4 literary horror picks for book clubs tired of romance

In Susan Barker’s Old Soul, Jake meets a stranger named Mariko while in Japan and learns that his closest friend and Mariko’s brother both died bizarre deaths after crossing paths with a strangely hypnotic woman. Jake sets out to learn more about the sinister female figure—a quest that takes him to various countries, as he discovers more people who have met her and connects her to numerous fatalities. Barker skillfully moves back and forth in time to chronicle the woman’s deadly deeds. The ominous atmosphere and dread-inducing supernatural details make Old Soul an unforgettable reading experience.

Mariana Enriquez’s hypnotic novel Our Share of Night tells the story of Juan Peterson and his son, Gaspar, who are trying to evade the Order, a violent religious sect headed by the family of Juan’s dead wife. Juan has psychic abilities that the Order find useful, and they have malevolent plans for Gaspar that Juan hopes to thwart with help from Tali, his sister-in-law. Set in 1980s Argentina, during the country’s military dictatorship, the novel draws on history and myth to tell the disturbing story of a powerful family.

An elderly woman turns detective in Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh. When Vesta, a solitary widow, discovers a note in the woods that says a woman named Magda was killed there, she decides to investigate the incident on her own. As she tries to piece together Magda’s identity and final hours, parallels emerge that may be connected to Vesta’s own troubled history. Spooky and unsettling, Moshfegh’s novel is a spellbinding read with a strange mystery at its center. The exploration of loneliness and alienation will inspire lively book club discussion.

Adelaide Henry, the protagonist of Victor LaValle’s Lone Women, settles in Montana in 1915 after the brutal death of her parents, bringing along a huge steamer trunk. Whenever the trunk is opened, bad things happen. In her new home, where she encounters other settlers, Adelaide finds it hard to keep the circumstances of her past—and her dark secrets—under wraps. Against the unforgiving backdrop of Montana, she struggles to shed her old life. LaValle’s chilling novel of the American frontier features horror and suspense that readers will find hard to resist.