2019's Best Horror Reads You May Have Missed (But Shouldn't)

It always kind of feels like I step into new things right when they’re blowing up and hitting a stride that makes everyone stop and take notice. This has felt like that year for the horror genre. Consistently stunning, original, necessary voices are entering the film game and putting out work that, while it may sometimes divide audiences, is undeniably powerful. And it got me thinking...

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...​what about the literary side? What kind of shakeups are happening there that we’re not talking too much about yet? Who are the new powerhouses on that side of the scene? This list is by no means complete, exhaustive, nor all I’ve found on offer. I’m only just starting to dip my toes into the incredibly varied worlds of horror literature, it feels like, and everywhere I turn there’s something I’ve missed that deserves a champion of its own. But for now, here are my five favorite encounters of the year, by voices that need to be heard.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick 

By Mallory O’Meara

​Part biography of one of horror’s most overlooked but iconic creators, part memoir of a woman shaped by a love of horror, Mallory O’Meara proves she is just as necessary, passionate, and powerful a voice for the genre as her subject. Beautifully weaving together the life stories of both Milicent Patrick and herself, O’Meara crafts a book told with palpable love, wonder, and humor. Spotlighting a woman unafraid to be strong, independent, fierce, and feminine all at once, Black Lagoon offers a portrait of an artist we all seem to have forgotten (and I, admittedly, didn’t even know existed) who did undeniably important work not just for Disney or Universal Studios, but for monster-making in the genre, and went virtually unrecognized when someone else took credit for her work and success.

Perhaps even more than that, though, the book is a case study in the importance of representation in a world that would rather have us believe all powerful stations are held by people who are nothing like us. More than a biography/memoir, this is a love letter to the genre and to someone who showed that you don’t have to be anything people expect to be a successful and powerful force, and that more often than not, success is whatever you make of it. This is only Mallory O’Meara’s first book (although she has worked as screenwriter and producer for Dark Dunes Productions), but she proves herself from dedication page to final word as a voice not to be missed.

In the Dream House

By Carmen Maria Machado

I first encountered Carmen Maria Machado’s hypnotically strange power for storytelling when I came across her short story collection Her Body and Other Parties in an independent bookstore some time last year. From the moment I saw the cover, I couldn’t take my eyes or my mind away from it. I think about at least two of the stories in that collection at least once a week. Her voice is unmistakable, unique, tender, and visceral all at once. She takes the conventions of storytelling and twists them into a shape never before encountered. I thought it was a gift unique to her fiction, but her memoir In the Dream House proved effortlessly how wrong I was. Told by way of an examination of genre tropes, Machado takes everything we thought we knew and could be comforted by—in storytelling and in queer relationships—and shows us the oft ignored seedy underbelly of brutality that can go along with it. She reminds us through her own story that we cannot trust what we see, can barely trust what we hear, and yet still will make efforts to force a comforting narrative from an uncomfortable truth. With shocking vulnerability and bite, she examines one of the most painful times in her own life, in order to bring a voice to a silenced corner of the queer world. She unflinchingly reminds us that if we don’t speak for the stories history would have us forget, even when it’s painful, they will be erased and all we’ll have left is half-truths and fabrications. In the Dream House isn’t just impossible to put down, it is vitally important for anyone who can get their hands on it. Carmen Maria Machado isn’t just hypnotic and visceral, she is necessary.

Salvaged

By Madeline Roux

I can remember exactly what it felt like to discover the kind of storytelling Madeline Roux brings to the table, and how deeply fascinated I was that it was even possible to do what she was doing. Her YA horror series Asylum (and its follow-up series, House of Furies) felt vitally weird to me. Weaving photography/visual art with unique voices and stories was something I had been playing with doing myself in high school. What kind of interactions can words and pictures truly have? What kind of power? I became an unflappable advocate for her work, pushing it on everyone I encountered. Little did I know her YA prowess was but the tip of the iceberg.

Salvaged is a special kind of horror book. Rosalyn Devar, the story’s main character, is flawed and wounded and doing anything she can to escape demons new and old, no matter how far she has to go. The thing is, the demons she’s running from aren’t just in her head anymore. And if she wants to protect the people she loves, her only option is to defeat them. It seems like this year has been the year of women examining what it takes to escape an abusive past relationship, and Salvaged does so with heart and vulnerability and a realism I wasn’t expecting. It will break your heart, terrify you, and make you cheer all in the space of a page. Compared frequently and for good reason with Alien, Roux’s space horror shines a light on the destructive, healing, undeniable power of memory, strength, and humanity through the story of a woman trying to prove to herself and the world that she is stronger than the past she’s left behind. Roux gives a story that reminds us not just that those voices in your head telling you you can’t make it are always wrong (maybe even space parasites?), but also that in order to escape the most horrific things imaginable, people need people. The darkness of space, and trauma, can get smothering. Sometimes the best light we have is another person’s hand reaching out to pull us through. Madeline Roux’s writing credits are varied, but with Salvaged she proves (again) how beautifully unique she is, and anything she sets a pen to is worth grabbing.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

