The best books that weave supernatural terror with real-world adversity

In 1950s Florida, twelve-year-old Robert is sent to a reformatory for the “offense” of trying to defend his older sister, Gloria, when she is sexually harassed by a white man.

The author transports the reader to the Jim Crow South in which Gloria fights to free Robert, and he struggles to survive in a haunted reformatory run by sadistic racists.

I appreciated how the author infused life, hope, and compassion into her characters, keeping me in suspense while showing at a visceral level how slavery begot mass incarceration and human-caused terror trumped the supernatural. 

Grayson Hale claims that the devil made him commit a gruesome murder. This brilliant page-turner kept me guessing whether the blame should fall on the devil or untreated mental illness, given Grayson’s upbringing within a fundamentalist Christian household where he was viewed as evil.

I love psychological horror, so this book was right up my alley as I turned the pages to see whether the murder had a human or supernatural cause. The book beautifully unfolds the story of Grayson’s trauma, shame, and self-loathing as an isolated and marginalized person.

I will say no more about that to avoid spoilers, but I loved how this book kept me guessing and entertained while it provided me with a new understanding and compassion.

From the first page of this paranormal thriller set in the borderland between Texas and Mexico, the story sucked me into Mario’s vortex of medical spending, powerlessness, self-loathing, and grief as he turns to contract killing to try to save his terminally ill child.

A dark heist thriller, the horrifying human violence of drug cartels melds with supernatural terror while the reader roots for Mario, a compelling character who acts in ways contrary to his own values.

I appreciated the story’s authentic dialogue and setting, which provided a window into the challenges of extreme poverty, racism, and lack of social mobility experienced by immigrants in the United States. Although a surreal tale, as a person who has had lived experience in the drug-selling world, I enjoyed how the story conveyed the confusion and deception of life within a drug cartel—never knowing who you can trust or what to believe—which lent an added authenticity to this “Barrio Noir” thriller.

After a “massacre” of a herd of elk on a protected reservation forest—a scene which spoke more of frenzied bloodlust than hunting for sustenance—four Blackfoot men become the prey of a creature bent on revenge.

Jones’s narrative satisfied my thirst for wholly original horror while exploring the clash of Native American traditional and contemporary culture. The story touches on the characters’ drive to assimilate, guilt and sense of identity, and the need to move beyond resentments to create a life worth living.

I loved the originality of the beast, the slice of reservation life, and the endearing, flawed characters, all rendered with gorgeous precision.

A man called “Pepper,” who may or may not suffer from mental illness, ends up in a locked mental ward in Queens, New York, where the entire novel takes place.

A beast, who the patients believe is the devil, comes out at night, assaulting and sometimes killing patients. Patient deaths are chalked up to suicide. The engaging, quirky characters—drugged to the gills while warehoused and essentially untreated in a public hospital—share the defining feature of being low-income and unprotected from both the supernatural and human forces that would destroy them. They must take matters into their own hands to protect themselves.

I appreciated the theme of how marginalization and isolation presented as much terror here as the supernatural. Yet, the hope and humor of the characters also kept me engaged and frequently smiling.