Lately, the state of the world is a big factor of negativity and rumination for me. To keep from getting jaded, I have to take periodic breaks from reading the news and researching crime cases. Fiction works as an escape, especially horror, which might sound like ugly-adjacent, but itâs cathartic. The characters arenât real, so if anything happens to them, itâs not going to affect my psyche the way real families dealing with the murders of their loved ones does. Sometimes a perfectly-solved mystery or a revenge tale is a breath of fresh air compared to the unresolved loose ends of real life.
Itâs hard to pick a favorite, butThe Fireman has it allââa pandemic that causes its afflicted to spontaneously combust (called Dragonscale because Spinal-Tap Drummer Disease was too long), a plucky pregnant nurse determined to have a healthy baby in spite of the odds (which includes an unhinged husband and a blood-thirsty post-apocalyptic death squad), a commune that has figured out a way to live with the disease, and a lone wolf that wears a firemanâs jacket who has somehow learned how to control his fire.
The characters are so real they still live rent free in my head. I read it during the COVID lockdown and the parallels were both scary and hopeful.
Nobody knew where the virus came from. FOX News said it had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s. MSNBC said sources indicated it might've been created by engineers at Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of Revelation. CNN reported both sides. While every TV station debated the cause, the world burnt.
Pregnant school nurse, HARPER GRAYSON, had seen lots of people burn on TV, but the first person she saw burn for real was in theâŠ
There is an intrinsic link between comedy and horror.
Fans of Jordan Peeleâs horror films would probably appreciate that author John Ajvide Lindqvist worked as a stand-up comedian for twelve years. And his take on the vampire story is immersive, thanks to Ebba Segerbergâs amazing English translation of the Swedish novel. The descriptive scenes rival both movie adaptations.
You are transported to a suburb in Sweden in 1981 where a twelve-year-old boy is struggling with the loneliness brought on by bullies and his parentsâ divorce. Until an attractive new neighbor moves in that only goes out at night. Oh, and a body is found in the woods, completely drained of blood. Now life is a bit less monotonous for our protagonist.
John Ajvide Lindqvistâs international bestseller Let the Right One In is âa brilliant take on the vampire myth, and a roaring good storyâ (New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong), the basis for the multi-film festival award-winning Swedish film, the U.S. adaptation Let Me In directed by Matt Reeves (The Batman), and the Showtime TV series.
It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come atâŠ
In the harrowing aftermath of Chornobyl's meltdown in 1986, the fate of Eastern Europe hangs by a thread.
From Beijing, American radiation scientist Lara, once a thorn in the Russian mob's side, is drawn back into the shadows of the Soviet Union on the Trans-Mongolian Express. She isn't alone. Anton,âŠ
Iâve been a fan of horror stories for as long as I could read.
(God bless those librarians who talked my mother into letting me bring home the books that I wanted to check out, or I wouldnât be the person I am today.)
The scariest element of horror in my opinion, is a predator without boundaries in the physical world. Combining that element with rattlesnakes, uninterred graves, and river-soaked apparitions, youâll get a southern gothic tale of revenge on a young girlâs murderer who usually finds himself immune to the law.
"The finest writer of paperback originals in America." - Stephen King
"Readers of weak constitution should beware." - Publishers Weekly
"McDowell has a flair for the gruesome." - Washington Post
Welcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy Alabama small town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: fourteen-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach of the law.
But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain ofâŠ
The dynamic between the protagonist and her aloof, hypochondriac mother was all too familiar, and maybe thatâs what attracted me to the storyline.
This book is more than just a murder mysteryââitâs a book about women and the toxic relationships we make with ourselves and others that are perpetuated from unhealthy upbringings. But itâs also about finding inner strength while it challenges the stereotypes that portray femininity as weak, nurturing, and safe.
This is a very psychologically complex story with very real, very flawed characters, and is worth the raw, dark journey to the perfect conclusion.
NOW AN HBOÂź LIMITED SERIES STARRING AMY ADAMS, NOMINATED FOR EIGHT EMMY AWARDS, INCLUDING OUTSTANDING LIMITED SERIES
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GONE GIRL
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille findsâŠ
Lena thinks she knows her future: in her small village, nothing much has changed for two hundred years. Women farm and fish, plant and harvest: a cooperative, productive, peaceful life. Until the day a soldier rides in, to ask the unthinkable of the women: learn to fight. Invasion is imminent,âŠ
A young pharmacist is hired in a rural town and begins to question what happened to the original druggist he replaced.
This Appalachian tale of murder and drugs even has its own soundtrack; I swear I could hear the radio and smell the characters, because the descriptions in this novel are so well written. This is one of the rare times Iâve read a book in one sitting because I had to know what was going to happen next.
A young pharmacist takes a job in a small rural town and is quickly introduced to a world of drugs, sex, guns, and deceit. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with the local 'good-time girl' and finds himself trying to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of the pharmacist he was hired to replace.
January 18, 1970, two West Virginia University freshmenâMared Malarik and Karen Ferrellâleft a movie theater and headed back toward their dorms. Deciding to hitchhike, they entered a cream-colored sedan. This was the last time their friends saw them alive.
Investigators didn't find too few suspectsââthey had far too many: the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the cab driver who beat a woman nearly to death, the violent orderly with the bloody broomstick, and the unstable bouncer with the "girlish" laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads.
Then handwritten letters began to arrive taunting the police to find their bodies: "You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brushââlook carefully. The animals are now on the move."
Bad Blood is paranormal suspense in First Person Snark, so if you like sarcastic, strong female characters set in a world where the preternatural is run amok (i.e., legal citizens in the United States), then this book and series are for you.
Follow Sadie Stantonâ"poster girl for the preternatural"âas sheâŠ
Melody and the Pier to Forever
by
Shawn Michel De Montaigne,
A young adult and epic fantasy novel that begins an entire series, as yet unfinished, about a young girl named Melody who discovers that the pier she lives near goes on foreverâa pier that was destroyed by a hurricane that appeared out of blue skies in mere moments in 1983.âŠ