Chet Williamson - Free Library Land Online - Music

Murder Old and New

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:41:15 +0300

An aged photograph of a dead man hanging from a tree...

Deaths in a nursing home that may not be as natural as they appear...

Clues showing a 70-year-old suicide could be murder...

Sinister small-town secrets, decades old, finally revealed...

Feisty Livy Crowe, single-and-loving-it owner of the nostalgia shop, Better Days, has to deal with all of these and more, including her mother's slow deterioration in a senior residence that might be a crime scene, a very awkward romantic triangle, and murders old and new that threaten even Livy herself...

***

I was so engaged in this slick, clever mystery, I nearly burned the house down, having forgotten I had something cooking on the stove. Murder Old and New by Laurie and Chet Williamson is so riveting and swiftly paced you almost hate to arrive at the solution because you hate to lose the narrator's voice.

Sharp writing, excellent characterization and a satisfying conclusion should...

The Crow - City of Angels

Mon, 11 Nov 1996 19:50:51 +0200

I believe there’s a place where the restless souls wander. Burdened by the weight of their own sadness, they cannot enter Heaven … And so they wait, trapped between our world and the next, endlessly searching for a way to rid themselves of their pain—in the hopes that somehow, some day they will be reunited with the ones they love.

Ashe feels the barbed wire cutting his wrists, chokes on the salt water filling his lungs. The pain of his last breath is just the beginning. He dies. And is reborn.

Guided from the realm of the dead by a dark spirit, an avatar, Ashe wears the mask of the Crow. His enemies will feel his wrath. Good and evil, life and death, an intimate dance in the … City of Angels.

Hunters

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 12:10:48 +0200

Deer season in northern Pennsylvania, when the woods explode with gunfire and bloody carcasses hang from cross-poles. Only this time, the carcasses aren’t just deer.

The Night Listener and Others

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 13:19:44 +0200

Chet Williamson's first story collection, Figures in Rain, won the International Horror Guild Award and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. But while that collection was primarily made up of ghost stories, The Night Listener and Others is an assemblage of tales that cover all aspects of the fantastic and horrific by a writer whose work critics have favorably compared to such disparate writers as Camus, Cheever and King, and who Supernatural Literature of the World hailed as "the rare writer whose fiction reflects an intimate familiarity with the supernatural literary tradition, and who extends it with works that occasionally subvert its principles." **

A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 13:14:05 +0200

Holiday Bundle Featuring Twenty Novels of Horror and the Occult The third of our series of holiday bundles, A Haunting of Horros features twenty novels of horror and the occult by various award-winning and bestselling authors. For $2.99, you're getting twenty novels containing over two million words in total, and a savings of more than $70 if each title was purchased separately. This bundle is only available for a limited time, so purchase your copy before it's gone. Titles included in this collection:
Horrorween - Al Sarrantonio - Book 1 of the Orangefield Series
It's Loose - B.W. Battin
Ash Wednesday - Chet Williamson
The Kill Riff - David J. Schow
Wire Mesh Mothers - Elizabeth Massie
The Beast That Was Max - Gerard Houarner - Book 1 of the Resurrection Cycle
The Evil - Hugh B. Cave - Book 1 of the Evil Trilogy
Blood of the Impaler - Jeffrey Sackett
The Fury - John Farris - Book 1 of the Fury Series
The Light at the End - John Skipp & Craig Spector
Lake Monsters - Joseph A. Citro
Prodigal - Melanie Tem
AfterAge - Yvonne Navarro
Ancient Eyes - David Niall Wilson
Child of the Night - Nancy Kilpatrick - Book 1 in the Power of the Blood world
The Dark’Un - Ronald Kelly
Gnelfs - Sidney Williams
Excavation - Steve Rasnic Tem
Thunder Rise - G. Wayne Miller - Book 1 of the Thunder Rise Trilogy
Hexes - Tom Piccirilli

Murder in Cormyr

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:00:50 +0200

Reign

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:09:55 +0200

The story centers around a renovated theater in Pennsylvania and is arranged in three acts, plus overture and curtain call. The tension in Act I heightens as the reader must decide if this is a murder mystery, psychodrama, horror or fantasy, with the author offering clues to support each possibility. Theaters have a history of ghosts and accidents, but as the number of deaths at the Venetian mounts, the police become less inclined to accept verdicts of "accident." Owner/actor Dennis Hamilton has nothing obvious to gain from the killings, nor could he have caused them, but his strange behavior makes others wonder if he might not have a double or another personality--or something else entirely--that does want the deaths. Mystery, suspense, drama and horror combine to make this one of Williamson's finest works.

