31 Days of Horror: Day 29-- Neil McRobert's (Talking Scared) Best Horror of the Year via Esquire

As Spooky Season is ending, I will begin to shift the conversation here on the blog  toward what you can do all year long to support Horror, but today I wanted to take one last look back at what a great year it has already been through Neil McRobert's 2024 Best Horror of the Year for Esquire magazine.

McRobert, the host of Talking Scared, knows his stuff. He is entrenched in the world of Horror like very few others. And his work in Esquire, bringing a knowledgeable and serious discussion of Horror to a mainstream media platform-- one that is not solely book focused-- is very important.

This best of the year list is one example of why McRobert's voice is necessary for us library workers to be aware of. Unlike me and my fellow library world reviewers, he does not have to worry about how easily a library can get a book and add it to their collection. He does not have to worry if the physical copy will stand up to multiple checkouts. He does not have to make sure his list does not, for example, have too many picks from the same publisher. And, he can include as many books as he wants.

This is awesome for us. To have another expert's opinion on what is "best" and why is priceless to us. There are too many yahoos online who want to yell about how their opinion is the only one that matters. However, they are not literal students of the genre like myself and people like Emily Hughes, or the other librarians who do this work day in a day out. McRobert has a degree in this; he reads the books; and he engages in deep conversations with the authors. His opinion matters to us and our readers.

Back in 2021, I invited McRobert to become part of the Why I Love Horror family. Click here for his essay. And click here to learn more about Talking Scared (if you don't know already).

And of course, the main reason for this post-- here is McRobert's top 38 Horror books of 2024. The list is annotated so you can use McRobert's words to share these titles with readers. You can see the introduction below or just click here and go to the Esquire site now. 

The Best Horror Books of 2024

Our favorites are digging grim tunnels into territory old and new, from haunted houses to whimsical horror comedies.

by Neil McRobert

There’s a long-standing theory that in times of real-world strife, readers lose their appetite for fictional horrors. That has never been true. The carnage of pulp magazines only gained popularity after the world wars, while Vietnam and the end of the hippie dream led directly to The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and the ascendancy of Stephen King. And now our freshly unstable world is proving fertile ground for the growth of new budding nightmares.

So far, 2024 has been brimming with fantastic horror stories. I’ve done my absolute best to curate a list of the must-read titles released up to this point. The most promising element of the list below is in the breadth, depth, and variety of the darkness at play. Unlike in previous “golden” eras of horror, there is no dominant trend. Rather, horror writers are digging their own grim tunnels into territory old and new. Retro haunted-house stories sit alongside extreme body horror. Whimsical horror comedies work in tandem with serious political subcurrents. Horror is not just responding to the perma-crisis we’re all living through; it’s providing respite and escape from it. Horror teaches as much as it terrifies. It heals as much as it hurts.

This list contains titles from the whole spectrum of the genre. There are stories to satisfy the most bloodthirsty tastes and some that will lead the uneasy on their first forays into the shadowy end of the library.

Enjoy. It’s good to be scared.

Click here to see the annotated list.