Digital Learning Commons: Literary Genres: Horror

Horror Fiction

Horror Fiction uses supernatural elements to create stories which incite fear, horror, or terror in readers.

[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

Clive Barker,

horror author and film director

Characteristics

Setting: Horror fiction is typically set in the real world, or otherwise realistic setting, either in present day or the past.

Plot: Horror fiction stories contain scary and unexpected events. The conflict requires characters to overcome a malevolent supernatural force.

Characters: Characters are usually ordinary people who are forced to face extraordinary circumstances.

Themes: Horror stories have existed for hundreds of years, going back to traditional folklore. Many of the same themes are still found in contemporary horror and can include human fears, death, good versus evil, or the unknown.

Subgenres

Comic Horror: Stories that spoof horror conventions or mix gore with humor.

Dark Fantasy: Combines fantasy elements with darker and more frightening elements of horror.

Gothic Horror: Usually set between the Middle Ages and the 19th Century, Gothic Horror or Gothic Fiction is characterized by elements of fear, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and emotion.

Hauntings and Ghost Stories: Classic tales of ghost stories, hauntings, poltergeists, and demons.

Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance may depict supernatural beings such as werewolves or vampires in a different, more positive light. Like other romance stories, Paranormal Romance centers on relationships and romantic love.

Supernatural Menace: Supernatural horror contains malevolent supernatural beings and monsters.

Zombie: Zombie stories feature flesh-eating reanimated corpses.

Authors

Tracey Baptiste
Clive Barker
LIbba Bray
Rin Chupeco
Cynthia DeFelice
Joseph Delaney
Margaret Downing Hahn
Anthony Horowitz
Eva Ibbotson
Claire LeGrand
Jonathan Maberry
Patrick Ness
Joan Lowery Nixon
Kenneth Oppel
Ransom Riggs
William Ritter
R. L. Stine
Jonathan Stroud
Kate Thompson
Rick Yancey

Notable Horror Fiction

Comic Horror

A Taste for Red by Lewis Harris
When some of her classmates disappear, sixth-grader Svetlana, along with her new friends go in search of the missing students using her newfound ability as an Olfactive, one who has heightened smell, hearing, and the ability to detect vampires.
Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi
While practicing for their next baseball game, thirteen-year-old friends Rabi, Miguel, and Joe discover that the nefarious activities of the Delbe, Iowa, meatpacking plant have caused cows to turn into zombies.
Notes from a Totally Lame Vampire by Tim Collins
Nigel Mullet, a 100-year-old vampire doomed to spend eternity in the body of a socially awkward fifteen-year-old boy, records his attempts to impress the love of his life, Chloe, while battling an embarrassingly overwhelming desire to sink his fangs into her.

Dark Fantasy

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked creatures as witches, along with kindly strangers and other helpful folk. Based in part on the Grimms' fairy tales Faithful Johannes, Hansel and Gretel, The seven ravens, Brother and sister, The robber bridegroom, and The devil and his three golden hairs.
Estranged by Ethan M. Aldridge
Edmund and the Childe were swapped at birth. Now Edmund lives in secret as a changeling in the World Above, his fae powers hidden. The Childe lives among the fae in the World Below, where being a human makes him a curiosity at the royal palace. But when the cruel sorceress Hawthorne seizes the throne, the Childe and Edmund must unite on a dangerous quest to save both worlds.
The Good Neighbors by Holly Black & Ted Naifeh
Sixteen-year-old Rue Silver, whose mother disappeared weeks ago, believes she is going crazy until she learns that the strange things she has been seeing are real, and that she is one of the faerie creatures, or Good Neighbors, that mortals cannot see.
The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco
Tea's gift for death magic means that she is a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community, but when an older bone witch trains her to become an asha--one who can wield elemental magic--Tea will have to overcome her obstacles and make a powerful choice in the face of danger as dark forces approach.

Gothic Horror

This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are inseparable twin brothers who stumble upon The Dark Library, where secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are housed, but after their father forbids them to ever return to the library Konrad falls gravely ill and Victor seeks out a cure for his brother beyond traditional medicine.
The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
In 1888, twelve-year-old Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with Dr. Warthrop, a scientist who hunts and studies real-life monsters, as they discover and attempt to destroy a pod of Anthropophagi.
Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
Set in 1920s New York City, this is the story of budding magician Anna Van Housen, who has spent her whole life playing sidekick to her faux-medium mother--and trying to hide the fact the she actually possesses the very abilities her mother fakes.
In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters
In San Diego in 1918, as deadly influenza and World War I take their toll, sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort and, despite her scientific leanings, must consider if ghosts are real when her first love, killed in battle, returns.
Jackaby by William Ritter
Newly arrived in 1892 New England, Abigail Rook becomes assistant to R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with the ability to see supernatural beings, and she helps him delve into a case of serial murder which, Jackaby is convinced, is due to a nonhuman creature.

Hauntings and Ghost Stories

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The orphan Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard as a child of eighteen months and raised lovingly and carefully to the age of eighteen years by the community of ghosts and otherworldly creatures.
The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts, spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they aren't exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities required to see-and eradicate-these supernatural foes.
The Ghost of Graylock by Dan Poblocki
Staying with their aunts over the summer, Neil Cady, his sister Bree, and their new friends Wesley and Eric, set out to explore Greylock Hall, an abandoned psychiatric hospital which is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Nurse Janet.
The Girl in the Locked Room by Mary Downing Hahn
Told in two voices, Jules, whose father is restoring an abandoned house, and a girl who lived there a century before begin to communicate and slowly, the girl's tragic story is revealed.

Paranormal Romance

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White
When a dark prophecy begins to come true, sixteen-year-old Evie of the International Paranormal Containment Agency must not only try to stop it, she must also uncover its connection to herself and the alluring shapeshifter, Lend.
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.
Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith
When multiple murders in Austin, Texas, threaten the grand re-opening of her family's vampire-themed restaurant, seventeen-year-old, orphaned Quincie worries that her best friend-turned-love interest, Keiren, a werewolf-in-training, may be the prime suspect.
Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
Seven stories of passion and love separated by centuries but mysteriously intertwined--this is a tale of horror and beauty, tenderness and sacrifice.

Supernatural Menace

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
Eleven-year-old Corinne must call on her courage and an ancient magic to stop an evil spirit and save her island home.
The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney
Young Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son, starts work as an apprentice for the village spook, whose job is to protect ordinary folk from "ghouls, boggarts, and all manner of wicked beasties.
Juniper Berry by M. P. Kozlowsky
When eleven-year-old Juniper begins to suspect something is wrong with her mother and father, she and her friend Giles discover they have been selling their souls, pieces at a time, to a silver-tongued creature in a terrifying fairy-tale underworld.

Zombie

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry
In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.
The Boy Who Couldn't Die by William Sleator
Sixteen-year-old Ken lost his best friend in a plane crash and now he wants to be invulnerable - to accident, attack and death. He finds a psychic who claims she can make him immortal for 50 USD - if he will give up his soul. He agrees, but then realizes that the psychic may be exacting a more sinister payment.
Legends of the Lost Causes by Brad McLelland & Louis Sylvester
A band of orphan avengers. A cursed stone. A horde of zombie outlaws. This is Keech Blackwood's new life after Bad Whiskey Nelson descends upon the Home for Lost Causes and burns it to the ground.
Undead by Kirsty McKay
On a school trip to snowbound Scotland, several students become infected and turn into hungry zombies, leaving a small band of survivors to take refuge in the school bus.
Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
While investigating the supposed suicides of her best friend, Riley, and mean girls June and Dayton, sixteen-year-old Wiccan Mila Flores accidentally brings them back to life.

Resources

YA Horror 2018: 30 Books That Will Send Chills Down Your Spine
Best YA Horror books of the year from Book Riot.
Reading Bites
Reading Bites is aimed specifically at teen and young adult readers of horror, paranormal fiction, and dark fantasy. We publish reviews of recent as well as older books and media that may be of interest.
Bram Stoker Awards
Each year, the Horror Writer’s Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror work, Dracula. The Bram Stoker Awards were instituted immediately after the organization’s incorporation in 1987.

Short Stories

Beware! by R. L. Stine (Ed.)
A selection of unsettling stories--one in graphic form along with two poems--by such authors as Ray Bradbury, William Sleator, Robert Service, Edward Gorey, Roald Dahl, Jane Yolen, and Mr. Stine himself.
Fear by R. L. Stine (Ed.)
A collection of thirteen scary stories by bestselling and award-winning authors.
M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman
Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you. Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers-but always embrace the unexpected.
Nightmare Hour by R. L. Stine
In story after story, America's bestselling children's author offers a world of nightmare and scary fantasy.
Werewolves by Jane Yolen (Editor)
A collection of fifteen stories by a variety of authors about the, sometime frightening, sometime humorous, phenomena of werewolves.
The Young Oxford Book of Nasty Endings by Dennis Pepper (Editor)
This is a collection of 35 stories where the main feature is the ending. Sometimes it's an unpleasant or a nasty end, sometimes there is an unexpected twist, but usually the ending comes as a complete surprise to the people in the story.
The New Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories by Dennis Pepper (Editor)
The stories are drawn from the early twentieth century tradition of ghost stories, together with contemporary stories that develop and extend this tradition.
Scream and Scream Again! by R. L. Stine (Ed.)
A harrowing array of scary stories that all have one thing in common: each either begins or ends with a scream!

Bram Stoker Award Winners and Nominees

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
When families go missing in Baltimore County, Jane McKeene, who is studying to become an Attendant, finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that has her fighting for her life against powerful enemies.
Flesh and Bone by Jonathan Maberry
Benny, Nix, Lou, and Lilah journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America searching for the jet they saw months ago, while evading fierce animals and a new kind of zombie.
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Call Number: Fantasy
Though she is from a family of clairvoyants, Blue Sargent's only gift seems to be that she makes other people's talents stronger, and when she meets Gansey, one of the Raven Boys from the expensive Aglionby Academy, she discovers that he has talents of his own--and that together their talents are a dangerous mix.
This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel
Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are inseparable twin brothers who stumble upon The Dark Library, where secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are housed, but after their father forbids them to ever return to the library Konrad falls gravely ill and Victor seeks out a cure for his brother beyond traditional medicine.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.
Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry
In post-apocalyptic America, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura and his friends set out into the great Rot & Ruin hoping to find a better future but are soon pitted against zombies, wild animals, insane murderers, and the horrors of Gameland.
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
Call Number: Graphic Novels
Anya, embarrassed by her family and lacking confidence in her body and her social skills, finally finds a friend after falling down a well, but quickly learns there are drawbacks to having a ghost for a friend.