The team at Stowmarket Library share some of their favourite horror books! Browse our staff picks and pick up a copy from your local library.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations or explore more of the National Year of Reading campaign.
Horrorstör
Grady Hendrix
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio.
Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
Tender Is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica
If everyone was eating human meat, would you?
Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans – only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing.
One day, he’s given a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her tied up in an outhouse, a problem to be disposed of later. But she haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, and watchful gaze, seem to understand.
And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost – and what might still be saved…
Let the Right One In
John Ajvide Lindqvist
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself.
Oskar is a 12-year-old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he’s frightened.
Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200-year-old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood.
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Mariana Enriquez
Mariana Enriquez’s ‘A Sunny Place for Shady People’ is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted ‘The Dangers of Smoking in Bed’.
Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina’s brutal past.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life.
But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn’t leaving the Blackwoods alone.
And when Cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Merricat must do everything in her power to protect the remaining family.
The Starving Saints
Caitlin Starling
Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low & there has been no sign of rescue.
But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed & the divine figures of the Constant Lady & her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.
Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviours, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors & exonerate her experiments as their source.
In the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne & the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.
The Eyes Are the Best Part
Monika Kim
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying – yet enticing.
In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of blue eyes. Salivatingly perfect male eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend.
George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration.
No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that. Ji-won’s hunger and rage need to be sated.
Hungerstone
Kat Dunn
Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them.
Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the Peak District, to the remote, imposing Nethershaw estate, where he plans to host a hunting party. Lenore must work to restore the crumbling house and ready it for Henry’s guests – their future depends on it.
But as the couple travel through the bleak countryside, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger.
As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years.
Clown in a Cornfield
Adam Cesare
In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress – that just may cost her life.
Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half.
On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.
Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town.