Author: Mary Kay Brayer

I can remember happening upon an edited-for-TV version of Devil’s Advocate when I was in high school, and staring at the screen in abject fear during a commercial break as my dad flipped over to watch whatever game was on. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, dear reader, but among the trifecta of shit I can’t handle, demons are Number One.

By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm, religious horror. (By the way, though demons are MY number one fear, this list doesn’t JUST include demons. Cults are also a huge contributor.)

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases)

Magnetized: Conversations with a Serial Killer by Carlos Busqued, translated by Samuel Rutter

Based on a series of interviews conducted by nonfiction writer Carlos Busqued, this true crime account details the upbringing and crimes of a Santero convinced to murder four strangers. It’s so spooky… you’ll love it.

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist):

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

I’m not gonna lie to y’all, I thought this book was going to be as dry as the others by authors who were writing in the 18th century, but this Scotsman goes deep into the terror of how twisted someone can get when they believe themselves to go automatically to heaven. It seriously, to this day, is one of THE scariest books I have ever read.

 

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Though marketed as a largely literary novel, the very opening of this book strikes fear into my heart: it starts with the terrorist bombing of a plane. As two passengers, actors with opposing viewpoints, fall to earth, they become “transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil.” (And did you know that this is the book that evoked the fatwah on Rushdie?)

 

In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, A Father, a Cult by Rebecca Stott

This memoir illuminates what it’s like to grow up as a fourth-generation cult member. Stott attempts to make sense of her childhood as the daughter of a high-ranking official of the Exclusive Brethren, a cult that believed the world was run by Satan. When her father gives her the memoir of the cult’s doings in the 1960s when on his deathbed, he charges Stott with writing about its truths.

God, Harlem U.S.A. by Jill Watts

This book of nonfiction details the cult of Father Divine. He’s a largely controversial figure who, in the 1930s, started a church that seemed very contradictory when contrasting his message with his own personal wealth. Though many would consider this book more an ethnography or biography than horror… I mean, it’s a cult! Cults are powerful!

 

Heaven’s Harlots: My Fifteen Years As a Sacred Prostitute in the Children of God Cult by Miriam Williams

This memoir offers the first-hand account of a woman who tries to get her own life back after a life of sex with strangers, with the motivation of trying to save their souls.

 

 

Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez

I know I keep recommending this one to y’all, but if you haven’t gotten it yet, please go on and do it. Break the monotony of your quarantine and read about a 12-year-old girl raised by her family’s slaves, treated for rabies that she didn’t have, the object of her exorcist’s very real desire. It will not disappoint you.

 

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

This memoir details the coming out story of a girl adopted by a very strictly religious family. At one point, an orange demon even comes to talk to her about whether she’s really homosexual. It’s a must-read, though it’s scary in a social sense rather than an existential one.

 

Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

These stories bring to life contemporary Argentina as a world of military dictatorship, vibrance, youth, and drugs. Enriquez says of this collection, “in literature I really care about the themes of bodies and desire and don’t think they should be restrained by medical discourses, or religious or social taboos or whatever.”

 

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami, translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel

In 1995 a doomsday cult released a poisonous gas in the air of the public transport system. Murakami interviews survivors in this book, illustrating how they were affected by the attack.

 

Harbingers (FKA news):

A few newsletters ago, we talked about Carmen Maria Machado’s horror memoir, In the Dream House. Here, she talks about surviving the book she had to write.

“If you are well and at home and have enough to eat and can concentrate on a book, do you read toward or away from your fear? Reading for comfort and escape is readily explicable. But why read about what you fear?” Fairy Tales and Facts: Siri Hustvedt on How We Read in a Pandemic might answer that question.

Speaking of fairy tales, here’s what Rebecca Solnit has to say about loneliness in our living nightmare/fairy tale.

According to Atlas Obscura, these are the 24 creepiest children’s stories that still haunt them today.

A24 set up auctions of some of its most popular horror movie props (think, the May Queen dress and bear’s head from Midsommar, or the actual light from The Lighthouse.) The best part is, “100% of each auction’s proceeds will benefit four charities helping New York’s hardest-hit communities and frontline workers.”

Here’s what Margaret Atwood (author of popular culture’s darling dystopia, Handmaid’s Tale) thinks we should be doing right now.

Want to watch some of Shakespeare’s spookiest tragedies? Click here for on-demand screenings of the Stratford Festival!

In case you’re concerned about Indie bookstores, here’s how they’re coping with the pandemic.

Don’t forget to enter Book Riot’s $250 gift card from Barnes and Noble giveaway!

Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or if you want to ask for a particular theme to a newsletter. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Enjoy reading about these scary religious propositions, and #stayhome. I’ll talk to y’all next week!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

If you’re like me, any horror movie that details someone GOING IN someplace is a big fat nu uh for me. You know what you should do when your car breaks down? Go in that barn full of chainsaws. (You thought what.) What should you do when you’re bored on spring break? Ignore the harbinger and continue driving your family into the desert in that rusted RV. (Oh hell no.) When you’re on the lam from boarding school? Hitch-hike and sell your soul to the devil. (You got the wrong one.) Those movies aren’t even scary, right? Like, why bother with the terror of how to escape Jaws when I can just. not. go. in. the water.

Ain’t nobody going nowhere right now, I HOPE, and that’s mostly because the horror of traveling is even more unfathomable than usual, what with germs lurking around every corner.

By the way, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s latest and greatest in horror. Join me, won’t you, on this journey (see what I did there?) through this realm of hell, Traveling.

Earworm: “What He Wrote” by Laura Marling

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

The Boatman’s Daughter by Andy Davidson

Miranda’s job is ferrying contraband across the bayou, but the situation gets more complex (yes, more complex than drug transport) when supernatural and human forces escalate, and the preacher she traffics for makes a peculiar request.

 

 

The Deep by Alma Katsu

This novel takes place during one of the most famous travels gone awry, the Titanic. Rather than focus too much on the iceberg, though, something else has distracted Annie from her job as a maid: the ship is haunted.

 

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist):

“Kneller’s Happy Campers” from The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God by Etgar Keret

This collection of short stories holds many macabre and fabulist tales, like the bus driver who won’t hold the door when people are running late, but my favorite is “Kneller’s Happy Campers.” That story takes place in an afterlife populated only by people who have completed suicide–if this sounds familiar, it’s because it was adapted into the film Wristcutters: A Love Story. The short story is fairly different, though, and takes place at a campsite/makeshift way station for souls that are, they think, on their way somewhere else.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

In this multi-racial, southern family, some members see ghosts, and others don’t. The mother of two ropes her friend into picking up their father from jail when he discharges, and the children are just along for the ride. In fact, the kids are the ones who see that they didn’t just pick up their dad but also a vengeful boy-ghost.

