APOCALYPTIC/POST-APOCALYPTIC HORROR

Last Updated: Aug 6, 2021 11:24 AM
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Introduction

Horror Reads

August 2021

Enjoy these novels, graphic novels, and films of different sub-categories of the horror genre.

APOCALYPTIC/POST-APOCALYPTIC HORROR

APOCALYPTIC/POST-APOCALYPTIC HORROR deals with the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it. Think zombies, killer plagues and World War III. Try Josh Malerman’s Bird Box (also a movie), Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead graphic novel series (made into a TV and spin-off series) and the movie Train to Busan.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman
ISBN: 9780062259660
Publication Date: 2015-02-10
Now a Netflix film starring Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson, and Rosa Salazar! Written with the narrative tension of The Road and the exquisite terror of classic Stephen King, Bird Box is a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, set in an apocalyptic near-future world--a masterpiece of suspense from the brilliantly imaginative Josh Malerman. Something is out there . . . Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from. Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now, that the boy and girl are four, it is time to go. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat--blindfolded--with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster? Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey--a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motely group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside--and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted? Interweaving past and present, Josh Malerman's breathtaking debut is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
Train to Busan
ISBN: 0812491017470
Publication Date: 2017
While a zombie-virus breaks out in South Korea, a couple of passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.
The Walking Dead Book 16 by Robert Kirkman; Charlie Adlard (Artist); Stefano Gaudiano (Artist); Cliff Rathburn (Artist)
ISBN: 9781534313255
Publication Date: 2019-09-10
Featuring twelve issues of The New YorkTimes bestselling, Eisner Award winning THE WALKING DEAD series by RobertKirkman (Super Dinosaur, Oblivion Song, Invincible) and CharlieAdlard-along with bonus content like eye-popping covers and a sketchbook-andpresented in a show-stopping, oversized hardcover edition. Perfect for long-timereaders and fans of THE WALKING DEAD. Herereaders follow Rick Grimes as he leads the Commonwealth's Governor, PamelaMilton, on a tour of the various communities Alexandria is aligned with.Naturally... terrible things begin to happen very quickly, and what's done can'tbe undone. Collects THE WALKING DEAD #181-193.

Body Horror

BODY HORROR showcases perversions and mutilations of the human body. Examples include Michael Faber’s Under the Skin (also a movie), Junji Ito’s graphic novels, especially Smashed, and the early filmography of Dave Cronenberg (The Brood). Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Rust Maidens, winner of a 2018 Stoker Award for Best New Novel, is a great read.

The Brood
ISBN: 9781681430614
Publication Date: 2015, Original Publication Date 1979
Special features: new documentary abou the making of the film and Cronenberg's early work; new, restored 4K digital transfer of Cronenberg's 1970 feature Crimes of the Future; 2011 interview with Cronenberg about his early career; interview from 2013 with actors Art Hindle and Cindy Hinds.
The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste
ISBN: 9781947654440
Publication Date: 2018-11-16
Something's happening to the girls on Denton Street. It's the summer of 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio, and Phoebe Shaw and her best friend Jacqueline have just graduated high school, only to confront an ugly, uncertain future. Across the city, abandoned factories populate the skyline; meanwhile at the shore, one strong spark, and the Cuyahoga River might catch fire. But none of that compares to what's happening in their own west side neighborhood. The girls Phoebe and Jacqueline have grown up with are changing. It starts with footprints of dark water on the sidewalk. Then, one by one, the girls' bodies wither away, their fingernails turning to broken glass, and their bones exposed like corroded metal beneath their flesh. As rumors spread about the grotesque transformations, soon everyone from nosy tourists to clinic doctors and government men start arriving on Denton Street, eager to catch sight of "the Rust Maidens" in metamorphosis. But even with all the onlookers, nobody can explain what's happening or why--except perhaps the Rust Maidens themselves. Whispering in secret, they know more than they're telling, and Phoebe realizes her former friends are quietly preparing for something that will tear their neighborhood apart. Alternating between past and present, Phoebe struggles to unravel the mystery of the Rust Maidens--and her own unwitting role in the transformations--before she loses everything she's held dear: her home, her best friend, and even perhaps her own body.
Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito
ISBN: 9781421598468
Publication Date: 2019-04-16
Thirteen chilling nightmares, presented by the master of horror. Try not to be noticed when you eat the secret nectar, otherwise you'll get smashed... What horrific events happened to create the earthbound--people tied to a certain place for the rest of their short lives? Then, a strange haunted house comes to town, but no one expects it to lead to a real hell... Welcome to Junji Ito's world, a world with no escape from endless nightmares.
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
ISBN: 0151006261
Publication Date: 2000-07-23
Isserley picks up hitchhikers with big muscles. She, herself, is tiny-like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her posture is suggestive of some spinal problem. Her breasts are perfect; perhaps implants. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men-trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley isonly interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain-physical and spiritual-and their conversation. Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory-our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion. A grotesqueand comical allegory announcing the arrival of an exciting talent, rich and assured.

