Over two months ago, I commuted to work for the last time. On the way home, I stopped for gas and groceries. That night, I cancelled a vacation planned for the next week and watched the Project Runway finale with my mom. Since then, I’ve been hunkered down with Mom and three dogs, making only essential trips to the grocery store and the vet. It feels like two years have passed. When the publication date for They Did Bad Things was set last year (which is about a decade in pandemic-time), I didn’t think my book about old college frenemies trapped in an isolated house trying to not to die (or kill each other), would be as fitting for the times as it is. As I prep to launch a book while most of the nationwide shutdowns and restrictions remain in place, I started thinking about the best crime/thriller/horror books to read in quarantine. If you’re stuck with your college roommates, They Did Bad Things might be for you.
Have a different quarantine situation? Want to lift your spirits by reading about someone whose situation is worse than yours? There’s a book here for you.
Books for About-to-be-Divorced Quarantining Couples
Ready to set your partner’s belongings on fire if they won’t stop videobombing your Zoom calls in their underwear? Read Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It instead. Forget your partner’s irritating habits by losing yourself in the story of Julie and James, who suffer from nervous breakdowns as a result of the creepy child-like drawings that appear on the walls and the secret passages that keep manifesting themselves inside their newly bought house. You’ll forget all about the dirty underwear on the floor when you start checking out your own window to see if the shouting of the never-seen children outside really are getting closer.
Planning on some couples therapy in the near future? In SJI Holliday’s The Lingering, Jack and Ali Gardiner thought leaving London for a commune in the English countryside would help solve their marital problems. But they probably shouldn’t have chosen a commune housed in a former Victorian mental asylum on land once used for a witch-burning.
Books for Singles Quarantining with Their Families
Not everyone has a partner to spend their stay-at-home orders with. So for those of you who moved back with the parents for the duration, enjoy Otessa Moshfegh’s Eileen, whose title character seeks a way out from life with her homebound alcoholic father by getting obsessed with a new co-worker at the boys’ prison where she works.
Or if you and your parents get along really well, and it’s the neighbors that are causing problems, Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests can provide a respite from the car parades that Karen next door insists on organizing daily.
Have your siblings with you, too? Take a break from recreating old family photos for your mom to post on Facebook and curl up with Shirley Jackson’s classic We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It will make you appreciate living in isolation with your sister who (probably) didn’t poison the rest of your family years ago. For those of you with brothers, you’ll enjoy Josh Malerman’s The Inspection. It will remind you of all the great times you spent with your brothers sharing a bedroom, watching movies together, building snow sculptures in winter that are harshly judged by a semi-psychotic father figure, and living in complete isolation from the rest of society unaware that something called “women” exist, and getting murdered if you venture out of bounds to find out. All those good, good times.
Books for People whose Roommates Aren’t Taking Quarantine Seriously
Have a roommate? How about a roommate who keeps bringing over unwanted guests who may or may not be bringing COVID-19 into your home? As you sequester yourself in your bedroom to avoid…whatever it is they’re doing, make sure you have a copy of Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions with you. Because there is nothing more welcome in your English manor house than creepy wood cutouts that keep showing up where they don’t belong.
Or help your roommate understand the risks of infection by gifting them a copy of Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp’s Cold Storage. Reading about a mutated, part-sentient fungus that makes people explode just might get them to wear that facemask on their next trip for groceries.
Books for People Quarantining Solo
All on your own? Not even a pet for company? Tempted to pull a Castaway and start talking to a volleyball? (Maybe you already have?) Meet Rose of M Dressler’s The Last to See Me, the last surviving ghost in America. Stuck in the now empty mansion where in life she worked as a maid, Rose is desperate for human contact but fearful of being exposed less she be eliminated by forces outside the house that vie for her destruction. Not sure any of us can relate to that right now.
