24 Nov 2016

If you’re already gritting your teeth in anticipation of the holiday cheer coming your way, we’ve compiled a list of violent, horrifying and disturbing books. We recommend you disappear inside of one of them until the post New Year’s hangover.

The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff

Few things dampen the festive spirit like a witch burning. Vividly capturing the atmosphere of seventeenth-century America, Stacy Schiff’s magisterial history draws readers into this anxious time in history and reveals details and complexity that few other historians have seen. In compulsively readable prose, she demonstrates how quickly the epidemic of accusations, trials, and executions span out of control.

The North Water by Ian McGuire

Behold the man: stinking, drunk, brutal and bloodthirsty, Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaling ship bound for the hunting waters of the Arctic Circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money and no better option than to embark as ship’s medic on this violent, filthy, ill-fated voyage. The North Water is a epic, violent adventure that will grip you from page one.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

Eileen Dunlop is an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s carer in his squalid home and her day job as a secretary at the boys' prison. Consumed by self-loathing, she tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies, and when a charismatic new counselor at the prison arrives on the scene, Eileen is unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. This mesmeric, terrifying debut novel with a Hitchcockian twist is even appropriately (or inappropriately…) set during Christmas.

Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

The unsettling writings of Shirley Jackson have established her as one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. This attractive volume of uncollected and recently discovered works brings together a treasure trove of short stories – each a miniature masterwork of unease – together with candid, fascinating essays, lectures, articles and drawings.

The Call by Peadar Ó Guilín

Read the book that gave all our staff nightmares this year. 14-year-old Nessa lives in a world where every teenager knows they will be ‘Called’. One instant she will be in the human world, and the next she will wake up alone in the land of the beautiful, terrible Sidhe. She will be spotted, hunted down, and brutally murdered. That is, unless she manages to survive for 24 hours and escape unscathed. And Nessa is determined to survive.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)

If you haven’t read Elena Ferrante yet, you’re missing out. This compelling novel is one of her earlier works, and tells the story of a woman’s headlong descent after being abandoned by her husband. Olga’s ‘days of abandonment' become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. It’s seriously soul-crushing stuff – so may be just the ticket!

My Dad Wrote a Porno by Jamie Morton, Alice Levine and James Cooper

Here’s a recommendation for something less soul-crushing, but still utterly, completely inappropriate for the holiday season… When Jamie Morton’s dad wrote a self-published erotic novel, Jamie did what few among us would do – he turned the experience into a smash-hit podcast with two friends. My Dad Wrote a Porno is the hilarious annotated book edition of the original erotic novel: Belinda Blinked by Rocky Flinstone.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

In the words of our reviewer: ‘From its very first pages, I knew Robin Wasserman’s novel Girls on Fire was going to be a book for me. I say this because it’s not going to be a book for everyone. Girls on Fire is intense, shocking, vicious, intoxicating and violent. It’s Gillian Flynn meets Megan Abbott meets Heathers, with a just a touch of The Craft. The last third of the book, in particular, seems to almost relish going to dark, disturbing (semi-ridiculous) places. I was completely along for that ride. Be warned, readers, you may not be.’

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

This is a raging, blackly-funny, weird novel from acclaimed film-maker and writer Miranda July. Cheryl is a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone with a perpetual lump in her throat. But when 21-one-year-old, Clee – a selfish, cruel blond bombshell – moves into Cheryl’s house, the latter’s eccentrically ordered world explodes. The First Bad Man is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure.

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Sink your teeth into the first book of a wonderful new epic fantasy set in the dark heart of an academy for assassins. Mia is known as the killer of killers and destroyer of empires, but her true story begins when she is just 10-years-old and forced to watch her father hang as a traitor. At the time of his death, her shadow deepens and a darkness joins Mia, bringing her surprising powers.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (translated by Nancy Forest-Flier)

Stephen King and George R.R. Martin are both fans of Thomas Olde Heuvelt, so be assured that his debut English translated is both terrifying and unputdownable. A seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town, Black Spring is haunted – and not in a fun campfire story kind of a way. The Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut, walks the town’s streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. Oh, and if her stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.