When I was writing the Third Edition of the Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, I originally had over 20 annotated choices per subgenre appearing in chapter 4-13. However, for word count sake, I had to reduce each lists to a well packaged dozen. Obviously making the cuts was hard, but I was able to include the tittles of those deleted annotations in an appendix at the end of the book with a promise that the annotations would run here on the blog.
And that promise begins today. Each list will be posted on the blog over a series of 10 weeks, every Tuesday, beginning June 1, 2021 and running through August 3, 2021. This weekly series will serve to promote the book's upcoming release in August of 2021, but I have also created an archive of all of the lists that will live here. That page is the official index of this bonus content.
In the book, my top three choices in each list are marked to denote Becky's Picks. I will also do that in these lists to give you a place to begin as you suggest. Just like the titles in the print book, every title appearing here is a great options for all public libraries. You can use these lists for collection development, displays, lists, and suggestions. Each subgenre has an essay discussing its history and appeal in the book which you can order here.
Chapter 13: Body Horror
[+] Denotes Becky’s Picks
Armfield, Julia. Salt Slow: Stories. 2019.
In this provocative and creepy debut story collection, Armfield examines the experience of being a woman by using the female body as the center of her tales and then adds supernatural experiences to heighten the sense of unease to provocative results. Standout stories include one where a teenger’s new stepsister is a werewolf and another where a woman, pregnant during the apocalypse, realizes the baby she is carrying is not what she expected. The characters are all relatable because the author retains just enough realism to keep the stories grounded with the terror firmly rooted in the body, while her lyrical language and imaginative monsters keep readers turning the pages.
Combining body horror and climate science fiction, Sealed is the story of an anxious and terrified young woman, Alice, who fled the city with her husband to get away from severe climate change and a spreading virus, a disease which causes human skin to grow unabated until it covers your mouth and nose, suffocating you. Is Alice overreacting because she is grieving for her mother and unsure about her impending motherhood or is everyone else not taking the horrors unfolding around them seriously enough? Readers need to decide for themselves as Alice is their only witness. This is a fast paced story marked by unrelenting tension and a menacing tone that will haunt readers after completion
Cesare, Adam. Video Night.
Billy Rae and Tom are best friends, on the eve of high school graduation and going in separate directions. The one thing they have in common is their love of horror movies, which comes in very handy when alien invaders sweep into town, taking over their victims' bodies and transforming them into something monstrous.Nostalgia, body horror, and alien invasions collide in this terrifyingly fun tale that perfectly captures what viewers love about the very best horror films of the 1980s in novel form. A twisted wish fulfillment tale where the more you know about horror movies, the better your chance at survival.
Grant, Mira. Parasite.
Set in a near future where humans have been implanted with a biologically altered tapeworm that protects them from disease, the company that created the technology has grown as everyone accepts and ingests this preventive medical technology. However, years later, strange alterations in people’s brains seem to be happening.The tapeworms are changing and they are not content with their preassigned job anymore. Told through the eyes of Sally, who lost her memory in a car accident and her parasitologist boyfriend as they begin a desperate search for answers, with the counter perspective of the evil corporate doctors in this is a gruesome and suspenseful crowd pleasing Biomedical-Horror Thriller. The Parasitology trilogy continues with Symbiont and Chimera.
+Hall, Polly. Taxidermist’s Lover.
In two alternating styles and timelines, Scarlett tells readers of the year when her lover got serious about the artistic expression of his work as he stopped merely stuffing animals, and instead actively combined creatures into new, grotesquely beautiful pieces of art. But this is a year that ended very differently than it began for Scarlett as well. One timeline is recounted as a monologue by Scarlett to her lover from Christmas Day, while the other is a month by month account of how Scarlett got to the place she is in, both in physical body and spirit. This is a slow burn, a harrowing tale of creeping dread and disorientation that will slowly inhabit the reader with its disquieting realizations and perfectly rendered horrific conclusions. Hall’s debut showcases a promising genre talent.
+Nonami, Asa. Body.
This atmospheric and unsettling story collection features characters whose perceptions of their bodies lead them directly into a tale of terror. Featuring five stories, each titled for a part of the body, readers are introduced to a new character in each tale and their corporeal obsessions such as the young man with thinning hair, the women who start getting plastic surgery but cannot stop, or a married man with a knee fetish. These are psychological tales where the unease begins with a single body part, but eventually it spreads out to permeate every page of the volume.
Pohlig, Molly. The Unsuitable.
Iseult’s father wants to marry her off as quickly as possible, but Iseult , at age 30, is a spinster by Victorian standards. She is also extremely troubled. You see, her mother who died in childbirth, is living inside her, constantly chiding and nagging her. The only way she can quiet the voice, is to jab repeatedly at the scar on her neck, trying to let her mother out. With a suitor found and marriage impending, Iseult’s mental state is deteriorating while the self harm is increasing. Written in a modern style but set in the world of VIctorian England, this is a disorienting tale of self mutilation where the monster’s origin may be supernatural or societal, but the visceral body horror is inescapable.
When Dr. Toshiaki’s wife dies in a car accident, some of her organs are donated. A young girl gets her kidney, but soon after she is plagued by unsettling dreams and depression. Both Toshiaki and the girl’s doctors discover that the mitochondria in the kidney cells themselves have evolved into a monster, more sentient than humanity, a creature that is growing in strength and is ready for more hosts. With a chilling biomedical threat and told in alternating past and present storylines which helps to magnify the mourning dread, the horrors in this novel fester inside both the characters and readers. Parasite Eve won the 1995 Japan Horror Novel award but was not published in English until 2005.
VanderMeer, Jeff. The Southern Reach Trilogy, begins with Annihilation. 2014.
This title was added because I had room with the inclusion of the appendix. See my review of Annihilation here.
Whiteley, Aliya. The Beauty. 2018.
Sometime in the future exists a world where all women have been killed by an epidemic, readers are introduced to “The Group,” a community of men and boys who are living, biding their time until they die, Narrated by Nathan, the group storyteller, we learn of how a mushroom that grew from the graves of the dead women, took on an approximation of their shae, and “meld” with the men. Are they there to help the men or are these fungi monsters meant to torment them? Atmospheric and bleak, yet peppered with gorgeous language, this novel contemplates gender and the body in original, thought provoking and chilling ways.
John and David, friends and recent college dropouts are living for the moment and partying all the time. They hear about a new recreational drug that allows its users access to unseen dimensions; however, they soon find out that it is way more nefarious. It opens a portal for aliens to come and take over human bodies. Our protagonists quickly turn from slackers to heroes as they use their video game experience to try to save their friends and family from being sucked into a wormhole from which they will be unable to climb out. A humorous spoof on Horror that simultaneously crafts a satisfying entry into the genre on its own, John Dies at the End is the book that took Wong from an internet creator to a novelist.
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