Spotlighting Black Horror at Waterstones

By Alice Dunne, Ella Clarke, Jack Stewart and Jamie Vincent

October is Black History Month, meaning it’s the perfect time to celebrate Black horror authors. Though readers should seek to diversify their shelves year-round, many might have yet to explore this diversity in genre fiction, where Black writers have historically been even less represented than in general fiction. This is why this week we’ve chosen to highlight the best of Black horror for your spooky TBR, all of it available right in your local Waterstones.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Ring Shout is a historical fiction with a horrific spin. Set in twenties America, Clark reimagines Birth of a Nation director D.W. Griffith as a demonic sorcerer and the Ku Klux Klan as a body intent not only on white supremacy but bringing about total Hell-on-Earth. Enter Bootlegger Maryse Boudreaux, a young Black woman who knows exactly how to defeat the monsters the Klan has unleashed and along with her companions, is prepared to go head-to-head with evil and save the world. 

Packed full of fast paced action and amazing characters, Ring Shout is an engaging read and a fearless confrontation of the horrific spectre of racism in not only America, but culture as a whole. 

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror by Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele has become one of the most renowned new directors, with his films Get Out and Us receiving endless praise for their exploration of psychological horror. In Out There Screaming, he moves from the screen to novels to curate an anthology of horror by Black authors and underrepresented modern voices. 

The anthology is now a New York Times Bestseller, with its variety of stories and author’s work allowing for a showcase of the horror genre – from psychological horror to remnants of traditional ghost stories. Much like his films, he includes unique and truly chilling stories that push boundaries in the horror genre and provide fresh voices. Each story is new, with contributions from N. K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, Tochi Onyebuchi and many more fresh and exceptionally talented modern writers. 

Waterstones have made sure to stock and praise about Peele’s anthology, with it available in paperback and hardback across their stores. It is the perfect read for horror lovers in the autumn months, or those wanting to explore something similar to his thought-provoking but horrifying films.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler reinvents the mythos of the classical vampire in Fledgling. Published in 2005 by Seven Stories Press, Fledgling was Butler’s final novel before her death the following year. In Fledgling, Butler masterfully combines the legend of the vampire through her signature science-fiction lens, transforming vampires into another species to draw parallels between speciesism and racism. The novel also uses themes of genetic modification/the parasitic nature of the vampire as a metaphor and critique of the racist prejudices against the integration of races.

Fledgling tells the story of Shori, a Daywalker vampire with the appearance of a young African-American girl who awakens in a cave, alone, wounded and bereft of her memories. Shori begins to feed on the inhabitants of a town, developing a symbiotic relationship with the townspeople as she recovers. As Shori begins to regain her memories she is drawn into the political conflicts between vampire families and discovers how she alone can survive in the daylight. 

Readers should be aware of triggering topics contained in Fledgling which explores sexual relationships between Shori and her symbionts. As fifty-three-year-old Shori appears to be ten-years-old and her partners cannot give proper consent. 

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi’s White Is for Witching is a dark, cerebral haunted-house novel that lingers long after the last page. It centres on Miranda Silver, who lives in the ancestral Silver House near the cliffs of Dover, a building with a malevolent spirit all of its own, shaped by generations of maternal ghosts. Miranda struggles with pica (a compulsion to eat non-food items like chalk or plastic), grief over her mother’s death and a growing sense that the house’s xenophobic and ghostly influences are suffocatingly real. Narration alternates between Miranda, her twin Eliot, a friend Ore and the house itself.  Oyeyemi uses voice and perspective to unsettle, confuse and challenge. Underneath its gothic atmosphere, this novel interrogates race, identity and belonging, especially through Ore, a Nigerian-born girl adopted into a white family, who experiences both the supernatural and the very real oppression of xenophobia. Oyeyemi’s prose is lyrical yet disturbing, this is horror rooted not just in ghosts, but in bloodlines, history and an oppressive, haunted legacy.