Seven horror novels about mysticism

Samsun Knight is a novelist and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The Diver is his first book from the University of Iowa Press.

Separately, he is also an assistant professor in the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

At Electric Lit Knight tagged "seven horror books that I love where the characters use occult rituals and older modes of knowing to explore the dark underbelly of our society today." One title on the list:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In-laws aren’t always evil, but sometimes they really, really are. When Noemí comes to check in on her cousin Catalina’s new married life, she knows already that Catalina suspects her husband of intending to poison her; but what she doesn’t know is how endangered she is, too, from the moment she arrives. This full-on Gothic thriller takes you for a fast-paced ride through beautiful colonial mansions and horrifying colonial legacies, ancient bloodlines and new-age rituals and the ineradicable persistence of older evils in today’s world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue