There are very few things I love more than combining different genres and elements just to see what happens. Some of these combinations work better than others and I think horror and Westerns were meant to be. There are so many things about the frontier era or the wild west that lend themselves to horror and thriller stories. The isolation of homesteading, lack of resources, the possibilities of freshly discovered horrors in new landscapes, and how easily a situation could turn deadly and desperate. All of those elements lend themselves to the horror genre with amazing ease.
So if you’re looking for something a little different, I’ve got some recommendations for your upcoming spooky season. (Or really, all year round. Why not?) This list is non-exhaustive and has a variety of offerings, so it’s like a tapas approach to a book list where you get to try a little bit of everything.
Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian
(Tor Nightfire)
Red Rabbit is one of those books that manages to be a lot of things at once and does them all well. It’s a horror novel—the body count in this book is high. It’s a western full of homesteaders trying to make their way and long rides through lonesome prairies. It’s also speculative, since the general premise is that a ragtag group of travelers cross a perilous landscape to hunt down a witch. The trip itself has a whiff of the Odyssey to it, with truly epic and disturbing pitstops. I picked it up on the recommendation of a bookseller that I know, and I’m so glad I did.
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
(One World)
If you’re the kind of person who listens to book reviews (and I hope you are because you’re reading this one) I can tell you that Lone Women was a, “Best Book of the Year” on pretty much all of them. I picked it up because the bookseller that recommended Red Rabbit told me that Lone Women was the best book she’d read all year and how she couldn’t stop thinking about it. That, friends, is extremely high praise. Set in 1915, the story starts with Adelaide, a woman on her own, quite literally setting her past on fire. She has a secret, a mysterious trunk, and is fleeing from California to Montana to become a homesteader. LaValle grabs you from page one, causing you to helplessly read on to find out what is in that trunk.
Brimstone by Cherie Priest
(Ace)
Okay, so you should probably know that I’m bad at following rules. Since this book takes place in 1920, technically it’s a few years past when the Wild West era ended. I’m putting it on here anyway. The book is told from alternating points of view between Tomás, a war veteran who returned home to discover his wife had died of influenza, and Alice, a clairvoyant who has recently left home to join a group of like minds in Florida. The two are brought together by a series of suspicious fires happening around Tomás. The fires start small, but soon turn deadly as something evil stalks the landscape. Again, it doesn’t quite fit the prompt, but it’s a fun mix of dark historical fantasy, horror, and hope.
Daughter Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics
(Harlequin Teen)
Daughter Unto Devils is a young adult book, but it pulls zero punches. If anything, it punches you and then kicks you while you’re still on the ground. (But, like, in a good way.) When sixteen-year-old Amanda’s family decides to move from the mountains to the prairie, she’s hoping for a fresh start, even though she’s hiding a pregnancy from her religious parents. Last winter was bleak and something happened that the family won’t talk about except that Amanda was at the heart of it. This book uses the wide open, uninhabited prairie landscape to great effect, as well as some top-notch body horror.
Six Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher
(Tor)
This is another genre-smasher. It’s sort of a fantasy-western-steampunk-horror kind of book. Set in the town of Golgotha, which is touted as a haven for the blessed and the damned, the story has a lot of eye-catching elements: a sheriff with the mark of the noose around his neck, a half-human deputy who is kin to coyotes, a banker’s wife who belongs to an order of assassins, and Jim, a young man trying desperately to cross a pitiless desert with his father’s eye in his pocket. If those elements don’t draw you in, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am. Just a head’s up that it’s a series, so prepare accordingly.
American Hippo by Sarah Gailey
(Tordotcom)
Okay, so remember how I said I’m bad about following rules? Here’s another example—this book isn’t horror. It’s a dark, gritty, Western romp with a frankly bananas concept that’s based on actual history. Namely that there was a moment in US history where we almost brought in hippos as an alternate food source. It was up for a vote. Gailey took that little historical tidbit and ran wild with it, which could have led to a very silly book (in a good way) but instead Gailey plays the concept with a level of seriousness that works. It’s a story of revenge and blood-thirsty hippo mayhem. For those of you that love shorter reads, this is a good one for you, because American Hippo is actually a collection of two novellas, River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. One book, twice the amount of man-eating hippo fun.
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