Here are 100 books that Kill Creek fans have personally recommended if you like
Kill Creek.
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I’ve been a fan of horror—specifically, supernatural horror—for as long as I can remember. Though the topic of life after death is perhaps one of the most long-standing debates in existence, almost every family has a story or two about things that can’t be explained. I’ve turned my lifelong interest in death, the occult, and how the two can coexist, into slow-burn horror stories for people who like a little weird with their fear. Stories that explore the beautiful complexity of queer people. Stories for the strange at heart.
This book is fast and punchy. It’s filled with twists and a high level of unnerving emotions. Set during autumn harvest, this is an absolutely perfect Halloween read. It is rather short, which means a fast reader or someone with some time could devour it in a day or two. There’s also an upcoming film adaptation.
It is Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end…
I’ve been obsessed with Halloween traditions since before I could finish my own bag of candy. In many ways, those dark and chilly childhood nights of trick or treating are what gave rise to my lifelong love of horror. Inspired by the thrill of staying up late on the one night of the year when the dead can return to earth, I have since delved deep into the ancient history and folklore of All Hallows’ Eve, much of which features prominently in my Book of Shadowsseries. I hope the books on this list help you capture the spooky magic of the season!
In this razor-sharp novella, Halloween is personified in a bloodthirsty creature who haunts the nearly abandoned town of Strang. Fearful of Halloween’s deadly tricks, the remaining residents leave small live offerings at their doorsteps every night at sundown. But once a year on All Hallows’ Eve, Halloween demands a bigger and bloodier sacrifice. Dripping with dreadful atmosphere, Hunt does a masterful job of rendering a story that is both disturbing and surprisingly emotional for such a quick read. Steeped in folklore and ancient traditions, this grim and twisted tale reminds us that the old custom of trick or treating was meant to protect us from evil, and that for all its modern fun and games, Halloween is supposed to be scary.
Strang isn’t the small, quaint town it appears to be. It’s haunted every night by a creature the townsfolk refer to as Halloween. Once the sun sets each day, Halloween emerges to collect its treats: a small, live offering from each household. The residents comply because no one wants to be the target of Halloween’s tricks. But the nightmare of residing in Strang is nothing compared to the yearly ritual Halloween demands of the citizens on All Hallows’ Eve.
I’ve always been intrigued by monsters. I grew up watching or reading anything that had a monster in it, much to the chagrin of my monster-hating mother. Over time, I grew bored with the same monsters in the same historical settings. It wasn’t until I discovered some of the books on this list that I found writers doing new, fun, and inventive things that reinvigorated my own love for them. I’m always going to be a monster junky, but I always hope to find authors that can bring these classic terrors into the modern world.
I loved the tie-in to classic superstitions and historical events that lay the foundation for this story. I found the spreading evil within the town to be one of the most compelling parts of the story. While the heroes were nice, I wanted to see just how far this malignant force would spread before being stopped.
I liked that the protagonists truly struggle and are in real peril. I enjoyed the more subdued action of the book and the real-world tone that it set.
"This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King." --Publishers Weekly
The book that launched the Pine Deep trilogy
Thirty years ago, a blues musician called the Bone Man killed the devil at the crossroads, only to be beaten and hung like a scarecrow in a cornfield--or so the story goes. Today, the people of Pine Deep celebrate their town's grisly past by luring tourists to the famous haunted hayride, full of chills and scares. But this year, "The Spookiest Town in America" will learn the true meaning of fear. Its residents will see the real face of…
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…
I’ve been obsessed with Halloween traditions since before I could finish my own bag of candy. In many ways, those dark and chilly childhood nights of trick or treating are what gave rise to my lifelong love of horror. Inspired by the thrill of staying up late on the one night of the year when the dead can return to earth, I have since delved deep into the ancient history and folklore of All Hallows’ Eve, much of which features prominently in my Book of Shadowsseries. I hope the books on this list help you capture the spooky magic of the season!
There are a lot of Halloween-themed anthologies out there, but none feature as many horror heavyweights as this must-have classic. Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, Ray Bradbury, Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell—they’re all here and they’ve brought plenty of spooky friends. Packed with short stories and novellas revolving around the scariest night of the year, this collection also features amusing and nostalgic anecdotes about the authors’ favorite Halloween memories. If you’re a fan of Spooky Season, grab the candy corn and a steaming cup of cider because there are more treats here than a Halloween sack spilling candy down a darkened lane.
