Our friends over at Libby often share statistics with us that look at their most checked-out books. We usually look at the most popular books of the last month, books that help celebrate a heritage month, and the most popular books of a certain genre. Since spooky season just passed, they shared with us around 50 of the most popular horror books that were checked out on the app.
Of the nearly 50 books, only six were by nonwhite authors, which I unfortunately don’t find surprising. One thing I’ve noticed about the most popular books on Libby is that they usually mirror bestsellers, which are notoriously non-diverse because of marketing, etc. With that said, the BIPOC horror books on Libby are strewn throughout the list, rather than being concentrated in one area. The second most popular book of the entire list, even, is by the King of Indigenous Horror himself, Stephen Graham Jones.
Something else interesting that I’ve noticed is that many of the horror books by BIPOC authors are also historical. I’ve mentioned a few times how colonialism and empire-building have resulted in some longstanding trauma across lands and peoples, and how the horror genre can be so cathartic in dissecting and analzying that trauma.
Below find bestselling, award-winning historical horror, as well as contemporary horror that looks at brand new terrors, all from BIPOC authors.
The first book in the series of the same name, anonymous author Uketsu’s Strange Houses calls to mind Diary and House of Leaves. Here, three people — a potential homebuyer, a writer, and an architect — investigate the mystery of a house with a mysterious floor plan, one that reveals hidden, empty spaces between the walls. What are these “strange spaces,” and do they have anything to do with the house’s last tenant, who vanished without warning? —K.W. Colyard
31. Molka by Monika Kim
Junyoung is an IT technician who controls all of the cameras in his Seoul workplace. The women there dismiss him, not realizing the trove of images he has of their most private moments. Dahye is a woman who has grown up in the shadow of a perfect older sister. When her boyfriend leaves her in the aftermath of a hidden camera scandal, she begins to lose her grip on reality, and Junyoung’s obsession with her only grows… —Alex Luppens-Dale
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SMG and witches? Come on!! In 1990s Massachusetts, graduate student Minerva is researching the life of author Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure writer of horror who attended the same university and whose friend mysteriously went missing during her time there. The more Minerva learns about Beatrice and the missing friend, the more she sees parallels to the unsettling stories her great-grandmother Alba told her about her life in 1900s Mexico. Something wicked is at play, she’s sure of it. But what? My queen stays spinning the genre roulette and going, “Yeah, I can do that.” And y’all, she did that, in deliciously creepy form. —Vanessa Diaz
Here, Due writes of the horrors of the Jim Crow South. It’s 1950 in Florida when 12-year-old Robbie is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown reformatory for kicking a wealthy white boy in defense of his sister. He can see ghosts, and the ones at the reformatory are something else — they tell of the horrors that have befallen Gracetown boys and warn him of worse things to come. Robbie makes friends who teach him how to survive, but if his sister can’t find a way to get him out of the reformatory in time, it may not be enough. —Erica Ezeifedi
Set in Japan in two disparate times,Japanese Gothicfollows two protagonists. In the present day, Lee has fled New York to hide away in his father’s home in Japan. He knows there’s something wrong with him and that he has committed a crime, but he can’t remember the details. In 1877, Sen, a female samurai, hides from imperial soldiers and attempts to protect her family. As the two find themselves communicating with each other through time, they realize they are living in the same home, a house that is built on dark secrets. —Emily Martin
This literally gave me a nightmare, but it might not be why you think. The monsters here are supernatural and all-consuming, but the true horror is the very real story that’s told of the Marias Massacre, where around 200 Blackfeet were murdered in the dead of winter. The story is told through a journal found in 2012, which was written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor. The pastor records his time with a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, a man with peculiar eating habits and seemingly superhuman abilities… and revenge on his mind. —Erica Ezeifedi
See the full list of Libby’s most popular horror books. And spooky season may be over, but we revel in horror year-round.
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