For Readers: Blog

Slasher summer

Slasher films and books aren’t just for cooler fall days!  There are quite a few horror movies and books set during the summer around lakes and camps if you are looking for chills to beat the summer heat.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She finds her only solace in the slasher movies of the 1980s and the extra-credit essays she writes for her history teacher explaining the genre’s themes. A group of rich investors discovers beautiful and secluded Proofrock, Idaho, despite its troubling history of mass murders and lake witches. Issues of class and privilege collide with the threat of a Fourth of July massacre, though no one takes Jade's warnings seriously. She pins all hope for survival on the new girl—the rich and beautiful Letha, the perfect final girl. [e-book | print ]

Daphne by Josh Malerman
It’s the last summer for Kit Lamb: the last summer before college with her high school basketball team, and with Dana, her best friend. But the night before the big game, one of the players tells a ghost story about Daphne, a girl who went to their school many years ago and died under mysterious circumstances. They also say that Daphne is still out there, obsessed with revenge, and will appear to kill again anytime someone thinks about her. After Kit hears the story, her teammates vanish, one by one, and Kit begins to suspect that the stories about Daphne are real. Now it’s a race against time as Kit searches for the truth behind the legend and learns to face her own fears. [e-book | print ]

Joyland by Stephen King
While King’s gigantic novel IT has some iconic summer scenes, this shorter book about a creepy amusement park is a perfect weekend read. In the summer of 1973, 21-year-old college student Devin Jones takes a job at Joyland, a North Carolina amusement park. Almost immediately, a boardwalk fortune-teller warns that Devin has a shadow over him, and that his destiny is intertwined with that of terminally ill Mike Ross, a 10-year-old boy who has the sight. Shortly after Devin meets Mike, Mike makes a cryptic comment: “It’s not white.” This proves a vital clue when Devin begins investigating an unsolved murder committed four years before at the carnival’s Horror House, and quickly stumbles into more than he bargained for. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Final Girls by Riley Sager
Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to: a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Now, Quincy is doing well; she has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past. That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit. When new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
If some of the previous books sound too scary for you, check out this funny horror book that feels more like Scooby Doo. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years. The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to the lake where it all began in 1977. [e-book | print]

Sign Here by Claudia Lux 
Peyote Trip has a pretty good gig in the deals department on the fifth floor of Hell. Sure, none of the pens work, the coffee machine has been out of order for a century, and the only drink on offer is Jägermeister, but Pey has a plan and all he needs is one last member of the Harrison family to sell their soul. When the Harrisons retreat to the family lake house for the summer, with their daughter Mickey’s precocious new friend, Ruth, in tow, the opportunity Pey has waited a millennium for might finally be in his grasp. And with the help of his charismatic coworker Calamity, he sets a plan in motion. [e-book | print ]

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare
Since teens are almost always the protagonists in slasher films, here are a few YA horror books with brave teen characters. Quinn and her father moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. [e-book]

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant, which includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. Mars seeks out his sister's old friends: a group of girls dubbed the Honeys, named for the beehives they maintain behind their cabin. They are beautiful and terrifying -- and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death. But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. [e-book | print | audiobook]

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron
Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the final girl at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. But the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity's role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they'll need to figure out what this killer is after. Is there more to the story of Mirror Lake and its dangerous past than Charity ever suspected? [e-book | print]
 

⏤Gina