Waukegan Public Library - horror

Have You Heard About... The Stand

Fran J — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:59:47 +0000

… Captain Trips, a devastating flu virus that wipes out 99% of the American population? This marks the beginning of Stephen King’s epic fantasy/horror novel, The Stand, and let me tell you, this one is a doozy. The uncut version is between 1100 and 1400 pages long, depending on which edition you read, but believe me when I say that this story is well worth the effort.

The basic story involves a flu virus that wipes out most of the American people. Only a few survivors are left in the deserted country, and slowly, they begin to band together. But at the heart of the apocalypse are two opposing forces: Mother Abagail, a 108-year-old black woman from Nebraska, and Randall Flagg, the “dark man” who haunts the dreams of the plague survivors. As the survivors are drawn towards either Mother Abagail or Randall Flagg, a great confrontation between good and evil begins to coalesce, bringing a small group of men into the desert to face the growing forces of Randall Flagg.

This is a really hard book to classify - on the one hand, it’s full of apocalyptic horror, and Randall Flagg is one of the best-developed villains in any of Stephen King’s works. On the other hand, the ultimate confrontation between good and evil, as well as the epic journey the characters must take, suggest elements of fantasy. And on the OTHER hand (yes, that’s three hands now), this is just a really well-told story that goes beyond known genres.

The main drawback to the book is its extraordinary length, but the characters are so well developed and the story is so interesting that it never feels slow or boring. In fact, I’d even go so far as to call this a FAST read…it certainly kept me turning the pages late at night.

Even if you’re not a fantasy or a horror fan, I highly, highly recommend this book. This is Stephen King at his best, and it’s a perfect example of why he’s considered one of the world’s premiere story-tellers.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... The Policy

Fran J — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:48:34 +0000

…the supernatural insurance company that uses death threats to coerce you into buying more insurance? Sounds a bit ridiculous, right? But in Bentley Little’s book, The Policy, this is an altogether believable and horrifying premise that plays upon our everyday, adult fears.

The story centers around Hunt Jackson, who has moved back home to Phoenix following a bitter divorce. Almost immediately, he runs into issues with his insurance - vandalism, harassment from his agent - until he receives an offer from a door-to-door insurance salesman who promises to take care of all his problems. But then the salesman keeps showing up, promising more and more outrageous insurance coverage, and the price of NOT accepting his offer gets steeper and steeper.

There is a sense of helplessness as the characters are drawn further and further into this nightmare, with seemingly no chance to escape the almighty force that has taken control of their lives. It’s like being strapped to an out-of-control roller coaster that’s becoming increasingly dangerous and erratic. His straightforward writing is very effective in pulling the reader directly into the heart of the story, and let me tell you, this story goes by FAST. Really, really fast.

Stephen King has praised Bentley Little’s work over the years, and for good reason: this guy writes some really scary stuff. This is a great author to try if you’re looking for a fast read to scare the pants off of you. You won’t be disappointed.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... American Horror Story

Fran J — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:50:41 +0000

… the house in California that drives people to torment and madness? In the first season of American Horror Story, the Harmon family move into a beautifully-renovated Victorian house in California, hoping for a fresh start after husband Ben Harmon’s affair.

But the house (known to tourists as the “Murder House”) has an unspeakably-violent history. A middle-aged man had an affair with a next-door neighbor and burned his wife and children alive. A surgeon from the 1920’s developed a Frankenstein complex and stitched pig heads to dead bodies. A homosexual couple was brutally murdered by a man in a black rubber suit and then buried in the basement. And now, the house is waiting to claim the Harmon family next.

American Horror Story does not shy away from showing us the worst that human beings can inflict on each other. There’s torture, murder, sex, blackmail, mutilation, adultery, and insanity– enough to make you sit up and say, “Oh, no– They did NOT just do that!” And that’s just in the first three episodes!

Horror fans, this is a show too outrageous and creepy to miss. Prepare to become hopelessly, hopelessly addicted.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... Paper Valentine

Fran J — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:06:08 +0000

…Brenna Yovanoff’s fantastic new spine-tingler? First of all, I love Brenna Yovanoff’s writing. Her first two books, The Replacement and The Space Between, are wonderfully creepy and beautifully sad. Yovanoff writes about teens, but not the way we adults think about teenagers. We think of adolescence as a time of irresponsibility and freedom, but from the perspective of a teen, it’s a time of insecurity, a loss of innocence, and a deep fear of the unknown. Yovanoff captures that sadness like no other writer.

Paper Valentine is Yovanoff’s most poignant work to date. It follows Hannah and her best friend Lillian during a brutally hot summer when a serial killer is striking at the heart of their sleepy town. The complication? Lillian has been dead for six months.

The beauty of Yovanoff’s writing is that as a reader, you hardly notice that Lillian is a ghost. The dialogue is so strikingly honest, I became absorbed in the unique relationship that Hannah and Lillian share. Her characters use the language we really use, and feel emotions that we really feel. Most writers avoid feelings of ambivalence and confusion, but Yovanoff embraces them.

I highly recommend Paper Valentine to teens and adults who are interested in breaking into young adult fiction.

Reviewed by Sara (staff)

Have You Heard About... The Floating Staircase

Fran J — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 06:23:54 +0000

…the rickety staircase rising out of a Maryland lake? In Ronald Malfi’s latest book, The Floating Staircase, Travis Glasgow and his wife buy a house in Maryland with a distinctive feature: a staircase rising out of the lake behind the property. But it’s easy enough to overlook, until Travis starts hearing weird noises and seeing shadows flit across the house. He realizes that the ghostly incidents are connected with the staircase, and he begins to investigate. But the more he uncovers about the house’s history, the more he realizes that some secrets can’t stay hidden forever.

