1. It's no older than 1993, and I believe it was a paperback. The cover had a very deep blue tint, a haunted looking house in the distance with a log in the foreground, perhaps a felled tree, and above the house was a giant skull with its hands around the house.
2.
3. I think I read it in the late '70s. It most likely would have been
in the horror genre section of the library, since that was my big
interest back then. The main character was a young teenage girl, whose mother was dead (possibly had recently died). Her father was devastated by grief, and didn't pay much attention to the girl. As she matured, she bound her breasts down with tape...I assume to try to stay a little girl, and keep from growing up. At
the end of the book, she unbound her breasts, let her hair down,
dressed as an adult, and went to her father, pretending to be, or
possibly believing she was, his dead wife (her own mother). Found! It's:
4.A fairly well-to-do couple move from the city to a place in the
woods (I even think they're renovating the place they buy). The wife is
doing research in the area about the mountain folk who have been
inbreeding and eventually comes to respect them... but of course there's
some sort of menace in the woods. I remember she throws a fit at a high
society party, a handsome but shady local laborer, and that she finds
safety with the inbreds. Found! It's:
4.
#2 may be "Tales from the Midnight Hour" by J. B. Stamper. See this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/tales-midnight-hour-j-stamper/dp/sitb-next/B000OEN900
and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_for_the_Midnight_Hour
The story may be "The Boarder."
#4 sounds sort of like "The Hunting Season" by John Coyne.
ReplyDeleteWow, night watchman, both of those were correct! I and my readers thank you.
ReplyDeleteGlad to be of service!
ReplyDeleteMakes me happy that there are fans out there with so much genre knowledge.
ReplyDelete#3 is Daughter of Darkness, by J R Lowell. It's one of my favorites!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3954533-daughter-of-darkness
Thanks Melissa, you made the reader very happy!
ReplyDeleteSadly, none of these seem to be it. :\
ReplyDeleteThis is the closest thing I have found to visually represent the cover art, except instead of the vamp it's skeletal and there are two hands around the house, and of course the blue tint instead of green. Maybe I dreamed it up as a kid, after 10 years or so of searching it is entirely possible lol.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/9d/b9/b1/9db9b1ef7fa28d35e5d30ed7ea7e4685.jpg
Thank you all so much for your help!
Hello everyone! After much continuous searching, I have found this one! It was a true splinter in my mind.
ReplyDeleteIt is the 1984 print of Ghostly Gallery by Alfred Hitchcock.
I've been trying to figure this out since the early 2000's so this is a HUGE relief to my sanity to know it wasn't something from my childhood imaginations
Thank you all so much for your help!!!