By Marlon James

I’ll be honest, this is the hardest one I’ve had to describe. Marlon James is an incredibly rich voice I feel like I’m just taking the first steps into, but his work with Black Leopard, Red Wolf is so wonderfully complex and intricate he feels like a familiar mythic powerhouse. The first in a trilogy, the novel weaves African folklore, political intrigue, and the fantastic effortlessly. Told in a constantly twisting reflective voice, it recounts the story of Tracker, a hunter-for-hire known for his nose who has been enlisted to aid in the search for a missing boy. He can track anyone if he’s caught their scent before, no matter how long it’s been since he’s last seen them. Along with former lover/friend/enemy, the shapeshifting Leopard and his companion, he crosses kingdoms and battles to find his charge. Tracker and Leopard are both tricky, fluid, flawed characters with motives and morals that occasionally clash with one another. Their relationship is deep and rich as the story they’ve been placed in. Less on the side of horror and more on the side of dark historical fantasy, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a beautiful, loving tapestry of African myth and political strife. Bursting with equally complex characters as original and cunning as any of its leads, James’s introduction to the “Dark Star Trilogy” proves he can craft any number of worlds worth exploring.

Here There are Monsters

By Amelinda Bérubé

Toxic female friendship is a rich field for storytelling. There are so many ways it can manifest it’s almost limitless. But it is always horrifying. Women and girls are capable of so much more darkness than they are ever given credit for in the genre, and hardly ever seem to get their time in the sun as villains. Here There are Monsters takes the subject one step deeper by examining the infinitely complex world of toxic sisterhood. It tells the story of sisters Skye and Deirdre, one a lonely oddball misfit and the other her fierce protector. Deirdre has always been a little off, preferring the worlds she makes up in her head to the one she has to live in, and Skye has always had to be the one to protect her from the cruelty of their schoolmates. But she’s had enough of being Deirdre’s Queen of Swords. Skye is trying desperately to carve out a normal life for herself in a new town until her sister disappears into the woods. No one knows where she went or how it happened. Skye, wracked with guilt, is the only one who knows what must be done to save her from the thing in the woods, and must make the choice between saving her new life or taking up her role again as Queen of Swords to save her sister.

​Part Blair Witch, part family portrait, Here There are Monsters delves into the power of secrets, belief, and connection to the earth and to each other in a beautifully dark and twisted way. With characters so rich and sharp I still feel like I’ve only scratched their surface, I found myself thinking of this book long after I had set it down. I love a good dark witchy tale, and Here There are Monsters delivers in spades. Nobody delivers all their secrets, and the spirits in the woods would like to rip them all out. Bursting with shadows, blood, humor, and love in all its complexity, Bérubé’s novel asks questions worth considering. How far would you go for someone you love? What would you do to survive the apocalypse? What kinds of sacrifices are you willing to make? What’s really out there in the woods? Can we trust our own minds? 

​There are a couple other works I’d like to spotlight which, although they weren’t released this year, still left an impact on me that I think more people should be drawn to. The voices and stories here are just as diverse, weird, and wonderful as those above, and it has been a joy to discover the potential of what can really be done with the genre through these works.

Our Lady of the Inferno

By Preston Fassel

A dirty, grimy, violent love letter to 80’s horror, this was my first exposure to really anything to do with Fangoria. And what an introduction it was. I first read it earlier this year, but I feel comfortable including it on this list because it has finally entered its second printing. I didn’t know what to expect from this book, I knew only that it featured two kickass women who eventually would go toe-to-toe against one another. But it’s so much more than that. If you ask me, both women have sociopathic tendencies, and I sometimes couldn’t tell who the worse one was meant to be. But that’s great! Women aren’t all shiny and squeaky clean and perfect! The drive to protect the things we love can turn us all into vicious creatures, capable of far more than we might imagine for ourselves. And both women featured in Our Lady’s alternating perspectives have something they believe is worth fighting for.

This is also the only novel in the list to feature a disabled, relatively main character. She is vital to the story and a sharp voice all her own. I had to stop mid-read to thank the universe (and the author) for her arc, and I think about each of the women in this book more than I ever thought I would. It’s dirty and lovingly crafted, gross and bursting with unexpected literary references that constantly remind us all that comfort can come from anywhere even in the darkest of times. It is hopeless and hopeful. Dark and light. Weird and wonderful and worth every moment of time you can give it.

Mabel

By Becca De La Rosa and Mabel Martin 

Okay, it’s not a book. But it is a story. A haunting, atmospheric, beautiful story about ghosts, houses, shadows, and people who are not what they seem. A love just within and without reach. I found it last year and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. With echoes of Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Mabel is an independent creation telling the haunting, haunted story of Anna Limon and Mabel Martin, and everything that follows them past, present, and probable future. Anna Limon is a caretaker for the elderly, and when she gets to her new job she finds nothing in Mabel’s grandmother’s house is quite what it seems. Things disappear, reappear, there are voices in the halls and rooms, there’s a singing, and a garden called Fairy Hill. It is unwilling to let its inhabitants go, but who is doing the grabbing? And where is Mabel? Mabel is one of the most unforgettably beautiful independent creations I have ever found, telling a queer love story featuring haunted houses and haunting gardens and creatures that’ll eat you up. Feed the dark corners of your soul (and your ears) with it wherever you listen to podcasts.

By Katelyn Nelson

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