Vintage Horror Summer: VHS-Inspired Thrills & Chills

The kind of book that pulls you in and keeps you hostage until the very last page, Horror Movie is an ode to the terror (and magic) of the movies and will kick off your summer of chilling reads. Read more about all things Horror Movie in Paul Tremblay’s exclusive B&N Reads blog post, here. 

The past comes knocking in this creepy thriller from the author of The Perfect Marriage and One of Us Is Dead — where family secrets won’t stay buried, and three siblings work to uncover their parents’ deadly past. 

If the gore of Friday the 13^thor A Nightmare on Elm Street is your cup of tea, Stephen Graham Jones’ latest will be a gruesome treat. A fatal high school prank, a cursed teenager on a killing spree and a pesky peanut allergy are just the start of this terrifying tale. Read more from Jones in his exclusive B&N Reads blog post, here.  

An author we love pays homage to filmmaking with classic horror movie tropes in this gripping story of the glitz (and guts) of making it big in Hollywood — even if that means working with a demonic camera. 

We’ve seen them run through haunted houses, yelled at them “Don’t go in there!” and sighed with relief after they made it through bloody nights. What happens after the silver screen cuts out? Enter Grady Hendrix’s (My Best Friend’s Exorcism, How to Sell a Haunted House) group therapy for the final girls we love to see on screen.  

The haunted house trope is hard to beat, and Christina Henry (Good Girls Don’t Die) makes it all her own. A single mother struggling to make a living for her and her son grapples with her sanity, morals and overwhelming fear while working for an infamous Hollywood director whose house holds sinister secrets she just can’t ignore.  

1994 is a legendary year in pop culture: OJ fleeing in his infamous white Bronco on live television, the Rangers win the Stanley Cup, and the Knicks are in the midst of tense NBA finals. Uncomfortable and uncanny, there’s something not quite right about Dead Eleven’s isolated island where people wind up missing and everyone seems to be stuck in 1994. 

These former child stars have only their memories and their trauma left from the TV show they spent their childhood on. An homage to 90s nostalgia and cult classic television, this eerie story will have you raise a brow at your old favorite shows.  

Any classic horror film fanatic has heard of cursed sets and doomed movie stars — explore this horrifying, gripping tale of a woman running from the jinxed film that ruined her life and try not to let the Needle Man infiltrate your dreams…