[Written by Charlie Clarke]
Summer is officially here and with the holidays just around the corner we’re guessing most of you have a little holiday or stay-cation booked. So with that in mind we are dedicating this month’s blog post to horror book recommendations that we hope will inspire you when you’re packing your holiday novel of choice.
We are going to kick things off with ‘Final Girls’ by Riley Sager. If you love your final girls and you love a good twisty turny thriller, this is the book for you. It’s the kind of book that once you pick it up you are going to struggle to put it down and it keeps you guessing right up until the end.
Up next is ‘Life Expectancy’ by Dean Koontz. A psychological horror following the Tock family after a series of predictions is made by Josef Tock on his death bed regarding his newly born grandson James’ life. As the story progresses we see each prediction come to life, alongside some pretty sinister characters.
‘Meddling Kids’ by Edgar Cantero is next on our list. As you probably have guessed from the title it pays huge homage to Scooby Doo, which is one of the reasons we love it so much. So if solving mysteries is your thing, this book will make you feel like a member of the Scooby gang for sure.
If you have some horror loving small people in your life, we highly recommend pretty much anything from R.L. Stein’s ‘Goosebumps’, ‘Point Horror’ and ‘Fear Street’ series’, some of these stories still haunt our nightmatres to be honest!! We also have to give a little mention to the (dare we say imitations?) ‘Creepers’ and ‘Shivers’ series which also had some great entries!
If you don’t fancy sinking your teeth into a long novel, may we suggest ‘The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares – The Haunted City’ which is a collection of terrifying short stories from some of our favourite horror filmmakers, including Eli Roth, Ethan Hawke and Scott Derickson to name just a few.
This wouldn’t be a true horror book recommendations list if the legend that is Stephen King didn’t make an appearance. Some of our favourites here at Superfreak HQ include 1408, Carrie, The Stand and Pet Semetery, alongside his short stories as well. If you love Stephen King you will also love the work of Joe Hill (his son!), we suggest giving ‘Horns’ and “Heart Shaped Box’ a read.
Next up is ‘Metro 2033’ by Dmitry Glukhovsky, which has actually been turned into a first person shooter style survival horror game. This post-apocalyptic novel is a dark and twisted page turner, so when you finish it super-fast because you haven’t been able it put it down, you’ll be glad to know it has two sequels ‘Metro 2034’ and ‘Metro 2035’.
If you prefer audiobooks to actual books, we’ve got you covered here too in the form of the Audible Original ‘Alien Audio Dramas’ which are full of as much suspense and terror as the films themselves – just don’t blame us if your relaxing lounge by a pool is a bit jumpier than you’d hoped for!
Finally we come to the granddaddy of horror literature H. P. Lovecraft. He’s another favourite here at Superfreak HQ and actually inspired our film ‘The Copywriter’ (go and check it out if you haven’t seen it yet). Now we didn’t just pop him in the list so we could shamelessly plug one of our films – his books are epic! We love ‘The Dunwich Horror’, ‘The Whisperer In The Darkness’, ‘Dagon’, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, ‘The Rats In The Walls’ and ‘The Shunned House’.
So there you have it, our scary story recommendations for your summer vacations! We hope we’ve inspired your next book purchases. Remember to shop at your local bookstores before hitting up Amazon!
Let us know if you check out any of our recommendations and what your favourites are in the comments – you know we love to hear from you guys.
Until next time, stay safe and keep it creepy!
Team Superfreak.
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