Demon Ex Machina

Angel

Author: Kilworth, Garry D.
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 320pp.
Pub. Date: January 1997
Publisher: Tor Books
Original Pub: May 1993 (Hardcover — Gollancz, UK)

From the Undead Rat:
San Francisco is being besieged by a new kind of arsonist. He leaves behind no clues, not even casing from what must be an incredibly powerful incendiary device which creates fires of extraordinary intensity. Detectives Dave Peters and Danny Spitz are assigned to track down the arsonist in a case that quickly turns from routine to bizarre and suddenly strikes home. The passages of loss and grief are touching, giving the reader a real sense of the character’s psychological pain. Then the investigation is afoot once more. When the evidence begins to point to a supernatural cause, Peters and Spitz reluctantly follow until they meet up with the Angel — torching Demons, heedless of human life, for the cause of Good. This is a wonderful glimpse at a mind set totally alien from ours. A little blasphemous, and very thought provoking, this book is an excellent read.
–The Undead Rat

The Blind Mirror

Author: Pike, Christopher
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 400pp.
Pub. Date: August 5, 2004
Publisher: Tor Books
Original Pub: May 2003 (Hardcover — Tor Books)

David, a twenty-eight-year-old artist, is recovering from a bad breakup with the mysterious and beautiful Sienna when he discovers a woman’s dead body half-buried on the beach near Lompoc, California.

To his surprise, David is interviewed not just by the local sheriff, but by FBI agent Krane, who declares that the woman was killed in a ritualistic manner. Soon the dead woman is identified as David’s ex-girlfriend, and he becomes the prime suspect in her murder. But Sienna can’t be dead; she keeps leaving messages on his answering machine. And no matter how badly their relationship ended, he couldn’t have killed her. She was the love of his life.

In self-defense, David begins his own investigation, trying to find out who the dead woman really is and what’s behind the satanic murder. He’s both helped and hindered by his friends, especially Julie, whom he had a crush on in high school and who has suddenly reappeared in his life, and the Reverend Pomus, who tries to warn David of the reality of true evil.

David’s search for Sienna and the truth about her disappearance take him from coastal California to New York City to Florida — and into the darkest night of his soul.

City Infernal (The City Infernal Series #1)

Author: Lee, Edward
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 336pp.
Pub. Date: April 2002
Publisher: Dorchester/Leisure
Original Pub: October 2001 (Hardcover — Cemetery Dance)
Links: The Domain of Edward Lee

Welcome to the Mephistopolis

Hell is a city.

It stretches, literally, without end — a labyrinth of smoke and waking nightmare. Just as endlessly, sewer grates belch flame from the sulphur fires that have raged beneath the streets for millennia. Clock towers spire in every district, by public law, but their faces have no hands; time is not measured here in seconds or hours but in atrocity and despair. In the center of this morass of stone and smoke and butchery and horror stands the 666-floor Mephisto Building, where Gargoyles prowl the wind-blown ledges and from whose highest garrets the innocent are hung from gibbets and left to rot for eons. The lone occupant of the very top floor looks down upon his dominion and smiles a smile that is brighter than a thousand suns. Here, yes, everyone is dead yet everyone lives forever.

Welcome to the Mephistopolis.

Welcome to the city of Hell.

Welcome.

Edward Lee offers a very new look at the very old concept of Hell. An occult fluke grants lonely Goth girl Cassie the harrowing ability to enter Hell as a living person. But to her surprise, the Abyss is not the barren fire-and-brimstone landscape she expects. It’s a ghastly metropolis fueled by pure evil, where sorcery replaces science and sheer horror reigns over a population of fallen angels, demons, crossbreeds, and the human damned.

The Demonologist

Author: Laimo, Michael
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 369pp.
Pub. Date: May 3, 2005
Publisher: Leisure/Dorchester
Also Pub: December 2007 (Trade Paperback — Delirium)
Links: Michael Laimo — Official Site

Is Bev Mathers going crazy? He’s been hearing chilling voices in his head, seeing nightmarish visions that just can’t be true. And it keeps getting worse and worse. No, unfortunately for Bev, he’s completely sane. What’s taking control of him is far more terrifying than insanity. And it has an unimaginable purpose . . .

