Category: The Fright Stuff

Last week was the 25th anniversary of Tales from the Hood, the horror anthology film directed by Rusty Cundieff, and produced by Spike Lee. Its stories are as relevant today as they were when the movie released. In case you need a refresher, in the episode “Hard-Core Convert,” the gangster Krazy K (played by Lamont Bentley) is basically Clockwork-Oranged with a montage/barrage of all of the trauma of the Black experience. As my friend and writer Mary Beyer (who is Black) stated after we re-watched the film last year, according to this film, hell is a funeral home in which we watch the myriad sufferings of Black people, and we have to watch and wonder at what point in the series of cascading failures anyone could have intervened to change its progression.

And right now especially, how can we talk about anything else? This edition of The Fright Stuff, Book Riot’s latest and greatest in horror, will celebrate horror written by Black authors. This list is by no means exhaustive, and if you know of anyone whom I have left off, please don’t hesitate to DM me so that I can include them in our next newsletter. I’m Mary Kay McBrayer, and I’ll be your guide through this realm of hell, horror by Black authors.

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

In her gothic novel debut, Elisabeth Thomas tells the story of an exclusive and formidable liberal arts college. Though its prestige is enviable, admission comes with a high price.

 

 

 

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

This novel examines the dilemmas which many working-class families face. When her grandmother dies, Lena Johnson inherits her family’s debts and takes a job that seems too good to be true. In the face of medical advancement that the company tells Lena will change the world, this book examines “the horror that has been forced on Black bodies in the name of science.”

 

Are You Afraid of the Dark? by Seth C. Adams

When Reggie’s father passes, he tries to cope by spending time in his treehouse. He takes in an injured stranger whom he grows to think of as a father figure… but the situation becomes infinitely more complex when Reggie learns that the new man is a killer for hire.

 

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

In this much-awaited sequel to Dread Nation, Jane McKeene travels west in search of her mother. She teams up with Katherine Devereaux, from Summerland as well, and the girls trained in fighting the resurrected corpses work together, at least for as long as they can.

 

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horror from the backlist): 

Hadriana in All my Dreams by Rene Dupestre, translated by Kaiama L. Glover

This incredible horror-fairy tale was just translated into English for the first time in 2017, despite its original publication in French in 1988. If you want a story about a human butterfly with an insatiable libido and a zombie bride… well. How could you NOT want that? Get this immediately.

 

 

Beloved by Toni Morrison

I spend so much time telling people how this is my favorite book of all time. It literally changed my life. Though I would say this book is Toni Morrison’s only HORROR book, everything she wrote is incredible, and there’s no time like the present to fully develop your love for her talent and skill.

 

Kindred by Octavia Butler

To be honest, all writing by Octavia Butler should be on this list because her work in science fiction and horror is unprecedented, but in this narrative, Dana, a 26-year-old woman living in contemporary California, is transported through time and space to the antebellum south. Her time-travels extend in length every time she gets sucked into the past, and they grow increasingly harder to bear.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

I love this novel. I’d classify it as a contemporary work of southern gothic, wherein a family navigates the pressures of race, the prison industrial complex, and of course, angry ghosts. (Seriously, I can’t oversell this one. It’s truly amazing.)

 

 

Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor

The title of this book nails it exactly: Leila Taylor traces America’s Gothic nature back to the time of slavery and since. This work of nonfiction is a must-read for anyone looking to educate themselves on the Black presence in American Gothic works.

 

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

I love a good twisted fairy tale, and everything I’ve read by Helen Oyeyemi delights and disturbs me. This one retells the trope of the gingerbread house throughout folk and fairy tales, and it includes everything from a nightmare country that may or may not exist to a changeling named Gretel with two pupils in each eye.

 

The Good House by Tananarive Due

This haunted house narrative is out of the ordinary–everyone in Sacajewea, Washington, calls Angela’s ancestral home the Good House… but what kinds of curses and protections did her grandmother invoke in it?

 

 

Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

I am putting this one on here, though many people classify it as general fiction, because the Atlanta child killings are horrific. Especially when you consider them from children’s perspectives, which this novel does. This book is so important, and Tayari Jones is ineffable.

 

 

Harbingers (FKA news):

Blood Bath magazine’s vampire issue is extending their submissions deadline for Black voices only through June. Click here for more information.

Similarly, The Mary Sue is requesting pitches from Black women authors on all topics they cover.

If you want/need to know more about Blackness in horror film, look to the resource of Horror Noire. You will also likely enjoy the work of Ashlee Blackwell, host of the now-archived (but still accessible) site Graveyard Shift Sisters.

