Category: The Fright Stuff

We’re still focusing on Black horror novels for Black History Month, and this week, I have two excellent YA horror books to share with you! This is one I actually JUST FINISHED reading, so this rec is hot off the presses. At Camp Mirror Lake, you can live out your favorite horror movies. Guests pay to be scared at this full-contact horror attraction. For Charity Curtis, it’s the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at the camp and recreating scenes from the classic slasher film Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. But then, on the last weekend of the season, Charity’s co-workers start disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity begins to wonder if she’s becoming a final girl in real life. Now, if Charity and her girlfriend Bezi want to survive the night, they’ll have to figure out who is killing off all the campers and what the killer wants.

I am so obsessed with this cover, but guess what? The book is good, too! Bonus! Daisy sees dead people, so in navigating life in Ontario, she’s completely unsurprised by the amount of ghosts she sees walking the city. But her boyfriend breaking up with her? Now that is surprising. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion, Daisy jumps at the chance for an escape to a quieter life. But the house — and what’s inside it — might be more than all of Daisy’s experiences with the supernatural have prepared her for. Flash forward to ten years later. Brittney’s desperate to get away from her abusive mother, and she’s quite certain that the book her mother wrote about a “Miracle Mansion” is a total sham. So, what does Brittney decide to do? She takes her popular web series Haunted on location to the mansion to find out what happened there ten years earlier and expose her mother’s lies.

As we all know, February is Black History Month, so all month, I’m going to share some of my favorite horror books written by Black authors. So, if you don’t see your favorite this week, just know there are more recs coming. I feel like first, I have to shout out the latest from Tananarive Due! The Reformatory is set in Gracetown, Florida, in the summer of 1950. Robert Stephen Jones Jr. is sent to Gracetown School for Boys after kicking a white boy’s leg. Robert thinks he’s just being sent to a reform school, but Gracetown is something much more than that. It’s a segregated school that is haunted by the boys who have died there.

I don’t feel like this book gets talked about enough, but it is so atmospheric and creepy and such an excellent exploration of classism and poverty (that, unfortunately, feels very relevant to contemporary life). Marion Shaw was raised in poverty. Now, she longs to escape the difficulties of city life, but she sees no way out. Could a newspaper ad searching for a bloodmaid be her way out? Marion knows very little about the position or the far north where she will have to travel, but she applies anyway. As the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger, Marion meets Countess Lisavet, who presides over a court of hedonism. Marion is eager to please her mistress, who is both charismatic and terrifying. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing, Marion realizes she must learn the rules of the House of Hunger, or her own life will soon be at risk.

Which books am I excited to see turned into adaptations? So many, but Mexican Gothic is up there for me. When I first read this book, I was floored, and I would love to see what this movie would look like. This one is going to have some really eery visuals; I can tell already. Mexican Gothic is being adapted as a limited series for Hulu, but there is no release date yet!

The Last House on Needless Street is a book that I have trouble imagining as a movie, which is why I’d like to see a film adaptation of this one so badly. If you’ve read it, maybe you already know what I mean. If you haven’t read this one yet, you are in for a treat. The film rights for this book were purchased by Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish’s Imaginarium Productions back in 2021. Now we’re all just patiently waiting to see what they do with it.

You’ll probably see Stephen Graham Jones mentioned a lot in this newsletter because he is such a prolific author, and all of his horror novels are so good. But this one is especially fun, as it’s written like a film script, so you experience this slasher story as if you were watching an over-the-top B horror flick. Lindsay is a homecoming princess who barely escaped a bloody death at the hands of a killer wearing a Michael Jackson mask. Now, Lindsay is assembling a group of final girls to replace her original homecoming court. This time, it won’t just be a fight for survival. This is a fight to become the Last Final Girl.

Illustrator Michael Rogalski had a lot of fun with this horror novel, which is designed to look like an IKEA catalogue. This book is about a haunted IKEA-like furniture store called ORSK. To find out what’s going on in their store, a group of employees agree to stay after hours, and…weird stuff happens. The illustrations throughout this one are so great, and they get creepier and creepier as the story goes on.

In the first few weeks of 2024, I’ve already read some amazing backlist horror books, including the manga Black Paradox by Junji Ito. In this book, a group of people meet online and make plans to end their lives together. Instead, they open up a portal to another world, and their lives are changed forever.

Here’s another incredible backlist title you should definitely check out if you haven’t already! This cosmic horror story is a poignant meditation on grief and depression. And it all starts when Thiago and Vera get a strange Alexa-like technology called Itza. At first, the Itza just does weird things, like ordering dildos for the house. But then there are weird scratching sounds in the wall. And Thiago starts having strange nightmares about a door.

