58 books like Handling the Undead

The first of a series, this book introduces Angel Crawford, a high school dropout with an alcoholic dad, a dead-beat boyfriend, and an addiction to prescription drugs. When things in your life are that bad, waking up as a zombie is more of an opportunity than a setback – especially when her newly undead status comes with a fresh job at the morgue and access to all the brains she can eat. But her new job and secret lifestyle come with a big side portion of murder mystery. This whole series is a fun urban fantasy romp that goes down smoother than a feast of brains. 

Is this book a bit of a Twilight knockoff trying to capitalize on teens by replacing vampires and werewolves with zombies as the love interest? No! Okay, well…sort of. I love this book because of its darkly humorous take on the whole zombie apocalypse deal. Written in the first-person from the zombie’s perspective, Marion was able to give his main character, R, a lot of…wait for it…life. Coupled with his magnificent use of morbid humor and smooth prose, this book definitely has a lot of bite.

Imagine coming back from the dead only to realize the world doesn't want you: You move in with parents who are disgusted by you, random strangers on the street throw food or pull mean jokes on you and your friends, and being caught out past your curfew sends you to the dog pound. That's the life that Andy Warner reanimates into after a fatal accident. It's not all bad, though. At least he's got some friends at the Undead Anonymous support group, including the dead-sexy Rita, and Ray, a guy whose “venison” seems to come with some miraculous healing abilities. This is a darkly comedic book filled with a colorful cast, and you can't help but delight in the tragic spiral of the characters as they become increasingly inhuman. After all, can you blame them? 

If you're familiar with Hugh Howey's work, it's probably thanks to his Wool series of post-apocalyptic sci-fi. I, Zombie is a very different sort of book. It's still post-apocalyptic in subject, but the tone is even darker and filled with both horror and melancholy for the dying world. The zombies here are prisoners of their own bodies, forced to drift and commit horrific violence that they can feel but cannot prevent. You'll get to meet several such zombies in this book and really feel for them as you see each one's backstory and how they came to be part of the horde – and it's that pathos that makes this book something special.

Mr. Lindqvist is a Swedish author that came to worldwide notice with his novel Let the Right One In and has written many great novels since then. He is not normally a short story author, nor does he particularly enjoy reading short tales, so this is a strange choice for me but Let the Old Dreams Die is so dreadfully different from other recent horror writers that I felt I had to include it here. To date, it is the only book of short tales that Mr. Lindqvist has written. There is a zombie tale (and how many of them have appeared over the years) but should zombies have citizenship? How should the health service care for them? Is it really their fault that they wish to eat people? Can we happily live together?

There is little that has not been covered before in Mr. Lindqvist’s tales but every story… show more.

Annika Bengtzon is another strong woman reporter working in a man’s world. She’s married to a man very involved in his own career. They have two children and Annika struggles to balance chasing after a story with looking after the kids and keeping house. Most women can relate to her very real pressures and will empathize with all that she goes through on the home front. I liked her tenacity and intelligence and almost reckless pursuit of a killer. Marklund is Swedish and I enjoy learning more about the country—another cold, northern setting. Her character develops over the series with gritty crimes at the centre of the stories.

There are so few novels in English that explore Gustavian Stockholm, and this is a thrilling page-turner set in 1793 that explores the dark side of the capital city one year after the assassination of King Gustav III. Mikel Cardell, a watchman with a brutal past in the army, and Cecil Winge, an investigator who is hovering near death himself, team up to find the perpetrator of a heinous murder. Author Niklas Natt och Dag (translates to Night and Day — an old aristocratic name) has written a story steeped in graphic, gory period detail and authentic atmosphere.  

Johan Theorin has received so much praise and accolades for this book that it feels a bit repetitive to heap more on. But here goes anyway. Like most of the books recommended here this one couples a mystery and a ghost story, never leaning completely to one side. The family moving into and restoring an old house is not exactly trailblazing in the ghostly realm but that does not matter at all. There is never too much of a good thing in my opinion. But make no mistake that a haunted house is not all that is being dealt with here, enter lighthouses, past shipwrecks, and drownings. Throw in present-day drug-addicted burglars, a tragedy, and excerpts from an old manuscript and the outcome is a master class in eeriness, drawing from an incredible sense of place and great storytelling.     

Mary Stewart was such a huge talent. She wrote in more than one genre but I am most drawn to her gothic novels like this one.

The original vintage cover from 1965 presents what it is: 60s style, castle parapets (pivotal scene in novel), and that Fawcett Crest price tag!

(And can we just take a moment here to recognize that the original covers were always the best ones in this genre of reads?)

Stewart was a genius at spinning out a mystery that keeps the reader guessing. This novel is no exception to that and adds in that gothic flavor with just the right touch.

One early summer afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from the mud of Lake Vättern, and Detective Inspector Martin Beck of the Swedish National Police is assigned to the case. Who was she? Who killed her? These questions remain unanswered for months and months (and months). Catching a killer, it seems, is a slog, and the routines of police work are captured here in all their tedium. And this is exactly why I love this book, as it compellingly dramatizes (to quote from Henning Mankell’s introduction) “the fundamental virtue of the police: patience.” There’s a heroism to these steadfast and rumpled men, and something thrilling about their dogged, often frustrating, yet ultimately successful pursuit of the truth.