Top Ten Tuesday; Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelves

 It's Tuesday and perhaps it's time for a Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of That Artsy Reader Girl and today's topic is the most recent additions to my bookshelves.

Here's my ten picks.

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

Description from Goodreads

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several terrible and unexplained deaths years earlier — and is now ready to kill again . . .

The Last Night to Kill Nazis by David Agranoff

Description from Goodreads
The Fuhrer is Dead and the clock is ticking… The Last Night to Kill Nazis is an emotional rollercoaster of adventure, terror and revenge that explores one of the world's most evil events through the lens of a horror novel. An entertaining and enlightening novel that is Inglorious Basterds meets Interview with a Vampire. April 30th, 1945. The Fuhrer has shot himself. Goebbels is drafting a surrender and the slow process for justice begins. This starts a clock ticking for Noah Sammovich, a former army ranger turned OSS secret agent. Only a month earlier he helped to liberate a death camp in central Germany. The trauma of seeing the final solution enacted on his people has convinced him that he must act before the surrender. His mission -- kill as many of the top Nazi leadership as he can before peace becomes official. The SS hatches a plan for 150 top leaders to escape from a secret airstrip in the alps and form a New Fatherland in occupied Manchuria. Noah has a plan and a secret weapon, a creature of the night with a thirst for blood and the ability to manipulate the psychic trauma of the pain they caused.

Linghun by Ai Jiang

Description from Goodreads

WELCOME HOME.

Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.

Honeysuckle and Bone by Trisha Tobias

Description from Goodreads

On the run from her own dark secrets, a teen girl becomes the nanny for a prestigious family on their extravagant Jamaican estate—but things aren't quite as they seem, and she quickly discovers even paradise may be haunted. Carina Marshall is looking to reinvent herself, and what better place to do it than Jamaica, her mother’s alluring homeland where she conveniently has access to an au pair gig for the wealthy and politically powerful Hall family. After months of being the target of vicious rumors and hate online (which she just might deserve), the luxurious Blackbead House seems to hold everything she wants, a world of mango trees, tropical breezes, and glamorous parties—and a place to disappear. Once there, Carina joins up with her fellow junior staff members, the self-named Young Birds, and finds herself sinking right into her busy, but comfortable, new life. Yes, the Halls run a tight ship, and yes, there is some tension amongst the family, but she’s content flying under the radar, doing her job, and hanging out with her new friends—not least, the handsome and charming Aaron. But when inexplicable things start happening to her in the house, only getting worse each night, Carina realizes that someone—or something—is out to get her. Is it the house itself? The Halls? Or, worse, is it her own past catching up with her? With the help of Aaron, she must figure out what is haunting her, and fast, before she is forced out of Blackbead House for good. Eerie, propulsive, and full of intrigue, Honeysuckle and Bone is a deliciously atmospheric, young adult novel, following an imperfect yet courageous teen as she seeks to remake herself in the homeland she always idealized, only to discover that new beginnings don’t always come easy.

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Description from Goodreads

Hungerstone is a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood and Emilia Hart’s Weyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband's affection and Carmilla's ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution, Hungerstone is a compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the book that inspired Dracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Description from Goodreads

In this gripping debut tinged with supernatural horror, a young Cree woman's dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home.

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie's dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina's untimely death: a weekend at the family's lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too--a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina--Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams--and make them more dangerous.

What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina's death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Psycho by Robert Bloch

Description from Goodreads

It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Description from Goodreads

In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

The Mermaid's Bubble Lounge by Seana Kelly

Description from Goodreads

The vampire Guild is in shambles. My husband Clive and I might have given more than a few Masters their final deaths—allegedly—so it’s fallen on us to fix the problem. Mostly on Clive, that is, as he’s the Master vampire. I’m Sam Quinn, werewolf book nerd and owner of The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar.

Vlad (yes, that one) and Cadmael are the houseguests no one would want, but we’re trying to grin and bear it because the Guild must be rebuilt, and we must make haste as rogue vamps are becoming a big bloody problem.

Finvarra, the fae king who had it out for me even before I helped cause his brother’s death, is coming to do what none of his assassins have managed: end me in as painful a manner as possible.

In other news, Stheno and Vlad have been hooking up and we’re all a little afraid of those two together.

The Cannibals of Candyland by Carllton Mellick III

Description from Goodreads

There exists a race of cannibals who are made out of candy. They live in an underground world filled with lollipop forests and gumdrop goblins. During the day, while you are away at work, they come above ground and prowl our streets for food. Their prey: your children. They lure young boys and girls to them with their sweet scent and bright colorful candy coating, then rip them apart with razor sharp teeth and claws.

When he was a child, Franklin Pierce witnessed the death of his siblings at the hands of a candy woman with pink cotton candy hair. Since that day, the candy people have become his obsession. He has spent his entire life trying to prove that they exist. And after discovering the entrance to the underground world of the candy people, Franklin finds himself venturing into their sugary domain. His mission: capture one of them and bring it back, dead or alive.

Cannibals of Candyland is an erotic horror story for the bizarro reader. Dark, disturbing, and absurd; this isn't the board game version of candy land you used to play as a kid.