Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week’s theme is all centred around Halloween, one of my favourite times of the year (and also my Dad’s birthday). I’m a big fan of horror so I decided to do this week’s Top Ten Tuesday Halloween theme on 10 horror books I’m dying to buy.
If you want to see what horror books I’ve read and enjoyed, I did a post a few months ago and you can check it out here.
So, here are 10 Horror Books On My Wishlist:
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED.
Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives – the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.
I know this isn’t a proper terrifying horror novel, but I’m starting this list off easy. I’ve seen a fair few people raving about Feed and I’m a massive zombie fan but, for some reason, I’ve just never got round to picking this series up. However, I know it’s more of a unique twist on the zombie apocalypse so I’m really intrigued to give this book a go.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
The lives of the Barretts, a suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.
To her parents despair, the doctors are unable to halt Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show.
Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls the terrifying events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories begin to surface and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed.
I can’t remember who, but I saw a blogger review this and enjoy it and since then it’s been on my wishlist. Possession stories can be hit and miss, yet if Stephen King likes it, I’m sold.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
What if you only had 3 minutes to save your own life and the clock is already counting down…Three minutes. Nessa, Megan and Anto know that any day now they wake up alone in a horrible land and realise they’ve been Called. Two minutes. Like all teenagers they know that they’ll be hunted down and despite all their training only 1 in 10 will survive. One minute. And Nessa can’t run, her polio twisted legs mean she’ll never survive her Call will she? Time’s up.
I’ve been so hyped for this since its release and I can’t wait much longer! I’ve only seen glowing reviews of this book so I have very high hopes. It sounds like it has fantasy elements too. A horror-fantasy? What could be better?
Goodreads | Amazon UK
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.
I enjoyed the American film adaptation of this book, but I know that both the Swedish film and the Swedish book are much scarier, so I’m really keen to give both a go. The Scandi’s really know how to make something creepy.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, the New Hampshire College Prep program is the chance of a lifetime. Except that when Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing has been closed, forcing students to stay in the crumbling Brookline Dorm formerly a psychiatric hospital.
As Dan and his new friends Abby and Jordan start exploring Brookline’s twisty halls and hidden basement, they uncover disturbing secrets about what really went on here . . . secrets that link Dan and his friends to the asylum’s dark past.
Because Brookline was no ordinary mental hospital, and there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.
There is something particularly terrifying about asylums. However, this has always confused me a little because people seem to think that the patients are the scariest part, which is actually just really discriminatory. In fact, it’s the horrific ways in which the mentally ill were treated that’s the most terrifying.
But anyway, I digress, this still sounds like a chilling read.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Summer. Massachusetts.
An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.
Anyone could be next.
We’re going to Christmasland …
I loved Joe Hill’s latest novel, The Fireman (check out my review here), so I’ve been looking forward to trying more of his work. (Even more so when I found out he’s actually Stephen King’s son!)
I saw a review on Amazon label this as “horror-fantasy”, which I wouldn’t have guessed from the blurb as I thought it was more about serial killers, but I’m even more intrigued now.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
When sisters Silla and Nori escape London and their abusive father, Aunt Cath’s country house feels like a safe haven. But slowly, ever so slowly, things begin to unravel.
Aunt Cath locks herself in the attic and spends day and night pacing. Every day the forbidden surrounding forest inches slowly towards the house. A mysterious boy appears, offering friendship. And Nori claims that a man watches them from the dark forest – a man with no eyes, who creeps ever closer. . .
I just finished Dawn Kurtagich’s first YA horror The Dead House this morning and I’ll hopefully have the review up tomorrow. So, you’re thinking that if The Creeper Man is on my wishlist, then I must have loved The Dead House, right?
Well, it was okay. I think it got a bit confused if I’m honest. I’ll go more in depth in my review tomorrow, so look out for that, but I know that The Creeper Man is supposed to be better so I’m willing to give Kurtagich another try.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Danny is only five years old, but in the words of old Mr Hallorann he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Danny’s visions grow out of control.
As winter closes in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seems to develop a life of its own. It is meant to be empty. So who is the lady in Room 217 and who are the masked guests going up and down in the elevator? And why do the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive?
Somewhere, somehow, there is an evil force in the hotel – and that, too, is beginning to shine . . .
We’ve had Stephen King’s son, now here’s Stephen King himself.
And I know what you’re thinking: I’m a horror fan and I haven’t read any Stephen King?! I know, I know, but for some reason I’ve just never picked up one of his books. That’s not because I don’t want to; on the contrary, I really want to. It’s just I’ve never got round to buying one. And what better place to start than with what most would describe as King’s best horror: The Shining.
I confess to not even having seen the film either, but I do obviously know all the iconic scenes, “Red rum” etc. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this sometime in the future.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Drip…drip…drip… In five days, she will come…
Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Rowe is not the kind of person who believes in ghosts. A Halloween dare at her ridiculously spooky boarding school is no big deal, especially when her best friend Naya and cute local boy Caine agree to join in too. They are ordered to summon the legendary ghost of Bloody Mary: say her name five times in front of a candlelit mirror, and she shall appear… But, surprise surprise, nothing happens. Or does it?
Next morning, Bobbie finds a message on her bathroom mirror – five days – but what does it mean? And who left it there? Things get increasingly weird and more terrifying for Bobbie and Naya, until it becomes all too clear that Bloody Mary was indeed called from the afterlife that night, and she is definitely not a friendly ghost. Bobbie, Naya and Caine are now in a race against time before their five days are up and Mary comes for them, as she has come for countless others before…
This has got great reviews since it was released so this is one I’m definitely excited to get. I find paranormal horrors the scariest and this one sounds right up my street.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.
Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she’s there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.
The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.
I saw a blogger review this a little while back and I’ve been looking forward to reading it someday ever since. I think it’s such a unique and interesting premise how the town has become used to the haunting and that they’ve shut themselves off from the world. Definitely excited about this one.
Goodreads | Amazon UK
And there you have it! Ten horror novels from my wishlist.
I haven’t actually read a lot of YA horror but, as you can see from this list, I’m trying to rectify that. However, after The Dead House not being as scary as I hoped, I’m a little sceptical of YA horror. Can it really be as scary as adult horror? Do the publishers allow that?
Do you have any horror recommendations? Have you read any of these books? Let me know in the comments below! And keep an eye out for my review of The Dead House!
Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth… but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.
Twenty-five years ago, Elmbridge High School burned down. The blaze killed three and injured twenty, and one pupil, Carly Johnson, disappeared. For two decades, little was revealed about what became known as the Johnson Incident.
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