On the flipside, Lucy Foley’s The Guest List will make you appreciate being alone. A glamorous wedding on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland sounds like a great getaway, until you realize someone is there to murder one of the guests. Who is it? The best man? The bride? A plus one? With this group and their past, there are plenty of options. Who did it? There’s plenty of motive to go around, too. It might be better to just stay home, on your own, where you might be bored but are at least somewhat safe.
Books for People Who Moved Apartments Right Before Quarantine
There’s never a good time to move in a busy city, but you might have hit the bad luck jackpot if your lease ran out around mid-March. Ignore the stack of boxes you still haven’t unpacked and live vicariously through Jules Larsen, who just got a job as an apartment sitter in Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door. Jules, broke and unemployed, has now got it made. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to live in one of New York City’s most exclusive, historical apartment buildings? So what if the previous apartment sitters mysteriously went missing and the building has a history of violent deaths and someone might be sneaking in to watch you sleep? You can enjoy those unobstructed views of Central Park until you die.
Or put yourself in the shoes of Libby Jones of Lisa Jewell’s The Family Upstairs, who upon turning twenty-five inherits the multi-million dollar house in London’s Chelsea district that once belonged to her parents. Her parents also happened to be members of a cult and Libby was the sole survivor of the death pact that killed her entire family—in that very house—when she was just a baby. And someone might still be living in the abandoned house. But you can’t beat that location or the money.
Books for People who Fled the City to Quarantine
Many city-dwellers looked to escape to places elsewhere when the lockdowns began. If you’re one of them, you might start to question your decision while you read Stephen Gregory’s The Cormorant. The only requirement of inheriting a dead uncle’s house is to care for his pet cormorant. No big deal. It’s just a bird. A bird typically viewed as an omen of gluttony, greed, bad luck, and evil. Who might have killed the now dead uncle. And might be trying to kill you, too.
Still not convinced you should have stayed put? Cozy up with Paul Tremblay’s downright terrifying The Cabin at the End of the World, where it might be the end of the world or it might not be. But—according to the psychotic strangers that show up at your family’s rented cabin with homemade weapons proclaiming to be the new four horsemen of the apocalypse and ordering you to kill someone—well, let’s just say they aren’t making many plans for the future.
Books for People Who Got Trapped on Vacation During Quarantine
I cancelled my vacation just before the lockdowns started, but many others didn’t get the chance. Did you get stuck in a hotel or AirBnB for an extended period of time? Miss the comforts of home while surrounded by a bunch of strangers? Experience how much worse it could have been by starting with Hanna Jameson’s The Last. The guests of L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland are trapped not by a pandemic but by radiation after the start of worldwide nuclear war. The guests who chose to remain instead of venturing out into the unknown don’t know each other, not all of them speak the same language, and one of them dumped a little girl’s body in the water tank on the roof. At least the hotel chef stayed behind.
Was your quarantine vacation a little less bleak and a little more soul-searching? Did you finally binge watch Big Little Lies while you waited to see if your flight was cancelled again? Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty might be more your style. These strangers travelled to an isolated health resort in the Australian Outback but the proprietor of the retreat may need more help than all nine of them combined.
Any train travel on your journey? Then check out the classic Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon. Originally published in 1937, and available again thanks to the British Library Crime Classics Series, a group of strangers get stranded on a snowbound train, decide to set off on their own, and come across a warm house with dinner ready. The only problem is the owner of the house is nowhere to be found.
Books for People Who No Longer Know What Day It Is
Everyone—raise your hand. Then grab a copy of The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. Part Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, part supernatural thriller, a man named Aiden must relive the same day at an English estate until he solves the mystery of who kills Evelyn Hardcastle. Making it more difficult? Each day he must inhabit the body of a different guest while someone else is aware of what’s happening and tries to kill him. Plus, he has no idea how this is happening, why it’s happening to him, who he really is, or how long it’s been going on for. Questions some of us are asking ourselves every morning.
As for me, I need to go walk the dogs. And finally read Cujo.
