Adventure, action, and romance all make for a great story, but sometimes that’s not what people are in the mood for. Sometimes, we just want to be scared silly in our cozy Liv Ahwatukee apartment. And there are a lot of ways to accomplish that — scary movies, haunted houses, or sitting around a campfire telling spooky stories. But when you’re home alone at night, one of the best ways to creep yourself out is a horror novel. Now, when people think about horror, they often think about slasher films or Steven King. While those are great, there is a whole host of other options out there. In two posts, we’ve gathered together a few excellent horror novels for you to try.
The Devil’s Only Friend by Dan Wells
From Amazon: “John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can…
“...but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war.
“John doesn't want the life he's stuck with. He doesn't want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn't want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn't want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn't want to kill people. But as the song says, you can't always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it. When John again faces evil, he'll know what he has to do.”
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
From Amazon: “The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.”
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
From Amazon: “Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
“So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead — keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
“When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
“But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.”