Nowadays, horror is all about the shock factor: whether accomplished with monsters, blood, or sex. I miss horror that makes my skin crawl; horror that makes my eyes dart behind me in a dark hallway, and my heart beat twice as fast as a jog on a cold winter morning. My choices range from children’s fiction, to teen fiction in manga format, to adult fiction in graphic novel format proving horror does not need to be X-rated to send a shiver down your spine.
These three very different books have a few things in common, including strong female heroines who are smart to be fearful. Their fear makes them cautious, but in some cases, they are not cautious enough.
This book follows Coraline, a young girl with an intriguing imagination and a profound sense of boredom. When Coraline ventures too deeply from her old house into the other-world, she will have to use her cunning wit to beat the other-mother at her own game or stay in the other-world forever.
Monstress is the first volume in a new graphic series about Maika Halfblood, a teenage survivor of the Arcanic and Human war. Maika, a seventeen-year-old Arcanic (magical creatures that resemble humans) has a lot to discover about her late mother and their past together. Her struggle and persistence to connect with her past leads her to discover her own “monstrous” truth. This discovery strengthens her determination for answers and revenge, but it also unleashes her hunger.
Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror is a manga that weaves the story of Kirie Goshima and her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito when their peculiar town succumbs to the hypnotism of spirals. Kirie and Shuichi seem to be the only people in the town suspicious of the spirals taking over their lives. Does the spiral already have its hold on the entire town, or is there hope to break the spell and return to their “normal” lives? But were their lives ever normal? Or has the spiral always been present: cycling down the bathtub drain, creaking in a spring, or even hiding in the inner ear?