Seven horror novels inspired by "Frankenstein"

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 seven "horror novels [that] retell, draw from, or are inspired by Frankenstein, using its rich cultural influence and references to tell their own stories or retell it in new and exciting ways." One title on the list:

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

In the midst of everyday violence, bombings, and general chaos, a man furious at the way people’s bodies are being carelessly treated and discarded gathers a bunch of blasted body parts together, stitching them into a monstrous single figure that he hopes will serve as some kind of protest. The problem is (as you might guess), the monster comes alive. But even as it kills, and stories of its violence spread, some decide that the monster is a figure on their side, as it disrupts the haunting disillusionment of their day-to-day lives.

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue