One of the gifts of the horror genre is that the stories use metaphor to examine human behaviors that defy understanding. My favorite horror novels, novellas, and short stories can be read again and again. While my Feral graphic novel series is for middle school readers, I wanted to provide grey areas, perhaps more than the editor always liked! I wanted the adventure, the scares, the questions, the uncertainty that would let the small town of Feral take on a larger-than-life presence for a reader and encourage revisiting it whenever the mood strikes. It's almost pleasant, the rhythm, the anticipation. A little unnerving too.
Feral is littered with secrets, mysteries, and unexplained disappearances. The town has always been weird… and most residents just accept that. But intrepid young investigators Freya and Monica are sure that Feral is getting weirder. Kids are disappearing more and more, signs of the supernatural are surfacing in new places, and the lights went on in the abandoned Messner Mansion.
The adventures from Welcome to Feral continue as they descend into the deep, dark passages hidden below the haunted town. If they aren’t careful, they might become the town’s next unsolved mystery! With vibrant art, clever humor, and plenty of thrills, animator Mark Fearing conjures a fearsome saga out of small-town terrors.
Each short story is an epic in disguise. They have unique settings, and twists on the predictable beats of a horror genre keep you guessing.
Real life is more frightening than the monsters we imagine, isn't it? Highly original and engaging, I read the book three times in the first year of ownership.
Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible. These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they…
It's sort of a classic, and yet, there's more to this story than the formal style of the peculiar author. It creates almost a trance when I read it. So many other authors have grabbed parts of this tale, and so many books and movies seem to resonate with aspects of the tale.
The odd Americana aspect of the setting and the historical overtones lull you into solitude while the plot twists the hold on your mind ever tighter. It's a favorite, even though I admit it can be a difficult read when compared to the pacing of modern genre writing.
This is a short story collection I return to every few years. There are four novellas in this collection, but each of them was delivered directly to my cerebral cortex. I can recall passages from each story. And I can see the locations.
I feel King is at his best when he's twisting his way through novellas and short stories. After reading "1922", it was weeks before I stopped seeing the well. And weeks before, I stopped shaking my head at what Wilfred James did or the grit of Tess in "Big Driver" or the pettiness of Dave Streeter. This is worth reading every year.
From the master of the long story form, the Sunday Times No. 1 besteller, Full Dark, No Stars - described by the Sunday Telegraph as 'an extraordinary collection, thrillingly merciless, and a career high point' - now with a stunning new cover look.
Is it possible to fully know anyone? Even those we love the most? What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?
In '1922', a story which was adapted into a Netflix original film, a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.
This was one of the first horror novels I read, so it has almost a mystical hold on me. I returned to it quite a few times through the years turning my paperback edition into a dogeared mess.
It was the first time I read a story where the real world of politics and cruelty were tied to the immortal, the unliving, the monsters of our imagination. The mix of horror and the supernatural works in this book as well as anything I've read.
And the scene under the keep, the tunnels that kept me awake as a youngster, and I still look at it as a masterclass on how to build fear and suspense.
The Keep is the first book in the Adversary Cycle from bestselling author F. Paul Wilson and the basis for the 1983 cult classic horror film written and directed by Michael Mann.
"Something is murdering my men."
Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims.
When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying.…
This is the only graphic novel/comic book on my list and it goes above and beyond in art and story.
I have enjoyed reading the Harrow County stories many times. I prefer the collected edition where you can take your time and read comic issues 1-16 of Darkhorse Comics Harrow County. The artwork pulls you in, and the story is filled with zippy turns and good dialogue.
It pulls from many of the books I've mentioned in building an early American horror story that heads off in multiple directions. I can smell the grass and trees, hear the click-clack of the horse-pulled carts, and taste autumn in the air while reading these books.
A topic for another time would be examining the different experiences when reading a graphic novel compared to a novel. The strengths and weaknesses, what exactly the illustrations add, but for a horror fan who has never read a graphic novel, you can't go wrong if you start with Harrow County.
The first half of the highly acclaimed, Eisner-nominated horror fantasy tale, collected in a value-priced omnibus.
Emmy always knew that the woods surrounding her home crawled with ghosts and monsters. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she learns that she is connected to these creatures--and to the land itself--in a way she never imagined.
I grew up on a family farm surrounded by larger vegetable and dairy operations that used migrant labor. From an early age, my siblings and I were acquainted with the children of these workers, children whom we shared a school desk with one day and were gone the next. On summer vacations, our parents hauled us around in a station wagon with a popup camper, which they parked in out-of-the-way hayfields and on mountainous plateaus, shunning, much to our chagrin, normal campgrounds, and swimming pools. Thus, I grew up exposed to different cultures and environments. My writing reflects my parents’ curiosity, love of books and travel, and devotion to the natural world.
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Stefan promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his story, has grown sympathetic to his cause and complicit in his pushback against prejudiced accusations. Their mutual attraction is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood. Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie's aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program. Stefan, whose own father died in prison while on a hunger strike, promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his…
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