Bloody Bloody Backlist: It Came From 2017

Haunted House books come in an array of “flavors,” from the chillingly Gothic, to the gruesome and gory, to outright skin crawling terror. And when it comes to creepy and generally upsetting (complimentary), The Grip of It really delivers. With short chapters that drive up the tension, and a dual narrative split between our two leads, this book will leave you wishing you’d turned on an extra light before you started reading. In The Grip of It, Julie and James, who flee city life in an attempt to save their dysfunctional marriage, end up settling in a house in the country. But what was supposed to be a fresh start for the troubled couple soon turns into a nightmare. As the house seems to warp and decay before their eyes, Julie and James rush to discover its sinister history before they become trapped within its walls forever.

Victor LaValle’s The Changeling — which is actually being adapted into a series by Apple TV+! — is already pretty well known to most of the horror community, I know. But it’s an excellent, eerie book, and always worth revisiting. It’s about a couple, Apollo and Emma, who have recently become parents. Apollo is settling into his role as a father, determined to be a better parent to his child than his own father was to him. Emma, on the other hand, has stopped showing any interest in their baby at all, and what first appeared to be post-partum depression soon devolves into something far more concerning. When Emma does something terrible, then disappears, Apollo has no choice but to follow, beginning a journey in a strange and frightening world of secrets and living legends.

And last, but most certainly not least, on this week’s list is one of my absolute, hands down favorite short story collections of all time. Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties is made up of dark, beautiful, and fantastical stories that you won’t soon forget. So if you haven’t read it, yet I highly recommend adding it to your reading list. While some of the stories in the collection are more instantly recognizable as horror — like the infamous “The Husband Stitch” — others are more sad or sentimental, underlaid by the knowledge that something has gone terribly wrong. And they’re all fantastic. My personal favorite is still the soft sorrow of “Inventory,” in which the narrator makes an inventory of their lovers as the world around them collapses in the midst of a plague-driven apocalypse.