In his first full-length novel since Bag of Bones, horror master Stephen King takes us back to Derry, Maine, the setting for It and Insomnia. There, four friends encounter telepathic aliens, renegade military forces and the redemptive power of their own childhoods while on a hunting trip in the Derry woods. A triumphant return to King's beginnings in nasty, gut-wrenching, monster horror, tempered by experience and maturity, Dreamcatcher resembles such earlier works as Cujo and Salem's Lot, but with the benefit of more complex characters and the recognition that sometimes the bad guys don't wear identifying hats.

Long ago, Henry, Jonesy, Pete and Beaver did something great something that would put the rest of their lives in stark relief by rescuing a boy with Down Syndrome from neighborhood bullies. Their unselfish aid for Duddits laid the groundwork for a lasting friendship and created psychic abilities in each. For years afterward, the quintet was inseparable. But the foursome grew up, leaving Derry and Duddits behind. Only an annual hunting trip keeps the four connected (minus Duddits). This year's trip is like any other, until a spaceship containing unfriendly and dangerous passengers crashes. The government quarantines the area, plotting to kill any living creature in the infected zone. One alien snatches the body of Jonesy, planning to spread his fungi race around the globe. It is only the friends' unique ability to communicate without words that fortifies their attempt to stop the extraterrestrial virulence. Gradually we understand that the central figure of Dreamcatcher, the force that holds together the friends and unifies their struggle to save themselves and the world, is Duddits.

Dreamcatcher is a tightly plotted, suspenseful tale of hostile aliens and heroic humans willing to sacrifice themselves to prevent the destruction of humanity. That King remains a force in fiction is demonstrated by the painful realism and urgent, clawing intensity he brings to Jonesy's memories of continuing recovery from a car accident, a reminder that King himself lived through that type of pain while writing this book. Clearly his own painful recovery provided his imagination fertile soil for nasty things to grow. And grow they do, like an alien fungus.

Stephen King has scared Kelly Koepke since she was a teenager.

Like the vampire, lovers of horror tales have appetites that can't always be sated with a single offering. Anthologies are a natural home for the terror tale, from creature-feature film festivals to the bloody pulp stories of the fabled EC Comics to chilling short story collections by the likes of Poe, Lovecraft, and others. In that spirit, prepare for a trio of terrible tomes that dish up a steaming stew of screams, just in time for Halloween.

Julie Myerson's Laura Blundy invokes the Victorian age—when penny novelettes brought a chill to cozy reading rooms and carriage windows barely screened the stench of decay in the gaslit streets. In this startling and engrossing book, the title character recounts in a matter-of-fact, almost detached manner, the many shocking events in her young life. After the sudden death of her storekeeper father, Laura becomes a homeless orphan. As one of London's invisible underclass, she is raped by one of her social betters, and circumstances force her to give the child she bears to an orphanage. Struck by a carriage while wandering the filthy streets, Laura is confined to a hospital bed, where infection forces the amputation of one of her legs by a charming young surgeon. Laura Blundy is replete with imagery that brings shudders even as it fascinates. Visions of a hanged murderess, dead children, and an operating theater that resembles a torture chamber bombard but never overwhelm the reader's senses. As Laura reveals the events of her life in candid yet disjointed fashion, the reader is led to believe she harbors a depravity of her own, but that conclusion fails to herald the final revelations in this fascinating tale.

The horror in Anne Rice's Merrick occurs on an entirely different level, but is no less sensual and terrible. Returning once again to the mystery-shrouded streets of New Orleans, Rice continues her saga of the vampires Louis and Lestat, and of David Talbot, the narrator of the story who grew to old age and then became a vampire in the body of a younger man. Into this world steps Merrick Mayfair, distantly related to Rice's Mayfair Witches and a powerful psychic and magician in her own right. In her inimitable, beautiful prose, Rice relates Merrick's youth and education, the spirits that haunt her, and her relationship with David Talbot as man and vampire. The story opens with a meeting between Talbot and Merrick, the first in 20 years and the first since Talbot's own transformation into a vampire. Talbot calls on Merrick to raise the spirit of Claudia, the child vampire from Rice's first vampire novel, for Louis, who feels haunted by her. Talbot goes into the meeting wary of the consequences of raising ghosts, and deeply aware of the temptation of giving the gift and curse of vampirism. The desires of vampires, of the scholarly society into which Merrick was recruited by Talbot while he was still a mortal man, and of Merrick herself mingle and lead to sometimes startling developments.Readers familiar with Rice's intricate world will be thrilled at the interactions between some of her greatest creations. Those experiencing Rice's work for the first time will find the rich detail imparts more than enough background to ensure deep involvement in the intriguing story.

Joining the grand tradition of horror anthologies is a new offering of supernatural stories edited by poet Roger Weingarten. Ghost Writing brings together 21 haunted tales by such acclaimed modern writers as Peter Straub and John Updike, who contributes the tale of a New England town and the ageless Indian who has taken part in town life seemingly since its founding. In other stories, the spirit world on the other side of a mirror offers haven for the spirit of an abused wife, and a trio of boys have their favorite prank interrupted by the ghost left behind by those who build roads. In Weingarten's own contribution, a ghost clarifies a family curse.

Each of these books reminds us that a good scare can come from the sight of blood or the knowledge that blood, or something more sinister, lies unseen beneath the skin.

Gregory Harris is a writer and editor in Indianapolis with a vast book, music, and video collection that includes many horror titles.

Australian writer Michel Faber, now well ensconced in Scotland, has written a wildly imaginative, scorching, bizarre, and insidious first novel that is generating critical praise and word-of-mouth buzz. In Under the Skin, Faber reverses many roles: animals are humans; humans become animals; and hitchhikers are victims rather than dangerous passengers.

Isserley, the book's heroine, has had her animal figure surgically altered to attract suitable human male hitchhikers men with no families who won't be missed and, most importantly, men with just the right balance of body fat and muscle. Her passengers see only enough to be sexually drawn in, as moths to a light. These hitchhikers run the gamut of the male sex; she befriends a graduate student, a piece of trailer trash, an itinerant philosopher, and a quayside mug, among others. Each fails to see in Isserley's thick-lensed glasses and odd posture anything more than a tragic genetic failure. This oversight usually proves to be a fatal error.

Faber's attack on contemporary morality and hypocrisy is unsparing and leaves few human virtues unscathed. Although the message of Under the Skin is ultimately compassionate and humane, the book is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. Its only shortcoming is the lack of a cover endorsement by Hannibal Lecter, who would surely find Under the Skin great reading.

Where were you during the '60s? Whether you served, marched, or missed it all, something in this major new work by Stephen King will put a lump in your throat. Though he is known as the King of Horror, King's real talent has always been describing the horror people perpetrate on each other. He may use the supernatural as a catalyst, but King's best work is about people who remind us of ourselves because they sound like us and think like us, even when at their worst.

Structured as two novellas and three short stories, Hearts in Atlantis is nevertheless a novel in which some strangeness what King refers to as the Ray Bradbury kind of childhood makes an appearance and leaves its mark, but cannot rival what the '60s wrought on an entire generation. Bobby, Carol and Sully-John grow up and grow apart in startling ways during the summer of 1960, helped along toward their destinies by a trio of bullies, an eerie older man, and the Low Men in Yellow Coats who hunt him. The story "Hearts in Atlantis" begins with hearts you can break, moves on to a ruthlessly destructive card game which turns its obsessed players into sheep, and finally wraps around again to flesh-and-blood broken hearts. Pete Riley tells how knowing Carol for a short time changes him from a kid with a Goldwater bumper sticker to a gassed-out peacenik and what it does to Carol the activist, whom he loves and loses in a few short weeks during this time of social upheaval. These two novellas form both the bulk of the book and its emotional center.

In "Blind Willie," one of the bullies now a Vietnam-haunted vet finds a certain penance in his bizarre daily ritual that both embraces and overturns '80s greed. "Why We're in Vietnam" follows Sully-John through the dark remains of the war, to his death in the present day. And the funeral in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling" brings the book full-circle, with an understated emotion that will take you by surprise and wring out your heart with its sad yet redeeming inevitability. You will see Stephen King in a new light. Read this moving, heartfelt modern tragedy and weep for our lost conscience.

Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Early on in Stephen King's new novel, Bag of Bones, the narrator—a suspense novelist living in New England—compares himself to his contemporaries and comes up wanting. While Mike Noonan was never a Grisham, Clancy, or Ludlum, he's done all right, just so long as he never publishes at the same time as Mary Higgins Clark, the 900-pound gorilla of his particular genre: "the Lovely Young Woman on Her Own Meets Fascinating Stranger," as he terms it. The one writer that Noonan never refers to, either at the beginning or anywhere else in the book, is Stephen King, an interesting omission considering that Bag of Bones is a crafty look into the world of modern publishing.

Apart from that, Bag of Bones is many things; it's a chilling ghost story, an intricate thriller, a mystery, and an almost painful psychological portrait. Mike Noonan, the aforementioned suspense writer, is in the grip, literally, of a four-year writer's block following the sudden death of his wife, Jo. When he sits at his computer and boots up WordPerfect, he gets physically ill. If this weren't enough, he has nightmares about Jo, and about Sara Laughs, his summer house in rural Maine. He is also troubled by the suspicion that his wife may have been having an affair before her death.

In an effort to confront these demons within him, he moves back to Sara Laughs only to find that they are very real, and that the summer house is haunted by several spirits, including Jo. While trying to understand what is happening around him, he meets Mattie and Kyra Devore, a young widow and her toddler daughter. In doing so, he runs afoul of Max Devore, Mattie's multi-millionaire father-in-law, who is determined to gain custody of Kyra. All of these plot lines crisscross-cross throughout the book and converge on one point Sara Laughs in a shattering conclusion that is both tragic and breathtaking.

Already drawing comparisons to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Bag of Bones also recalls Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, as well as the movie Poltergeist. It goes without saying that it is a chilling tale.

Mike Noonan compares himself to Grisham, Clancy and Ludlum, though he never evinces the desire to reach their level of achievement. King is at their level, but I can't help but think that he wants to move beyond them, to the literary acceptance of, say, a John Irving or John Updike. Certainly Bag of Bones is a giant step in that direction. Is this his best novel? No, I think that's yet to come.

James Neal Webb lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

After reading T. Kingfisher’s novel The Hollow Places, I have one thing to say to Stephen King: Steve-o, you’ve got some stiff competition.

The Hollow Places is one of the most terrifying books you’ll ever read. The tale starts innocently enough. After her divorce, a graphic artist named Kara goes to live with her gentle and eccentric Uncle Earl (he calls her Carrot). Settled in the back room of his museum of strange objects, Kara can live rent-free as long as she helps him categorize his oddities. Next door to the museum is the Black Hen, a coffee shop whose barista, a nutty and lovable chap named Simon, may have eaten his twin in the womb. But he's not the source of the horror.

The objects in Earl’s museum are what you’d expect. There are statues of Bigfoot and Mothman, a Feejee mermaid and all manner of sad, taxidermied animals, including an eight-foot-long giant river otter. Fans frequently send objects to Earl, and one day an item that Kara finds especially sinister arrives. But like everything else, she inventories it and puts it somewhere among the oddments. Then, as is the case whenever something really creepy comes into an already creepy museum, strange things start to happen.

Kingfisher’s superpower is her ability to describe things that cannot possibly be, things that can’t be there but are—things that the human mind can’t wrap itself around. In this, Kingfisher, the author of The Twisted Ones and Dragonbreath, is much like H.P. Lovecraft. She differs from Lovecraft in that she has a rollicking sense of humor and believes in the power of love.

The Hollow Places is one of those books that keeps you up at night, either because you can’t put it down or because you’re scared to turn off the lights and go to bed. You’ve been warned.

Civil society is always fragile. When it collapses under violent threat, its citizens inevitably reveal their truest selves. With his groundbreaking first novel, World War Z, Max Brooks adapted this timeless truth—the essence of The Iliad, King Lear, War and Peace, etc.—on a global scale (with zombies). In Devolution, the author gives it another go, this time in microcosm.

Greenloop is a would-be environmental utopia (with all the modern amenities) established by a bunch of well-heeled city folks in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest forest. The volcano of Mount Rainier is sleeping nearby, along with a family of sasquatch. Rainier wakes up, and so does Bigfoot. Next stop: Greenloop.

