Hey, I'm Kendare Blake, author of the Three Dark Crown series,
back with another Epic Reads author in residence series of book recommendations.
And today, as you can see, I'm dressed up as Scary Terry.
[SOUND] Yes, Scary Terry or Freddy Krueger.
Because today, I am recommending horror.
This is a pretty sad costume.
I know, but it was the best I could come up with.
I don't own a fedora and I can't apply the latex makeup.
So you get some butter knives and a stripy sweater, but.
[LAUGH] [SOUND]
[MUSIC]
I know some of you might be thinking, why horror?
It's summer.
Shouldn't we be talking about books with barbecues or rampaging squirrels?
Well, I suppose those are very nice, but I love horror.
So I was not going to pass up the opportunity to shove some of my horror
favorites at you, regardless of time of year.
I don't think that horror is just for October anymore.
There are so many good things happening in the horror
entertainment industry that, I don't know.
There's so much to choose from, that you can be just disturbed and
scared off your nut any time of the year, including now.
So in case you need something spooky around the campfire there, there you go,
summer, camp fires, summertime, horror.
These are a few that you might enjoy.
[SOUND] The first recommendation is turning into a TV
series on AMC this summer.
And it is Joe Hill's NOS4A2, or Nosferatu, if you prefer.
I usually just spell it out.
I don't know why, I don't think it matters.
NOS4A2 is about a young girl named Vic who has a strange,
magical ability to find things that are missing or things that she is looking for.
So let's say her mom looses an earring and she really wants to find it.
So she goes outside.
She jumps on her bike and
she races across this covered bridge that only exists inside the space of her mind.
Which sounds weird, I know.
But trust me, it makes sense.
So when she comes out on the other side of this bridge,
she will be where the missing earring is.
And she'll find it, return it.
Yada, yada, yada, everybody's happy.
But Vic being the precocious child that she is, one day,
she rides out on her bike and crosses that bridge looking for trouble.
And she finds it in the form of Charlie Manx,
a serial killer who drives a black Rolls Royce Wraith
with the vanity license plate NOS4A2.
So Charlie Manx's bag is that he steals children,
murders their parents.
Murders the crap out of their parents,
steals the children away to a place that he calls Christmasland.
Which I know sounds so delightful.
And I'm not going to ruin any of the macabre secrets and
details of Christmasland.
Let me just tell you and assure you that it is not as nice as it sounds, and yet
it is awesome.
I think it's a great Christmas story.
It's a great story year round.
And if you're a fan of the Stephen King Universe,
which I am a huge fan of, Joe Hill is Stephen King's son.
And this is loaded with Stephen King references.
I mean, for the first time in his fiction writing career,
I think he really just let that King flag fly and had a ball with it.
And I really enjoyed it.
I'm a big fan of all of Joe Hill's work.
But NOS4A2 is my favorite of his novels, so I hope you like it too.
[SOUND] Okay, confession, some of the books that I want to recommend today,
I don't actually have copies of.
Because when I recommend horror to people, sometimes they're hesitant,
like they don't wanna be scared out of their gourds or something.
So instead of just saying, please go buy this book, I think you'll really like it,
I have to just shove it in their hands and make them take it with them.
So that's usually what I end up doing.
So this next book, it is Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics.
Which I loaned out to a friend, and I don't think I'm getting it back.
Because they really loved it, and I think they're keeping it.
So I'll have to pickup another copy for myself one of these days.
So Daughters Unto Devils is, how to describe it?
Did you ever watch Little House on the Prairie and enjoy it,
except you wish that more people died?
Yeah, Daughters Unto Devils is the book for you.
So in previous videos,
we've already talked about how much I love The Oregon Trail and frontier stories.
Well, Daughters Unto Devils kinda takes two of my likes and mushes them together.
So the American prairie and freaky-deaky demons, just mixes them together,
in just this bloody mash of oxen, and plowing, and stabbing.
And it's just great, it's absolutely great.
I read it so fast.
I think I read it in three hours, just cuz I could not stop.
Did you ever see that movie a couple years ago, The Witch?
I can't remember who directed it.
Anya Taylor-Joy was the lead, and
there was that wicked black goat called Black Peter or something.
But if you were rooting for the goat, then you will enjoy Daughters Unto Devils.
And I highly recommend that one for you.
[SOUND] Caitlin R Kiernan's The Red Tree.
Caitlin R Kiernan is probably one of my favorite living writers,
one of my favorite living writers.
And I don't think that nearly enough people read her.
She's amazing, her writing is beautiful.
It's intensely researched and it's so strange.
I love strange.