Bev has become an innocent man in an infernal game, a victim of hellish forces beyond understanding. His visions of blood and debauchery are growing more ghastly every day. Some of them — the most shocking — are real. Bev can feel his mind, his body, his very soul slipping away. Will his only hope or his eternal damnation come from . . . the demonologist?

Demons

Author: Shirley, John
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Two Novellas
Page Count: 384pp.
Pub. Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: Del Rey
Original Pub: February 2002 (Hardcover — Random House)
Links: John Shirley Web Site

From the Editors of Amazon.com:
Nightmarish demons terrorize the world in this sharp-edged tale of horror and humanity from award-winner John Shirley. A young artist from San Francisco witnesses the demons’ arrival and the world’s response — panic, denial, and even cooperation in the slaughter. He joins a group of people who believe that human action brought the demons into the world and that the power of human consciousness — awareness of one’s true self — is the only defense against them. Then nine years later, in the face of a new threat, the group must overcome conspiracy and the world’s disbelief to battle demons once again.

Themes of wakefulness and sleep — the struggle for self-awareness against the deliberate denial of what’s happening around us — form the counterpoint for the terrifying and often brutal events of the story. This is a fast-paced, finely told horror tale combined with a pointed examination of the ways in which people so often conspire in their own destruction.

–Roz Genessee

The Descent

Author: Long, Jeff
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 592pp.
Pub. Date: October 31, 2001
Publisher: Jove
Original Pub: July 1999 (Hardcover — Crown Publishing)
Links: The Descent Web Site

From the Editors of Amazon.com:
In a high Himalayan cave, among the death pits of Bosnia, in a newly excavated Java temple, Long’s characters find out to their terror that humanity is not alone — that, as we have always really known, horned and vicious humanoids lurk in vast caverns beneath our feet. This audacious remaking of the old hollow-earth plot takes us, in no short order, to the new world regime that follows the genocidal harrowing of Hell by heavily armed, high-tech American forces. An ambitious tycoon sends an expedition of scientists, including a beautiful nun linguist and a hideously tattooed commando former prisoner of Hell, ever deeper into the unknown, among surviving, savage, horned tribes and the vast citadels of the civilizations that fell beneath the earth before ours arose. A conspiracy of scholars pursues the identity of the being known as Satan, coming up with unpalatable truths about the origins of human culture and the identity of the Turin Shroud, and are picked off one by bloody one. Long rehabilitates, madly, the novel of adventures among lost peoples — occasional clumsiness and promises of paranoid revelations on which he cannot entirely deliver fail to diminish the real achievement here; this feels like a story we have always known and dreaded.

–Roz Kaveney

The Exorcist

Author: Blatty, William Peter
Format: Mass Market Paperbacks
Type: Novel
Page Count: 400pp.
Pub. Date: February 1, 1994
Publisher: HarperCollins
Original Pub: 1971 (Hardcover — Harper)
Links: William Peter Blatty

This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books.

From the Editors of Amazon.com:
When originally published in 1971, The Exorcist became not only a bestselling literary phenomenon, but one of the most frightening and controversial novels ever written. (When the author adapted his book to the screen two years later, it then became one of the most terrifying movies ever made.) Blatty fictionalized the true story of a child’s demonic possession in the 1940s. The deceptively simple story focuses on Regan, the 11-year-old daughter of a movie actress residing in Washington, D.C.; the child apparently is possessed by an ancient demon. It’s up to a small group of overwhelmed yet determined humans to somehow rescue Regan from this unspeakable fate. Purposefully raw and profane, this novel still has the extraordinary ability to literally shock us into forgetting that it is “just a story.” The Exorcist remains a truly unforgettable reading experience. Blatty published a sequel, Legion, in 1983.

