I’ve always been attracted to strange things. When I was a kid, I loved to picnic in graveyards and make up stories about the people buried there. I think I gravitate toward the strange because it’s an escape from the gray every day. The best horror writing fills readers with wonder, opens the door to that magical question, ‘what if?’ But being truly engaged depends on caring about what happens to the characters in a book. That’s why I chose Horror with A Heart as my theme. I like horror with well-developed characters, people that matter to me. People who I could imagine as my friends.
Forget the Brad Pitt movie. The only way to consumeWorld War Zis in the form of a book.
A series of interviews with survivors of the zombie apocalypse, it tells a huge story without robbing individual characters of their voice. People from every walk of life (doctors, politicians, soldiers, janitors) have an opportunity to share their experiences.
It’s a book that manages to be powerful and personal at the same time. I recommended World War Zto my neighborhood book club. At first, they were hesitant about reading horror, but in the end, all of them loved the book.
It began with rumours from China about another pandemic. Then the cases started to multiply and what had looked like the stirrings of a criminal underclass, even the beginning of a revolution, soon revealed itself to be much, much worse.
Faced with a future of mindless man-eating horror, humanity was forced to accept the logic of world government and face events that tested our sanity and our sense of reality. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and key players in the ten-year fight against the horde, World War Z brings the finest traditions of journalism to bear on what is…
Remember your high school years? You probably do, but not accurately.
Grady Hendrix is an incredible writer of the human condition. In My Best Friend’s Exorcism, he revisits adolescence, a time “when the word ‘friend’ could draw blood”.
Abby Rivers is just starting high school and notices that her former BFF, Gretchen, is acting strangely. Is this the normal drifting apart of friends or is something else going on? When Abby delves deeper, she discovers sinister forces at work. She enlists the help of an exorcist and well...
I’m sure you know what happens next. It is a book not only about an exorcism but about the deep bonds of friendship. And it comes complete with relationship quizzes, so you can see where you stand with your own friends.
The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act different. She s moody. She s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she s nearby. Abby s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil? Like an unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist, My Best Friend s…
I was already writing stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft but I wasn’t sure I had a place in the genre. Then Victor LaValle took one of Lovecraft’s most racist works, The Horror At Red Hook, and produced an alternate version.
Black Tomtouches on the events of Lovecraft’s original story but tells the tale from the point of view of a black musician named Tommy Tester. LaValle’s reimagining of Lovecraft is a revelation.
He showed me that I didn’t have to be like Lovecraft to write in his world. And LaValle perfectly captures the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, a world that Lovecraft’s racism prevented him from seeing, even though he lived in New York City at the time.
People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.
Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic…
Just when I thought I was done with vampires, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’sCertain Dark Things came along.
I was burned out on the genre. Most of the characters in vampire stories are rich, privileged, and frankly, not that interesting. Atl, the main character in Certain Dark Things, is the exception.
A descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, she finds herself caught between the rival vampire clans that dominate Mexico City. When she develops an unexpected attachment to a street kid named Domingo, her life gets even more complicated.
Domingo could have been nothing but a Renfield, a plaything for her vampire lead. But Moreno-Garcia explores the tender bond that develops between them, a connection that puts both in jeopardy. An engrossing new spin on the vampire tale.
Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood-drinkers, is smart and beautiful - and very dangerous. Domingo is mesmerised.
Atl needs to escape the city quickly, to get far away from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn't include Domingo, but little by little, she finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of…
Stephen King. I know, I know. I can practically hear people rolling their eyes.
But in 2014, King wrote what he described as his first hard-boiled detective story. It was a complete change of pace. The story of Bill Hodges, a retired cop desperate to crack the unsolved case that haunts him,Mr. Mercedes buzzes with interesting characters.
Most prominent among them is Holly Gibney. She emerges as the hero of this story, someone who overcomes her own obstacles to help Bill Hodges catch a killer. You get the sense in Mr. Mercedes that King cares about all his characters.
Even the killer is portrayed as the victim of a horrific environment. And the crime that begins the story? It haunts me to this very day.
The first standalone novel in Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy (Mr Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch) - and the basis of Mr Mercedes, an AT&T Audience Original Series starring Brendon Gleeson.
Described as 'the best thriller of the year' Sunday Express, the No. 1 bestseller introduces retired cop Bill Hodges in a race against time to apprehend a killer.
A cat-and-mouse suspense thriller featuring Bill Hodges, a retired cop who is tormented by 'the Mercedes massacre', a case he never solved.
Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of that notorious crime, has sent Hodges a taunting letter. Now he's preparing to kill…
Darkness Below is the first book in an action-packed, character-driven series of dark academia based on the world of H.P. Lovecraft. The story centers around Ellen Logan, an undergraduate at Miskatonic University. When two of her friends die mysteriously and the university refuses to investigate, she launches her own search for answers. Ellen uncovers evidence of a murderous cult, a stolen book of magic, and a terrifying creature. To survive the darkness below, she must team up with the renowned (but difficult) Professor Andrew Carter and stop the forces that threaten to tear their world apart.
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
