The best books that show our monstrous, horror filled hearts

The Bus on Thursday introduces the reader to Eleanor Mellett who, after recovering from breast cancer, travels to a remote town in Australia to teach primary school. The horrors that ensue are both hilarious and terrifying. From a new lover who fights kangaroos in the middle of the night to body parts in the local lake, it is a wild ride. One that reveals the horrors of an isolated small town just as much as it does the potential horrors of the kind of isolation that a cancer diagnosis or experience can cause. Bartlett’s voice is one of the strongest I’ve read in quite some time—she writes with energy and venom, creating a fairly unlikable main character that the reader can’t help but entangle themselves with.

This book is a dark ride into the worst grief a human being can imagine—the loss of a child. Mario loses his four-year-old daughter to illness, and as a complication of his grief, his marriage also falls apart. Debt drives him into further dark places, and Mario takes on a series of unsavory jobs. The ghouls and ghosts in Mario’s life become more and more tactile as the novel progresses. Iglesias’ use of Spanish throughout the novel is brilliant even to the non-Spanish speaker. He welcomes the reader into the darkest corners of the human psyche, places we may later wish we hadn’t gone, and yet, the writing, the story, the poetry of all that pain, is so expertly rendered that you can’t help but fall in love with the novel even as it rips you apart.

Ghost Eaters is a deep dive into the horrors of addiction. While the focus is largely on substance abuse, the book also explores love addiction and grief in fresh ways. Erin, the protagonist, loses her graduate school friend and love to an overdose. As she tries to explore the details of Silas’ final days, she finds herself mixed up in a new drug—one that allows the user to communicate with the dead. Discovering what happened to Silas, leads Erin to learn far more about herself and her own addictive personality than it does about Silas or his final days.  

Silvia Moreno-Garcia does an amazing job of sucking the reader into a brand-new gothic place where the mind and body can no longer be trusted. Setting always plays a big role in my own novels—finding a place that seems to be haunted by a yet-to-be-identified story—and Moreno-Garcia does this brilliantly. Those who love Edgar Allen Poe or the Bronte sisters will adore this fresh take on gothic horror. Noemí is a fantastic female character, strong and willful and curious. And yet, she is no match for the molding mansion and the family that inhabits it. 

The Grip of It is among the best-haunted house novels out there. A young couple flees their city life—as well as some potentially life-ruining gambling habits. Julie and James are hopeful, as new homeowners often are, until things begin to go wrong. Odd sounds. Inexplicable spots of decay. Hidden rooms. The novel has all the best markers of a haunted house story while also piling on a sense of unique and unending claustrophobia and suspense that I don’t think I’ve read at quite this level before. It is a brilliant journey into the interior of the human mind. I loved every page.