Recommendations based on "The Rest of Us Just Live Here"

“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.

In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a 'Surbiton of the mind'. But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined and, as he relapses into chaos, he encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark, an old lover, with whom he reprises a troubled, masochistic relationship and, finally, the seemingly flesh-and-blood embodiemnts of all his private phantoms.The sequel to his haunting, celebrated account of a troubled childhood, Waking Up in Toytown is unsettling, touching, oddly romantic and unflinchingly honest.

Having had his retirement snatched from him by malfunctioning technology, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell finds himself facing yet another year at Leighford High School. Jacquie's hopes of a dedicated house husband are dashed and she is annoyed further when a family holiday becomes an impromptu school trip, families welcome. Less than a week into their trip to the Isle of Wight the situation takes another turn for the worse when the wife of Tom Medlicott, the new Head of Art, goes missing, forcing Jacquie to play the role of woman policeman.Back in Hampshire, when Medlicott himself is found dead at the bottom of the stairs Henry Hall is also drawn into the investigation, but with the man's entire family lying at the bottom of the morgue, his suspect list is non-existent. Then Maxwell stumbles by accident on the linchpin to the whole case. He knows the reason, all he has to find is the murderer. And to find him - or her - he will have to cross more than the Solent. With the answer lying in a missing piece of paper, divorces and deceit, will Maxwell survive to apply for retirement again?

Dean Koontz has been called "America's most popular suspense novelist,"* but that only begins to describe the rich variety and endless invention that characterize his work. Critics hail his impeccable craft and the artistry that has inspired the devotion of millions of fans around the world. He is unique among contemporary writers, venturing far beyond traditional boundaries to explore our deepest fears and most transcendent aspirations.Now, in From the Corner of His Eye, Koontz brings together his most powerful themes to draw readers into a spellbinding world made by a master at the top of his form -- a story rich in triumph and tragedy, joy and terror, love, hate, and profound meaning, played out by perhaps the most unforgettable cast of characters he has yet created.Bartholomew Lampion is born in Bright Beach, California, on a day of tragedy and terror, when the lives of everyone in his family are changed forever. Remarkable events accompany his birth, and everyone agrees that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen.On this same day, a thousand miles away, a ruthless man learns that he has a mortal enemy named Bartholomew. He doesn't know who Bartholomew is, but he embarks on a search that will become the purpose of his life. If ever he finds the right Bartholomew, he will deal mercilessly with him.And in San Francisco, a girl is born, the result of a violent rape. Her survival is miraculous, and her destiny is mysteriously linked to the fates of Barty and the man who stalks him.At the age of three, Barty Lampion is blinded when surgeons reluctantly remove his eyes to save him from a fast-spreading cancer. As the growing boy copes with his blindness and proves to be a prodigy, his mother, an exceptional woman, counsels him that all things happen for a reason, that there is meaning even in his suffering, and that he will affect the lives of people yet unknown to him in ways startling and profound.At thirteen, Bartholomew regains his sight. How he regains it, why he regains it, and what happens as his amazing life unfolds results in a breathtaking journey of courage, heart-stopping suspense, and high adventure. His mother once told him that every person's life has an effect on every other person's, in often unknowable ways, and Barty's eventful life indeed entwines with others in ways that will astonish and move everyone who reads his story.People magazine has said that Dean Koontz has the "power to scare the daylights out of us." In this, perhaps the most thrilling, suspenseful, and emotionally powerful work of his critically acclaimed career, Koontz does that and far more. He has created a compulsive page-turner that will have you at the edge of your seat, a narrative tour de force that will change the way you yourself look at the world.

A mother and her son have been executed in their home and fingerprint matches show their attacker died twenty years ago. But how can dead serial killers return to haunt the present? The answers lie in the darkest shadows of The Dead Room. When CSI Darby McCormick is called to the crime scene, it�s one of the most gruesome she�s ever seen. But the forensic evidence is even more disturbing: someone watched the murder unfold from woodland behind the house � and the killer died in a shoot-out two decades earlier. The deeper Darby digs, the more horrors come to light. Her prime suspect is revealed as a serial killer on an enormous scale, with a past that�s even more shocking than his crimes, thanks to a long-held secret that could rock Boston�s law enforcement to its core. Is it possible to steal an identity? Or are dead men walking in Darby�s footsteps? The line between the living and the dead has never been finer.

Getting to the bottom of some strange "supernatural" events is the goal; at various stages in the story, readers can choose one of two different options, each resolving the mystery in its own way.

'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...

Travis Lindsay, his best friend, Nish, and all their pals on the Screech Owls hockey team, are on their way to New York for an international peewee tournament. Excitement builds in the team van on the way to Lake Placid. First there are the entertaining antics of their trainer, Mr. Dillinger – then there’s the prospect of playing on an Olympic rink, in a huge arena, knowing there will be scouts in the stands. But they have barely arrived when things start to go wrong. Their star centre, Sarah, plays badly from lack of sleep. Next Travis gets knocked down in the street. And then someone starts tampering with equipment. It looks as if someone is trying to sabotage the Screech Owls. But who? And why? And can Travis and the others stop the destruction before the decisive game of the tournament? Mystery at Lake Placid is the first book in the Screech Owls Series by Roy MacGregor.

Bruce and Bill meet a strange boy with a bulldog who offers to introduce them to the ghosts in his house.

When 16 skeletons are unearthed near an old prisoner-of-war camp outside the northern city of Hafton, it seems like a simple case for Detective Chief Inspector John Blizzard. With all indicators pointing to natural deaths from influenza during the First World War, there seems little to concern modern-day detectives.