48. The Girl with All the Gifts (Mike R. Carey, 2014)
From the writer of such lauded comics as Lucifer and Hellbazer comes this post-apocalyptic zombie tale that does something most zombie stories don't: make you actually care about the characters, even some of the ones who out of the gate seem incredibly unlikable. It posits a future where much of humanity has been taken over by a deadly spore virus, rendering them mindless zombies, that is, with the exception of humans at military outposts studying the infected and roving survivalists, called junkers, who seem to take a very nihilistic view of things. What makes this book somewhat unique though is the third kind of creature, children who have been infected with the spores but are still able to maintain coherent thought (unless they catch a whiff of the overt human smell). The story follows one of these "gifted" children, named Melanie, as she travels with a teacher she idolized from the compound she was imprisoned in along with a hard-nosed sergeant, a rookie private and a sociopathic researcher who wants to slice 'n' dice Melanie's brain at the earliest convenience.
Some may be familiar with this story via its film adaptation. Interestingly, this holds the fairly unique distinction of being written concurrently with the screenplay to the film, also written by Carey. As far as plot points go, they stick pretty close to another aside from the ending but the book gets a leg up by doing a better job at nuanced characterization, jumping back and forth between the points of view of each of the five characters on the move and fleshing them out much more than the film version does. The book also goes into a lot more detail on the science of what happened for those interested in that aspect of it. Overall, this was a solid read that's recommended for fans of post-nuke and zombie fiction as well as those looking for a more character-driven survival narrative.
To Read (250)
| Title | Author |
| The Passage | Justin Cronin |
| We Have Always Lived in the Castle | Shirley Jackson |
| The Historian | Elizabeth Kostova |
| Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris |
| The Wasp Factory | Iain Banks |
| The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Hell House | Richard Matheson |
| The Silent Companions | Laura Purcell |
| Her Fearful Symmetry | Audrey Niffenegger |
| Fledgling | Octavia E. Butler |
| Whispers | Dean Koontz |
| The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Carrion Comfort | Dan Simmons |
| Zone One | Colson Whitehead |
| Ring | Koji Suzuki |
| Broken Monsters | Lauren Beukes |
| The Changeling | Victor LaValle |
| Fever Dream | Samanta Schweblin |
| Dark Matter | Michelle Paver |
| HEX | Thomas Olde Heuvelt |
| The Drowning Girl | Caitlin R. Kiernan |
| Pandemonium | Daryl Gregory |
| Frankenstein in Baghdad | Ahmed Saadawi |
| The Grip of It | Jac Jemc |
| Mongrels: A Novel | Stephen Graham Jones |
| Last Days | Brian Evenson |
| Heart-Shaped Box | Joe Hill |
| The Snowman | Jo Nesbø |
| Dread Nation | Justina Ireland |
| The Case Against Satan | Ray Russell |
| Night Film | Marissa Pessl |
| Drawing Blood | Poppy Z. Brite |
| The Last Werewolf | Glen Duncan |
| Lovecraft Country | Matt Ruff |
| Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories | China Miéville |
| The Bad Seed | William March |
| The Walls Around Us | Nova Ren Suma |
| The Good House | Tananarive Due |
| Mr. Shivers | Robert Jackson Bennett |
| The Croning | Laird Barron |
| Hammers on Bone | Cassandra Khaw |
| Shutter | Courtney Alameda |
| Fiend: A Novel | Peter Stenson |
| Parasite Eve | Hideaki Sena |
| The Lesser Dead | Christopher Buehlman |
| The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction | Violet Kupersmith |
| Obscura | Joe Hart |
| Rebecca | Daphne Du Maurier |
| Beloved | Toni Morrison |
| Rosemary's Baby | Ira Levin |
| I Am Legend | Richard Matheson |
| The Woman In Black | Susan Hill |
| Collected Ghost Stories* | M.R. James |
| Those Across the River | Christpher Buehlman |
| The Hunger | Alma Katsu |
| Her Body and Other Parties: Stories | Carmen Maria Machado |
| Let the Right One In | John Ajvide Lindqvist |
| Bird Box | Josh Malerman |
| Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories | Mariana Enriquez |
