You’d think it would be simple for a horror aficionado to make a list of six chilling books for the hottest month, but keeping it to only six is a real struggle. I gave myself two rules. First, nothing instantly obvious, the sort of thing that everyone would include, which eliminated A Head Full of Ghosts, Heart-Shaped Box and anything by Stephen King, for instance. Second, only books that genuinely got under my skin and gave me a thrilling little chill. Every one of these will give you the shivers.
Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
Still best known for his blockbuster success Bird Box and the Sandra Bullock film of the same name, Malerman is one of the most interesting writers working in any genre. As part of the band The High Strung, he indulged his creative muse for years before publishing his first novel, and if anyone is actually possessed by a muse, it’s got to be Malerman. You never know what kind of story he’s going to tell next and he rarely does what’s expected.
As much as I love Bird Box, Incidents Around the House is my favorite Malerman. The story of an eight-year-old girl’s “Other Mommy,” a malevolent thing that lives inside her closet but wants to live inside her heart. Yes, it’s chilling, but I’ll take that one step further and say it’s one of only two books that have truly frightened me as an adult. (The other is The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell, which is out of print or it would’ve been on this list.)
Incidents Around the House has been adapted for film as Other Mommy, starring Jessica Chastain, coming to terrify you soon.
Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez
Nicky Gonzalez made waves in literary circles long before the release of Mayra, her first novel. The overwhelming thought I took away from reading it was that the horror genre is so lucky to have her. The best-written debut I’ve read in a long time, Mayra is a swamp gothic set in the Florida Everglades, focused on questions of friendship, obligation and authentic identity.
Gonzalez’s writing is gorgeous, elegiac, full of such yearning — for lost friendship, for a place to belong, for some undefined thing that will allow your emotions to finally make sense — that the sinister nature of the story sneaks up while you’re caught up in these very authentic, human longings. The same way it sneaks up on our protagonist, Ingrid. I loved this book so much and I’m waiting eagerly to learn what’s next.
The setting is just as sweaty and stifling as the most sweltering summer day, but somehow it’s still going to give you enough chills to cool you down.
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
A major bestseller in his native Netherlands, Thomas Olde Heuvelt has built an excellent reputation among English readers with a string of profoundly creepy novels, including several early books in his native Dutch language, as well as the more recent international creepers Echo and Oracle. But the one among them that still gives me a shiver to think about is his English language debut, Hex.
Set in a town called Black Spring, New York, Hex concerns the ghost of the Black Rock Witch, so much a part of the town that every child learns the rules of behavior. But teenagers are, of course, rebellious, and trouble follows. It’s difficult to make folk horror work in an ordinary, modern setting, but Olde Heuvelt manages to build the town’s local lore and legends in a truly harrowing way, steeped in the townspeople’s fear, even in an environment that includes social media and the internet.
The story’s most enduring chill is the image of the Black Rock Witch, her lips sewn shut and the town’s very strict warning never to cut the stitches and allow the witch’s voice to return. I get a shiver just thinking about it.
Itch! by Gemma Amor
With horror at the peak of its popularity in bookstores, it’s become increasingly more difficult to break through the noise, but Gemma Amor has built a reputation for herself as one of the stars of this generation. Her work has made significant waves both in print and on popular podcasts including No Sleep, The Grey Rooms, and Calling Darkness, which she co-created and writes.
I considered Amor’s seaside gothic The Folly for this list, but Itch! was the one that — forgive the pun — really got under my skin. Main character Josie escapes a toxic relationship and retreats to her hometown to figure out how to start over, only to stumble onto an ant-infested corpse in the forest, and the investigation into a masked killer, as the town’s traditional festival approaches.
So much early classic horror authored by men concerned a return to the protagonist’s hometown and the discovery of dark secrets there that it became a cliché, but Amor’s take on this conceit is a feminist horror must-read. It’s as if a small village Tana French murder mystery turned into full on horror, with a constant buzz of body horror underneath. I couldn’t have loved this more. I still shudder when I think about Itch!
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle is magnificently talented. For anyone who has read his work, that’s no secret. He’s best known for the breakthrough novel The Changeling and for the stunning, creepy western horror Lone Women, and like all his work, they are unsettling and beautifully written. But whether you’ve read LaValle before, I encourage you to reach back a bit further, to The Devil in Silver (the source of the most recent season of AMC’s The Terror).
A man named Pepper wakes up in the psychiatric ward at New Hyde Hospital, itself an understaffed and underfunded nightmare. Pepper has no idea how he ended up there and no memory of the crime of which he stands accused. We’re introduced to a motley array of patients who share space with him on the ward, but the real shock comes that night, when he wakes to discover a monster with the head of a bison in his room. What follows is a maddeningly stressful, spine-chilling thriller that’s as weird as they come, but also an insightful novel about lunacy, mental health care, the power of belief and the nature of monstrosity.
LaValle is one of the best writers working in any genre. Don’t overlook this beauty.
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Catriona Ward’s brilliance took center stage at bookshops everywhere when she published her novel The Last House on Needless Street. A slew of awards followed, raves from Stephen King, and so much more attention. Ward had written excellent novels before that — Little Eve is a particular favorite of mine — but Needless Street planted a flag. Other excellent work followed and I’ve loved each new book, but Looking Glass Sound blew me away.
When novelist Wilder Harlow returns to his seaside town to write the story of the killer who stalked the area in his youth, the friends he made then and the terrible secret they share, he is haunted by the past and unable to trust his eyes, his mind and event his own book.
If you still know people who are snobbish about reading horror, this is the book to give them. I first posted online about it while only half-finished just so I could rave and spread the love. During my read, I kept thinking about other great authors with whom Ward’s book seemed to be in conversation, including (again) Tana French, Jonathan Carroll, Joseph Heller, and one of my all-time favorites, John Irving. Looking Glass Sound is so dark and so compelling, both twisted and full of twists, and so full of sadness and longing, it’s another can’t miss.
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