’Tis the season for a scare!

We went in search of some books that would be off the beaten path to the haunted house and asked our NYPL book experts to name some unusual, specific, super-cool sub-genres of horror.

Dangerous Vegetation

Day of the Triffids is the original zombie novel, in a way, if you accept that every zombie story is really actually a story about the people who are left behind. There are no walking dead, but the fight for survival is the same, and the triffids are far more terrifying than any slightly ambulatory overgrown artichoke has a right to be. —Kay Menick, Schomburg Center

Last year, I read three middle-grade fiction reads featuring carnivorous trees. In The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier, there’s a creepy tree growing straight through a home. It grants wishes to those who know how to ask, but will take a substantial price in return! This suspenseful tale of supernatural horror will make you think twice about relaxing against a tree trunk to read… —Stephanie Whelan, Seward Park

Dangerous vegetation is just the beginning in The World Jones Made. Philip K. Dick juggles five or six separate plot lines in this book, including a horrifying vision of six months after…?  The catalog offered me a different suggestion: “Do you mean A World Gone Mad?” It may have read the book. —Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Exhibitions

New Weird

China Mieville writes in the sci-fi subgenre identified as New Weird. The name is... appropriate. Reading Perdido Street Station or Railsea will give any reader a nice glimpse into Mieville’s spectacularly warped vision of science fiction and fantasy. Mieville’s excellent with the prose as well. Perdido Street Station is almost a parable of scientific curiosity gone horribly awry as Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin unwittingly stumbles across a horrific new drug and its equally horrific production. The weird? Insect-headed lovers, sentient steampunk robots, vampiric moths that secrete drugs and more create an insane tapestry for readers willing to bend their minds. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

Lovecraft-iana

Last year I was browsing NYPL ebooks on my phone and stumbled on several collections of H. P. Lovecraft-inspired short stories. These are not stories written by Lovecraft but what amounts to (usually) well written fan fic. I read the first two Black Wings of Cthulhu collections and was very happy with them for the most part, but as I ran searches I found that there are thousands of stories in this genre. Some stories are about Lovecraft, some take place in the reality of one or another of his stories, and some are simply strange in the same kinds of ways that Lovecraftian tales are strange. —Arieh Ress

Mass Hysteria

U.S. history has been sprinkled with fascinating, mysterious cases of mass hysteria-- collective delusions rapidly spread throughout communities by fear-fueled rumors. (The earliest, and perhaps most well-known incidence, is the Salem witch trials.) My recommendation, however, is The Fever by Megan Abbott. Loosely based on the 2011 conversion disorder outbreak that happened among high school girls in LeRoy, New York, Abbott turns bewildering, emotional moments of adolescence into potential causes for a terrifying mass psychogenic illness. The result is a chilling thriller (think Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars) that will have readers’ hearts racing with the turn of every page.  —Lauren Restivo, 115^th Street

Creepy Animals

Here’s a children’s story about a vampiric bunny called Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by Deborah and James Howe.  Told from the point of view the family pets, the Monroe family is trying to figure out why their vegetables keep turning white with tiny fang marks.  Could it be the new family bunny? —Leslie Bernstein, Mott Haven

I still shudder a bit thinking of Alan Ahlberg’s  Improbable Cat. He looks like a cat, but what is he really? Something very very hungry... written for kids, but creepy enough for a grown up. —Danita Nichols, Inwood

Japanese Gore

You know we have to talk about Japanese gore, right?! And here at the NYPL we have plenty of senseless, bloodyrific cinema to keep you occupied. Just check your brain in the cauldron you’ll find at the door, and check out some of the carnage the Far East has graced us with. Try House, Helldriver, Meatball Machine, Dead Sushi, and The Machine Girl. —Joseph Pascullo, Grand Central

Historical Romance

How about historical romance haunted mental hospital horror? In Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James, it is 1919 and Kitty Weekes has falsified her resume for a job at an isolated mental hospital on the Cornwall coast. The hospital, Portis House, is filled with soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of World War 1. They are suffering from night terrors, nervous conditions, and a desperate despair, and most of them are hiding from their families in shame. But there’s something more sinister at work too: strange noises, odd cold spaces, weird black slime and a collective nightmare that they all refuse to talk about. To get to the heart of the horror and stop the evil, Kitty will have to trust a mysterious patient who might be a war hero or a mad man or perhaps both. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

Funny-Scary

I recommend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. It’s basically an extended version of the story Pride and Prejudice, except that the Bennets, Darcy, and other characters must also occasionally fight off zombies. This romantic, horrific and silly story inspired a trend of turning classic novels into comedy-horror stories, and has spawned a number of spin-offs of its own - including a prequel (Dawn of the Dreadfuls) and a sequel (Dreadfully Ever After) (both by Steve Hockensmith). It is currently being made into a movie.  —Christina Lebec, Bronx Library Center

Aliens

My favorite is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The book, written by Jack Finney in 1955, is still creepy today and has spawned a slew of other sci-fi horror movies. Most people will know it as the 1978 movie with Donald Sutherland , but also check out the wonderful original movie from 1955, which is filled with spooky paranoia as one man tries to stop the takeover of his community by large seed pods that replicate and replace human beings. —Maura Muller, Volunteer Services

All gifs via Giphy.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.

And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for 100 new recommendations every month!