This book takes the traditional haunted house story and combines it with an extremely compelling murder mystery – so compelling, in fact, that I found myself just as obsessed with the house’s secret as Travis Glasgow. And the author does a fantastic job of taking the small ghostly incidents (a strange noise, a shadow flitting across a hallway) and transforming them into something truly unsettling. A very impressive and entertaining ghost story.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... Chasing the Moon

Fran J — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 06:28:21 +0000

… the end of the world as we know it? In Chasing the Moon, A. Lee Martinez shows us just how funny things can be when the world is about to end. Diana finally finds the perfect apartment – reasonable rent, furnished in her style, even utilities are included. It turns out to have one small catch in the form of Vom the Hungering, an ancient entity who lives in the apartment’s closet. Diana can’t leave the apartment until she opens the closet door, but when that happens, Vom will come out and eat her. On the bright side, as long as she is Vom’s warden, she won’t age, grow sick, or die by conventional means. On the down side, even the best apartment gets boring after a while. Fortunately for Diana, she turns out to have a knack for dealing with this sort of problem, because Vom isn’t the only monster in the world.

A. Lee Martinez has a way of turning anything from fantasy wars to robotic noir into absolutely insane humor, and eldritch horrors are no exception. Sure there are unspeakable monsters everywhere, but most of them are just regular guys, waiting for another rift in space and time to open up so they can go back to their home dimensions. They may cause a little damage while the wait, but the universe will work around them and get things more or less back the way they were. Usually. Most people won’t remember the differences anyway, so it doesn’t matter all that much, right?

One of my favorite quotes (from p. 65):

“… it always gets better. One way or another.”

“One way or another?”

“Oh, you know. Crossword puzzles. Pornography. Video games. Knitting. Madness. Death. We all find a way of coping, Number Five.”

Reviewed by Fran (staff)

Have You Heard About... Bedbugs

Fran J — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 06:35:51 +0000

… New York City’s infestation of demonic bedbugs? And now that I’ve freaked everyone out, I highly recommend Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters, which is horror fiction at its creepy-crawly best! The story follows Susan and Alex Wendt, who have just moved into a spacious (and cheap!) apartment in New York City. But it isn’t long before Susan starts worrying that their new home is crawling with bedbugs. She wakes up with odd bites, and the more stuff she reads about bedbugs, the worse the situation becomes. But the exterminator can’t find anything, and Susan’s husband hasn’t seen anything either. Is Susan going crazy, like everyone believes, or are these bedbugs actually after her?

This book is scary on two levels - on the one hand, the idea of supernatural bedbugs is gross enough to make anyone check their sheets before they go to bed. But on the other hand, Susan’s obsession with these insects is just as frightening, and we start to wonder how far she’ll go before she breaks down completely. If you read this book, keep the lights on, and make sure you inspect your sheets before you go to bed.

Good night…sleep tight…and don’t EVER let these bedbugs bite!

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... The Good House

Fran J — Thu, 31 May 2012 06:32:09 +0000

… the African spirits haunting the Washington woods? Angela Toussaint is struggling to cope with the death of her fourteen year old son, who committed suicide in her grandmother’s old house. But other townspeople are dying in similar, brutal ways, and everything seems to center around Angela’s childhood home, the Good House. Do the strange events have anything to do with Angela’s deceased grandmother, who could raise the African spirits of her native homeland?

The Good House, by Tananarive Due, is a fresh take on the traditional haunted house story - instead of wailing ghosts and clanking chains, Due gives us African spirits both benevolent and vengeful, while still keeping the elements of a good, spooky ghost story. But this isn’t just a horror novel. It’s also novel about grief, the bonds of family, and cultural history - definitely a story to be savored.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)

Have You Heard About... Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Fran J — Thu, 03 May 2012 06:27:08 +0000

…the stuck-in-a-time-loop orphanage that serves as a home for some very peculiar orphans? Jacob learns the truth about it in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. When Jacob’s grandfather is brutally murdered by monsters only Jacob can see, he is determined to find answers. Jacob hunts through his grandfather’s old photographs and finds some very peculiar snapshots of children. His hunt leads him to a remote island off the coast of Wales filled with tight-lipped locals. While roaming the moors, Jacob stumbles into a time loop and into the very orphanage where his grandfather took refuge from the Nazis 60 years ago.

The book is punctuated by the unsettling photos Jacob found among his grandfather’s possessions. I enjoyed reading the story from Jacob’s perspective, an antihero filled with fear and self-doubt, struggling to come to terms with his family’s past and his own future.

Reviewed by Sara (staff)

Have You Heard About... The White Devil

Fran J — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:09:15 +0000

… the spectacularly spooky English ghost story? The White Devil by Justin Evans follows the story of seventeen-year-old Andrew Taylor, who is sent to a British boarding school for his last year before college. But it proves to be a tough adjustment, as Andrew’s classmates succumb to a mysterious epidemic as soon as he steps foot on campus, and Andrew begins having frightening visions of a malicious, jealous ghost haunting the school. To make matters even stranger, the school’s poet-in-residence, Piers Fawkes, notices an uncanny resemblance between Andrew and the school’s most famous student, poet Lord Byron. But this resemblance is extremely dangerous, for the ghost seems to be tied in with the history of Lord Byron, and he’s coming after Andrew next.

This novel, with its foggy landscape and crumbling English houses, borrows heavily from classic ghost stories, but what makes this book really special is the literary background that forms the basis of the book’s central mystery. But don’t be fooled - this isn’t your average tale, with wailing ghosts and clanking chains. This book is extremely scary, and best read in a well-lit room.

Reviewed by Katie (staff)