 

Harbingers (FKA news):

Why do women kill? And why is it so hard for us to understand their motivations? Check out this article to learn more.

Emily St John Mandel (author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel) talks about writing pandemic literature during an actual pandemic.

Want to know how people are reading during this pandemic? Click here.

Rest in peace, British horror actress and director, Hilary Heath.

So, yeah, we might not be able to hang out together, but did you know that Drive-In Theaters are making a resurgence? Because everyone watches from inside (or outside) their cars, we can still social distance. Tune in near you for the latest horror adaptations!

And speaking of film horror, Twede’s Cafe from Twin Peaks has been restored to its Lynchian glory.

One last thing about film adaptations: Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, says here that we never really left the era of Patrick Bateman.

I don’t know about y’all, but when we’re on lockdown and it starts raining, I feel suddenly so trapped. Here’s a list of some of the best rain in literature, from the southern Gothic of Faulkner to the contemporary genius of Jesmyn Ward.

Want to know what fiction gets right (and wrong) about pandemics? Click here.

Want to know what John Keats thought about being held in quarantine? Of course you do.

Y’all ain’t even ready for this collection of dissected skulls and medical marvel show and tell. I know that it’s not exactly literary, but you GOT to see it–and hell, maybe it’ll motivate you to write something horrifying!

Want to know about the long-lasting fallout from the 1894 plague in Hong Kong? How could you not.

Want ideas about what to read to distract yourself from IRL horrors?

Want to know which vampire book you should read next? Take this quiz!

Here are some reads about creepy kids, too.

It may not surprise you to know that two books about dystopias are among New York Public Library’s most borrowed.

Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or if you want to ask for a particular theme to a newsletter. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Enjoy reading about this traveling and #stayhome. I’ll talk to y’all next week!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Content Warning: Discussion of suicide

 

During training at my first week on the job at a conventions hotel, a returning employee looked up into the atrium and told me that when he worked there years before, a woman jumped from the forty-second floor. He held his huge, manicured hand up and traced her fall. The wires crossing the open space cut her into pieces. Housekeeping cleaned her up after she landed, which sounded, to him, “like a truck hit the building.” All the employees went to counseling afterward.

I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to that? I didn’t ask why, if this was a forty-five floor hotel, she jumped off the forty-second. He did tell me that she was not a guest at the hotel, and no one below had been hurt, which seemed to me like a miracle.

I didn’t work there long. Less than a year. Not just because of that story–I wasn’t even THERE when it happened and I’ll never forget it–but because hotels are disturbing to me. They’re so transient. So clean-seeming. So microcosmic. So, like, empty. It’s so weird to me that there were hundreds of people who worked at that hotel, and yet if they did their jobs WELL, it looked as though they never existed.

Very few people are staying in hotels at this time, because non-essential traveling is mandated to stop. Yet people who are symptomatic are staying there to quarantine themselves from their families. When I heard that the first thing I thought was, when they check out, Who’s going to have to clean that room?

I write all this as an introduction to The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. This week’s realm of hell/theme is Hotels, and I’ll be your Virgil through it. (Don’t worry, I’ll tell you about more than The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, and Psycho.) I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and with no further ado, let’s go ahead on and check in to our rooms.

Ear worm: “Hotel Yorba” by The White Stripes–“all they got inside is vacancy.”

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Written in a truly noir style, this new novel combines timelines of past and present into a sort of time-warp that bends itself to the hotel itself. It focuses on the spooky atmosphere and the nature of sleep, and is a well-written, well-received slow burn of a creepshow.

 

 

The Return by Rachel Harrison

When one of the friends in a four person clique goes missing without explanation, and then turns up on the front porch a year later, the BFFs’ natural response is, of course, girls’ trip. They book themed rooms at a boutique hotel only to realize, slowly, that the returning friend is… not okay.

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist): 

The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones

Y’all already know that I love Stephen Graham Jones and his writing with all of my dark cold heart, but listen to this beginning: a mad scientist figures out the controls of the experiment on how to weigh souls (originally conducted in 1901). Then, he ventures to help a woman who is convinced she is being haunted by her dead sister, whom she ate in the womb. I KNOW, RIGHT. Let’s do this!

Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

A word of caution: make sure that when you order this book, you’re ordering the English translation (unless, of course, you speak fluent Spanish). Which I do not. I was drunker than I thought when I pushed the “GIMME IT” button, AKA “add to cart,” and was SUPER disappointed that I had to wait on another version of this collection of short stories to arrive.

I digress. While not all of these stories take place in hotels, as you may have surmised from my introduction, the lives of cleaning women have fascinated me. I know they’re not ghosts. I know that. But I remember as a six-year-old going with my mom to clean new houses after contractors finished construction, and sitting on an overturned bucket in my parka scraping paint off a window with a razor blade, and just being like, no one will ever know that we were here.

I digress again. Get this book, y’all. It’s spooky and realistic and shows a side of the service and hospitality industry that you’ve likely seen, and then likely forgotten.

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

This novel is a surrealist classic in which Juan Preciado follows his mother’s dying wish to find his father. He travels to his father’s hometown to find a literal ghost town–a town inhabited by ghosts–and while he’s there, he stays at the makeshift bed and breakfast hosted by Ediviges, one of the town’s ghosts, until he’s taken in by the cook at Media Luna. The story unfolds like a dream, and it’s a truly fascinating tale.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is the GOAT when it comes to noir and horror, and this western mafia mash-up is no exception. When a Good Ol’ Boy finds two million dollars in a shootout that he stumbles upon in the desert, he goes on the lam, where he’s hunted by both the “prophet of destruction” trying to recover the money, and the old-time sheriff who is trying to save both their lives and their souls. (I truly cannot oversell this book. It’s the dismal tide. If you haven’t read it, go ahead on and do yourself a favor by ordering it from your local indie bookseller. And then live-tweet all your extreme reactions, and make sure you tag me.)

Ring by Kōji Suzuki, translated by Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley

You’re almost definitely familiar with the myriad adaptations of this book, but in case you’re not… here’s the synopsis: a group of teenagers take a vacation to a cabin in the mountains outside Tokyo. While there, they accidentally watch a cursed video tape that haunts them, warning them that unless specified acts are performed, each of them will die in seven days. (To be totally honest, I watched The Ring movie in ninth grade the morning before my dad came to pick me up from a sleepover, and every time our landline rang, I jumped out of my skin.) It’s super scary, especially right now when videos just autoplay through no direction of your own, and we’re just constantly consuming content.