–Stanley Wiater

Messenger

Author: Lee, Edward
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 344pp.
Pub. Date: March 2004
Publisher: Necro Publications
Links: edwardleeonline.com: the domain of Edward Lee

A little bit of Hell has just come to earth.

Would you like to become someone else? Well, someone else is about to become you. He will share your heart and your mind, he will seep into your body, he will feel all your ecstacy . . .

And then he will take you on a slaughterfest.

Occult rites. Ritualistic murder.

You have become possessed.
But not by a ghost.
Not by a demon.
It’s something much worse.

Just as God has a messenger, so does the devil, and that messenger is here, now, in your town. He has a message to send . . .

The Messenger.

A diabolical novel of ultimate erotic horror . . .

Son of the Endless Night

Author: Farris, John
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 509pp.
Pub. Date: April 1986
Publisher: Tor Books
Original Pub. Date: 1985 (Hardcover — St. Martin’s)
Links: Official John Farris Web Site

An electrifying tale of demonic possession.

The Talisman

Author: Aycliffe, Jonathan
Pseudonym of: Denis McEoin
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 224pp.
Pub. Date: May 1, 2001
Publisher: Severn House
Original Pub: November 1999 (Hardcover — Ash-Tree Press)

Nominated for the 1999 IHG Award Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in a Novel

A statue, unearthed in ancient Babylon during the course of an archaelogical dig, is transported to London. Once there, it quickly exerts an evil influence over those with whom it comes into contact an influence that threatens to spread throughout London and beyond.

The Void

Author: Jacobs, Teri A.
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 348pp.
Pub. Date: June 2002
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Links: Teri A. Jacobs — Dark Fiction Writer
Book List for Teri A. Jacobs

Ohio Connection: Teri A. Jacobs lives in the Cincinnati area.

Ohio author Teri A. Jacobs scores big with a truly unique book in the field of horror literature. The netherworld of ancient Central and South America, Xibalba, contains shadowy demons and soul devouring gods and heroes. The Dark Man, a human who calls himself Coatl, walks between the worlds of Earth and Xibalba to haunt the dreams of his victims and steal their souls for the masters of Xibalba to torture and devour. But the prize soul belongs to Leslie Starr — unknowingly harboring a mysterious force that could destroy the depraved gods of Xibalba or release them upon the Earth — who knows there’s something lurking in her head, but has no idea what it is or how to use it.

The Witch

Author: Mitchell, Mary Ann
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 463pp.
Pub. Date: February 1, 2007
Publisher: Medallion Press
Links: Mary Ann Mitchell — Official Site

Deep in the basement a wooden box sits on a table. Demons that were called into the world are etched on the box. With tiny claws they writhe, push, and scratch at the wood, attempting to gain freedom. The forked tongues flick the air, bulbous noses scent, swollen cheeks pulse. Their icy determined voices vibrate the atmosphere with inaudible high-pitched screeches calling for revenge.

Five-year old Stephen’s mother, Cathy, is dead. Her body was cremated, her ashes cast into the ocean. Yet her spirit hovers over Stephen. It urges him to go down to the basement. For Stephen is meant to be the demons’ instrument. His innocence will be their mask, his love their weapon.

Because Stephen’s father ended his affair with the babysitter too late. And Stephen’s oppressive, demanding grandmother must pay for the pain she selfishly forced on her daughter.

With blue eyes and cherub smile, Stephen will set out to punish Mommy’s persecutors.

Working for the Devil (A Dante Valentine Novel #1)

Author: Saintcrow, Lilith
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 416pp.
Pub. Date: September 1, 2007
Publisher: Orbit
Links: Lilith Saintcrow: Writer on the Dark Side.

When the Devil needs a rogue demon killed, who does he call?

The Player: Necromance-for-hire Dante Valentine is choosy about her jobs. Hot tempered and with nerves of steel, she can raise the dead like nobody’s business. But one rainy Monday morning, everything goes straight to hell.

The Score: The Devil hires Dante to eliminate a rogue demon: Vardimal Santino. In return, he will let her live. It’s an offer she can’t refuse.

The Catch: How do you kill something that can’t die?