Horror – All Time Classics

Horror thrillers will have a massive year in 2022. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark Book alike reimagine an ever-evolving genre that, it turns out, has a lot in common with crime fiction, especially when it comes to slashers, serial murderers, and ghosts of the past. 

This list comprises books I've read and enjoyed, so please excuse any notable releases that aren't included in the list below or the notable picks. I may be a novice in this genre, but I'll never stop once I start reading the best horror novels.

1. Latanya Mcqueen, When the Reckoning Comes

This book explains what I want to happen to everyone who attends a plantation wedding, hoping for a "quaint" experience. A woman goes to her best friend's plantation wedding, incredibly outraged by choice of the site but determined to support her childhood best friend nevertheless, in LaTanya McQueen's striking new addition to the booming realm of Black horror fiction. 

But, on the other hand, the estate's spirits had something else in mind... They should, too, because no one should ever have their wedding on a plantation. This is something I cannot emphasise enough.

2. Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart Is A Chainsaw

In My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones has created the ideal summer horror thriller, a deliciously self-aware blend of horror critique, slasher fiction, and social drama, all wrapped up in a strong message of female empowerment. 

If the violent rumours surrounding the adjacent lake were true, an adolescent delinquent equally enraged by her white mother, her Indian father, and her entire community would adore it. Moreover, she's convinced that the lovely new girl at school would be the ideal Final Girl. But even the best-laid plans don't always work out...

3. Debra Castaneda, The Monsters Of Chavez Ravine

Some fantastic gentrification thrillers have been published recently, but Debra Castaneda's The Monsters of Chavez Ravine must be the oddest. In 1952 Los Angeles, a once-close Latinx community, is forced out of its homes by a conspiracy of city planners and corporate stooges.

The remaining members must band together to combat an otherworldly danger that proves vulnerable to this world's armament. You'll find yourself rooting for the novel's protagonists and admiring its odd historical setting based on the aftermath of the Zoot Suit Riots a decade earlier.

4. James Han Mattson, Reprieve

In a complex and multi-layered tale that speaks to the meaning of terror, a diverse group of strangers struggles to make their way through six increasingly horrifying rooms in a full-contact horror house. They will receive a sizeable financial prize if they make it to the end. 

Something, however, goes wrong. Reprieve uncovers stark facts about what it means to seek fear in an unfair society as we jump in time between approaching disaster and its terrible aftermath.

5. Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us

Thiago and Vera purchase a condominium and quickly learn that their first house is filled with spooky surprises. Vera is dead a few years later, Thiago is in mourning, and their smart speaker has been possessed by a violent ghostly force that may or may not be responsible for Vera's death. 

Thiago withdraws to the mountains to grieve, but the mysterious forces that plagued the condo follow him to his Colorado cabin. A deadly clash between living and dead, man and machine, and civilisation vs wilderness.

6. Jess Lourey, Litani

After her well-received debut, Unspeakable Things, Lourey's sophomore novel takes us to the 1980s, where something terrible is happening in the small town of Litani. Teenager Frankie Jubilee has just moved to a new city after her father's sudden death. She soon discovers something very wrong going on around her in this subtle and terrifying journey to the height of the Satanic Panic. 

The kids she meets keep talking about "the Game," and adults seem far too interested in playing with children. But is it true that their harmful activities are motivated by Satan worship, or are they simply exploiting the weak?