Perfect Days by Raphael Montes, translated by Alison Entrekin

Clarice is a vivacious screenwriter hard at work on Perfect Days, her work in progress about a group of fun-loving kids roadtripping across Brazil. Teo is a friendless recluse who lives with his paraplegic mother and becomes unhealthily obsessed with Clarice, to the point that he kidnaps her and retraces the map of her screenplay, stopping to rest in hotels across Brazil. Kind of makes you NOT want to leave the house… even if we could right now.

Harbingers (News): 

Want to learn about the Providence Biltmore, AKA the inspiration for both the Bates Motel and the converted apartment of Rosemary’s Baby? Read here!

Want to learn some ancient alchemy? Check this out.

Lotssss of horror options on the Indie Next List!

Look how delightful these depictions of Riverhead Books’ catalogue are, from artist Steve Powers rendering as a mural in Brooklyn, miniaturist Lorraine Loots’ tiny paintings of each title, and books in blocks.

Check out this historical account of why the bubonic plague doctors iconic uniforms were… the way that they were.

Stephen King says, “I’m sorry,” to everyone who’s said it feels like we’re living in one of his novels.

One of our favorite authors, Carmen Maria Machado, tells us all what she’s been doing during the shut in. And here’s an article about what other authors have been doing to occupy their time.

If you’re busy researching your own horror writing, or just bored to tears, take this virtual tour of medieval murders in London!

Want to hear 5 Books about Horror to Help You Cope with Anxiety? Click here.

And how about learning 4 Folkloric Creatures We Need to Make Horror Movies about Rather than W*ndigos? Don’t mind if I do!

And if you’re wondering how to make good habits, you can learn about the supreme discipline of one of the masters, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, here. Although he’s more known for his literary works, SEVERAL of his books are ALSO horror (you can check the backlist of this newsletter to see about them).

Check out Book Riot’s COVID-19 updates, too!

That’s it for hotels and horror. For now. Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or if you want to ask for a particular theme to a newsletter. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Enjoy reading about these hotels from the safety of your own home, and I’ll talk to y’all next week!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

I don’t think I’m an easily spooked person. Once, my boyfriend hid on top of my washing machines behind a folding door and tried to scare me, but all he did was dent my detergent bottle. (Okay, one time, he did hide in the shower with the shower curtain OPEN and jumped out and he got my ass real good. He was so excited. He was like, “I got you?! I scared you?!” and I just sighed and said, “You are the superior being,” and then took a barefoot walk around my dirty block to take my blood pressure down. But in my defense, what kind of monster would hide in the shower with the curtain OPEN? How did he fit in there? He’s a grown ass man, y’all.)

I digress. As readers of horror, we know that the written word can evoke such a paranoia and deep sense of fear because it’s in our imaginations, we might not conceive of the scary thing, but we bring it to fruition in our minds’ eyes.

And yet. There’s this concept of the horror picture book that really freaks me out. Sometimes images are, actually, worth ~1000 words. Or at least their equivalent. I mean, think about the G.D. Babadook. Or that damn Momo Doll. Nu uh. Mm mm. Nu uuuuuh.

So for this edition of The Fright Stuff (you’re in Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror, in case you needed reminding!), I’m going to take you on a tour through the ring of hell known as Picture Books. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil.

Earworm: “When the Lights Go Out” by the Black Keys

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases):

Ghoulish: The Art of Gary Pullin by April Snellings

You’ll likely recognize the artwork of Gary Pullin from his famous film posters like that of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Big Lebowski, Vertigo, and The Babadook. This book is a gorgeous, full-color compilation of his illustrations, curated and illustrated by the fantastic April Snellings.

 

Born to Be Posthumous by Mark Dery

This biography details the life and artwork of eccentric illustrator, Edward Gorey. You likely will recognize him from his Gashlycrumb Tinies or his alphabet of ways to die.

 

 

 

Little: A Novel by Edward Carey

This fictional biography of Marie Tussand is a fascinating account of this little person’s development into the curator of the wax museum that we know today. (And if you’re wondering whether this is horror, well… she was ordered by an angry mob to cast the severed heads of murdered aristocrats, soooo.)

 

Bites of Terror by Cuddles and Rage

Based on the webseries Cuddles and Rage, this book imitates the structure of Tales from the Crypt, but spins tales of macabre whimsy about food. For example, what happens when a deathly mold overtakes a neighborhood of strawberries?

 

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist):

Deceptive Desserts: A Lady’s Guide to Baking Bad Christine McConnell

You’ll likely recognize Christine McConnell from her show on Netflix that was equal parts puppets, horror, and baking, and this book is its delightful counterpart. If you’ve ever wanted to make a cake shaped like a Gremlin, this is the book for you and this is the time to get it–who among us has yet to resort to stress-baking during this quarantine?

Carmilla edited by Carmen Maria Machado, written by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, and illustrated by Robert Kraiza

While you are likely familiar with the original lesbian vampiress serial text, this new edit by Carmen Maria Machado will bring it into a whole new light for you–and it’s accompanied by the gorgeous illustrations of Robert Kraiza, inimitable tattooist.

 

Infidel, story by Pornsak Pichetshote, artwork by Aaron Campbell

This graphic novel features a Pakistani Amercan Muslim woman who lives with her fiance in an apartment building that is haunted by the literal and figurative monsters of racism. This one is pretty great because of its focus on representation not just in the actual world, but in the world of horror and comics, as well.

 

Afterlife with Archie: Escape from Riverdale, story by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, artwork by Francesco Francavilla

In a campy-spooky Archie/Sabrina crossover, Sabrina brings Jughead’s dog (Hotdog) back to life, but he’s just not the same after his resurrection. Then, his not-the-same-ness starts to spread to the rest of the town, leading to an emergency evacuation!

 

Locke & Key, story by Joe Hill, artwork by Gabriel Rodriguez

If you’ve loved the Netflix adaptation, it’s definitely time for you to dive into the source material. After a home invasion turned murder, the Locke children begin opening doors in Keyhouse, and their contents are not as innocuous as they seem.

 

Harbingers:

Want to read an alternate opening to Jordan Peele’s Get Out? Be careful, Dre!

Japan is seeing a resurgence of imagery featuring the healing monster, Amabie. Read more about the folkloric cryptid here.

Not EXACTLY horror related, but more horror adjacent: when you’re ordering the books recommended above, consider this article about how to actually help bookstores during this time of pandemic.

I don’t know about y’all but this quarantine is feeling REAL 18th century to me. In case you’re wondering how they entertained themselves before screens, and when they just couldn’t read anymore, Emily Temple has gone deep into the parlor games manuals of the 19th century and compiled some of the most fun.

Author Gabino Iglesias explains how writing horror can help ALL writers.

Want to know how authors kept their writing rituals alive? Edith Sitwell used to lie in an open coffin.

Rest in peace, Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, known for haunting avante garde scores like those the film adaptations of The Exorcist and The Shining.

If your books are looking a little worse-for-wear from being taken in the bath (or locked in the freezer, for safety), this article shows how to care for them.

Have you watched Shudder’s new docuseries about cursed films? Check it out here. And,if you don’t have Shudder you can use the promo code SHUTIN for a free month.

LitHub’s astrology book club has some fresh picks for April based on your zodiac sign!

That’s it for this week–just kidding. You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging without mentioning Alvin Schwarz and Stephen Gammel’s trilogy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, did you? (Talk about childhood nightmares!) This is my most favorite Tweet I’ve ever Tweeted:

If you think that’s as funny as I do, feel free to follow me @mkmcbrayer. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Enjoy your spooky picture books from the safety of your home, and I’ll talk to y’all next week! (By they way, if you have a special themed request, drop me a line! I’LL BE HERE.)

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m struggling. My anxiety is usually pretty under control, and as far as I know, I have not been exposed to the virus, plus I’ve been following all of the protocol, but the paranoia builds in me every time I reach to touch a doorknob, turn on a light, or even cross the street so as to avoid coming within six feet of someone, waving even as I do it because, I mean, I’m not a monster… I just want to stay away from your gross body and your nasty cooties.

Normally, when I’m anxious about something, I just dive deeper into the crevasse. Meaning, if I’m scared of home invasion, I’ll watch a thousand Lifetime documentaries featuring B&Es, et cetera, because I feel like the better informed I am, the better I can protect myself against whatever I’m afraid of (and I have anxiety, so, like, I’m afraid of everything). To paraphrase Karen Kilgariff from My Favorite Murder, I need to know all of the most horrible shit so that I can avoid it.

It usually works for me. If you’re reading this horror newsletter, it might probably work for you, too. By the way, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest in horror. I structured this newsletter a little differently from the others because, well, desperate times call for desperate measures.

So, here are the greatest books that I know of about plague and/or quarantine:

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

This impeccable debut novel admittedly makes this list because of a small portion that is narrated by a swarm of mosquitos in Zambia, who are self-proclaimed as man’s greatest nemesis. Still, the Old Drift, a colony established generations before, sees change through three families plagued by magical maladies and less magical epidemics like AIDS.

 

Room by Emma Donaghue

Jack, the five-year-old “Bonsai Boy” narrates this novel in which a woman has been abducted and held in a shop-turned-bunker for years. It’s compelling, sweet, and devastating. I had this book on audio, and I highly recommend that option.

 

 

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

This collection of stories shares a frame narrative with the Canterbury Tales… sort of. A bunch of writers go to a lock-in retreat where each of them thinks they’ll sabotage the stores and rations just to make things a little more interesting. It unsurprisingly turns into a survival situation pretty quickly, and they all get what they wanted: something to write about.

 

“Inventory” by Carmen Maria Machado in her collection Her Body and Other Parties

I mentioned this story recently, but I think it bears repeating. Not only is Machado one of THE most interesting voices in horror now, but this story compiles an inventory of sexual experiences which the narrator writes to keep her mind off of being one of–if not THE–last surviving person of a plague.

 

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

This fascinating novel braids two storylines: in one of them, the City is inhabited by souls that have departed earth, but have not yet been forgotten by the living, and yet their number is decreasing. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd’s supplies dwindle in her Antarctic research station, and all she can find on the radio is static. Both groups wonder what is happening, and the story progresses, meeting in the middle to illustrate it to the reader as the characters unpack the mystery.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

If you’re looking for pandemic literature, you can’t skip this one: a pandemic has sorted out all of earth’s inhabitants into the living and the living dead. The narrative follows Mark Spritz, a member of one of the sweeper units that clears lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies, and the rest of the population deals with the post-apocalyptic stress disorder that HAS to be a thing–THANK YOU.

 

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler

It’s our woman science fiction author prototype, Octavia Butler, again! This novel follows a family as they are kidnapped by Eli, the only survivor of a space mission gone awry, crash-landed in the Mojave desert, and in which he was infected with an alien microorganism. In effort to slow its transmission to the rest of the human species, Eli isolates himself in a “family” situation quarantine. Yikes.

The Last Man by Mary Shelley

We most likely know Mary Shelley from the book that made her famous, the allegedly first science fiction novel, born of an orgy/party hosted by Lord Byron, Frankenstein. This book, too, focuses on a theme of science fiction. After all of humanity has been wiped out by the plague, the Last Man wonders, “And what does our narrator do, alone in the world? “I also will write a book, I cried—for whom to read?” He calls it “The History of the Last Man,” and dedicates it to the dead. It will have no readers. Except, of course, the readers of Shelley’s book.” (This last quotation comes from “What Our Contagion Fables are Really about.”)

The latest in horror:

In keeping with the regulations on how to decrease the spread of COVID-19, I’m just going to list a whole bunch of dope books that have just/are about to release. There isn’t a theme. Or, the theme is, books whose authors/publishers have taken one for the team in limiting their exposure by canceling book releases and launches, thereby directly affecting their books’ sales. In case you missed that subtext: BUY OR PRE-ORDER THESE BOOKS. They’re not getting the exposure that they deserve because their authors, publishers, publicists, et al, have a high regard for human life. (This list is by NO means comprehensive, and if I missed YOUR book or one that you love, pleeeeease let me know. My contact info is in the signature!)

The Fish & the Dove by Mary-Kim Arnold

This collection of poems reflects the history of the Korean War, its effects on generations afterward, and the institutionalized language that it produced. Arnold says, the “legendary Assyrian warrior goddess Semiramis haunts this book,” which I love.

 

 

And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories & Other Revenges by Amber Sparks

This collection of short stories in unmissable–it blends elements of the fairy tale, mythology, contemporary ideals, and apocalyptic technologies to illustrate feminine narratives in hilarious and horrifying ways. You’re gonna love it.

 

 

Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings

This book narrates a horror of medical experimentation as it addresses class and race. It’s described as part Handmaid’s Tale and part Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. DON’T MIND IF I DO.

 

 

No Bad Deed by Heather Chavez

When a veterinarian pulls over to help at a bad car wreck, one of the survivors leaves her with an impossible choice: she can either let the other victim die, or she can die.

 

 

 

Here are more books (not exclusively horror) whose releases have been affected by the quarantine.

Harbingers (FKA as news):

Do you want to know what our contagion fables are really about? Check out this article on The New Yorker. (Bonus: I learned that heating books in the oven at 160 degrees kills bed bugs WITHOUT damaging the books.)

Rachel Harrison (author of the newly-released title The Return) explains on CrimeReads how a sense of dread is the essential ingredient of a good dark fiction story.

