Must-Read Contemporary Horror Books About the Horrors of Modern Life

This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot’s ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society.

If you’ve traveled in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’ve found lodging through Airbnb or a similar home-sharing service, but after The Apartment, you may think twice before putting your trust in strangers. After falling victim to a traumatic crime, Mark and Steph decide it’s time for a break, so they trade their Cape Town home for a flat in Paris on a popular home-swapping site. But their Parisian pied-à-terre turns out to be un-lived-in—and not for the living.

Unless you were a member of the armed forces or a loved one of someone who was, the American invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 didn’t fundamentally alter the fabric of daily American life—but the same can’t be said for those countries who suffered invasion and occupation, even today. Set in U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Frankenstein in Baghdad follows Hadi, an eccentric local character who collects body parts from bombings and stitches them together, intending his creation as an expression of rage and frustration at what’s been done to his city and country. But the corpse disappears, and a series of grotesque murders follow in its wake, and Hadi realizes his creation has quite literally taken on a life of its own.

The water wars are coming. Access to clean water is the sine qua non of human civilization, Day Zero is on the horizon in scattered locales all around the world, and it’s only going to get worse. So what happens next? In The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi imagines a near future where climate change has triggered devastating droughts, horrifying in its plausibility. Fresh water is controlled by dueling business interests, with all the corporate intrigue and sabotage you might expect. When news of a new water source arises, forces mobilize to take control—with deadly consequences.

The opioid crisis gets most of the news coverage, but meth addiction is on the rise again in America. Peter Stenson’s novel imagines a vision of the zombie apocalypse where a group of addicts discover that their meth dependency is the only thing keeping them from succumbing to the virus that’s turned the rest of society into shambling, ravenous monsters. But how do you survive when the thing that’s keeping you alive will eventually kill you?

The way most of us relate to our own bodies is the stuff of horror without any fictional embellishment—unrealistic beauty standards, endless diet culture, dysmorphia, and more—so a collection of short stories about body image? A no-brainer. These five stories, each named after a different body part, explore vanity, fear, expectations, and health in ways that are as surprising and suspenseful as they are horrifying.

Apollo Kagawa is a very proud new father, and like so many parents, he loves to post pictures of his baby on Facebook. But before long, Apollo and his wife Emma discover that someone or something else is watching their digital presence, and that someone or something is taking an unhealthy, otherworldly interest in their son. This is a cautionary fairy tale for the digital oversharing era, and you’ll think twice before posting any photos after you read it.