Kristen Arnett (author of Mostly Dead Things) interviews Carmen Maria Machado about pleasure reads on The Kristen Arnett Show.

Want to know why some release dates are changing? Rachel Kramer Bussel interviews three different publishers about their reasons.

People say that Disney’s Snow White is for children, but it’s got a lot of elements of fairy tale horror in it… including the evil witch being based on this statue.

Click here to read about the copyright battle that led to numerous legal and illegal film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The Castle Rock Historical Society is offering horror-themed incentives for anyone who is able to donate to support the protesting of George Floyd’s death.

Win a 1-year subscription to Audible.

Enter to win $250 to spend at Barnes & Noble.

Until next week, follow me @mkmcbrayer for minute-to-minute horrors or DM me there to let me know of other books I should include. I’m also on IG @marykaymcbrayer. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

 

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

After my freshman year of college, I went to my then-boyfriend’s hometown to visit, up in the corner of Georgia where time on any automatic programming clock shifted between eastern and central at random. We stayed the night with one of his friends and his sister, who also ran a daycare of 10-20 small children out of her home, which could not have been newer than 100 years old. It was hot and humid, and the ceiling fans were running so high that their blades were blurred circles around their fixtures. Really, that whole experience is kind of a blur. Even the photos from my old digital camera are streaked. All the doorknobs kept falling off, and we could hear the kids running on all three floors.

Y’all, I’m FROM the south, and I’ve never heard or seen anything more southern gothic since then–or, you know what, just regular Gothic.

But not all horror about houses has to do with hauntings or ancestral manors, though of course we can’t forget those classics like We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson or The Amityville Horror by Jay Hanson. I mean, just look at one of the most famous weird-horror YA (kind of?) books, Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews.

If you haven’t guessed yet, 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 today’s realm of hell, the Uncanny House.

Earworm: “You Only Live Twice” by Nancy Sinatra.

Fresh Hells (FKA New Releases):

We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III

Though all the books in this list will deal with the house, this novella takes place entirely in a bathroom. A family on the verge of self-destruction has barricaded itself in the bathroom during a tornado, debating and arguing about whether the tornado exists and its severity.

 

 

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

As the title suggests, this novel invokes many of the traditional Gothic tropes, like, for example, the newlywed cousin in an Englishman’s mansion who sends a letter begging vaguely to be rescued. Noemi, the rescuer, is a debutante and unlikely savior, but she heads to the house in the Mexican countryside, where the house itself begins to invade her dreams. (This title releases on June 30, so be sure you pre-order!)

Are You Afraid of the Dark? by Seth C. Adams

Fourteen-year-old Reggie finds a new father figure while he is mourning his own father. The stranger in distress wanders out of the woods, where Reggie gives him shelter in his tree house and nurses him back to health before learning that his new semi-role model is a killer for hire.

 

 

The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig

A Victorian woman on the cusp of spinsterhood believes her dead mother’s spirit lives in the scar on her neck. As the date of her wedding with a medical experimenting suitor (that her father arranged) approaches, her father’s and mother’s wills grow increasingly at odds.

 

 

Harbingers (FKA news):

Author of horror-memoir In the Dream House and collection of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado talks about her first graphic novel, The Low, Low Woods at Book Expo 2020. The compendium will release in September. You can hear more about it on the Book Expo’s 2020 Adult Book & Author Dinner Facebook livestream.

AMC bought the rights to Anne Rice’s vampire novels.

How dark books and essays help during coronavirus: “We don’t read or write to be reassured — at least I don’t. We read and write to reckon with all the things we cannot know.”

Remember Little: A Novel, the book I recommended back when it released about Madame Tussaud? Its author, Edward Carey, is staving off the quarantine with an illustration a day. If you don’t already follow him on social media, go ahead on and do it!

Part two of Maya Alexandri’s “Being an EMT during a Pandemic” is now live… it’s a truly intense read.

I loooove weird fiction author Etgar Keret, and if you want to hear how he uses humor to “cope with the indignities of everyday life,” which… I mean, how else can we cope? Check out this link.

Here’s a take from one author who states that serial killers are usually NOT geniuses.

Have you ever remembered every detail of an engrossing horror book… except for its title? There’s an app for that.

Want to read some books in which the apocalypse sneaks up on you? Check out these eerie books.

Florence is trying to get back the body of Inferno author, Dante Alighieri.

Did you know that the Gates of Hell are in Turkmenistan?

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. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

 

Mary Kay McBrayer
Co-host of Book Riot’s literary fiction podcast, Novel Gazing (be sure to check out tomorrow’s episode for a very special interview!)