Looking for some quick horror reads to get your reading goals off to a good start? Here are some amazing horror novels in translation that are right around 200 pages. Fever Dream is a mind-bending novel that starts with a woman waking up sick in a hospital bed. A young boy sits at her bedside, and she speaks with him, trying to make sense of what happened to her.

The Hole is another novel of psychological horror. Ogi wakes up from a coma following a car accident that killed his wife and left him paralyzed and disfigured. Now, his mother-in-law is in charge of his care. But as she mourns the loss of her only child, she often neglects to care for Ogi and leaves him alone in his bed. The only thing Ogi has left to remember his wife is her garden in their front yard. So when Ogi sees his mother-in-law digging up the garden his wife had spent so much time cultivating, he is confused. And his mother-in-law, digging bigger and bigger holes in the garden, insists she’s simply finishing what her daughter started.

Paul Tremblay is always a must-read horror author every year, but this book looks especially good. Back in 1993, a group of young filmmakers spent four weeks making an art-house horror film that would become a cult classic…even though only a few scenes from the film were ever released to the public. And yet, somehow, the movie became a fascination for film fans everywhere. And now, three decades later, there are talks of creating a major Hollywood reboot. Only one member of the film’s original cast is still alive. The man who starred in the film as “The Thin Kid” has vivid memories of just how strange the filming process was. And just how dangerous. As he attempts to help the big-budget remake get underway, memories of the original filming and all of its mysteries and secrets come flooding back. And the past and the present begin to blur.

This book cover is already haunting my nightmares. When her father leaves unexpectedly, Ji-Won is forced to keep the rest of her family together and care for her grieving mother. Then Ji-Won’s mother tells her eating fish eyes could bring them good luck, so Ji-Won tries it. Now, all she can think about is eating eyes. And not fish eyes this time. Human ones.

This final book is being described as perfect for fans of Yellowjackets, and it comes from Gwendolyn Kiste, who won a Bram Stoker Award for The Rust Maidens and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction for Reluctant Immortals. This book follows the story of three childhood friends who are the lone survivors after everyone else in their town turns into ghosts.

Let’s highlight some Jewish horror, starting with the iconic Paperbacks from Hell novel The Tribe. Back in 1945, Jewish captives were liberated from the Belzec concentration camp, but no one could understand how they survived. Thirty-five years later, in 1980, a rabbi’s son is murdered, and those responsible are found slaughtered and covered in a strange gray substance. Now, Rachel Levy and Detective Roger Hawkins are determined to uncover what happened in both cases and how they’re connected.

The Tzadikim Nistarim, or Lamed Vav Tzadikim, is a Jewish legend that says that in each generation there exist 36 righteous people. But when detectives James Manning and Covina “Dewey” Duwai are called to investigate a series of brutal murders, they discover that the 36 righteous men are not a myth at all.

New beginnings are always scary, and that’s why a family looking for a fresh start is a pretty standard trope for horror fiction. Here are a couple of novels that do it well. Eric Ross is looking for a fresh start after a family trauma sent him on the run with his two daughters. Unsure of where to turn and desperate to find a job, Eric feels like his prayers are answered when he sees a position advertised for a caretaker of the Masson House. The Masson House is notoriously haunted, but this only draws Eric to the house more. His family has their own ties with the supernatural, and Eric is looking for answers.

You’ll probably see me recommend this book a lot because I love it so much, so listen up and read it! You won’t regret it! Marigold’s family moves to a new place in a new town in the hopes of starting over (seeing a pattern here?). At first, when Marigold and her family move to the picture-perfect house on Maple Street, it seems too good to be true. But Marigold can’t help but overhear the whispers about her neighborhood at her new school. And then there’s the house itself, where things keep disappearing, and the family feels strange presences watching them around every corner.

This first book probably seems like an obvious pick for ’90s-inspired horror. But if you have somehow not read this book from Grady Hendrix, maybe you didn’t know it takes place in the ’90s! The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires pits a true crime-loving book club against an actual vampire. Get ready for one of the scariest vampire stories you’ve ever read.

I love that the title of this horror anthology is a cross between two ’90s staples: Ahh! Real Monsters and Now That’s What I Call Music. If you don’t know these references, then congrats. You’re young, and I’m old. If you do get them, then you’ll probably love this anthology of 14 short stories set in the ’90s.

Here’s another book you’ve likely heard of before, but as one of the most terrifying horror novels released in the 1990s, it has to be mentioned. In this story, teens watch a videotape and then mysteriously die. But what’s on the viral videotape that everyone is watching? If you’ve only seen the movie, the real answer might surprise you.