Douglas Clegg

Mrs. Bluebeard

Sunday, October 6th, 2019

Book has changed publication date. More information to come.

“I never truly believed that Olivia Palgrave was my mother.”

So begins this page-turner of gothic suspense as award-winning author Douglas Clegg spins the tale of a boy growing up within the web of secrets of a house of shadows by the sea in New England. 120+ pages in print. Genre: Gothic Suspense, Psychological Horror.

Sometimes, Memory is the Scariest Place

The Faces

Tuesday, October 1st, 2019

First Time in Trade Paperback & Ebook

Beneath the Mask of Nice, a Face of Horror

In this “masterful novella”* of horror and suspense from bestselling and award-winning author Douglas Clegg, a costume party opens the door to a terrifying world.

Hypnotic, haunting, and compulsively readable, THE FACES is high-test nightmare fuel. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.”—Richard Chizmar, author of Chasing the Boogeyman, and Gwendy’s Button Box(with Stephen King).

Are They Watching You?

Nothing goes right for Harold until he finds the famous mask based on his father’s favorite old-time comic strip. Joe Face and his family all had a nice smile and an easy-going attitude to the worst life could throw their way — in the funny pages.

But soon enough, his life turns inside out, revealing…

The Faces of Nightmare

A novella. Genres: Psychological Horror, Horror fiction, Weird Fiction.

Exceeds expectations…A suspenseful tale of mounting terror…”—Rue Morgue Magazine.*

“Superior horror fiction…powerful, succinct, and deep. Highly recommended.”—Scream Magazine.

THE FACES seems whimsical at first…until the story turns nasty and profoundly disturbing. The social satire is the real horror here, making us dread what lurks behind the faces of our closest friends and loved ones. Another masterful novella from Douglas Clegg.“–Norman Prentiss, author of Odd Adventures with Your Other Father.

The Dark Game

Tuesday, January 31st, 2017

Can you escape the nightmare?

Free Preview! Click here to start reading The Dark Game (Two Novelettes) now.

Men imprisoned, one in war and one in an asylum, these two novelettes are packed with twisted psychological suspense and spine-tingling horror at its darkest.

Read The Dark Game, a dark suspense novelette about war and mind by Douglas Clegg.

Also available in a trade paperback edition.

One man, a prisoner of war; and the other, a disturbed young man who wants out of a hospital for the criminally insane – at any cost!

Douglas Clegg brings together two dark classics with The Dark Game and I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes in this novella-length collection (125 pages in its print edition).

Note: These two short novellas/novelettes can also be found together in the collection Lights Out.

Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

First Time in Trade Paperback

You’re invited to dinner…

In trade paperback, Douglas Clegg/s Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters. Published by Alkemara Press.Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters is 112 pages in its hardcover form. NOTE: this is not a horror novel as such. It is more a gothic literary mystery with a dark underpinning.

In October 1890 authorities discovered two teenaged girls at Bog Farm surrounded by a scene of unimaginable carnage. A legend grew of their cannibalistic night of terror…

Twenty years later, an inexperienced reporter travels to the infamous New Hampshire farm, determined to shed light upon the events of that night of sheer horror.

Lizzie Borden, Dr. Crippen, the Windrow Sisters

— murderers whose mystique has lasted more than a century. But of them all, the tale of the Windrow girls is unrivaled in its legend of depravity and innocence corrupted.

Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters is 100 pages in its first print edition. It is a short novella.

Funerary Rites

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

First time in Special Edition Paperback

They’re different. They don’t even look like us.

From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Douglas Clegg comes a dark novelette of a village caught on the edge of fear. 60 pages.

Someone should do something about them.

When outsiders arrive to a quiet New England village, they bring odd and outlandish customs with them. One special summer night, something terrible happens in the village — brought on by those strangers, the ones who live out in the woods, the ones who go barefoot and speak in an odd language.

“Clegg’s stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby.”– Dean Koontz, New York Times Bestselling Author.

Funerary Rites can also be found within the collection, Lights Out.

Isis

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

First Time in Trade Paperback

She broke the law of the Dead…but at what price?

If you love the fiction of Daphne du Maurier, Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, and other dark gothics with ghost stories, you are sure to enjoy the novella, Isis.