| White is for Witching | Helen Oyeyemi |
| Feed | Mira Grant |
| The Other | Thomas Tryon |
| The Collector | John Fowles |
| The Vampire Lestat | Anne Rice |
| Queen of the Damned | Anne Rice |
| World War Z | Max Brooks |
| Swan Song | Robert McCammon |
| The House with a Clock in its Walls | John Bellairs |
| "Young Goodman Brown" | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Shadowland | Peter Straub |
| Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation | Octavia E. Butler, John Jennings and Damian Duffy |
| Down a Dark Hall | Lois Duncan |
| Through the Woods | Emily Carroll |
| Intensity | Dean Koontz |
| The Elementals | Michael McDowell |
| The Atrocity Archives | Charles Stross |
| Experimental Film | Gemma Files |
| The Ballad of Black Tom | Victor LaValle |
| The Cipher | Kathe Koja |
| Bloodchild | Octavia E. Butler |
| The Screwfly Solution | James Tiptree Jr. |
| Elizabeth | Ken Greenhall |
| The Red Tree | Caitlin R. Kiernan |
| "The Willows" | Algernon Blackwood |
| "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" | Joyce Carol Oates |
| "It's a Good Life" | Jerome Bixby |
| Goosebumps (The Complete Series #1-#62) | R.L. Stine |
| Lunar Park | Bret Easton Ellis |
| Exquisite Corpse | Poppy Z. Brite |
| Minion | L.A. Banks |
| The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories | Edited by Ann VanderMeer |
| The Bone Key | Sarah Monette |
| The Imago Sequence and Other Stories | Laird Barron |
| The Jumbles | Tracey Baptiste |
| Rotters | Daniel Kraus |
| Alone with the Horrors | Ramsey Campbell |
| The Werewolf of Paris | Guy Endore |
| Spirit Hunters | Ellen Oh |
| Furnace | Livia Llewellyn |
| "Left Foot, Right Foot" | Nalo Hopkinson |
| "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts" | Sonya Taaffe |
| The Troop | Nick Cutter |
| John Dies at the End | David Wong |
| The Girl Next Door | Jack Ketchum |
| Communion | Whitley Strieber |
| The House of Souls*** | Arthur Machen |
| Grendel | John Gardner |
| Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen |
| The Outsider, and Others | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Uncle Silas | Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
| Out of Space and Time | Clark Ashton Smith |
| Conjure Wife | Fritz Lieber |
| The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce | Ambrose Bierce |
| The Best Tales of Hoffmann | E. T. A. Hoffmann |
| The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch | Phillip K. Dick |
| Worse Things Waiting | Manly Wade Wellman |
| The Trial | Franz Kafka |
| Murgunstrumm and Others | Hugh B. Cave |
| The Land of Laughs | Jonathan Carroll |
| She | H. Rider Haggard |
| The Anubis Gates | Tim Powers |
| The Painted Bird | Jerzy Kosiński |
| The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner | James Hogg |
| Mythago Wood | Robert Holdstock |
| Hawksmoor | Peter Ackroyd |
| Song of Kali | Dan Simmons |
| The Sheep Look Up | John Brunner |
| The King in Yellow | Robert W. Chambers |
| Caleb Williams | William Godwin |
| A Voyage to Arcturus | Dave Lindsay |
| The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade | Herman Melville |
| The Crystal World | J.G. Ballard |
| The Dark Tower and Other Stories | C.S. Lewis |
| The Green Man | Kingsley Amis |
| The Lurker at the Threshold | H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth |
| Falling Angel | William Hjortsberg |
| The Black Spider | Jeremias Gotthelf |
| The Cellar | Richard Laymon |
| The Wolfen | Whitley Strieber |
| The Ceremonies | T. E. D. Klein |
| The Arabian Nightmare | Robert Irwin |
| The White Devil | John Webster |
| Something about Eve : a comedy of fig-leaves | James Branch Cabell |
| The Totem | David Morrell |
| The Wandering Jew | Eugène Sue |
| All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By | John Farris |
| Night has a Thousand Eyes | Carnell Woolrich |
| The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction | Anthony Boucher |
| The Sound of his Horn | Sarban |
| The Pet | Charles L. Grant |
| Sweetheart, Sweetheart | Bernard Taylor |
| The Dark Country | Dennis Etchison |
| Quatermass and the Pit | Nigel Kneale |
| Who Made Stevie Crye? | Michael Bishop |
| In a Lonely Place | Karl Edward Wagner |
| A Nest of Nightmares | Lisa Tuttle |
| The Track of the Cat | