10 Great Horror Reads For Spooky Season

Wake Forest's local independent bookstore, Page 158 Books, has been a community mainstay for years. Not only does it host a variety of events like author signings, writing workshops, literary festivals, and music performances, but it also provides over a dozen regular book clubs catering to all types of readers' interests. The Page 158 Books Horror Book Club has been around for four years and meets the first Monday of each month at 6 pm at the bookstore (even on holidays).

Horror stories serve as a great vehicle for exploring fears and figuring out what you would do in any given situation. They are also accessible to all readers, being based around feelings everyone struggles with (loneliness, depressions, and helplessness). Additionally they excel in representation of communities that are often overlooked, marginalized, or struggle in greater society, e.g., single parents, queer folks, people of color, lower income families, the unhoused community, etc.

The horror book club schedules books based on an assortment of themes (matching holidays or seasons), genres (slashers, cryptids, cosmic horror, historical, sci-fi, revenge, etc), and formats (novels, novellas, graphic novels, paperbacks, hardbacks).

Here are ten favorites from the past few years.

Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror

This collection of mostly sci-fi horror (with some speculative fiction mixed in if science-fiction seems too limiting) is an anomaly - most anthologies are a mixed bag with some good stories, some terrible tales, and often many unremarkable works. Dark Stars, however, punches well above it's weight class with a disproportionate number of high concepts told well from both established and new authors. This is must read for horror fans into sci-fi.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Katsu's historical horror starts firmly in the real with an exploration of one of America's haunting human catastrophes, the Donner party. A wagon train headed west to California in the mid-1800s with dreams of discovery instead falls prey to depleted rations, unexpected misfortunes, isolation, petty quarrels, and escalating violence. Moments of self-sacrifice and nobility bring hope but quickly fall to human wickedness, and the survivors in turn find themselves and their doomed endeavor subject to supernatural predations. Well-paced and engaging, this is one for fans of historical horror with an overlay of malicious preternatural forces.

The Fisherman by John Langan

What begins as a sweet and slow tale of two widowers seeking solace in fishing turns into something unexpectedly dark. The two men find comfort and connection in the patience and process of fishing, which helps them feel connection to their lost families. As they explore more fishing spots they find themselves moving into unexpected territories that contain more than they ever expected. Stories within the novel - fish tales - create a Lovecraftian landscape and offer solutions to grief but with a high cost. Langan writes literary fiction focusing on characters whose thoughts, feeling, and interactions drive the story, even as his writing creates an oppressive atmosphere and surreality that builds towards cosmic horror.

Holly by Stephen King

Stephen King is a master storyteller with the ability to quickly engage the reader with complex characters and believable settings. His latest novel focuses on Holly Gibney, the insecure and uncertain young women who first appeared as a secondary character in King's earlier work, Mr. Mercedes. Holly has come into her own, focusing her natural compulsions, pattern-recognition, and computer skills into being a private detective, now working solo after the death of her partner. A missing person case during the Covid-19 pandemic soon leads her to uncover a series of disappearances, all linked to an unlikely pair: two elderly retired college professors. They are more than they seem, however, and their placid demeanor hides ruthlessness. They'll go to any lengths to hide the dark secret in their basement, and their depravity makes Holly more vulnerable than she realizes.

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

This classic modern horror novella's influence still resonates through popular culture today. When Joanna Eberhart moves with her husband and children to Stepford, Connecticut, it seems like the perfect start to a new life. She quickly discovers that all the wives of Stepford are giving up their careers and hobbies to be simple, docile housewives. As more of her friends lose their independence, Joanna learns that the earliest Stepford wives were successful business professionals and leading feminist activists. Now she must find out the chilling secret of her new home and try to escape the fate of all the other wives.

The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky

Another advantage of the Page 158 Books' book clubs is the ability to cross over with over groups and read and discuss the same novel. The horror book club did this with the young adult book club when both read The Mary Shelley Club, a YA thriller. In it Rachel is a new scholarship student at a prep school, starting fresh after being the victim of a home invasion. Taking comfort in horror movies, Rachel soon comes across the Mary Shelley Club, a group of similarly horror movie obsessed students that create "fear tests," elaborate pranks meant to scare other people. Rachel is glad to finally belong after feeling like an outsider for so long and embraces the feeling of power from the pranks. Soon, though, the fear tests escalate, turning dangerous and ultimately deadly, and what started as a game becomes something Rachel can't afford to lose.

Hide by Kiersten White

Hide begins with a hide-and-seek contest: 14 contestants have to spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park without being caught, and the winner gets $50,000, enough money to change their life. Mack is certain she'll be able to win - she's spent her life trying to be unnoticed and wants money to retreat from the world. She soon notices that people in the game are starting to disappear for real, and the folks running the game seem uninterested. Then she begins wondering what is actually seeking them. This novel provides a great gothic atmosphere in an eerie setting, and the action is exciting, surprising, and backstopped by a deep mythological lore that gradually reveals itself in unexpected ways.

The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

This YA horror fantasy novel is beautifully written. A gravedigger's daughter must take up the family charge of keeping the risen dead, called bone houses, from terrorizing her town. Just as the adopted son of a noble arrives, working as a mapmaker and searching for answers to his own past, bone houses begin assaulting the town. The two of them must find the source of the undead and stop them if the town is to survive. Along the way they encounter a community that cherishes and lives with their risen loved ones, and are followed by a dedicated undead goat that will stop at nothing to protect them. This is a haunting and horrific fairy tale where getting what you want doesn't always lead to the happy ending you expect.

The Girl With All The Gifts by Mike Carey

Dystopian zombie futures have been overdone for the past decade, which is why this novel is so remarkable for its innovative and interesting approach. In a sci-fi future where humanity is struggling to survive against hungries (zombies), Melanie is a young girl held in a secure base where she spends most of her time in a classroom with other children. She has a genius-level IQ and enjoys learning, but feels sad and lonely because all she knows is her classroom and the cell she lives in. The highlight of her day is her teacher, Miss Justineau, who is kind to her and whom she loves. Melanie doesn't understand that she and the other children are different from the people that run the base, namely that they are a second-generation of hungries, children that were infected in utero with the fungus that creates a zombie-like state but these children can talk and reason. The leader of the base is trying to find a cure for the fungal illness. When the base is breached, Melanie and a small team - most of whom want to kill her - must try to survive in the outside world where only she can move freely and safely. This becomes a coming-of-age tale where Melanie must decide the fate of the world, a burden she carries not as a weight but as a hope for the future.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Not all horror book club selections are mainstream, and some can be quite dark and edgy. This novella, which we read for Thanksgiving, was extremely divisive for the Page 158 horror book club. It focuses on a world where a virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Governments have legalized eating “special [human] meat.” Marcos works in a processing plant slaughtering humans. One day he is given a live specimen, and though any form of personal contact with special meat guarantees a death sentence, he takes her home and starts to treat her like a person. In other words, this story is not for the faint of heart. The mechanisms and bureaucracies of cannibalism are described in extreme details at a tannery, butcher shop, breeding center, game reserve, processing plant, scientific laboratory, and church (where members sometimes choose to donate their bodies to be eaten). It is a bleak dystopia where people demonstrate utter callousness, hypocrisy, and a total lack of empathy. It is expertly written, but may be too confronting for some.