From Publishers Weekly:

“Clegg (The Abandoned) expands the burgeoning backstory of his multivolume Harrow haunted house saga with this poignant chamber tragedy involving young Iris Catherine Villiers (who, as an adult, will become Isis Claviger, oracle of the spook-ridden Hudson Valley academy)…This potent novella, one of Clegg’s best, is both a stand-alone triumph and a powerful new chapter in his evolving series.”

From Fangoria:

“…a story of love, loss and longing…told with the beautiful prose of an old-fashioned Gothic era.”

From The Strand magazine:

“Haunting yet poignant, Isis is a work that should firmly place Clegg among the all-stars of horror such as Straub, Machen, LeFanu, and Stoker.”

From NY Times Bestselling Author R.L. Stine (Goosebumps):

“‘Never sleep there, for the dead enter your dreams.’ Those frightening words froze me to the page. And when Isis dares to open the doors to the Tombs, I knew the dark legends and terrors of this book would stay in my dreams for a long, long time.”

From Christine Feehan, New York Times bestselling author:

“Douglas Clegg’s Isis is a haunting beauty of a tale as chilling and dark as the shadows on an October night.”

From Cemetery Dance Magazine:

“…a literary work for the ages. This story is Clegg at his absolute best. . . . lovely and powerful and profound. . . . a story that will live on for decades”

  • Other novels in this genre that would have similar readerships though different books, obviously: The Haunting of Hill House, Hell House, The Woman in Black, Ghost Story, The Shining, Haunted.
  • Movies, also similar audience (if different story): The Innocents, The Others, The Haunting, The Woman in Black.

The Necromancer

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

In Trade Paperback & Ebook

“A cross between the Marquis de Sade and Charles Dickens…Scintillatingly brilliant.”*

Love shows like Taboo, Game of Thrones, with their dark seamy underbelly of history or alternate history? Enjoy historical fiction with a bit of supernatural and occult woven through? You’re sure to delight in devilish, The Necromancer. Note: Not for the faint of heart.

Occult societies, murder, brothels, London, and a young debauched Victorian on the loose…Justin Gravesend, who would later in life build the house called Harrow, was once an innocent Welsh lad in Victorian London…until he crossed the road to the night side of town…

Genre: Horror, gothic thriller, coming of age, Victoriana, occult, suspense, supernatural fiction, short novel, novella, prequel. This book is 196 pages in its first trade paperback edition (now available as well as in ebook).

Read Some Reviews – If You Dare!

“Readers will find themselves enthralled by the early life and lessons of young Justin Gravesend…There is a richness to the prose in this book reminiscent of ‘The Confessions of an Opium Eater’ penned so long ago. Side by side, they might have been written by contemporaries, and that is the magic of Clegg’s prose in this volume.” — FeoAmante.com Reviews.

*”…Like reading a cross between the Marquis DeSade and Charles Dickens.. [Clegg’s] prose is scintillatingly brilliant in parts and I was sucked right into this squalid tale of black magic. …the book is worth this little gem of horror literature…” – Alternative Reality Webzine.

“Justin Gravesend’s story is one of perversity and debauchery and his embracing of it. Clegg does not back away from the more unsavory elements, yet keeps the language of the time (presumably the late 1800s), so that sometimes it felt as if I were reading something from Boccaccio or the like. ‘The Necromancer’ is never anything less than compelling, and I finished this relatively short tale in two sittings.” – Craig’s Book Club Reviews.

 

 

 

Purity

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

In Trade Paperback, Audiobook, & Ebook

There is No Madness but the Madness of the Gods

Short novel of 150 pages in its print edition.

In Purity, the darkest force is love. From award-winning author Douglas Clegg comes a dark psychological thriller of dangerous obsession. This is one of Clegg’s bestselling and most popular novellas of suspense.

There is No Purity but the Purity of Love

“Douglas Clegg turns the screws dexterously in this sleek, multifaceted suspense story…in a vacation paradise saturated in alcohol, entitlement and hypocrisy…”—Publisher’s Weekly

Purity by Douglas Clegg in print from Alkemara Press

The Words

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

First Time in Trade Paperback

The Horror Begins When You Say the Words…

The Words - Trade Paperback - Douglas Clegg130 pages in print, The Words is the second book of the Dark Coming of Age series.*

When Mark befriends outsider Dash, he believes his new friend to be an outcast rebel. But Dash leads Mark into a world of endless night where a ritual of darkness leads to terror…a Lovecraftian of the terrors of devotion.

A Short Novel of Friendship, Gods and Monsters