NEW YORK, March 1 — You’ll need the Lord’s divine light after encountering these dark reads. Be it human sacrifice, supernatural menace, or occult murder—when it comes to the sub-genres of horror, we just can’t get enough.
So below, we’ve rounded up a collection of novels that all have one thing in common: They all worship at the temple of twisted fiction. Can we get an amen?
1. ‘Harvest Home’, by Thomas Tryon
Sick of city life, a family man moves his wife and daughter from the mean streets of Manhattan to the idyllic countryside of New England. Though we’re pretty sure religious sacrifice and sheep’s blood rituals aren’t exactly what he had in mind. A pivotal novel of the 1970s, Thomas Tryon’s culty chiller was a New York Times bestseller and remains one of those benchmark horror novels.
2. ‘Song of Kali’, by Dan Simmons
1986 World Fantasy Award winner, ‘Song of Kali’ claims it can shock, scare, or soil even the most battered genre fan. One skim of the squalor, rotting corpses, and cloying humidity of Calcutta that author Dan Simmons brings to life on the page, and you’ll have to agree. About a family who find themselves at the core of an ancient Hindu cult, “Kali” is one of those novels that gets stuck in your head.
3. ‘3 Gates of the Dead’, by Jonathan Ryan
Faith and fear collide in Jonathan Ryan’s theological thriller about one man’s struggle with the man upstairs. Spiritually conflicted, Father Aidan Schaeffer is haunted, and not just by hypocrisy in the church: his ex-fiancée’s been murdered, and it’s the first in a string of ritualistic killings. Get out the good book — you’re gonna need it after it this religious rabbit hole of holy relics and holy-hell terror.
4. ‘Of Fever and Blood’, by S. Cedric
The first in S. Cedric’s Inspector Svarta Thrillers, ‘Of Fever and Blood’ is a heart-racing supernatural horror about a pair of inspectors, one an albino by the name of Eva Svarta, who are on the hunt for a predator who can’t be caught. A cryptic synopsis, yes, but we wouldn’t want to spoil the ending. We’ll just say influences of Stephen King, lots of graphic violence and scenes of bloody torture are at play in this cat-and-mouse thriller.
5. ‘Devil Bones’, by Kathy Reichs
Number 11 in an 18-book series from best-selling author Kathy Reichs, ‘Devil Bones’ is a dark and twisted tale about Voodoo and devil worship. When a plumber happens upon an abandoned cellar and its macabre contents—severed body parts and religious curios included—forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (yes, that Temperance Brennan from the small screen “Bones”) is called in to play pin the head on the body.
6. ‘Sacrifice’, by Sharon Bolton
Picture this: You pick up and move your life to the Shetland Islands, only to find a body buried in your yard. So goes the story of Tora Hamilton, the protagonist of Sharon Bolton’s murder mystery about an obstetrician who becomes obsessed with three things: who the remains belong to, why her heart was ripped out, and why she was killed just moments after giving birth.
7. ‘Ritual’, by Mo Hayder
Mo Hayder’s ‘Ritual’ introduces readers to Flea and Jack, the duo who appear in much of Hayder’s work. Here, police diver Flea Marley finds a severed hand underwater and matches it to Detective Jack Caffery’s missing person. Together, the two get to the bottom of who’s leaving body parts all over Bristol, and it’s a case that sends them into an underground culture of drugs and African rituals. — Reuters
* This story was originally featured on The-Line-Up.com. The Lineup is the premier digital destination for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal.
