Horror Criticism

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality. "There is a signature motif discernible in...

A recording of the reading of the first edition, published in 1950. An additional bonus chapter, The Holy Planet Purgatory from the 1931 typescript, is included. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson is Gurdjieff's world-famous cosmological epic. It examines human life on Earth from the viewpoint of beings belonging to a distant world, led by the all-wise Beelzebub. Through this cosmological allegory—rich in humour, anecdote, and linguistic elaboration—Gurdjieff demonstrates a methodology for the spiritual growth of all mankind.

"This is gory and brutal and beautiful and painful and terrifying and a pure delight." —Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author “Leede’s words and narrator Sosie Bacon’s voice imbue Maeve with thought-provoking realism and earnestness, even as her violent acts become more...

Winner of The Story Prize Longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize Shortlisted for the 2025 Toronto Book Award A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2025 The award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs conjures up worlds – real, invented, uncanny – in this ingenious, electrifying collection. A...

"Blood-soaked, heart-wrenching, grim and glorious.”—Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black Sheep From CJ Leede, the author of Maeve Fly, comes a scorching new apocalyptic novel. American Gods meets The Last of Us in this epic and sweeping story about the end of the world as we...

Ever since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon's A History of Horror is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre. Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels.

Blockbuster box office. Critical acclaim and Oscars recognition. From Get Out and Weapons to The Substance and Sinners, the horror genre is enjoying a glorious–and gory–golden age. Screaming and Conjuring details the films and frights that led to this extraordinary renaissance, from the release of the groundbreaking Scream in 1996 to the arrival of 2013’s The Conjuring, which spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise.

Step into the shadowy world behind Hollywood’s most iconic creatures with Monsters Unborn! Drawing on unproduced scripts and decades of behind-the-scenes history, author Bruce Kilkowski Jr. uncovers a treasure trove of “lost” stories from haunting gothic re-imaginings to bold futuristic reinventions that never made it to the screen. Packed with new research, this book brings to life abandoned visions of legendary monsters like the Bride of Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, revealing just how close they came to rising again.

50 Years of Hammer Horror by John L. Flynn, Ph.D. is the follow-up book to his popular 75 Years of Universal Monsters. Hammer Film Productions was the most successful independent film company in the world. Between 1935 and 1983, the company produced more than 250 motion pictures and television shows, and their signature productions headlined theater marquees all around the globe. Those productions included thrillers, comedies, historical dramas, and science fiction. The company was best known for its series of gothic horror films.

Torture porn, shock-for-shock’s sake, violence that doesn’t serve the plot, and characters you hate — what was going on in the 2000s in horror cinema? And why were audiences hungry for it? Millennial Nasties takes a critical but appreciative look at an oft-ignored subset of horror. This book dissects the English-language horror films of the 2000s and the cultural events they were responding to.

New York Times bestselling author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Downtown Owl, “the Ethicist” of the New York Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman returns to fiction with his second novel—an imaginative page-turner about a therapist and her unusual patient, a man who can render himself...

A romance editor looks for love where you’d least expect it—and discovers what our favorite horror films can tell us about sex, society, and ourselves “A bloody love letter to those horrors that have drenched the silver screen. The Happily Ever After here . . . is a comprehensive list of...

You sang these songs as a child. So did your parents. So did theirs. You had no idea what you were singing. Behind the cheerful melodies and innocent circles of childhood lie documented histories of plague, execution, religious persecution, political betrayal, and mass death. The wool tax that left the medieval poor with nothing. The Viking attack that brought London Bridge down. The one hundred and thirty children who walked out of Hamelin on June 26, 1284 and never came back. The queen who burned nearly three hundred people alive and called it mercy.

Published in 1892, in this piece Mead explains that anyone can be a Theosophist, but in order to be considered an Occultist, the individual must be an agent of practice, not theory, and must have the wisdom to differentiate good from evil. Simply claiming to be an occultist and having basic knowledge on general subjects is not enough to truly be considered one. One of the great, underrated writers of Esoterica.

Many creatures lurk in the dark, weaving on top of one another, roiling together like waves on the night sea. The darkness forms in layers to encompass the land, fill the corners, and obscure angles. Untold mysteries lie just beyond reach told in many tongues, many inflections, many rhythms. The stories are many. Innumerable. Legion.

An Esquire Best Book About Hollywood A USA TODAY Best Book of 2021 “A lovely and loving book.”—Will Schwalbe, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Your Life Book Club "I'm not sure I have ever read a book about movies that is as tender and open-hearted as Films of Endearment...

To avoid fainting, keep repeating It's only a move ..only a movie ..only a movie ..only a movie If you grew up believing that Planet of the Apes told you all you needed to know about politics, that Slade in Flame was a savage exposé of the pop world, and that The Exorcist revealed the meaning...

Visions have always been...my pasture. I almost think there is no wisdom comparable to that of exchanging the realities of life for dreams. Old castles, old pictures, old histories take one back into centuries that cannot disappoint. I waked one morning from a dream of which all I could recover was that I had thought myself in an ancient castle and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.

A Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween. Night of the Living Dead. These films have been indelibly stamped on moviegoers' psyches and are now considered seminal works of horror. Guiding readers along the twisted paths between audience, auteur, and cultural history, author Kendall R. Phillips reveals the macabre visions of these films' directors in Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film.