Library Chicken Best Books of 2019: Horror

Hello everyone and welcome to another wrap-up of what the BookNerd has been reading!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: end-of-the-year booklist time! This week I’ll be sharing some of my favorite horror novels that I read in 2019. I’m fairly new to the horror genre, in that I actively avoided it for decades. That’s maybe because I grew up in the 80s, so I thought horror was Stephen King and teen slasher movies, and those aren’t really my thing. (Also I’m a squeamish wimp who gets scared and grossed out easily.) But horror is an extension or a sibling or at least a cousin of my best-beloved genre, science fiction/fantasy, and a lot of my favorite novels by authors like Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, and Jeff VanderMeer could be described as horror-adjacent at the very least, so a few years ago (starting around 2016, though I can’t imagine what could have triggered my interest) I dipped a toe into the zombie-infested waters and am having a great (and terrifying!) time exploring the genre. If you’re not typically a horror reader, I recommend giving it a try—there are books all up and down the scariness/goriness scale, and everyone can find something to suit their sensibilities.

• Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Speaking of dipping toes into infested waters—Grant’s novel asks the question, “What if mermaids were real? And what if they WANTED TO EAT YOUR FACE?!?” A few years ago, an entertainment conglomerate known for producing “documentaries” about mythical creatures (e.g., Bigfoot) sent a ship full of scientists, actors, and various television producers to the empty waters over the Mariana Trench in search of mermaids. After contact was lost, the ship was discovered adrift and abandoned, with only bloodstains and a few very disturbing film clips left to tell the tale. The younger sister of one of the people lost on that voyage is now an undersea researcher in her own right, and when she is approached to go on a follow-up trip to the same location she is eager for answers. SPOILER: Things do not go as planned. After I’d read and enjoyed this novel (no snorkeling in my immediate future, thank you very much) I realized that Grant’s novella “Rolling in the Deep” tells the story of the first doomed voyage, and though I generally am not a fan of reading things out of order I think you could go either way with this pair. NOTE: “Mira Grant” is the pen name of urban fantasy author Seanan McGuire, so if you enjoy McGuire’s other books as much as I do, consider giving her horror a try!

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• The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike, translated by Deborah Boehm

From the uncharted ocean depths to the horrors of suburban Tokyo! Housing is always a problem, so when the Kanos find a lovely new apartment for a very reasonable price, they can’t believe their good luck. The mom, Misao, has only one concern: her new home overlooks a graveyard, which seems a bit inauspicious. Koike’s novel, originally published in 1986, is a popular classic of modern Japanese horror that English readers can now enjoy in a translation by Deborah Boehm. This is one of those books where I found myself yelling at the characters, “What are you doing?!? GET OUT ALREADY!” but I enjoyed the slow-building suspense along with the subtle surprises and differences that reading in translation can bring. Not gory but verrrrry creepy.

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• The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Many of the reader reviews for this one contain some variation on the line: “You’ll never look at rocks the same again,” and they don’t mean that in a “Wow, geology is cool!” sort of way. After her grandmother’s death, our protagonist, Mouse, is tasked with cleaning out her house, which is made more difficult by the fact that (1) her grandmother was a terrible person and was estranged from the rest of the family, and (2) she was a hardcore hoarder. Also, there may be Things Lurking in the Woods outside. (SPOILER: There absolutely are.) Fortunately, Mouse has her dog Bongo to keep her company and—this is not a spoiler because the author gives us this incredible gift up front—we know that Bongo comes out okay at the end, so we don’t have to spend the whole book worrying about what happens to the dog! HURRAY! This is an original and very creepy take on the ‘haunted woods’ idea and I’ve been seeing this book on various best-of-the-year lists, so congratulations to T. Kingfisher, who you may already know as Ursula Vernon, author of (among many other wonderful works) the delightfully Eva Ibbotson-esque Castle Hangnail. 

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• A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

This is another 2019 book that has been showing up on various best-of lists, which is impressive as it’s also Hamill’s debut novel. The Turner family has been seeing monsters for a while, and in response, the father became obsessed with building a massive haunted-house attraction, which ultimately becomes an important business for their town and the Turner family’s livelihood. But the monsters don’t go away, and son Noah, like the rest of the family, has to decide how he’s going to deal with that. Does he ignore them and hope they go away, or does he invite them in? This novel has been described as a literary fiction-horror hybrid (and indeed focuses as much on family relationships as it does on the horror aspects) so it’s a good choice for people who are looking to broaden their reading. But mostly I want people to read it so I can talk to them about the ending and figure out what I think. Do I like it? Do I hate it? I’m not entirely sure, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. 

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• The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

Another litfic/horror mash-up: this book follows a young couple with a troubled marriage as they move into a house with a troubled past. I’m a sucker for a haunted house story and this one is very unsettling. One thing I enjoy about horror is seeing what’s happening through the character’s eyes, and realizing (as a reader) that reality is coming apart around them even as the character seems oblivious. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, but Jemc does it well. Also a great entry point to the genre.

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• Kill Creek by Scott Thomas

So you’ve got a haunted house. Everyone in town knows the stories. Everyone knows it’s totally legit do-NOT-go-in-there haunted. What do you do? Clearly, you invite the country’s most famous writers of horror and ghost stories to spend the night and then see what happens. Best. Publicity. Stunt. Ever. That’s the premise of Thomas’s haunted house story and I am most definitely in. (Also, is anyone making a movie of this book? It should totally be a movie.) I don’t think the later portions of the book hold up quite as well as the beginning (horror as a genre often has a difficult time sticking the landing) but this is a fun, scary, Halloweeny read. This was another debut novel and I’m looking forward to what Thomas does next. 

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• Salvation Day by Kali Wallace

I feel like I’m cheating a bit with this one, because it’s not straight horror—I’d describe it as a science fiction thriller with horror elements—but it does have zombies in space, so that’s got to count, right? In a future of space exploration and ecological disaster, a terrorist group hijacks a transport ship in order to take over the derelict exploration ship House of Wisdom, left abandoned in orbit after a virus killed everyone aboard. Clearly this is a TERRIBLE idea and once again I am here for it. The narration flips back and forth between one of the terrorists (though really, “terrorism” is in the eye of the beholder, right?) and one of the hostages as they explore the ship and discover that the authorities have not been completely honest about what happened to the crew. This is a page-turner with so many great elements (cults! conspiracies! diversity! romance!) that also has something very relevant to say about our present of anti-immigration, anti-refugee rhetoric and us vs. them thinking. A great read and I highly recommend it. This is Wallace’s first novel for adults; I haven’t read her YA novels yet but they’re on hold for me at the library.

Happy Reading and Happy Holidays! Now GO GET SCARED.

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