Bloody Bloody Backlist: 2013 Backlist Books

As many of you might remember, 2013 was kind of smack in the middle of a massive wave of “-apocalyptic/viral plague/zombie plague/quarantines and remnant societal enclaves” fiction. And among that outpouring of books, was Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans, about a post-apocalyptic Gulf Coast, devastated by storms and sickness. The initial outbreak of Delta Fever lead to the entire Coast being quarantined, and now, years after the fact, the rest of the country has given its inhabitants up for dead. But life still exists inside the quarantine zone, condensed into warring factions struggling for survival. When Fen’s tribe is murdered for their virus resistant blood, she and her tribe leader’s newborn child are the only two survivors. Determined to get the baby out of the quarantine zone to the Outer States, where she can have a better life, Fen teams up with a rogue scientist, Daniel, who’s found himself trapped inside Orleans and who may just posses the secret to its salvation. But only if the three of them can survive the perilous journey to the quarantine wall and make their escape.

I mean, does this book even need an introduction? Yes, friends, 2013 was the year that blessed us with one one of the strangest, most frightening Christmas books you will ever read. Ho ho hell no. The unforgettable villain of the story, Charlie Manx, is a monster who preys on children, stealing them away in his Rolls-Royce Wraith (the one with the titular NOS4A2 plate) and transporting them clean out of this world to that hidden park of terrors and amusements: Christmasland. The only child who ever escaped him was Vic McQueen, who shares his remarkable ability to slip outside the world. After her narrow escape, Vic grew up determined to forget that Manx ever existed. But when Manx returns and kidnaps her son as revenge, Vic has no choice but return to the past she tried to bury. To take up her bike and follow the hidden roads, all the way to Christmasland.

I realize that not everyone considers The Ghost Bride a horror novel because it’s not explicitly, “make you afraid of dark doorways” scary. But I think there’s always a place in the horror genre for darker books that aren’t overtly scary, but are still horror thematically, tonally, etc. (Though for those of you who prefer a good scare, I’ve heard that they upped the creep level in the Netflix adaptation.) The Ghost Bride is about a young woman, Li Lan, who’s limited prospects of a decent marriage result in her receiving a very strange offer from a wealthy and powerful family that normally wouldn’t consider Li Lan a suitable wife for one of this sons: the Lims need a Ghost Bride. It’s a rare practice in which a young woman is married to a deceased son of the house whose spirit is believed to be restless and haunting the family. In return, Li Lan will trade her uncertain future for a guaranteed a home— but security comes at a price. With every night that passes, Li Lan is drawn further and further in the frightening world of the dead that her betrothed inhabits, and unless she can unravel the secrets at the heart of the Lim household, she may find herself trapped in the afterlife forever.

Jessica. Really. Multiple vampire books two weeks in a row? Okay, but listen: I kind of love the idea of a vampiric viral plague leading to a vampire quarantine zone that’s basically one big blood orgy dance party that humans are too stupid to stay away from. Literally so stupid that they will walk through the one way door into Coldtown, knowing that— alive or not— they’ll never be coming out again. Of course, the quarantine isn’t optional for the vampires themselves, and it isn’t optional for people who have been bitten and exposed to the “virus.” Like Tana and her ex, Aidan, who were attacked at the same sundown party. Left with no choice but to make their way into Coldtown in order to protect their friends and loved ones, the two find themselves in a strange new world where consumption— extravagant, excessive, and fully televised consumption of all kinds— is the rule of the land.