Classic novellas, never-before-published stories, essays on the history, literature, and films of Halloween, and real-life memories of October 31st-from today's best practitioners of fear:
Dean Koontz * Peter Straub * Poppy Z. Brite * Rick Hautala * Steve Rasnic Tem * Elizabeth Engstrom * Thomas Ligotti * Gary A. Braunbeck * Jack Ketchum * Thomas F. Monteleone * Hugh B. Cave * Simon Clark * Christopher Golden * Ray Bradbury * Jack Ketchum * Alan M. Clark * Gahan Wilson * Paula Guran * John Shirley * Tom Piccirilli * Jack Cady * David B. Silva * Robert Morrish *…
Although I was a little scared of Halloween as a kid, I’ve grown to love the silly side of spookiness. Growing up with Pee-Wee’s Playhouse every Saturday morning, I learned that silliness is a superpower. Now, when working on kids books, my ultimate goal is to put work into the world that will delight kids, and won’t make the parents groan and say, “that one again?” Finding the sweet spot of being fun to read, fun to hear, and fun to look at is what I love most about creating kids books. I hope you and your little ghouls and goblins enjoy my spooky board Boooook list!
I love that the little girl (actually a little witch) in Ghosts in the House! is confident and capable every step of the way as she deals with her haunted house.
Ghosts are not something to be afraid of – they can be useful! Kazuno Kohara’s linocut illustrations are a perfect pairing to her words – simple and refreshing.
Ghosts in the House! by author-illustrator Kazuno Kohara is just the right mix of sweet and scary for the youngest trick-or treaters
At the edge of town lives a clever girl with a spooky problem: Her house is haunted! Luckily, she happens to be a witch and knows a little something about taking care of ghosts. She catches them, puts them in the washing machine, airs them out to dry, and gives them new lives as sofa covers, table cloths, and, of course, bed sheets to cozy up under. Fresh and charming illustrations in dynamic orange, black and white bring…
As a former Division 1 basketball player at Marquette University and current ecommerce executive, I’m always looking for new sources of inspiration. Please enjoy my list and send me any comments on what you find inspiring!
Win By Two is the true story about a Kansas City drug dealer and a private school teacher, bonded together through basketball. This is a powerful story about race, leadership, and what can happen when people get outside of their comfort zones and build bridges in their community. It also challenges our internal biases that we may not even know exist.
A drug dealer, who grew up in the urban core of Kansas City. A private school teacher who grew up in San Diego and dared to hire a convicted felon as his assistant coach. And the game that saved both their lives. A drama so powerful no storyteller would script the details that unfold. It all starts in a crack house on the west side of the Paseo, and in a broken low income home in east San Diego. It unfolds in a private school gymnasium, a state penitentiary, a chapel in downtown Kansas City, the Johnson County Suburbs, and…
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing…
I’m an author of YA fiction who spent his earlier years “wiggling dollies” (as the Brits say) in the trenches of Jim Henson’s Muppet world and then spent a decade writing children’s television of the PBS kind. After writing my first kids’ novel (Out of Patience), I never looked back. OK, I did glance back for the inspiration for a second novel…
The “deep map” that Least Heat-Moon unfolds for us in this revelatory book is the history of Chase County, Kansas, home of the largest and least corrupted stand of tallgrass in America. He takes us with him—by car, on foot, and in mind—as he explores this story-rich land, its plants, animals, and the homespun people who have struggled to occupy this forbidding landscape.
In one breath, he reminds us it was the tall grasses of the African savannah that first made humankind stand up. In another, he tells us that the humans who peer across America’s tall grasses have “prairie eyes.” In “a place where you see twenty miles sitting down,” you have prairie eyes if you take in the horizon with stoic calm, knowing it can bring the deliverance of rain or the destruction of a tornado, dust storm, prairie fire (the “red buffalo”), or locusts.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. By the author of Blue Highways, PrairyErth is “a majestic survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains” (Hungry Mind Review).
William Least Heat-Moon travels by car and on foot into the core of our continent, focusing on the landscape and history of Chase County—a sparsely populated tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of central Kansas—exploring its land, plants, animals, and people until this small place feels as large as the universe.