My boyfriend and his two best friends are Eagle Scouts, and yet I still would not go camping with them. I told them it was because I’ve hit my quota on sleeping and shitting on the bare ground (which I have done plenty in my younger and more vulnerable years), but really it might be because why would I want to sleep on the ground when my whole species has evolved so that I won’t have to do that? Not to mention, if something happens involving The Wild, I would feel about myself the way I feel about the Final Girl when I’m watching a horror movie and she’s like, “What was that noise??” and the boys are all like, “It’s your imagination! Chill out!”

Reader, in case you don’t know this about me, I have zero chill, and I have accepted that, and made peace with it, and moved on with my life. And for that reason, I will sleep in the house like a normal-ass person.

Don’t get me wrong: I CERTAINLY appreciate the survival skills and will insist that “Eagle Scout” goes on anyone’s resume who has that title. But I’m not going to, like, just, like, walk into the woods and tempt fate.

To their credit, and my younger self’s credit, too, there is a sort of comfort in learning about the dogs running wild at the site of Chernobyl, or the dolphins swimming up canals. It’s kind of nice to see nature flourish in the absence of humanity. That’s what I thought about the Area X in the film adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation. I mean, that’s what I thought at first, before it turned into a fever dream and Tessa Thompson turned into one of those evil topiaries from The Shining. But in general, it’s also kind of horrible to think about the planet without us on it, because in our understandably egocentric view, what is the planet without us? Like, who would be here to care that nature was so beautiful?

In the books listed here, not only does the natural world bloom to its full potential, but nature fights back specifically against humans. 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 of hell, nature.

Earworm: “All of the Sudden I Miss Everyone” by Explosions in the Sky

New Releases:

Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

In the title story alone, shoots of a new plant infiltrate the home of children, but in all of these stories, there’s an element of the natural becoming overtly territorial, and it is soooo creepy. If you haven’t checked out this book yet, definitely do that–plus Tremblay has another forthcoming release, Survivor Song! 

 

“The Bad Graft” and “The Tornado Auction” from Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

I know, I know: I can’t shut up about this book, but Karen Russell has out-Karen-Russelled herself in this collect. The story “The Bad Graft” talks about a Joshua Tree spirit possessing a girl, and “The Tornado Auction” happens in a rural future where farmers cultivate the weather, and that obviously does not go well. If you ain’t picked up this book yet, do yourself a favor. And then message me all of your extreme reactions because I clearly need to process the experience of reading it.

Cryptkeepers:

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Oghi wakes from a coma bedridden and disfigured by the car crash that killed his wife. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, and though she says she is continuing the work her daughter did on their home’s garden… Oghi notices that, actually, she is pulling up the vegetation and obsessively digging holes.

 

Crota by Owl Goingback

In this retelling of a Native American myth, the town sheriff goes to investigate a double homicide unlike any he’s seen before. The bodies have been torn apart. Though many assume a bear as the killer, Crota, a cryptid from the natural pre-historic world, is at hand.

 

 

Harbingers (FKA News):

Hold the phone: the new movie about the Shirley Jackson novel starring the inimitable Elisabeth Moss, just released their trailer! Click here to view the first trailer of SHIRLEY.

According to Emily Alford at Jezebel, “(T)he thing missing from much of both Jackson criticism and adaptations is her work’s simplest theme: madness is born of too much time alone.”

Mike Flanaghan, director of The Haunting of Hill House Netflix adaptation, is dusting off some Christopher Pike paperbacks….

Are people reading more horror during quarantine? Click here to see what the BBC thinks.

The Dutch are responding to disease by inventing new ways to swear at each other. Apt, people. Apt.

Why do readers still sympathize with unsympathetic narrators of Lovecraft’s writing? Scott Kenemore at CrimeReads suggests it’s because they “tend to encounter clues that point to the fact that humans—their hopes and dreams, their institutions and religions, and most certainly their accomplishments—don’t, for lack of a better word, matter. That the universe doesn’t give a damn what we do, and that our opinion of ourselves is a case of vast overestimation.”

Click here to find out how having kids can change your life… and your horror fiction.

Protect your library the old-fashioned way, with curses.

Speaking of witchcraft, see this IG video of Madeline Miller talking about Circe’s witchcraft…

What makes a book more thriller? More sci-fi? More horror?

Pandemic time reminisces a lot on Gothic literature… and here’s how.

Learn about comics themed on vampires through the ages here.

Click here and enter to win a 1-year subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

Click here and enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore.

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. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

 

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

The Mummy (1999) is, as S.A. Bradley calls it, my “first kiss” with horror. Though it’s absolutely a summer blockbuster action film, Stephen Sommers’ love story between Imhotep and Anck-su-Namun will forever be my #relationshipgoals. After all, death is only the beginning.

The movie about the preserved corpses didn’t scare me so much in Imhotep’s reign of evil, but rather his punishment of being mummified alive. I know now as an adult that the “hom dai” is not a practice supported in concept by archaeological research, but rather the Hollywood-ified Planet Egyptland version of Ancient Egypt that popular culture has come to know and love. (Make no mistake: I know it’s bullshit, and problematic, and yet I also love it.)

In fact, you’ll notice as we navigate through this realm of hell, preserved corpses, that while many of the corpses are of people of color, very few of the authors are of color. I attribute that disproportion to Orientalism, or the long-enduring Victorian obsession with Egypt and its remains, but that’s just my opinion. The fact is that we don’t have many books about preserved corpses by authors of color, though the corpses themselves are often non-white. Take, for example, this Diorama surprise, which featured a human skull. Or the amazing Mary Roach’s how-to guide on the historical practice of shrinking human heads. Even the inimitable David Sedaris has his story “The Gift of Owls,” in which he says, “It would have been disturbing to see the skeleton of a slain Pygmy in a museum, but finding him in a shop, for sale, raised certain questions, uncomfortable ones, like: How much is he?”

Nonetheless, 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. Call it Duat, the bog, the funeral parlor… wherever preserves your body after your death.

Earworm: “Back to Life” by Soul II Soul–However do you want me? However do you need me?

New Releases: 

Death by Shakespeare by Kathryn Harkup

This new release talks about the deaths that Shakespeare wrote about in his plays, and whether they can be validated by science. For example: can you really kill someone by pouring poison in their ear? Shock? Sadness? Fear? Shame? And, most relevantly, how did Juliet look dead for 72 hours and then rise to perfect health?

 

“Bog Girl: A Romance” from Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

I’ve loved Karen Russell’s writing for a long-ass time, but these stories rival my long-time favorites in the weirdly horrific. I know I told y’all about one of them in last week’s newsletter, but this one, about the boy who works the peat bog and then finds a bog girl and then falls in love with her… deeply unsettling in the most romantic way.

 

The Mummy of Canaan by Maxwell Bauman

Though this novel utilizes the trope of the mummy’s curse, American teens are the ones who wake it from its rest in Israel and allow its rage to begin. The noir-like narration lends itself well to this interesting retelling.

 

 

Cryptkeepers: 

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

You know I had to include this most classic southern gothic tale if we were talking about mummies! Flannery O’Connor at her epoch-Flannery-O’Connor, here. Featuring an anti-religious prophet, a sex worker, and a stolen museum artifact… you won’t regret reading this one in one sitting.

 

 

Mostly Dead Things by Karen Arnett

If you have a macabre sense of humor–and you must, because here you find yourself–this novel is for you. After her father’s suicide, Jessa takes over the family’s taxidermy shop in Florida. From there, things get out of hand.

 

 

El Negro and Me by Frank Westerman

In this book of nonfiction, Frank Westerman writes about his interactions with a centuries-old mummified man, displayed in a Spanish museum, from present-day Botswana. In this book, he not only details his personal emotional reaction to the obvious disrespect, but also the man’s return to his homeland. (This title has yet to be translated into English, though it is currently available in ten other languages.)

Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home by Sheri Booker

More macabre humor! This memoir tells the rites of passage of Sheri Booker, who grew up in her family’s West Baltimore funeral home. Their funeral home was “never short on business,” and she witnesses every form of grieving from brawling to bawling.

 

Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses by Bess Lovejoy

This book of nonfiction is almost an ethnography: it’s a series of detailed accounts of famous corpses. Want to know what happened to Elvis Presley’s body? Osama Bin Laden’s? Grigori Rasputin’s? Eva Peron’s? All of them are in this book. It’s. so. fascinating!

 

 

 

Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre, translated by Kaiama L. Glover

Though this novel is less about a preserved corpse and more about the traditional folklore of the Haitian zombie, I think it still deserves to be on this list. For one: zombies in the traditional sense are NOT walking corpses, but rather souls imprisoned in their own bodies and controlled by another person. The narrative of this book follows one such victim who, on her wedding day, drinks the zombie-making potion. It’s a must-read for any zombie lover who needs to be disillusioned about their origins, but who also loves a rapt plot.

Harbingers (FKA news):

Stop the press: a posthumous story by Katherine Dunn, beloved author of beloved horror novel, Geek Love, has just been released. Click here to read “The Resident Poet.” I cannot wait.

Click here to read about the Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the ‘Rats of NIMH.’

Want to see how the economy fared in other pandemics? Click here to read about the 1381 Black Plague peasant revolt. And if you want to read about Bloody Saturday, the 1918 strike after the Influenza pandemic, click here.

I guess we can call it horror? Stephenie Meyer is releasing her spin-off to Twilight, entitled Midnight Sun.

One of my favorite horror authors, Samanta Schweblin, talks about tackling writer’s block (or not), inspirations, and book she wishes she had read in this interview! (Her book Little Eyes just released, too)

In case you missed it, James Baldwin wrote about the Atlanta Child Murders. That’s some real life horror, right there.

Check out these super-trippy, mind-melding illustrations commemorating the 155th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland’s release.

Atlas Obscura is launching the Obscura Academy. This challenge is to create your own map, including history, or monsters, or krakens of the deep. You know, chart your own course.

Rest in peace John Lafia, Child’s Play co-screenwriter.

Joe Keery (Steve Harrington) hints at a “scarier” season 4 of Stranger Things.

Don’t forget to enter to win $50 to your favorite Indie Bookstore!

And, click here for a chance to win a 1-year subscription to Kindle Unlimited!

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. Talk to you soon!

Your Virgil,

 

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

I’m not a mom, but as y’all know, that decision or circumstance is just as loaded with feminist biases as any decision or circumstance inhabited by a woman. Regardless, motherhood, the concept of being completely in charge of another human life, is absolutely terrifying. Because, like, what if you get it wrong?

I know I’m not the only one with this paranoia because 1: I’ve heard about it my whole life from various moms; and 2: literature is obsessed with the trope (think Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson, or even the film Alien); and 3: as soon as I got to my car after watching Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film mother! I started crying. I don’t know why. I just did, okay?

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, in this realm of horror, an observance of Mothers’ Day.

Earworm: “K-Hole” by CocoRosie

Fresh Hells (FKA new releases):

“Orange World” in Orange World by Karen Russell

Though every story in this collection is fascinating, this one focuses on what happens when a woman makes a deal with a devil to preserve her geriatric pregnancy.

 

 

 

This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home by Lauren Sandler

I suppose this isn’t horror in its most distilled sense, but this reported chronicle of one homeless woman’s life for a year, “as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City” definitely qualifies for real fear among stories of survival.

 

The Need by Helen Phillips

When mother of two, Molly, hears an intruder in her home, she first attributes it to her sleep deprivation. Then she realizes that the trespasser knows far too much about her family. This novel embodies “the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity” of motherhood.

 

 

Cryptkeepers (FKA horrors from the backlist):

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

Our classic favorite speculative fiction author, Octavia Butler, composed these six short stories in her collection Bloodchild. The titular story is “set on a distant planet where human children spend their lives preparing to become hosts for the offspring of the alien Tlic. Sometimes the procedure is harmless, but often it is not.”

 

“Summer” by Tananarive Due

Danielle takes care of her infant, Lola, while her husband is at National Guard Army training. She swats a fly that does not move, twice, and she sees it as an omen, in her grandmother’s voice: “Anything can happen once… When it happens twice—listen. The third time may be too late.”

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

This retelling of the Snow White story comes from the perspective of the evil stepmother, who learns only because of the birth of her first daughter that her husband’s family is Black. Though the stepmother loves her stepdaughter, Snow, rather than send away her own daughter for the darkness of her skin (as her husband’s family has been doing), she sends away Snow.

Harbingers (FKA news):

Speaking of content with a focus on motherhood, there’s a new reveal about the surrealist self-portraitist and cultural icon Frida Kahlo! What would you do if a stranger revealed that she had an affair with your father?

What’s going on with this witchy literary trend on TikTok?

During these quarantined times, our generations-long obsession with writers’ houses expands even wider.

Looks like a lot of writers hear their characters’ voices in their heads… and believe that the characters have agency of their own.

I know we can’t really leave the house right now, but Seattle has a troll under one of its bridges.

Want to read the fake news article that almost ruined Lizzie Borden?

These 7 spectacular and spooky libraries have virtual tours available for you.

Halloween’s David Gordon Green is directing an “elevated” Hellraiser series for HBO.

Want to know how indie bookstores are faring in this hellscape?

Check out this list of crime novels set amid plagues and pandemics.

One of my first horror loves was Alvin Schwarz and Stephen Gammel’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I had the whole set (viva Scholastic Book Fairs!). Now, we’re getting another film adaptation installment!

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. Happy Mothers’ Day to you and yours!

Your Virgil,

 

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

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