Lamplight (2017) is a modern-day ghost story by Benjamin Appleby Dean, following a group of young adults who receive mysterious anonymous messages on their phones when their friends begin to disappear, one by one. At the same time, the town of Crooksfield experiences a sequence of unexplained electrical faults - lights and lamps that cannot be turned off, even when disconnected.
Tropes used:
- Bittersweet Ending: Amy ultimately finds a new strength within herself, and drives the Lamp-Lighter back, but at the cost of all of her friends.
- Darkness Equals Death: Subverted. Total darkness is the only place safe from the book's antagonists, who depend on artifical light in order to exist.
- Eldritch Abomination: Both the grotesque shadow-creatures who make up the main antagonists, and, it's strongly hinted, the Lamp-Lighter itself.
- The Heartless: It's not clear whether the shadow-creatures are actually born out of fear and loneliness or merely prey on it, but they only target those who have become socially isolated, both physically and electronically.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The un-named beings who infiltrate Crooksfield cannot be physically seen - only their shadows are visible.
- Preserve Your Gays: Amy, the only gay character, is also the sole survivor of the book's events.
- Surreal Horror: Especially towards the final third of the book, as reality begins to break down and the shadow-creatures come through into the material world.
- Weakened by the Light: Inverted. The creatures here aren't deterred by light at all - in fact they need it in order to take physical form.
