Traci Thomas curates horror reads for weekend

Traci Thomas, the creator of the podcast The Stacks, released a list of horror recommendations ahead of the upcoming holiday. The selection includes 20 fiction titles and 8 nonfiction works intended to provide readers with a source of fear during the weekend.

The fiction list features established authors alongside contemporary voices. Stephen King appears with the novel Carrie. Toni Morrison is represented by Beloved. Stephen Graham Jones offers The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Other titles include Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle, and Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Thomas also included several translated works in the fiction category. Kim Bo-Young's A Plagued Sea appears with translation by Sophie Bowman. Mariana Enríquez contributes Our Share of Night, translated by Megan McDowell. Han Kang's The Vegetarian is included with translation by Deborah Smith. Sarah Moses translated Agustina Bazterrica's Tender Is the Flesh.

The list features 11 additional fiction titles from American and international writers. These include The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, and Lone Women by Victor LaValle. Jen Sookfong Lee is listed with The Hunger We Pass Down. Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie round out the classic selections. Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Gabino Iglesias' House of Bone and Rain, and Mira Grant's Into the Drowning Deep complete the fiction section.

Three horror anthologies are included in the recommendations. Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. edited Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology and its sequel Back for Blood: Never Whistle at Night Part II. Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams edited Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Cynthia Pelayo edited Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror.

The nonfiction section lists eight true crime and historical horror books. Lizzie Johnson wrote Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. Ben Wickey authored More Weight: A Salem Story. Wright Thompson's The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi is also included. Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda provides a historical account.

Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry co-wrote Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. Daniel James Brown's The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party is on the list. Heather Ann Thompson wrote Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II and Richard Lloyd Parry's People Who Eat Darkness: Murder, Grief and a Journey into Japan's Shadows conclude the nonfiction section.