Called a “modern-day Walden” by the Chicago Sun-Times, PrairyErth is a journey through place, through time, and…
I’ve spent pretty much my entire adult life as a journalist, a dining critic, or a humor columnist. But over the past ten years, my reading choices have been influenced less by, say, The New Yorker, than by my daughter, Hannah. As she grew from Knuffle Bunny to Junie B. Jones to Judy Moody, so did I. And when she began reading middle-grade novels, I did too. Then I began writing them. There is something amazing about the endless possibilities of a kid’s imagination before they get cynical and start to care about things like being cool that makes middle-grade the sweet spot for ideas. It’s like Hannah came along and recalibrated my brain—for reading and writing alike.
Lois Ruby is a YA veteran who has more than 20 books to her name, many of them historical fiction, including the beloved Steal Away Home, which appeared on basically every year-end best list back in 1994. She also happens to be my mom. And her latest book, which takes place during the “red scare” of the 1950s, is among her best. It’s a tense story about a baseball-crazy 13-year-old boy whose parents are accused of being communist sympathizers, turning his life upside down when he’s supposed to be studying for his bar mitzvah. The clock-ticking backdrop, leading up to the notorious execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for supposedly passing on nuclear secrets to the Soviets, gives the whole book terrifyingly high stakes.
A suspenseful and heartfelt story about an era whose uncertainties, controversies, and dangers will seem anything but distant to contemporary readers.
If thirteen-year-old Marty Rafner had his way, he'd spend the summer of 1953 warming the bench for his baseball team, listening to Yankees games on the radio, and avoiding preparations for his bar mitzvah. Instead, he has to deal with FBI agents staking out his house because his parents―professors at the local college―are suspected communist sympathizers. Marty knows what happens to communists, or Reds, as his friends call them: They lose their jobs, get deported...or worse. Two people he's…
When my late wife Margo Wilson suggested, over 40 years ago, that we should study homicides for what they might reveal about human motives and emotions, her idea seemed zany. But when we plunged into police investigative files and homicide databases, we quickly realized that we had struck gold, and homicide research became our passion. Our innovation was to approach the topic like epidemiologists, asking who is likely to kill whom and identifying the risk factors that are peculiar to particular victim-killer relationships. What do people reallycare about? Surveys and interviews elicit cheap talk; killing someone is drastic action.
It was Calvin Trillin's hilariously enthusiastic stories about the world's best restaurants (most of which seem to be situated in his hometown of Kansas City) that initially made me one of his many fans. Between 1967 and 1982, however, he also wrote a series of long articles for TheNew Yorkerentitled "U.S. Journal," in which he used singular events, often homicides, as the launchpads for tales rich in local history and lifeways. Sixteen of Trillin's best are assembled here. Has anyone written more penetratingly about how rivalries and resentments are embedded in social settings?
True stories of sudden death in the classic collection by a master of American journalism
“Reporters love murders,” Calvin Trillin writes in the introduction to Killings. “In a pinch, what the lawyers call ‘wrongful death’ will do, particularly if it’s sudden.” Killings, first published in 1984 and expanded for this edition, shows Trillin to be such a reporter, drawn time after time to tales of sudden death. But Trillin is attracted less by violence or police procedure than by the way the fabric of people’s lives is suddenly exposed when someone comes to an untimely end. As Trillin says, Killings…
Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind—supposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nilda’s new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And Nilda…
I’m a multi-award-winning novelist and Kansas historian. Through reading letters written by African Americans in Kansas, I realized that black people were a major political force. In fact, with the settlement of Nicodemus, for the first time in American history, enough black people had gathered in one place to dominate political decisions and prevail over the white community. No one had told the story of the three black powerhouses who shaped politics on a county, state, and national level. I was thrilled when University of Oklahoma Press published my academic book. It won second place in the Westerner’s International Best Book contest.
I’m a native Kansan. I have a special appreciation for books about my beloved state. So, finding this superb work about African Americans moved me to tears. Painter writes about the great migration from the South after the Civil War. Kansas was literally regarded as “The Promised Land” due to the Homestead Act and the promise of free land. Painter is unflinching in her telling of the violence that occurred to prevent black people from leaving. The Exodus to Kansas was feverish and dangerous. She tells of heroics required to leave the South, due to black people's “fear of future evil, and their dread of renewed slavery.”