PHANTASMAG
Summer Scarin’:
5 Chilling Books to Help with the Heat Words by Lana Thorn
Images by Jack Rogers
28 June 2024


Summer slasher season is upon us! Oh, to be in a cabin on a lake hunted by a masked killer. While a rainy Autumn night may be the favoured setting of most, there’s a rich tradition of enjoying horror in the summer. Scary stories are best told by a campfire, after all, and there’s something special about getting goosebumps in the sun.

Phantasmag is giving you a reading list. We’ve got slashers, gothic thrillers, and more. It’s optional, but you’re highly encouraged to flick through these scary pages (ideally, with trembling hands).

 
CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2020)
By Adam Cesare


This Bram Stoker award-winning novel is a full-blown YA slasher that doesn’t skimp on the gore. A good late summer read (the horrors arise early in the school year), Clown in a Cornfield follows Quinn Maybrook as she moves with her dad to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri. Mourning the recent death of her mother, she soon finds she’s got plenty more to worry about. You see, Kettle Springs has been in a financial and cultural slump: its major factory burned down, and the old guard is fed up with the wayward youth. Suddenly, town mascot Frendo the Clown goes on a killing spree….

Cesare’s book is a slasher for the 2020s, with many of the gruesome murders having something to say about America’s political landscape. There’s also plenty of commentary on the social media generation, found in recent entries in the subgenre like Thanksgiving and Bodies Bodies Bodies. It’s also been tapped for a movie adaptation from the producers of Smile and the director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Give it a read, or Frendo will getcha.


OUR SHARE OF NIGHT (2019)
By  Mariana Enríquez



In a sprawling tale spanning the years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its aftermath, Our Share of Night begins with another parent-child pair in mourning. Shattered by the loss of a beloved wife and mother, Juan and little Gaspar travel to her ancestral home. There, they cross paths with the extended family: a devious cult by the name of The Order, who will stop at nothing in their search of immortality. Unfortunately for Gaspar, it appears that joining The Order is his destiny.

Mariana Enríquez has crafted a horror novel unlike any other, exploring the occult while deftly blending family drama, murder mystery, and the Gothic. In the midst of the supernatural scares, it also offers a uniquely grounded representation of both political trauma and personal grief. Our Share of Night explores wide facets of the human condition: chronic pain, tender love, the joys of adolescence, stolen youth, complex queer relationships, and the pressures of familial expectation. The characters are delightfully flawed, and you won’t make your mind up about them until the last page. Meanwhile, Enríquez’s lush descriptions of the countryside are a nice break from the scares, where you can see the natural settings and feel the stickiness of a hot summer night in Argentina.

NB: It starts slow but, trust us, it’s worth it.


MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW (2021)
By Stephen Graham Jones



While Clown in a Cornfield won it in 2020, this one took home the Bram Stoker award the following year. Stephen Graham Jones has steadily made a name for himself in the genre, and My Heart is a Chainsaw is a slasher as deconstructed as an ice cream left too long in the sun.

Jade Daniels, our heroine, likes slashers as much as we do. In fact, her knowledge is nothing short of encyclopaedic. They’re a comfort to her in a lonely existence in Proofrock, a mountain village in Idaho along the Indian Lake, where Jade is both a lifelong resident and an outsider. She’s half-Native American, with an absent mother and abusive father. But murder comes to Proofrock (skinny-dipping is rarely rewarded in this genre), and Jade realises that she’s in a real life slasher. My Heart is a Chainsaw is as thrilling, brutal, and fun as the stories it emulates, while gracefully handling heavy themes from gentrification to child abuse. It also asks vital questions about what it means to be a final girl. Speaking of…

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP (2021)
By Grady Hendrix



Our beloved slashers have a famed set of rules and a fierce group of fans, so it’s no surprise we’re getting a wave of meta horror novels. Like My Heart is a Chainsaw (and released the same year), The Final Girl Support Group examines, well, the final girl. Grady Hendrix, who has a knack for snappy titles (see My Best Friend’s Exorcism, the subject of a recent film adaptation), poses a simple question: what’s life like for these survivors after they escape death?

The titular group of six middle-aged women, who all escaped death in their youth, unpack their trauma together with a therapist. They’re understandably hyper-vigilant and still triple-lock their doors at night, savvy to all the classic horror movie mistakes made by those they’ve outlived. Each one’s story is modelled directly after the most famed final girls (from Nancy in Elm Street to Sally in Chainsaw Massacre), and Hendrix doesn’t try to hide it. When someone misses a meeting, the women have to put their survival skills to the test once again. Funny and perceptive in its satire while keeping you on the edge of your seat, The Final Girl Support Group is a fast-paced, bold love letter to the slashers of the 70s and 80s.


MEXICAN GOTHIC (2020)
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia



Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror, Mexican Gothic is a haunted house story with a twist (and we won’t spoil the details). All you need to know is the novel is set in 1950s Mexico and follows Noemí Taboada, a young socialite as glamorous as she is shrewd. After a mysterious letter (alleging intent to murder!) from her newly-wed cousin, Noemí travels to an ominous estate in the mountains to investigate the trouble.

The two-world title is apt: Mexican Gothic is a vicious take on the tradition that birthed what we know today as the horror genre. Firstly, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel is drenched in atmosphere. Summer in Mexico is rainy season, so there’s cold air and fog aplenty. We have standard haunted house fare, but also nasty body horror and thorny threads of colonialism and eugenics. It may not be the first title that comes to mind when you think of a beach read, but Mexican Gothic will cast a lovely dark cloud over the hot summer sun.