Soulstorm

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:02:50 +0200

Three men are offered a million dollars each if they will spend a month in an isolated Pennsylvania mansion, The Pines. There they will confront madness, murder, and the ultimate evil – so that their billionaire host might find the key to life beyond the grave. But as they learn, dead souls dwell in The Pines. And death is just the beginning...

Ash Wednesday

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:17:23 +0200

In Merridale, semi-transparent blue apparitions have appeared. These aren't ghosts, exactly. They are visions of the dead in their final moments - the last seconds of their lives portrayed for all to see. They don't move, and they don't speak.

Ash Wednesday is a thoughtful horror story about what happens to people when they are forced to gaze into the face of death and, specifically, the face of their own personal dead: their friends and family, those they believed to be dead and gone. Murders are revealed, rapes and other crimes. People despair, and try to create new lives out of the wreckage. Two of these are Bradley Meyers, a vet already driven half-crazy by his experiences in Vietnam, confronted by the sight of his dead son, and now barely capable of containing his rage, and Jim Callender, whose son has died in the same accident, for which he is partly responsible. As Callender sinks into guilt, Meyers moves toward murder.

This edition of Ash Wednesday contains a final portion that was not included with the book when it was first published. It was removed due to an editorial decision to which I acquiesced. After the book appeared, the last chapter was published in Bill Munster's excellent small press magazine, Footsteps. The entire book as originally written appears here, and in the accompanying audiobook, for the first time.

-- Chet Williamson

Lowland Rider

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 13:01:44 +0200

Jesse Gordon, driven to a shocking murder by the killing of his wife and infant daughter, condemns himself to life underground in the New York City subway system. Abandoning the light of day, he finds an evil as old as time, and a redemption which must be bought by a price far greater than death...

Second Chance

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:12:08 +0200

A breathtaking novel of dark suspense and bittersweet nostalgia, Second Chance breaks new ground for a writer whose work critics have favorably compared to such disparate writers as Camus, Cheever, and Stephen King. In Second Chance, Chet Williamson defines a generation and gives readers the ride of their lives through a disquietingly different and threatened America. Thrills, romance, and nail-biting suspense combine to create a novel in which a Big Chill-like gathering of old friends could lead to the real "Big Chill" for every person on Earth. It all begins innocently enough. Woody Robinson, a successful musician, gathers his baby boomer friends and recreates an evening in 1969 out of nostalgia for his long dead love, Tracy. The party quickly becomes a wake for lost ideals, and then something more, as time and fate play wonderful and terrible tricks on the celebrants. By the evening's end, Tracy is back in Woody's life as though she had never left. But there is another change as well, a shocking one. His name is Pan. An environmental terrorist who wants to save the world by destroying humanity, he has the deadly viral ammunition to do just that. Pan will prove that the darker side of the sixties isn't dead -- it's only been sleeping. Now it's awake and furious. And only one man and one woman can stop the nightmare. With the swirling color and magic of a Fillmore West poster, the hallucinogenic impact of a Jim Morrison lyric, and the wistful voice of early Dylan, Second Chance is an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and redemption, an electrifying synthesis of past and present that will enchant its readers today and haunt them tomorrow.

Robert Bloch's Psycho

Mon, 12 Nov 2001 15:09:56 +0200

"Horror author Chet Williamson ably succeeds in the tough task of creating a sequel to Robert Bloch's masterpiece, Psycho; a prequel to the less effective Psycho II; and a solid story in its own right...The novel shines. Whenever Norman gets the spotlight, the novel feels like a lost Bloch work." —Publishers Weekly

The original Psycho novel by Robert Bloch was published in 1959 and became an instant hit, leading to the smash movie only a year later, which brought Norman Bates's terrifying story into the public consciousness, where it still remains (proven by the success of the tv series, Bates Motel). It took Bloch 23 years to write another Psycho novel, revealing that Norman had been in a mental institution the entire time. In that sequel, Norman quickly escapes the sanitarium and goes on a killing spree in Hollywood.But what happened in that asylum during those two decades? Until now, no one has known.It's 1960. Norman...