Want to know how Snowpiercer might be a dark sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Of course you do.

Want to learn about how the first myth of alien abduction was born? I don’t–you might remember that I’m exxxtra afraid of aliens. But maybe you do?

Did you see that Audible just made hundreds of audiobooks free to stream? The list includes some horror classics like Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and a collection of Edith Wharton short stories.

Also, let’s just say that going “deeper into the crevasse” just isn’t working for you, or let’s just say you’re not that into horror right now because the world is scary enough. Here’s a list of books in which NOTHING BAD HAPPENS.

And y’all know I always make jokes about Dante and being your Virgil, but real talk, this time, Italy is about to celebrate its first Dante Day, as the 700th anniversary of his death approaches.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of THE FRIGHT STUFF, and hopefully it made you feel that you weren’t alone, even if you are physically alone. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can find me on Twitter or Instagram– make sure y’all get at me with any important news that I missed, okay? But y’all keep in mind, too, that while I DO DEFINITELY want to know my mistakes, I also work real hard on this, so y’all be nice about it. Stay safe and sequestered!

Until next week,

Your Virgil (y’all know I’m a stick to my guns on this name),

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Almost every horror fan knows about the trope of the Final Girl, the one who survives to the end of the film through no real merit of her own. She’s usually blonde. Usually small. Usually “pure.” She’s basically the one who DESERVES IT the least, but she doesn’t survive on any of her own merit.

That’s not necessarily how it works in real life, of course. Terrible things happen to good people all the time–but that doesn’t mean we can’t admire the strong women featured in horror novels. (Don’t worry, I’m not spoiling any plot points for you–I won’t say whether these girls make it to the end.)

By the way, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, the Final Girl. To commemorate this edition of The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror, here’s a film still from the most epic Freudian horror film I’ve ever seen, The Descent. Here we go. Let’s talk about Final Girls (or women in horror in general) for Women’s History Month.

Earworm: “Bad Girls” by M.I.A.

Fresh hells (FKA new releases): 

The Return by Rachel Harrison

If you like the noir-style of narrator as well as milennial-accessible language, you’ll love this debut novel from Rachel Harrison. When the prettiest of a group of four close college friends goes missing for two years and then suddenly returns, they go on a girls’ trip. They realize almost as soon as they get to the hotel, though, that something is wrong with the one who has returned.

 

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

This is the fourth of Grady Hendrix’s horror novels, and if you loved his novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, like I did, you’ll love this one, too. The narrative moves at a clip, but it does not sacrifice the development of its characters–something that I found particularly refreshing about this book because, as the title implies, white-wine-drinking, affluent housewives are seldom taken seriously, much less in the Charleston of the 1990s, and much much less when a wealthy-yet-vampire stranger is involved. (This one has his trademark visceral descriptions of gore, too, don’t worry!)

Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed

Molecular biologist turned author, Premee Mohamed, introduces us to best friends Nick and Joanna. When Joanna “invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.” This novel is a bildungsroman set among a “war of eldritch horror.”

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horrors from the backlist):

Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol Clover

If you’re looking for the ultimate horror criticism, this is the one you can’t do without. Carol Clover coined the term “final girl,” and she’s responsible for identifying a lot more of them, like “the terrible place,” for example. I particularly like her analysis of the occult in horror films, and what it means based on the characters’ genders.

 

“Inventory” by Carmen Maria Machado

This story is featured in her debut collection, Her Body and Other Parties, and I thought it was particularly apt since it deals with the theme of terminal disease spreading because people can’t stay away from each other. It’s also harrowing and sexy, and if you’re in the mood to read some horror about hypothetical plague, you can read the short story online here. 

 

Paradise by Toni Morrison

This narrative is set 17 miles outside of Ruby, an all-Black town in Oklahoma, at a decadent edifice nicknamed The Convent, which houses four women who are nothing close to nuns. The book opens with the men of Ruby waging war on the women’s homes. This novel is by Toni Morrison. Just go get it. You won’t regret it.

 

Harbingers (FKA news of the literary horror world):

According to this study, women authors lead literary fiction book sales, so that’s dope.

Check out this new research on one of our wonderful women classic horror/sci-fi authors, Octavia Butler, “Finding Octavia Butler’s Pasadena.”

The freaky medieval legend behind this holy well was one of the inspirations behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Want to know why Stephen King is so hard to adapt? Check out this article.

While we socially distance ourselves in our own homes, you might want to read about the homes/manors of Gothic heroines… whose homes are always bigger than they seem.

Want to read horror literature about pandemics? Check this out.

What about the horrors of social distancing? Read here.

Though it may not seem to be on theme for horror literature, you can read about what it’s like to promote a book during a pandemic, and if you want to help those authors, here’s a list of book tours that have been canceled, and how to pay it forward.

Here’s what New York Indie Bookstores are doing to survive among the doom and gloom.

And if you’re looking for short-notice horror reads till your orders get delivered, did you know that FANGORIA is opening up its content digitally for two months free?

For more literary updates on the COVID-19 pandemic, click here. 

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can find me on Twitter or Instagram– make sure y’all get at me with any important news that I missed! Stay safe and sequestered!

Your Virgil,

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Because Derek Waters of Drunk History won’t return my phonecalls, we hosted a Drunk History DIY party a couple weeks ago, and in preparation, I went DEEP into the research wormhole of Irish folklore (I wanted to talk about Bridget and Michael Cleary). Wow, y’all, that tide of terror runs deep AND wide… did you know that there are like, nine levels of fairies? And almost none of them mean humans well.

Anyway, it might interest you to know that the American cultural holiday of St. Patrick’s Day is one of the best, and despite that I look totally Arab because my mom’s genes are visually invincible, my dad’s side of the family is Scots-Irish–BTW, it will surprise no one that the McBrayer family crest is a red and gold lion and features the motto “IN DEFIANCE.” I will drink to that. Not beer, though. Never beer.

By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s newsletter about the latest and greatest in horror. In observance of St. Patrick’s Day, this week’s theme is Irish folklore… which means that a lot of our texts will be by white authors, since Ireland is predominately white. (I honestly didn’t realize how much so until my best friend came back from a week’s trip over there explaining how excited she’d get when she saw another person of color.) That said, some Irish folkloric retellings will live up to our Book Riot standards of diversity, but it’s still a stretch, and I just felt like I owed y’all an explanation as to why. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, Irish folklore.

Earworm: “Black is the Color” by Nina Simone (Yes, this is a cover of an Irish folksong, but no one sings it as hauntingly as the American treasure, Nina Simone. Fight me.)

