The best character-driven horror books with a heart

Forget the Brad Pitt movie. The only way to consume World War Z is 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 Z to my neighborhood book club. At first, they were hesitant about reading horror, but in the end, all of them loved the book.

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 Ballad of Black Tom rocked my world.

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 Tom touches 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.

Just when I thought I was done with vampires, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain 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.

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.