Recommendations based on "Motel Styx"

“An extraordinary work of humane imagination...Call it magic realism with soul. The closest compatriot of The Between is Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Not shabby.”—LocusA man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural, now updated with new material, from the award-winning pioneer of speculative fiction and author of the classic My Soul to Keep—now available as a Harper Perennial Olive Edition.When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake.When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come?As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves . . .Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between is the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself.

A retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in a rural Wisconsin town, Jack Sawyer is called in to assist the local police chief in solving a gruesome series of murders that causes Jack to experience inexplicable waking nightmares.

From the opening pages, the scene is set for the menace to come: the lonely Bates Motel, the obsessional Norman Bates, the runaway secretary, the face at the rain-soaked window and at the end the terrifying stabbing in the shower.

In 'The Haunted Monastery', Judge Dee and his wives seek refuge from a violent mountain storm and are plunged into a bizarre series of interrelated crimes. Three women have been murdered in the monastery; Dee has seen something impossible, perhaps supernatural, and inexplicable events flash forth in the dark tangle of corridors and the Taoist Hell - a hall filled with statuary showing realistically the torments of Hell.

What happened to a teenager named Lucy one night in 1966 after a Beatles concert? She rushed the stage, kissed Paul, started home with her friends, and was never seen again-until cemetery guide and unintentional PI to the dead Pepper Martin sees her as a ghost. Lucy's spirit can't rest in peace until her body is found and buried. But how will Pepper track down a missing corpse after forty-five years?

In her showdown with the murderous Pretender, a bullet taken at close range severed the connection between Taylor's thoughts and speech. Effectively mute, there's no telling if her voice will ever come back. Trapped in silence, she is surrounded by ghosts—of the past, of friendships and trusts lost...of a lost faith in herself and her motives that night.When Memphis Highsmythe offers Taylor his home in the Scottish Highlands to recuperate, her fiancé can't refuse her excitement, no matter his distrust of the man. At first, Memphis's drafty and singularly romantic castle seems the perfect place for healing. But shortly the house itself surrounds her like a menacing presence. As Taylor's sense of isolation and vulnerability grows, so, too, does her grip on reality.Someone or something is coming after Taylor. But is she being haunted by the dead…or hunted by the living?

Some deaths live on foreverFor as long as it has stood overlooking New England's jagged coastline, Lexington House has been the witness to madness…and murder. But in recent years the inexplicable malice that once tormented so many has lain as silent as its victims. Until now…A member of the nation's foremost paranormal forensic team, Jenna Duffy has made a career out of investigating the inexplicable. Yet nothing could prepare her for the string of slayings once again plaguing Lexington House—or for the chief suspect, a boy barely old enough to drive, much less kill.With the young man's life on the line, Jenna must team up with attorney Samuel Hall to pinpoint who—or what—is taking the lives of those who get too close to the past. But everything they learn brings them closer to the forces of evil stalking this tortured ground.

Revisit the misty hills of Scotland, where there might be ghosts and there's certainly a killer, in this thrilling tale of romantic suspense from New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham. It seemed like the ultimate moneymaking plan--buy an ancient, run-down Scottish castle and turn it into a tourist destination. Toni Fraser and her friends intend to put on reenactments combining fact and fiction, local history, murder and an imaginary laird named Bruce MacNiall. But then someone arrives, claiming to actually be Laird MacNiall--a tall, dark, formidable Scot somehow familiar to Toni--just as the bodies of young women are found, dumped and forgotten in the nearby town. How is it possible this laird exists? Toni invented Bruce MacNiall for the performance...yet sinister, lifelike dreams suggest he's connected to the recent deaths. Bruce claims he wants to help catch the murderer. But even if she wants to, can Toni trust him when her visions seem to be coming from within the very eyes of the killer himself? Originally published in 2004

William Dougal's newly-found respectability suffers a rude setback when, in a squabble over his girlfriend, he accidentally kills a man and has to dispose of the body. His old rival Hanbury is on hand to help out--but at a price.

'The dead can't speak to us,' Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. Sometimes, only an outsider can get to the truth. Patrick has been on the outside all his life.Thoughtful but different, infuriating even to his own mother, his life changes when he follows an obsession with death to study anatomy at university. When he uncovers a crime that everybody else was too close to see, he proves finally that he has been right all along: nothing is exactly as it seems. And that there have been many more lies closer to home...