The personnel of Greenloop is the ultimate catalog of urbanite hubris, idealism, cluelessness and dormant heroism. Moral fiber hits rock bottom in the character of Tony, the founder of the community, a charismatic Grizzly Man type whose phony charisma crumbles in the face of disaster. The community’s shining light is Mostar, a survivor of the Balkan conflicts of the last century. She is the prophet, the pragmatist, the ass-kicker. With these characters, and the other Greenloop residents, Brooks demonstrates how a person’s true nature comes to light in a catastrophe, when they must either summon courage they never knew they possessed, or die. Or both.

In Devolution, as in World War Z, Brooks relishes what he calls “forensic horror,” a medium for understanding a disaster retrospectively, through available evidence. The novel is framed by an unnamed researcher into the events, who presents the diary of Kate Holland, a resident of Greenloop. The researcher illuminates Kate’s complex firsthand account through interviews with her grieving brother and a baffled park ranger.

The transformation of Greenloop and its members—especially Kate and her slacker husband, Dan—from self-doubting basket cases into formidable warriors transcends the notion of “evolution.” It’s terrifying. Brooks is not only dealing with the end of humanity; he’s also showing us our further course toward a new, ineluctable, absolute brutality.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Max Brooks shares the inspiration behind Devolution: “We are racing headlong to build a society for comfort and not for resilience.”

In his funny, gory new romp, Grady Hendrix conjures horror heroines out of a surprising demographic—the carpool moms of 1990s suburbia. They looked like “carpool drivers, skinned-knee kissers, errand runners, secret Santas and part-time tooth fairies, with their practical jeans and their festive sweaters. . . . But when the time came, [they] went the distance.” And how.

Life in the Old Village, Patricia Campbell’s suburban South Carolina enclave, has always been safe, if a little unstimulating. But that’s before Patricia is attacked in her yard by an elderly neighbor gone feral, and soon she finds herself driving around her neighbor’s attractive relative, James Harris, and inviting him into her house for ice cream with the family. Life is suddenly far from boring, but when Patricia’s suspicions about James begin to escalate, she takes the matter to her true crime book club. 

According to her friends, Patricia’s just projecting a titillating plot onto their ploddingly dull daily lives. But when children from the poor neighborhood across town start dying, the club is forced to grapple with the possibility that Patricia’s new friend just may be the monster she claims he is. And as if one monster isn’t enough, the women must confront another enemy at least as terrifying: the patriarchy.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires takes place in the same universe as Hendrix’s Stoker Award-winning horror novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is loosely based on his own childhood. Hendrix writes in an author’s note that his latest novel was inspired by the strength of his own mother and others like her: women easy to write off, but hard to defeat. “I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom,” Hendrix explains. “As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.” 

In turns heartwarming and enraging, bloody horror and social critique, this genre-bending vampire story helps cement horror as a frontier for feminist storytelling. 

“This isn’t a story. It’s a road trip.” So prefaces Joseph Fink’s gonzo parable of anxiety, evil and the monsters they can spawn.

When we meet Keisha Taylor, she is trying to enjoy a sandwich at a truck stop—but neither the sandwich nor the ambiance is making it easy. At the booth next to her, a gelatinous blob of a man leers and grunts at her as he shovels eggs into his mouth with his hands. The situation devolves from unsettling to terrifying when the blob drags another customer outside and eats him alive—as the other diners act like nothing is amiss.

Keisha wasn’t always a trucker. She once lived with her loving wife, Alice, until Alice disappeared and was presumed dead. Six months after the funeral, Keisha begins seeing her wife on the scene of live news broadcasts from around the country. Alice isn’t dead after all.

On little more than instinct and a sparse set of clues, Keisha gets a trucking job and sallies forth to solve the mystery of Alice’s disappearance. But what Keisha uncovers is far more sensational than one woman’s wrecked marriage: She discovers a country haunted by cannibalistic ghouls, wandering oracles and a malevolent wraith in a police uniform. What are these creatures, who is protecting them, and why are most people so intent on ignoring their existence?

Fink, co-creator of the cult sensation podcast “Welcome to Night Vale,” evokes his own experiences with anxiety through the character of Keisha. His revelations about the nature of the disorder are as delicately limned as his action scenes are jarringly gory.

Bracingly candid and unabashedly epic, Alice Isn’t Dead is indeed a wild road trip that backs up Keisha’s hard-won philosophy that “the only way out is through.”

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.