The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary by Joan Hoff and Marianne Yeates

I mentioned this title in passing above, as the story of Bridget and Michael Cleary. It’s honestly what really piqued my interest in Irish folklore. The main narrative focuses on Bridget’s murder: I’m overgeneralizing for the sake of synopsis, but essentially, Bridget’s whereabouts were unaccounted for for a couple hours, and when she returned home acting strangely, her husband (Michael) mistook her sickness for a changeling, and he, her neighbors, and her family, all tried to exorcise the fairy from her. This is a work of NONFICTION, and to understand it fully, the authors go in depth about the beliefs of the fairy religion, too. It’s an incredibly well-researched text, and you’ll really love it if you like true crime, too.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

This contemporary novel is a reimagining of the changeling folklore of Ireland, the idea that fairies inhabit human bodies as a sort of possession. When new father Apollo realizes that his wife and child have disappeared, he goes on a quest to recover them, and on the way, he discovers a whole lot more.

 

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

This novel also retells the changeling mythology, but this time from the perspective of the mother. Lauren Tranter is positive that she saw something at her hospital room window after giving birth, a creature who tries to exchange her own creatures with Lauren’s twins. Later, when her twins go missing and then are found, Lauren insists that they are not her children and tries to go about rectifying their hostage state. It’s dangerous, especially if she’s wrong.

The Good People by Hannah Kent

I learned who the Good People are from The Trials of Bridget Cleary, and I can tell you, among the fairies, these ones are the ones you want on your team. This novel is based on true events, too. Nora cares for her grandson who can neither speak nor walk, and in her superstitious community, rumors spread that Micheal is a changeling who will bring them bad luck. She bands together with Mary, the handmaid, and Nance, an “elderly wanderer who understands the magic of the old ways” to save the child from the village’s superstitions.

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley

This novel focuses on the folkloric belief in Northern England (admittedly, not Ireland) of rituals that protect towns from the devil by drawing boundaries. The Gaffer, the one who redraws the villages boundary lines each year, dies the autumn this narrative begins. John Pentecost, his grandson, returns to the farm only to discover as they are burying the Gaffer and bringing the sheep down from the moors, as is custom, that the Endlands may have let the Devil in after all.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

This book also takes place in Northern England, but I couldn’t resist including it on the list because of its impeccable folk horror! Silvie, a teenager on summer break, and her family attend an anthropology class’ reimagining of Bronze Age rituals because her father is basically obsessed. As normally happens when people in charge are obsessed with tradition, this reenactment quickly veers off the rails into more horrific territory.

Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan

This book is less about folklore and more about Irish history, but it’s still a novel full of horrors worth exploring: when American writer Jack Quinlan travels to research the Irish Famine, he quickly notices some odd occurrences, like the hiding of the priest and some weird ritual in the cemetery. Obviously, Jack ends up researching a lot more than just the famine.

 

True Irish Ghost Stories by John D. Seymour

This anthology has collected early 20th century stories and true events, and they’re divided into chapters including hauntings, poltergeists, and bean sidhes and “other death-warnings.” Though the cover is a little photo-shoppy, the stories inside are bomb–plus, who are we to judge books by their covers?

 

 

The Tain translated by Thomas Kinsella

When I asked my best friend for a recommendation for this list, Sara said, The Tain, which  “rhymes with ‘coin.’ (Gaelic, y’all.) The hero has a ‘warp spasm’ that turns his knees backwards and makes him an unbeatable killing machine that can only be stopped by looking at boobs, and the antagonist queen gets her period in battle, and it carves trenches in the earth as deep as a house. Her name is Medb, which rhyme with ‘stave.’ Also the whole war is because the queen found out that the king had one more cow than her, so she went to steal Ireland’s best cow from another country so she would have more riches than the king. There’s one boring chapter that’s just like, listing who’s in the battle, but the rest is dope.” There’s no way I could have paraphrased it any better, so there you go.

News: 

A lot of stories about folklore are oral histories commemorated in ways other than literature, so if you want to learn about the Cornish story of a mermaid abducting a preacher’s son, look no further.

This might be literature-adjacent, but did you know that you can spend a night in The Addams Family’s manor? 

Ann Napolitano says you should honor your weird obsessions in your writing, and the weirder the better. Learn why here.

Rest in peace, Max von Sydow. (In case your memory needs jogging, the horror community knows this actor best from his portrayal of Father Merrin in the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist.)

Stephen King is “uneasy” about “muzzling” authors like Woody Allen.

Looks like another Dracula adaptation is in the works, but this time directed by Karyn Kusama. 

Speaking of films, Robert the Doll is the inspiration for both Chucky (of Child’s Play) and Annabelle (of The Conjuring). If you want to know more about him, check out this article. Though it seems that this horror news has little to do with literature, this bit from the link above is really haunting to me: “To date, the walls near his glass case are covered in numerous letters from previous visitors and naysayers, begging for Robert’s forgiveness and asking him to remove any hex he has cast.” YIKES.

While we’re all busy being freaked out by the Corona Virus, we should also acknowledge that from disease like this comes a lot of inspiration for horror writing. Shakespeare himself is known for embracing the plague’s existence in his plays. I wouldn’t exactly call it a silver lining, but the Scottish play wouldn’t be the Scottish play without the plague.

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can find me on Twitter or Instagram, and this has been The Fright Stuff. If y’all know some good stories about banshees, get at me. But if you ARE a banshee, stay over there.

Until next time, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Monsters are much scarier (to me) when I can’t see them… case in point: once, I was cleaning my plate at my boyfriend’s house. I flipped on the garbage disposal switch, and at the unholy din that vibrated from the sink I shrieked, “HERE THERE BE MONSTERS.” (I’m not exaggerating when I say it sounded like he’d shoved a bear trap down there and it was grinding its teeth on the thing that was supposed to be shredding it into smithereens.)

Basically, what I’m saying is the moment a monster comes on screen, some of the fear diminishes. That’s why that garbage disposal was such a terror. And that’s why reading about monsters is such a delight–the concepts of them live in your head.

By the way, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter about latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil in this realm of hell, MONSTERS.

Earworm: “Monster” by Kanye West (but let’s be honest, we all know who’s the real star of the show here… HEY NICKI HEY NICKI) Also, fun fact, I definitely taught this verse to my English Composition 1102 class so they could hear the difference between meter and rhyme. #litprofessor

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases)

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

If you ain’t pre-ordered this yet, seriously, what are you doing? When I tell you that this is a genuinely compelling monster horror book that utilizes Native American folklore without that old tropey chestnut “it was built on a graveyard,” believe me. The scenes themselves are so suspenseful and imagistic that you won’t want to put this novel down. The drama starts when a group of four Blackfeet on the Reservation hunt and kill a herd of elk, but before they can field dress them all, a blizzard comes in and prevents them from using all of the animals. Needless to say, Po’noka is not happy.

