Christmas Reads for Horror Fans
It’s Christmas and that means its time for a good ghost story, or zombie story, or scary tale of revenge from beyond the grave. Searching for the perfect read for the horror fans in your life? Look no further, we’ve got 10 books guaranteed to send shivers up their spines.
NOS4R2 by Joe Hill
An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.
Anyone could be next.
We’re going to Christmasland…
NOS4R2 is an old-fashioned horror novel in the best sense. Claustrophobic, gripping and terrifying, this is a story that will have you on the edge of the seat while you read, and leaving the lights on while you sleep. With the horrific tale of Charles Manx and his Silver Wraith, Joe Hill has established himself as the premiere horror and supernatural thriller writer of his generation.
NOS4R2 is available in paperback, eBook and audio download.
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
Abner Marsh has had his dearest wish come true – he has built the Fevre Dream, the finest steamship ever to sail the Mississippi. Abner hopes to race the boat some day, but his partner is making it hard for him to realise his ambition.
Joshua York put up the money for the Fevre Dream, but now rumours have started about the company he keeps, his odd eating habits and strange hours. As the Dream sails the great river, it leaves in its wake one too many dark tales, until Abner is forced to face down the man who helped to make his dreams become reality.
Fevre Dream is available in paperback and eBook.
In the Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill
As USA TODAY said of Stephen King’s MILE 81: ‘Park and scream. Could there be any better place to set a horror story than an abandoned rest stop?’ In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are growing more and more desperate.
What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale, as only Stephen King and Joe Hill can deliver.
In the Tall Grass is available in eBook and audio download.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
It’s the week before Hallowe’en, and Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois. The siren song of the calliope entices all with promises of youth regained and dreams fulfilled . . .
And as two boys trembling on the brink of manhood set out to explore the mysteries of the dark carnival’s smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will also discover the true price of innermost wishes . . .
Something Wicked This Way Comes is available in paperback and eBook.
I Am Scrooge by Adam Roberts
Award nominated SF author Adam Roberts takes on Dickens in this festive zombie gorefest.
Marley was dead. To begin with.
The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house counting money. The boards that he has nailed up over the doors and the windows shudder and shake under the blows from the endless zombie hordes that crowd the streets hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiiiinns!
Just how did the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets of old London town?
Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde?
It’s the Dickensian Zombie Apocalypse – God Bless us, one and all!
I Am Scrooge is available in paperback and eBook.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
In Mary’s world there are simple truths.
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future – between the one she loves and the one who loves her.
And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?
The Forest of Hands and Teeth is available in paperback and eBook.
15 Miles by Rob Scott
Samuel ‘Sailor’ Doyle has transferred from Vice to Homicide in the Virginia State Police. He has a mistress, an alcohol problem, a prescription drug dependency, and a burgeoning self-loathing that alienates his wife and family.
On Friday 3 July, the rookie investigator is assigned to a double homicide on a rural farm some 15 miles outside Richmond. One of the victims has been interred in a makeshift tomb, while the other is stuck half-in, half-out of a hope chest overflowing with cat litter. And the farm is covered with dead bodies: dozens of cats, sheep, goats, cows, and one dead horse. The mentally handicapped daughter of the victims, Carl and Claire Bruckner, is missing.
Doyle soon discovers that Bruckner was a Marine captain who lost his leg in Vietnam thanks to the incompetence of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lake – now retired General Robert Lake, and Republican Party presidential hopeful, who will be speaking in Richmond on July fourth – the following evening. What Doyle fails to realise as he follows the various clues is that wherever he goes, he is spreading disease – and not just any disease, but Yersinia pestis. The plague.
Is the dead Marine planning revenge, even from beyond the grave?
15 Miles is available in eBook.
Hater by David Moody
REMAIN CALM
DO NOT PANIC
TAKE SHELTER
WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
THE SITUATION IS UNDER CONTROL
Society is rocked by a sudden increase in the number of violent assaults on individuals. Christened ‘Haters’ by the media, the attackers strike without warning. The assaults are brutal, remorseless and extreme: within seconds, normally rational, self-controlled people are becoming maddened, vicious killers.
There are no apparent links as a hundred random attacks become a thousand, and then thousands, right across the country. Everyone, irrespective of gender, age, race, sexuality or any other difference, has the potential to become a victim – or a Hater. People are afraid to go to work, afraid to leave their homes and, increasingly, afraid that at any moment their friends, even their closest family, could turn on them with murderous intent.
By the end of today you could be dead. By the end of today you could be a killer. Attack first, ask questions later … but the answer might not be what you expect …
Hater is available in paperback and eBook.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The last man on earth is not alone …
Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth … but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.
By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.
How long can one man survive like this?
I Am Legend is available in paperback and eBook.
Patient Zero by Jonathan Mayberry
‘When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.’
Police officer Joe Ledger, martial arts expert, ex-army, self-confessed brutal warrior is scared. The man he’s just killed is the same man he killed a week ago. He never expected to see the man again, definitely not alive, and definitely not as part of the recruitment process for the hyper-secret government agency the Department for Military Sciences. But the DMS are scared too: they have word of a terrorist plot straight from a nightmare – a bid to spread a plague through America – a plague that kills its victims and turns them into zombies.
Time is running out and Joe has shown he has the abilities they need to lead one of their field teams.
And so begins a desperate three-part mission – to contain the zombie outbreaks, to break the terrorist cell responsible and to find the man in their own team who is selling them out to the terrorists.
Patient Zero is astonishingly fast moving, incredibly violent and down-right terrifying thriller – a new breed of thriller of techo-thriller that plays on our fears of mad science.