I love the idea of a house as a world (I even wrote my own story with this premise). Imagine a house as infinite as a universe where instead of traveling to distant planets, you walk down endless corridors or enter rooms that open up into whole new realities. Stoddard's trilogy is not the only one to use this idea, but it's probably one the best. The fact that it is also a Victorian/Edwardian pastiche, evoking writers like C.S. Lewis or William Hope Hodgson, is a definite plus.
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit or the stars die.
The clocks must be wound or Time ceases.
The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the strange rules of the house. He must travel its winding corridors and secret passages to the myriad countries lying within its walls.
He has little time to act; the Anarchists have seized control of the Doors; the Black River is rising; the Eternity Clock is running down.…
Adam Nevill is one of the most accomplished horror writers I know. This book is not recent (his recent books are also worth checking out), but it is one of the most accomplished horror novels ever written. The horror comes not so much from the supernatural elements (though these are very good) as from the ratcheting sense of claustrophobia and helplessness as the heroine is driven back to the haunted house by poverty and violence.
Winner of the August Derleth Award, No One Gets Out Alive is the ultimate haunted house thriller from horror writer Adam Nevill.
Darkness lives within . . .
Cash-strapped, working for agencies and living in shared accommodation, Stephanie Booth feels she can fall no further. So when she takes a new room at the right price, she believes her luck has finally turned. But 82 Edgware Road is not what it appears to be.
It's not only the eerie atmosphere of the vast, neglected house, or the disturbing attitude of her new landlord, Knacker McGuire,…
An excellent combination of horror and sci-fi, this is an engrossing and genuinely original beginning of a new series. It is rare for me to wait impatiently for the next instalment in a sci-fi series, but I am waiting for this one. This is not your boring everyday zombie!
Waking up on the beach in Greece after a midnight party, Cleo, a British-Greek tourist, sees a stranger sitting next to her. The stranger has a giant spider on his forearm. So begins an incredible odyssey through the nine levels of the mysterious mountain populated by an odd assortment of monsters, demons, and avatars of dead gods. Still grieving the unsolved disappearance of her twin sister Cora, Cleo is thrust into the world whose rules she does not understand and whose inhabitants confound everything she thought she knew about Greek mythology. Confronted by Woven Women, masked huntresses, sentient graffiti, and Mother of Monsters, Cleo has to make sense of it all. And meanwhile, a mysterious Call reverberates in her brain: You have to go up. You have to find your sister. A story of self-discovery, courage, and breathtaking adventure, Nine Levels is a highly imaginative, innovative, and engrossing retelling of familiar legends with a twist you won’t see coming.