Miscreations edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey

This anthology contains works about “Gods, Monstrosities, and Other Horrors,” and it features works by authors you already love, like Alma Katsu, Theodora Goss, and Victor LaValle, plus several that you’re GOING to love. Every story rotates on the idea of a created monster, whether man or gods created them. It’s super compelling, and you don’t want to miss it.

Monstress (Volume 4) by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Who DOESN’T love a graphic novel featuring monsters–let alone a series featuring a monSTRESS!? In case you missed the first three installments, this narrative is set in “an alternate matriarchal 1900s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk,” and it follows a girl as she navigates the “trauma of war.”

 

Bites of Terror by Liz Reed and Jimmy Reed

This is the husband and wife team behind the webcomic Cuddles and Rage, which they call “disturbing stories with heart.” These ten short stories are told in comic book format, but with photographs of the creations instead of illustrations. Hear the macabre stories of a strawberry that has been quarantined to avoid a mold pandemic, or the “widowed watermelon attempts to regrow her chopped-up husband from seed.” What a damn delight, am I right?

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

You’re likely familiar with his work already, whether it’s his novels My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Horrorstor, or We Sold Our Souls, or maybe the film Satanic Panic, or maybe his Paperbacks from Hell project, but regardless, he’s back for more. Be sure to pre-order this novel from the new master of horror so you can read it hot off the press when it releases at the end of the month!

Cryptkeepers (FKA as dope reads from the backlist): 

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud

I mentioned in the Book Riot litfic podcast that I co-host (Novel Gazing) that one of my most effective ways of finding book recommendations is through authors whom I love, and this book of short stories comes with high praise from Carmen Maria Machado, one of my faves. In this collection, people face monsters, real or imagined, and they “face the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.”

My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

This graphic novel is a beautiful imagining of a girl in Chicago who believes herself to be a werewolf. It’s a fascinating look at her relationship with her super-cool brother as well a mysterious past of the Holocaust survivor who lives above them.

 

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

This novel has a super cool premise of retelling: an oddball junk collector in the rubble-strewn streets of Baghdad collects body parts. He strings them together so that the government will give them a proper burial, but once he makes a complete corpse, it disappears. WHAT.

 

 

News

Big news from Quirk! Grady Hendrix’s latest is destined for the screen! According to the publisher, “After a 10-buyer bidding war, Grady Hendrix and Quirk Books sold rights to The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires to Amazon Studios, with Hendrix and Quirk serving as executive producers.” HOW DOPE.

Learn here how Gothic novels paved the way for domestic thrillers.

This plot twist in science shows how Edgar Allan Poe actually probably DIDN’T die by suicide.

Looks like Bram Stoker Award-Winning poet, Stephanie M. Wytovich will be teaching a Witch Lit course on LitReactor this summer, so be sure to stay tuned for that! (And until then, you can look at our Season of the witch-themed newsletter from November.)

And speaking of witches, this astrology book club chooses their monthly reads based on horoscopes ad the zodiac.

If you want to know more about Toni Morrison (the author that I consider to have written THE BEST literary horror book, Beloved) and her Catholic faith, read this article.

Need inspiration for your next writings? Visit this Torture Museum in Bruges, Belgium, which displays its torture devices in chronological order.

Have you heard of The Black Vampyre? It’s an 1819 text that is among the first to cross the vampire narrative with the American slave narrative. You can read more about it in a forthcoming book from Open Graves & Open Minds about the Polidori (2021).

If you want more books by Authors of Color, check out this list by Book Riot’s own Jessica Avery!

I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram, and this has been The Fright Stuff, monsters edition. Until next time, beware the Kraken.

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Look me in the eye and admit to me if you weren’t freaked out when your Furby started talking from deep within your closet where you thought you’d safely stashed it after it learned to speak.

If that didn’t freak you out, I don’t know what to tell you. The idea of being constantly surveilled, or influenced by technology beyond our control is one of the freakiest things about our contemporary world–I mean, just this past weekend when I was narrating my audiobook, the technician said that another author’s phone kept coming on until they realized it was listening, and every time she said the word “Syria,” it was ready to take orders. Don’t get me wrong, I put plenty of my business out in the street/on the internet, which is why I don’t need to be wondering if not having a band-aid over my webcam means someone is watching me from the other side of the world. And although fame would make this hair justifiable, and all press is good press, et cetera, I just DO NOT NEED A SWIMFAN.

In case you didn’t realize it yet, you’re in The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest in horror. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, science and surveillance–but, a big thanks goes out to the Book Riot community, who recommended a LOT of these books to us.

Ear worm: “She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin

This new novel from the inimitable Samanta Schweblin will be released in its English translation this May, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pre-order it immediately, like I did. If you’re not familiar with her other novel, Fever Dream, or her collection of short stories, Mouthful of Birds, this book is a great one to start with: it’s a true work of horror focusing on what happens when you let strangers (in the forms of robots) into your home.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

In this retelling of the Henry James classic, The Turn of the Screw, Ruth Ware tells of a governess accused of murder awaiting trial. Her letters inform her lawyer of the strange goings-on at the house, the lack of any adults nearby, the odd behavior of the children, and the constant surveillance of the “smart” house.

 

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

Just the web copy of this description will have you rushing to erase your digital footprint: when the it-girl with the broken apartment lock and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers gets ONE follower who is SUPER interested in following her… it turns into a creepy stalker situation. Even in 2020, y’all got to remember to be careful what you put on the internet.

Cryptkeepers (FKA the backlist):

“The TV People” by Haruki Murakami, in the book The Elephant Vanishes

This story creeped out both me and my world literature class A LOT. When people–regular people, but all dressed alike, and just slightly smaller than most people–show up to deliver TVs unannounced, it’s not the last uncanny thing that happens. Also, why are they here? And WHAT IS GOING ON?

 

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

In plot, the synopses are correct, but in practice, according to one reviewer, the book is a changeling itself. It says, “It plays with memory, fairy tale, and the stories we tell each other about ourselves; it walks around the walls we build of our stories — whether out of family memorabilia or photos on Facebook — and probes them for holes.”

 

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Aside from having the immediately most horrifying title ever, this classic science fiction horror novel demonstrates one instance of what happens when artificial intelligence gains sentience. In this version, the AMs obliterate nearly all of humanity, and, out of the spite of not having its own agency, entertains itself by torturing the species who made it.

 

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk

You likely are familiar with this author from his cult classic, Fight Club, but this book made my brain loud in such a way that even a near decade after reading it, I still remember details of its plot: when time travel overlaps with the technology of sensory experiences that can be LITERALLY recorded and inserted into someone else for them to experience, what IS authentic?