COSMIC HORROR

COSMIC HORROR highlights the horrors of the cosmos and the insignificance of humankind. Examples include Victor LaValle’s short novel The Ballad of Black Tom, a retelling of a Lovecraft short story, John Langan’s novel The Fisherman, and the John Carpenter movie The Thing. The first season of the TV series Lovecraft Country is also well-worth a watch.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
ISBN: 9780765387868
Publication Date: 2016-02-16
One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break? "LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do." -- Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All "[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction." -- Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days "LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft's Dagon... [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending." - Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction
The Fisherman by John Langan
ISBN: 9781939905215
Publication Date: 2016-06-30
In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.
Lovecraft Country
ISBN: 0883929728800
Publication Date: 2020
Based on Matt Ruff's novel, this series follows Korean war vet Atticus Freeman, his friend Letitia and his Uncle George on a journey across 1950s Jim Crow America where they face racist terrors and the terrifying monsters of an H.P. Lovecraft paperback.
The Thing
ISBN: 9780783227504
Publication Date: 2005, Original Publication Date 1982
Set in the winter of 1982 at a research station in Antarctica, a twelve-man research team finds an alien being that has fallen from the sky and has remained buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Unfrozen and unleashed, the THING creates havoc and terror as it changes forms and becomes one of them.

Erotic Horror

EROTIC HORROR deals with sexuality and horror. Not to be confused with MONSTER PORN, which is about having sex with Bigfoot. The novels of Anne Rice (try Interview with the Vampire and Lasher) are a good starting point, as well as the True Blood TV series, based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels of Charlaine Harris.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
ISBN: 0345409647
Publication Date: 1997-03-18
The spellbinding classic that started it all from the #1 New York Times bestselling author "A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth--the education of the vampire."--Chicago Tribune Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force--a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.
Lasher by Anne Rice
ISBN: 0345377648
Publication Date: 1994-08-09
"Steamy . . . fast-paced and hugely engrossing . . . . Rice's title character -- a seductive, evil highly sexual and ultimately tragic creature -- is fascinating." -- The Miami Herald "Behind all the velvet drapes and gossamer winding sheets, this is an old-fashioned family saga . . . . Rice's descriptive writing is so opulent it almost begs to be read by candlelight." --The Washington Post Book World At the center of Anne Rice's brilliant new novel, the beautiful Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven, must flee from the darkly brutal, yet irresistible demon known as Lasher. With a dreamlike power, this wickedly seductive entity draws us through twilight paths, telling a chillingly hypnotic story of spiritual aspirations and passion . . . .
True Blood: Season 1
ISBN: 9781419877315
Publication Date: 2009

Extreme Horror

EXTREME HORROR, also known as splatterpunk and hardcore horror, is graphic, visceral and disturbing. Examples of extreme horror include Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho and Ania Ahlborn’s novel Brother. Movies include the Human Centipede (which also counts as body horror) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
ISBN: 0679735771
Publication Date: 1991-03-06
The modern classic, the basis of a Broadway musical, and major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films starring Christian Bale, Chloe Sevigny, Jared Leto, and Reese Witherspoon, and directed by Mary Harron. In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Brother by Ania Ahlborn
ISBN: 9781476783734
Publication Date: 2015-09-29
From the bestselling horror author of Within These Walls and The Bird Eater comes a terrifying novel that follows a teenager determined to break from his family's unconventional--and deeply disturbing--traditions. Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he's sure that someday he'll see the world beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he's immediately smitten. For a moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he's become. But his brother, Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place...
Human Centipede
ISBN: 0030306954097
Publication Date: 2010
Texas Chain Saw Masacre
ISBN: 0788607863
Publication Date: 2006, Original Publication Date 1974

Folk Horror

FOLK HORROR is horror set in the country/rural areas. Examples include Mike Mignola’s graphic novel Hellboy: The Crooked Man and Others, Gemma Files’ novel Experimental Film and Adam Nevill’s novel The Ritual (also a movie). There are a number of great folk horror movies out there, the latest being Midsommar.

Experimental Film by Gemma Files
ISBN: 9781771483490
Publication Date: 2015-12-03
Fired at almost the same time as her son Clark's Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, former film critic turned teacher Lois Cairns is caught in a depressive downward spiral, convinced she's a failure who's spent half her adult life writing about other people's dreams without ever seeing any of her own come true. One night Lois attends a program of experimental film and emerges convinced she's seen something no one else has--a sampled piece of silver nitrate silent film footage whose existence might prove that an eccentric early 20th-century socialite who disappeared under mysterious circumstances was also one of Canada's first female movie-makers. Though it raises her spirits and revitalizes her creatively, Lois's headlong quest to discover the truth about Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb almost immediately begins to send her much further than she ever wanted to go, revealing increasingly troubling links between her subject's life and her own. Slowly but surely, the malign influence of Mrs Whitcomb's muse begins to creep into every aspect of Lois's life, even placing her son in danger. But how can one increasingly ill and unstable woman possibly hope to defeat a threat that's half long-lost folklore, half cinematically framed hallucination--an existential nightmare made physical, projected off the screen and into real life?
Hellboy Library Volume 4: the Crooked Man and the Troll Witch by Mike Mignola (Illustrator)
ISBN: 9781595826589
Publication Date: 2011-06-28
The oversized Hellboy Library hardcover series continues, featuring Mike Mignola and Richard Corben's award-winning Crooked Man story! Hellboy has racked up multiple Eisner Awards, numerous spinoffs, a novel line, video games, cartoons, and two feature films. Hellboy Library Volume 4 collects two complete trade-paperbacks full of short stories- The Troll Witch and Other Stories and The Crooked Man, as well as an extensive selection of previously unreleased sketches and designs.
Midsommar
ISBN: 0031398306849
Publication Date: 2019
The Ritual by Adam Nevill
ISBN: 9780312641849
Publication Date: 2012-02-14
Now a Netflix Original Movie! When four old University friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. With limited experience between them, a shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives. Lost, hungry, andsurrounded by forest untouched for millennia, Luke figures things couldn't possibly get any worse. But then they stumble across an old habitation. Ancient artefacts decorate the walls and there are bones scattered upon the dry floors. The residue of old rites and pagan sacrifice for something that still exists in the forest. Something responsible for the bestial presence that follows their every step. As the four friends stagger in the direction of salvation, they learn that death doesn't comeeasy among these ancient trees . . .

Literary Horror

LITERARY HORROR contains elements of both horror and literary fiction. Try Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (made into a Netflix series that has nothing to do with the book), Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and Kea Wilson’s We Eat Our Own, the best alternate-history novel about the making of Italian cannibal-sleaze 80’s movie Cannibal Holocaust (note: I do not recommend this movie) you will ever read.

Beloved by Toni Morrison; A.s. Byatt (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780307264886
Publication Date: 2006-10-17
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison's Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe's house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe's terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison's unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy; Harold Bloom (Introduction by)
ISBN: 0679641041
Publication Date: 2001-01-02
"The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable." Cormac McCarthy's masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf. "A classic American novel of regeneration through violence," declares Michael Herr. "McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers."
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; Laura Miller (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780143039983
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
The greatest haunted house story ever written, the inspiration for a 10-part Netflix series directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, and Timothy Hutton First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers--and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson
ISBN: 9781501128325
Publication Date: 2019-04-02
A "canny, funny, impressively detailed debut novel" (The New York Times) that blurs the lines between life and art with the story of a film director's unthinkable experiment in the Amazon jungle. When a nameless, struggling actor in 1970s New York gets the call that an enigmatic director wants him for an art film set in the Amazon, he doesn't hesitate: he flies to South America, no questions asked. He quickly realizes he's made a mistake. He's replacing another actor who quit after seeing the script--a script the director now claims doesn't exist. The movie is over budget. The production team seems headed for a breakdown. The air is so wet that the celluloid film disintegrates. But what the actor doesn't realize is that the greatest threat might be the town itself, and the mysterious shadow economy that powers this remote jungle outpost. Entrepreneurial Americans, international drug traffickers, and M-19 guerillas are all fighting for South America's future--and the groups aren't as distinct as you might think. The actor thought this would be a role that would change his life. Now he's worried if he'll survive it. This "gripping, ambitious...vivid, scary novel" (Publishers Weekly) is a thrilling journey behind the scenes of a shocking film and a thoughtful commentary on violence and its repercussions.

Occult Horror

OCCULT HORROR, also known as supernatural horror, deals with ghosts, monstrous beings, and Satan. Try Grady Hendrix’s novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Alma Katsu’s novel The Hunger, and Stephen Graham Jones’ novel The Only Good Indian. For movies try any movie in the Conjuring franchise (The Conjuring 2).

The Conjuring 2
ISBN: 0794043179341
Publication Date: 2016
Two paranormal investigators work to help a single mother and her children who are being terrorized by malicious spirits.
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
ISBN: 9780735212510
Publication Date: 2018-03-06
As featured in The New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Issue "Supernatural suspense at its finest...The best thing about The Hunger is that it will scare the pants off you."--The New York Times Book Review "Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark."--Stephen King A tense and gripping reimagining of one of America's most fascinating historical moments: the Donner Party with a supernatural twist. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos. They cannot seem to escape tragedy...or the feelings that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it's a curse from the beautiful Tamsen Donner (who some think might be a witch), their ill-advised choice of route through uncharted terrain, or just plain bad luck, the ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains...and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along. Effortlessly combining the supernatural and the historical, The Hunger is an eerie, thrilling look at the volatility of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.
My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
ISBN: 9781594748622
Publication Date: 2016-05-17
It's BEACHES meets THE EXORCIST in this heartwarming & horrifying coming-of-age novel by author Grady Hendrix (Horrorstor, Quirk, 2014). Two high school BFFs find their friendship tested when one of them is possessed by a demon. Abby and Gretchen have been BFFs since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shared love of E.T., roller-skating parties, and scratch-and-sniff stickers. But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act...different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre occurrences begin to pile up, Abby realizes there is only one possible explanation- Her best friend Gretchen, her favorite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not going to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
ISBN: 9781982136451
Publication Date: 2020-07-14
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From USA TODAY bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a "masterpiece" (Locus Magazine) of a novel about revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition. Labeled "one of 2020's buzziest horror novels" (Entertainment Weekly), this is a remarkable horror story that "will give you nightmares--the good kind of course" (BuzzFeed). From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Psychological Horror

PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR relies on atmosphere, emotional/psychological states and unreliable narrators to disturb and unsettle the reader. Try Kathe Koja’s novel The Cipher, Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, and the movie Get Out.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja
ISBN: 9781946154330
Publication Date: 2020-09-15
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag. "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not". But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
Get Out
ISBN: 0191329005750
Publication Date: 2017
A young black man meets his white girlfriend's parents at their estate, only to find out that the situation is much more sinister than it appears.
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
ISBN: 9780062363237
Publication Date: 2015-06-02
WINNER OF THE 2015 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen María Machado
ISBN: 9781555977887
Publication Date: 2017-10-03
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction "[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."--Roxane Gay "In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn't put it down."--Karen Russell In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode ofLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious,Her Body and Other Partiesswings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

List Created By

BCCLS Adult Services Committee 2020-2021

George Galuschak, Montvale Public Library

APOCALYPTIC/POST-APOCALYPTIC HORROR

Introduction

Horror Reads

August 2021

APOCALYPTIC/POST-APOCALYPTIC HORROR

Body Horror

COSMIC HORROR

Erotic Horror

Extreme Horror

Folk Horror

Literary Horror

Occult Horror

Psychological Horror

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