Releasing the Notes

Robert Neville is the last man on earth, the lone survivor of a vampire outbreak. He has set up all the protections to keep him alive, and the vampires less so. When he finds another survivor he brings her into his house and teams up with her. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that she may not be the best companion, and maybe he is better off on his own.

Matheson tells a masterful story with this book, one of my all-time favorites. It explores the lonely aspects of survival, choosing to accept reality and adapt to it, and what to do when the traditional world-views are challenged and found lacking. This dark, and oddly insightful, novel will leave you with some serious questions, and a lot of garlic-flavored thoughts to chew on.

A community pops up in Ranier, set apart from the rest of society. They have their groceries delivered by drones, and have carved out a life where they never need to leave. After a natural disaster, they find themselves even more set apart, as the only road into the community is destroyed. When people are finally able to reach the community, they find that a pod of Sasquatch have come through and massacred the people living there.

Max Brooks is a masterful horror writer. I love the way he uses perspectives in this book as the story is pieced together. No description will do this book justice, the writing is so compelling that you will lose yourself in the story and come to having no idea what time it is or how you ended up where you are.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant scientist, but sometimes he becomes so obsessed with ideas that he loses his way. He finds himself patching together a flesh golem, and seeks to spark life into his creation. When he is successful, he realizes the full depth of his actions, and abandons his monster. The monster craves a normal life, teaches itself language, and struggles with emotion, but no matter what he does he cannot find acceptance. In frustration at his entire existence, he turns toward his creator with vengeful desire.

If you think you know Frankenstein’s monster from the movies or stories where he makes his cliche’d groaning entrance, think again. The real monster’s story is eloquent and beautiful, and full of a depth that is missing in any of his other portrayals.

A zombie outbreak is over, and the humans have won. With the war, or pandemic, or whatever you want to call it, wrapping up, Max Brooks searches the world for written accounts, people willing to be interviewed, or anything he can use to put together a first-hand account of the war. This book is a compilation of all the stories he is able to find, spanning from patient zero, to the near collapse of humankind.

Max Brooks, again, is a genius. While I love the Brad Pitt movie by the same name, the book is head, shoulders, and knee-caps above it in story-telling and delivery.

“Life, uh…. finds a way.” When scientists discover a way to clone dinosaurs using ancient DNA, bringing them back from the depth of extinction. Always looking for a way to make a buck, a park is created where you can see these relics of the past, for an astronomical fee. Disaster hits, and now we have an island full of wild monsters, and the people unlucky enough to be visiting them.

The original Jurassic Park movies are masterpieces in their own right, but, as always, the books is above and beyond. Crichton has the time in the book to explain the science behind everything that happens, as well as dive deeper into the terrors of being stranded on an island with dinosaurs.

Count Dracula is preparing to move to England, and employs Jonathan Harker to help with the process. Shortly after the purchase of a new residence, a string of strange occurrences convinces Harker to search out the help of Van Helsing to get to the bottom of it all. They investigate the crashing of an ominous “unmanned” ship, women with strange puncture-marks on their necks, and an inmate of the insane asylum becoming manic over the impending arrival of his master. What they find is unsettling.

Stoker’s Dracula is a pioneer of sorts in the horror genre, and is heavily drawn from for much of our vampire lore of today. Even knowing the basics of this story, you will still be drawn into the storytelling itself.

A new cult has popped up, and seems to be somehow related to a string of paranormal occurrences. This book is a collection of letters from Francis Wayland Thurston, the man who has traversed the world as he puts together the pieces of the story behind the Cthulhu cult. As he puts the story together, he learns that the being that the cult worships, Cthulhu, is a creature of the mind, and that the religion he has inspired is as old as history itself.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”*

*Translation: – “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. “

Lovecraft builds impeccable worlds in the horror genre. While this story itself is extremely short, and only a part of the Cthulhu stories, Lovecraft builds and amasses the information in a slowly revelatory way. There may not be any jump scares, but the horror will just settle into your bones and sit with you for a while.

Jack Torrence feels like there is a distance between himself and his family. He decides that taking a job as a caretaker of a hotel in the Rocky Mountains during the dead of winter will give him an opportunity to fix that relationship. However, the Overlook Hotel has other plans, and young Danny finds that while the hotel seems empty, there are many guests who never really checked out. He comes across many ghosts and apparitions in the building, and many have evil intent. His father is driven crazy by them, and finds his relationship with his family more strained than ever.

You can’t make a horror book list and not include Stephen King. I believe this is his best work, and a chilling tale that is well-developed.

Benny Imura lives in a world post-zombies. His community has built protections from the zombies, and as long as you stay in the city you are safe. However, Benny idolizes the zombie hunters from the trading cards, and wants to be like them. His older brother Tom, who is also a zombie hunter, would prefer him to do something else, but since Benny seems to have made up his mind, Tom decides to show him the ropes.

This zombie novel throws in an often-overlooked aspect of the zombie apocalypse – the fact that the zombies used to be real people, with real relationships. Tom Imura approaches zombie hunting with the appropriate respect for the dead, and the families of the dead. Mayberry did a great job of building a story around that element of post-zombie life.

Ichabod Crane, the gullible new teacher in Tarry Town, has grown to hate the ghost stories prominent through the town about the surrounding Sleepy Hollow. He grows so scared of the hollow that he is often heard whistling or singing as he travels through, trying to ground himself in reality. Late one evening, he sees a rider behind him in the dark, and learns that maybe the stories of a headless rider are true after all.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a classic. It was written in 1820, and it reads as if it was written in 1820. While the writing can be sluggish at time, the story itself is enjoyable as you get to know the character of Ichabod, and as you have to decide what you really believe happened to him.

A young writer is working the checkout counter of a grocery store when a local gives him the story of his life. “H”, as he is known, gives the writer a collection of writing by Abraham Lincoln that have never come to light, weaving an entire hidden life of the famous president. Alongside his political career, Abraham has lived a life seeking revenge on vampires for the life of his mother. He teams up with a vampire, a man known as “H”, who guides him along his mission to eradicate the world of its dark underbelly.

I love this book so much, and one of the main reasons I love it is that the story should not work at all. Somehow, Graham-Smith pulls together a fun, campy narrative while preserving all we already know about Lincoln, just spicing up the already legendary life a little.

Lucy is looking to join an agency that deals with the main societal problem of the time: ghosts. She finds a home in the Lockwood & Co agency, and joins Lockwood and George as part of the youngest, and smallest, agency available. After accidentally burning down a house, Lockwood & Co need to find some fast success in solving a couple of paranormal cases to save their agency from financial collapse. Along the way, Lucy’s talent becomes better developed, and she may be one of the rarest ghost hunters of her generation.

Written for younger audiences, the fun aspects of this book are refreshing in the horror genre.

Noemi is not afraid of anything. When her cousin sends for her help, Noemi packs up her life and heads to High Place to live with her cousin and her cousin’s new husband. She can handle the controlling husband, and the oppressive conditions she has to live in, but when the house itself starts sending her dreams and visions, she decides she has to do something about it. And when a house has seen all that this one has, it is no wonder it has reached out to Noemi.

Twist on the classic Gothic Horror genre, this one was a slow spooky read. It is beautifully written and elegant in form, an impelling read.

Cora’s father is a whistle-blower, and has left the country to hide. Cora is just trying to avoid the whole thing, when one night a stranger breaks into her house and destroys her computer. She chases after it, only to realize it is not from this world. She is captured and chosen by the intruder, and becomes a mouthpiece for an alien race, meditating between the alien and the government. When another alien enters the scene chasing after Cora’s alien, things get dicey, and Cora doesn’t know who to trust.

Ellis plays with morals and motivations to flesh out the ways her characters act in the story. It really highlights the uncharted territory that would come with first-contact.

Robbie is sent to the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory school, after he kicks the son of a large landowner. The school is haunted, many of the haints hanging around from tragedies enacted upon them at the school. After he is punished for acting out, Robbie finds that he has a knack for finding the different ghosts around the school, and the principal puts him to work capturing as many as he can. However, his new friends, Redbone and Blue, become upset that he is capturing the ghosts, and erasing the evidence of what has happened there. Gracie, Robbie’s sister, is spending all of her time trying to get the judge to understand what really happened with her brother, and freeing her brother.

Due does a great job of making us question what is real and what is not, and if any of that is really important in the end. A beautiful mixture of true story (based on real reformatory school experiences) with the paranormal, the story has keeps you engaged until the bitter end.