The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy

You’ve probably heard of the mysterious dark web where anything goes, from criminal trade to bitcoin exchange, but in this novel, an “ancient darkness” gathers there as well, and a group of unlikely heroes has to band together to stop it.

 

 

The Mall by Richie Tankersley Cusick

This YA novel is a great one for any fan of Stranger Things who is nostalgic for the 1990s. When Trish notices a familiar face in the crowd around her work at the mall, she can’t unsee him. If you can stomach a stalker plot line, you’ll love this read.

 

 

 

News:

Want to know how the famous painter, Peter Brueghel, interpreted the census as a Doomsday book? Check out this article.

Want to know why absolutism is almost always a horrorshow? Of course you do.

Book Riot’s own Zoe Robertson writes about what Eco-Horror teaches us about ourselves.

If you’re looking for horror reviewers and horror reviews, this list seems to be the truest utopia.

Women in Horror Month has just wound to a close, but the Women in Horror Film Festival in Atlanta is still riding that wave. Though it’s literature-adjacent, there’s a ton of literary stuff written ABOUT these films.

And if you missed Women in Horror Month–or, who do I think I’m talking to?–if you just MISS Women in Horror Month, here’s a great list of women authors of horror whom you may have missed!

Check out this article about Queer Characters in Horror from Book Riot’s own S.F. Whitaker, too!

Time to turn off all my electronics forever! JUST KIDDING. But seriously, that’s all the horror I can stand for this week. Until next time, I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and you can FOLLOW ME (see what I did there?) on Twitter or Instagram, as long as you’re not the dreaded SwimFan.

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing

Dear reader, you know that I can’t deal with demons or evil kids, and now it’s time to reveal the third arm of the trifecta of shit I can’t handle: aliens. I’ve feared them since I was a small child running upstairs to hide under the covers when I heard the Unsolved Mysteries theme music, and I did it during the first half of the movie Arrival, too. Don’t get me started on Honeymoon or Annihilation, or especially this new one, Horse Girl. I CANNOT EVEN. I CANNOT.

Don’t judge me: even Stephen Hawking said it was rational to fear extraterrestrial beings, and I will continue to do so until they suck me up by my chest into the mothership. (Seriously, even E.T. freaked me out, like, I’m gone fling these Reese’s Pieces to create a diversion while I Scooby-Doo run until my legs give out BYEEEEE.)

In case you couldn’t tell from my frantic ramblings about the horrors of aliens, you’re in Book Riot’s weekly horror newsletter, The Fright Stuff. This week’s theme is all about outer space, AKA number three in the trifecta of shit I can’t handle, and I’m Mary Kay McBrayer. I’ll be your Virgil through this realm of hell, the extraterrestrial.

Earworm: “On & On” by Erykah Badu: “You rush into destruction ’cause you don’t have nothin’ left. / The mothership can’t save you so your ass is gone get left. / If we were made in his image, then call us by our names. / Most intellects do not believe in God, / But they fear us just the same.”

Fresh Hells:

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

So… this is Ted Chiang’s new collection of short stories, and they’re every bit as creepy as the one on which the movie Arrival was based, “The Story of Your Life.” That novella is in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others, and both collections are definitely worth checking out if you can steel yourself against the extraterrestrials.

 

“Fallow” by Sofia Samatar, in her collection Tender: Stories (f, AOC)

The stories in Tender are all retellings of fairy tales and folk lore, but the one entitled “Fallow” is about a colony in space that was founded by fundamentalist Christians. The rules that they put into place are terrifying, and when our protagonist becomes extremely interested in the man from Earth… it gets twisted.

 

Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor

This book is an autobiography of one of the most prolific authors of science fiction and horror, Nnedi Okorafor. It talks about how she found refuge in speculative fiction while undergoing an operation to correct scoliosis and then woke up to partial paralysis. It’s a story of how limitations can become outlets to creativity, and it details a formative experience of the writer of Akata Witch, Binti, Who Fears Death, and many other well-beloved science fiction works.

Cryptkeepers:

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Genly Ai, the ambassador of the planet Terra, gets sent to Gethen, a planet of gender-fluid beings. This novel is the one that earned Ursula LeGuin much of her early fame, and the novel is a first among feminist science fiction in that it examines the roles that gender and sex play on a society.

 

 

 

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

When Vanja is sent into the colony of Amatka as a government informant, she finds a huge government cover up that puts the entire colony at risk. In this novel, “everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing—not even language, nor the very fabric of reality—can be taken for granted.”

Under the Skin by Michael Faber

You might recognize this book from its film adaptation of the same name, starring Scarlett Johansson. The premise is similar: a woman drives through the Scottish Highlands sizing up and picking up hitchhikers. It’s not long before the audience realizes that she’s an alien, and the men are her prey. The book goes into much gorier detail than the adaptation about what happens to her victims, but it’s certainly not one to be missed.

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

You might also recognize the first of his trilogy from its film adaptation of the same name, too, this time starring Natalie Portman. Four women (a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor) are called to explore Area X, a mysterious environment that seems to be growing. Former expeditions have been met with catastrophe, and the people studying it don’t know why. It’s gotta be aliens, right?

Dawn (Xenogenesis) by Octavia Butler

This book is basically what I thought Annihilation was going to be: Lilith Iyapo wakes up in a spaceship full of tentacled aliens who saved her and all the other surviving humans from a ruined Earth. They’ve rehabilitated the planet, and now they’re welcoming humanity back to Earth in exchange for genetically merging with human civilization.

News:

Apollo 14 took seeds into outer space in 1971. Want to know what happened when the Moon Trees sprouted?

Want to win a $50 Barnes and Noble gift card? Sign up for Book Riot’s Daily Deals.

2019 saw the release of Memory: The Origins of Alien, which details how the franchise was created, including all its literary references like Greek mythology, H.P. Lovecraft, a ton of comics, and more.

Wired Magazine says the newest trend in cli-fi is Doomer Lit. Read here to learn more.

The Safdie Brothers (the writers of Uncut Gems) are producing a show about a cursed couple who flip houses.

Check out these blue slime Ghostbusters Twinkies!

Have a drink at this Lovecraft Bar in Portland.

And if you want more women in horror to honor Women in Horror month, look at Erin Al-Mehairi’s article about how women CAN write horror.

And last but not least, the 2019 Bram Stoker Award Finalist list has been posted! A LOT of great contenders!

 

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this realm of hell, extraterrestrial horrorscapes.

Until next week, you can find me hiding under the covers in fear of abduction (I DO THIS FOR YOU.), or on Twitter @mkmcbrayer and Instagram @marykaymcbrayer. I always love to hear of what news I missed OR what topics you want to read about in the upcoming newsletters, so let me know!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing