LibGuides: Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists: Here There be Monsters

Here There be Monsters

The Good House by Tananarive Due
Call Number: Fic Due, Tananarive
Working to rebuild her law practice after her son commits suicide, Angela Toussaint journeys to the family home where the suicide took place, hoping for answers, and discovers an evil force that is driving locals to acts of violence. (Description from catalog.)
Ararat by Christopher Golden
Call Number: Fic Golden, Christopher
While climbing Mount Ararat in Turkey, an avalanche forces a couple to seek shelter inside a massive cave uncovered by the snow fall. The cave is actually an ancient, buried ship that they speculate is really Noah's Ark. But when a team of scholars, archaeologists, and filmmakers make it inside the ark for the first time, they discover an elaborate coffin in its recesses; the cadaver within is an ugly, misshapen thing with horns. Now a massive blizzard has them trapped in the cave thousands of meters up the side of a remote mountain... but the team is not alone. (Description from catalog)
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Call Number: Fic Khaw, Cassandra
A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It's the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding. A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested. But the house has secrets too.
(Description from catalog)
Kill Creek by Scott Thomas
Call Number: Fic Thomas, Scott
"At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests ... When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween in one of the world's most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won't be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek."--Cover flap.
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Call Number: Fic Tremblay, Paul
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of what at first seems to be acute schizophrenia, a condition which only gets worse, leading them believe its actually demonic possession, as they become the center of a reality TV show. (Description from NoveList.)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Call Number: Fic Waters, Sarah
After being summoned to treat a patient at dilapidated Hundreds Hall, Dr. Faraday finds himself becoming entangled in the lives of the owners, the Ayres family, and the supernatural presences in the house. (Description from NoveList)

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Call Number: Fic Hendrix, Grady
"A supernatural thriller set in South Carolina in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a real monster"-- Provided by publisher.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
Call Number: Fic Jones, Stephen Graham
Set in the deep South, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, and surprisingly funny novel that follows an unnamed narrator as he comes of age under the care of his aunt and uncle - who are werewolves. (Description from NoveList.)
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Call Number: Fic Katsu, Alma
A supernatural reimagining of the Donner Party story follows a group of wagon-train pioneers who navigate sanity-testing misfortunes, including the mysterious death of a little boy and a series of disappearances that cause a beautiful member of the group to be accused of witchcraft. (Description from NoveList.)
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Call Number: Fic Cronin, Justin
A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment that only six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte can stop. (Description from catalog.)
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Call Number: Fic Jones, Stephen Graham
They were introduced to their culture but never identified with it, never believed in its power. During an elk hunt, a disturbing event occurs. Ten years later, tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in violent, vengeful ways. Now they are in a desperate struggle for their lives-- and the lives of all they love.
(Description from catalog)
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro; Chuck Hogan
Call Number: Fic Toro, Guillermo del
A vampiric virus infects New York and spreads outward, threatening the city and then the world, as a CDC doctor and a Holocaust survivor fight to save humanity. (Description from NoveList)

World War Z by Max Brooks
Call Number: Fic Brooks, Max
In World War Z, life as we know it ends the way many horror fans knew it would: zombies rise up! After the post-war devastation, author Max Brooks "interviews" survivors and records their stories as well as details on what causes zombies, how they spread, what will stop them, and effective strategic warfare methods against them. (Description about NoveList.)
Cell by Stephen King
Call Number: Fic King, Stephen
Mayhem and violence are unleashed around the world when a pulse from a mysterious source transforms all cell phone users into savage homicidal maniacs, and only a small band of "normies" who avoided the technological attack can stop the rampage. (Description from NoveList)

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Call Number: Fic Olde Heuvelt, Thomas
Black Spring is home to the ghost of Katherine van Wyler, an alleged witch who was tortured and hanged in the 1600s. Eyes and lips sewn shut, she visits the town's residents, ominously coming and going in their houses whenever she wants. But for residents to leave Black Spring would be to invite disaster, so the town's leaders have taken measures to keep it quarantined. Then a group of boys decides Katherine needs an Internet presence, and horrendous chaos breaks out. (Description from NoveList.)
The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Call Number: Fic Henderson, Alexis
In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet's word is law, Immanuelle Moore's very existence is blasphemy. The daughter of an union with an outsider that cast her once-proud family into disgrace, Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the women in the settlement. But a chance mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches.
(Description from catalog)

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Call Number: Fic Braithwaite, Oyinkan
Slasher meets satire, in this darkly comic novel set in Nigeria about a woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends.
(Description from catalog)
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
Call Number: Fic Hendrix, Grady
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized-someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again.
(Description from catalog)
The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones
Call Number: Fic Jones, Graham Stephen
Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone's got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You're from this town. Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She's just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she was rescued by a horse and bravely defeated the killer, alone, bra-less. Her story is already a legend. She's this town's heroic final girl, their virgin angel.
(Description from catalog)
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Call Number: Fic Jones, Graham Stephen
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies...especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
(Description from catalog)
Final Girls by Riley Sager
Call Number: Fic Sager, Riley
Emerging as the lone survivor of a serial killer's massacre a decade earlier, Quincy Carpenter struggles to ignore traumatic memories and move on as one of a group of other survivors who look to her for answers when one of them is found dead in a suspicious suicide. (Description from catalog.)
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Call Number: Fic Stage, Zoje
An ailing woman fights to protect her family from her mute daughter's psychologically manipulative schemes, which are complicated by her doting husband's denial about their daughter's true nature. (Description from NoveList.)

The Troop by Nick Cutter
Call Number: Fic Cutter, Nick
Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip. This year, something is waiting in the darkness. Something wicked ... An intruder stumbles upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine ... (Description from catalog)
Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay
Call Number: Fic Tremblay, Paul
In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government's emergency protocols are faltering.
(Description from catalog)
The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman
Call Number: Fic Zeltserman, Dave
Jack Durkin is the ninth generation of Durkins who have for nearly 300 years weeded Lorne Field. It's an important job, though no one else seems to realize it. For, if the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow--a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said ... (Description from catalog.)
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Call Number: Fic VanderMeer, Jeff
Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
(Description from catalog)

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks
Call Number: Fic Brooks, Max
A modern retelling of the Bigfoot legend is presented as a gripping journal by a woman from a high-tech Pacific Northwest community who becomes cut off from civilization by a volcanic eruption before witnessing the flight of starving humanoid beings.
Rovers by Richard Lange
Call Number: Fic Lange, Richard
Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For seventy years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed on.
(Description from Amazon)
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Call Number: Fic Malerman, Josh
In Bird Box, brilliantly imaginative debut author Josh Malerman captures an apocalyptic near-future world, where a mother and her two small children must make their way down a river, blindfolded. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them -- but is it man, animal, or monster? (Description from catalog.)
The Ritual by Adam Nevill
Call Number: Fic Nevill, Adam
When four old University friends set off into the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle, they aim to briefly escape the problems of their lives and reconnect with one another. But when Luke, the only man still single and living a precarious existence, finds he has little left in common with his well-heeled friends, tensions rise. With limited experience between them, a shortcut meant to ease their hike turns into a nightmare scenario that could cost them their lives.
(Description from catalog)
Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo
Call Number: Fic Pelayo, Cynthia
When the Pied Piper returns, leaving his special calling card on the bodies of his brutally murdered victims, Detective Lauren Medina is torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe and keeping a promise she made long ago to him.
(Description from NoveList)
Relic by Douglas Preston; Lincoln Child
Call Number: Fic Preston, Douglas
An unusual figurine and the Amazon Basin archaeologists who found the relic are at the heart of a mystery surrounding a series of brutal killings at New York's Museum of Natural History. (Description from NoveList)