Feasting in Horror

With all the buzz and excitement surrounding the forthcoming film adaptation of ‘Pet Cemetery’ by Stephen King, this felt like a good time to share some ideas with you all about great horror novels for both young and old. Most adult readers would agree that King is the master of all things creepy and jumpy, and if you’ve never read any Stephen King before then ‘Salem’s Lot’ or ‘Carrie’ are a good place to start. For much younger readers, however, there are lots of suitably scary and spine-chilling Young Adult fiction books out there for you to terrify yourselves with. Let’s kick off with ‘Thirteen’ by Tom Hoyle for starters! What could not be more terrifying to teenagers than the idea of a strange cult capturing and eliminating all boys born on the night of the Millennium when they reach the grand age of 13! For those of us who enjoy a good old-fashioned zombie apocalypse story then look no further than Charlie Higson’s ‘Enemy’ series than runs to a whopping 7 books. Each instalment is filled with enormous drooling adult zombies that are trying to pick off kids one by one as they hide in all the great landmarks of London. For those who like to mix their horror genres, then ‘Demon Road’ by Derek Landy is a real rollercoaster ride of demons, vampires, werewolves and other satanic beasts. All manner of creatures are encountered by our heroine as she drives at speed through America in an attempt to elude her murderous demonic parents! New on the scene, however, is the fabulously entertaining ‘Undead’ by Kirsty McKay which is again a zombie novel, but this time ( more topically ) about a group of Year 11 students on a school ski trip whose bus gets ambushed on the way home!!! The final offering in this feast of teen horror thrillers is the Cilip Carnegie award-winning best-seller ‘The Bunker Diaries’ by Kevin Brooks which is certainly not for the faint-hearted. One of my personal favourites, this is a book that is short, edgy and hard to put down. It is a gripping and tense thriller about a group of random strangers who have all been kidnapped and then held together for no apparent reason in an underground bunker. The plot raises many questions – few of which are ever answered – and the suspense created throughout is superb.

So, although it is a long time until Halloween and these titles may, therefore, seem unseasonal, I hope they give you a few ideas on how to frighten yourself in the months to come; or maybe provide an escape from the real horror of the nightmare that we call revision!