Five fresh literary spins on classic creatures

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged five "stories [that] put an exciting new spin on the classic creature horror we all think we know, from vampires and zombies to sirens." One title on the list:

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

Jones has quickly become the king of Indigenous horror, and in this 2016 novel, he took on werewolves, bringing in fun takes on werewolf daily life and what it might actually look like to be a lycanthrope in the modern world. He tells the tale in a constellation novel format, a series of chapters centering on the young protagonist and his aunt and uncle as the trio tries to survive on society’s margins. This is a gritty werewolf tale complete with coming-of-age energy and a look into the early work of an author who has become a modern, persistent phenomenon.

Read about the other books on the list.

Mongrels is among R.W.W. Greene's five SFF books about road trips and Mallory O'Meara's ten great horror books for wimps.

--Marshal Zeringue