The weirder, the better, that's what I always say.
I think this is one of her less weird novels,
which it's actually one of my favorite of hers too.
Which is why I'm recommending it.
It might be a good starter place for her stuff.
It is about a writer, which I also enjoy.
I really like it when writers write about writers.
So this writer, Sarah Crowe, she goes to this old house.
She rents it for the summer to write her next novel.
And in the basement of this cool, old place that she's rented,
she discovers an old typewriter and a manuscript that was written by one of
the previous tenants, who committed suicide on the property.
And a bunch of other wicked, devious, supernatural happenings seem to be
linked to a mysterious red oak that is planted and growing on the property.
And the more she delves into this other writer's manuscript,
the more obsessed she becomes with the history of this red tree.
And just a lot of creepy stuff starts to happen to her there, involving the tree.
She uncovers a lot of really disturbing facts about things that have gone on,
on the property.
And then she starts to doubt her own sanity.
It's a totally unreliable narrator, which I dig, yeah.
And ignore the cover.
Cuz I know the cover is not fabulous, [LAUGH] but the book really is.
So Caitlin R Kiernan, The Red Tree.
[SOUND] Okay, the next book that I want to recommend is another
one of those situations where I don't have it anymore.
It is Rin Chupeco's, The Girl From the Well and The Suffering.
So it is a duology.
I don't have it anymore.
Because I really enjoyed it.
I remember it as being just so,
so good, and so fun, scary and fun at the same time.
And I thought more people should enjoy it, so I donated it to a program.
Now, I kinda regret it.
I might go buy them again later.
So The Girl From the Well is about a Japanese ghost named Okiku,
and she was murdered herself.
And now she goes around exacting her vengeance on other murderers.
If you enjoyed those early 2000 horror films like The Ring and
The Grudge, I think you'll really dig The Girl From the Well series.
When I was watching The Grudge,
I'm like, man, I'd like to know more about the lady with that hair.
And The Girl From the Well is told more from Okiku's point of view.
And you really get to see another side and to hear what's going on behind that
ghostly vengeance, instead of just like, no, the little boy's meowing again.
Okay, that was just from The Grudge.
The Girl From the Well and The Suffering,
in addition to Okiku comes across the path of an American boy who is studying abroad.
And they kinda form this, well, I don't wanna call it a partnership.
And I don't wanna give too much away.
But check them out if you like Asian horror or Japanese horror.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
[SOUND] The last book that I want to recommend is no stranger to folks.
It is Josh Malerman's Bird Box.
The Sandra Bullock movie just came out on Netflix earlier this year, but
I'm going to recommend the book.
Because I don't wanna say that the book was better, but
the book does it differently.
With a premise like Bird Box, which for those of you who don't know,
people are dying the world over.
It feels very apocalyptic, and you don't know what it is.
Because if you look at it, that's when you die.
So you have to basically keep your eyes shut or walk around blindfolded,
and try to survive while something outside is trying to kill you.
So you have to be very careful about letting things in.
I mean, there's just a whole lot of logistics to fighting a monster or
a force like that, that this book examines really, really well and a lot of fun.
When I was reading it and I heard the movie was coming out, I was like,
I don't know how you would film that.
Because so
much of the tension is based around these characters who have no idea what it is.
And then we as readers, of course, have no idea what this is.
We don't know what it looks like.
We don't really know much about it.
We just have that kind of claustrophobic terror of being trapped without one of
our senses.
And so in a film, I was like, well, we as the viewers of the film,
we're gonna be able to see everything.
What, are they gonna just close-up on Sandra Bullock's face the whole time?
They did a really good job.
But Bird Box, the book, really does a lovely job of it as well.
I really like horror that is not necessarily, totally in your face.
It's a little more subtle.
It's a little more implied.
Your imagination is left to wander.
Because I think that there is no better way to scare a person than to turn on
their own imagination.
Because they know what scares them best.
And I can imagine any number of terrible things that the creatures or
the force in Bird Box could be.
And that'll scare me more than if you just show me like, it's purple and
it has eight eyes.
[SOUND] I wish I didn't know.
Okay, but Bird Box, the book, Josh Malerman, it's really great.
All right, and those are all the horror recommendations that I have for you today.
I could go on and on about horror.
And if you want more recommendations, I mean, hit me up on social media.
Because I have them, I have them for you.
I will not let you down.
But right now, those are all I have.
And if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash these butter knifes,
because they're the only ones I own.
All right, [SOUND] till next time.
Hi, I'm Kendare Blake, author of the Three Dark Crowns series.
Thank you so much for watching.
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