Booklist Magazine’s Annual Horror Top 10

Each year, the August issue of Booklist Magazine is a Spotlight issue on Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror which means the editors take all of the star reviews for Horror from the past 12 months and pick a Top 10.

This list is a great RA and Collection Development resource for a few reasons:

1. You need all 10 of the titles in your collections. You probably already have most of them. These are the bare minimum of horror titles for all library collections. They are a good fit for the general reader.
2. You can use this list, or any list from August’s past, as a premade book talk. Looking for a scary read? Here are ten great titles courtesy of Booklist. Any year will do.
3. Same using this list and all past years' lists to make a display. Halloween is just around the corner.
4. You can use these lists as ready reference for when you get a request for a horror title. All of the titles link to a longer review, which you can read to the patron to see if they are interested in the title.

Speaking of lists from year’s past, click on the year to get the list.

• 2018 [and below]
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015

I can also vouch for this list since I reviewed or read 5 of the 10 titles. 

Top 10 Horror: 2018. 

Maguire, Susan (author). 

FEATURE. First published August, 2018 (Booklist).

Magical books, bodily misery, the end of the world, and mermaids (oh my!) are all covered in this year’s 10 best horror-fiction novels, reviewed in Booklist between August 2017 and July 2018.

After the End of the World. By Jonathan L. Howard. 2017. St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne, $26.99 (9781250060907).

The second Carter and Lovecraft novel is diabolically clever and convoluted, with a new time line, an epic conspiracy, and a dangerously magical book that is not supposed to exist.

The Book of Hidden Things. By Francesco Dimitri. 2018. Titan, $14.95 (9781785657078).

Three grown childhood friends investigate the disappearance of a fourth, following a trail left in a book of supernatural creatures, in this emotional English-language debut.

The Cabin at the End of the World . By Paul Tremblay. 2018. Morrow, $26.99 (9780062679109).

A young girl and her two dads may be the key to humanity’s survival in this thriller that uses unreliable narrators and a nonlinear time line to capture the emotional intensity and terror of the family’s dilemma.

Frankenstein in Baghdad. By Ahmed Saadawi. Tr. by Jonathan Wright. 2018. Penguin Press, $16 (9780143128793).

In Saadawi’s haunting and startling mix of horror, mystery, and tragedy, a monster is constructed from the scattered remains of bombing victims in U.S.-occupied Baghdad, and a killing spree that starts as righteous revenge turns amoral.

Her Body and Other Parties. By Carmen Maria Machado. 2017. Graywolf, $16 (9781555977887).

Women and their bodies, and the violence done to them both by themselves and others, occupy the center of Machado’s inventive, sensual, and eerie debut horror collection, describing situations that are at once familiar and completely strange.

Into the Drowning Deep. By Mira Grant. 2017. Orbit, $26 (9780316379403).

A team of scientists and big-game hunters travel deep into the Marianas Trench to find proof of the existence of mermaids—and that the total annihilation of a previous expedition was not a hoax—in Grant’s fast-paced, thrilling horrorfest.

Thirty-Seven. By Peter Stenson. 2018. Dzanc, $26.95 (9781945814310).

In an unnerving but spellbinding story that alternates between a young man’s days among his twisted adopted family and his later post-traumatic struggles following the self-destruction of a cult run by a former oncologist, counterculture favorite Stenson shines a spotlight on the darker side of humankind’s primal yearning to belong.

Unbury Carol. By Josh Malerman. 2018. Del Rey, $27 (9780399180163).

Malerman’s retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” which mixes suspense, dark fantasy, and the spaghetti western, features narrator Carol, afflicted with a spontaneous coma; her dastardly husband; her outlaw first love; and a perfectly rendered villain.

We Sold Our Souls. By Grady Hendrix. 2018. Quirk, $24.99 (9781683690122).

A pulpy, Faustian tale of a heavy-metal megastar and his former bandmates who are determined to save their own souls—and the world.

The Whispering Room. By Dean Koontz. 2017. Bantam, $28 (9780345546807).

Koontz’s continuation of The Silent Corner (2017) will have readers questioning if renegade FBI agent Jane Hawk is too unhinged to defeat the scientists whose nanotechnology conspiracy caused her husband’s death.