Seven of the best twisty horror retellings

At Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged seven titles that take a familiar story and reimagine it in the most delightfully gruesome way, including:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

In this award-winning novella, Victor LaValle subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu story “The Horror at Red Hook,” this time telling the story from a new perspective. Charles Thomas Tester takes risky jobs to keep a roof over his head and take care of his father. But when he delivers a magical tome to a sorceress, he accidentally opens up a door to another world. This story is all-engrossing, so it’s no wonder that it won the Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award. When we’re talking about the best retellings, this novella has to make the list.

Read about the other titles on the list.

The Ballad of Black Tom is among Lyndsie Manusos’s six top horror retellings of well-known stories, Erica Ezeifedi's six books for fans of the movie Sinners, Brittany K. Allen's ten top books for fans of Sinners, Chase Dearinger's seven horror titles where the setting is a monster, and Colleen Kinder's ten titles about chance encounters with strangers.

--Marshal Zeringue