Quirk Holiday Mall 2024: Horror Topic

It’s great to read horror all year long, but there’s nothing like some horror for the holidays. Browse these reads and find the perfect choice for your favorite horror fan.

The Unmothers

by Leslie J. Anderson

“An impressive debut, an intricate and unsettling narrative about desperation that is full of stellar writing.”—Gabino Iglesias, New York Times

In this raw and lyrical folk horror novel, a journalist sent to a small town begins to unravel a dark secret that the women of the town have been keeping for generations.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy.

As she’s pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, her sense of reality is tipped on its head. Is she losing her grip? Or is this impossible story the key to a dark secret that has haunted the women of Raeford for generations? Unbearably tense and utterly gripping, this atmospheric tale of female rage, bodily autonomy, and generational trauma hails the arrival of a masterful storyteller.

This Wretched Valley

by Jenny Kiefer

“A hallucinatory nightmare of a novel that blends adventure, horror and historical fiction, and isn’t shy about violence or strangeness.”—New York Times

“If you love wilderness horror, This Wretched Valley is a must-read.”—Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger and The Fervor

Take only pictures. Leave only bones. This dread-inducing debut builds to a bloodcurdling climax, and will leave you shocked by the final twist.

The Z Word

by Lindsay King-Miller

“This cinematic romp has something for nearly every reader; humor, gore, heat, action, and mystery all swirl in the San Lazaro desert.”—Booklist, starred review

The Z Word is a propulsive, funny, emotional horror debut about a found family coming together to fight corporate greed, political corruption, gay drama, and zombies. Packed with action, humor, sex, and big feelings, it’s the queer zombie romp you didn’t know you needed.

What Kind of Mother

By Clay McLeod Chapman

A New York Times Book Review Best Horror of 2023 selection.

“Packed with profoundly unsettling scenes that’ll slither under your skin and stay there long after you turn the last page.”—Gabino Iglesias, author of The Devil Takes You Home

Combining supernatural horror with domestic suspense into a visceral exploration of parental grief, What Kind of Mother cements Clay McLeod Chapman’s reputation as a “star” (Vulture) and “the twenty-first century’s Richard Matheson” (Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman.)

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

By Clay McLeod Chapman

“Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today.”—Jordan Peele

“Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing sendup of the pitfalls of American divisiveness.”—Keith Rosson, author of Fever House

From Vulture‘s “master of horror” Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes will be released on January 7, 2025. Preorder now!

Horrorstör

By Grady Hendrix

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires comes a hilarious and terrifying haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting: a furniture superstore.

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

Horror for Weenies

by Emily C. Hughes

A smart, funny crash course in 25 iconic horror movies, from Psycho to Hereditary, for people who love getting the reference but hate being scared.

You don’t have to miss out just because you don’t like to be frightened! Stop trying to read nonsensical Wikipedia plot summaries (we know you’re doing it), and let an expert tell you everything you need to know about the most influential horror films of the past 60 years—without a single jump scare or a drop of gore.

Horror for Weenies is the first installment in the Outsider’s Guide series, which offers highly readable crash courses in major cultural phenomena, so you can catch the references and understand the big deal. Never get left out of a conversation again!

Take me back to the Quirk Books Holiday Mall!