kimberly Burns— a self-sufficient, nineteen-year-old— expects her customary camping trip to be a calming escape from the non-stop demands of college life but the attack from a recently turned vampire changes everything. Aaron Calem has been trying to resist the blood lust raging through his new body, but the unfamiliar voice in his head won’t let him pass up an easy meal.
When he’s left with a girl barely clinging to life, he must choose between loyalty to his brothers or his own morality.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Family
by Shawn Chesser, Book 16 of the Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse series
Cade Grayson’s intent to honor a longstanding promise is jeopardized when he and his daughter, Raven, learn they may have a new enemy. The revelation complicates an already dangerous trip through hundreds of miles of western New America — a yet to be conquered frontier teeming with zombie hordes, roving bands of opportunist breathers, and the scattered remnants of a mostly defeated invading army.
Cathedral
by Avery Cross. Book 2 of the Academy of Ancients series
Mysterious necromancers. Wicked summoners. Fierce witches. Occasional familiars. Military experiments. Secret councils. Forbidden alliances. The Academy of Ancients will suck you in.
Briar’s gone from being an aimless foster child to being a witch at Academy of Ancients. She’s not just any ol’ witch, she’s one with two elements. And not only that, she’s one of a kind, evidently.
So rare that she’s sought after by a paranormal military cadre.
Limbo
by S.L Goulding
Chase is a troubled teenager who is struggling to find a sense of purpose in his life. He soon discovers that he has the ability to astral project into Limbo, an ominous place where people who have committed suicide reside. There, he meets Ash, a girl who is condemned to roam Limbo for eternity.
A once-depressed Chase finds happiness with Ash, and he finds himself unable to enter Limbo, leaving Ash alone and worried. As he falls back into his depression, he seeks out Ash, only to discover that reality and Limbo aren’t what they seem. As they try to navigate their feelings and the truth, past actions are brought into the light, and both of their lives are forever changed.
The Asylum Confessions: Killer Families
by Jack Steen, Book 2 of The Asylum Confession Files series
They arrive alive. They always leave dead. But first, they give me their confessions.
My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my ‘death’ ward at the Asylum, I’m the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers – among other things. Here’s what happens: they come on my floor, they give me their deathbed confession, and I help to make their death less painful. There’s a catch, though: I want the real story, the one they haven’t told anyone else.
Fat Vampire: The Complete Series
When overweight treadmill salesman Reginald Baskin finally meets a co-worker who doesn’t make fun of him, it’s just his own bad luck that tech guy Maurice turns out to be a two thousand-year-old vampire. And when Maurice turns Reginald to save his life, it’s just Reginald’s own further bad luck that he wakes up to discover he’s become the slowest, weakest, most out-of-shape vampire ever born, doomed to “heal” to his corpulent self for all of eternity.
As Reginald struggles with the downsides of being a fat vampire — too slow to catch people to feed on, mocked by those he tries to glamour, assaulted by his intended prey and left for undead — he discovers in himself rare powers that few vampires have… and just in time too, because the Vampire Council might just want his head for being an inferior representative of their race.
Unveiling the Past
by R.W. Wallace, Book 2 in the Ghost Detective series
Not everyone can attend their own funeral. Not consciously and calmly, anyway.
Even Robert, a long-time ghost and something of a pro when it comes to final rites, finds it disconcerting. In the company of his long-time friend and fellow ghost Clothilde, Robert watches as his mother accompanies his remains to the grave — thirty years after his demise.
But why does Clothilde’s frail old uncle do the same? Does he know about the link between Clothilde and Robert’s deaths?
A funeral won’t put the past to rest — only solving the mystery of their own murders can bring closure.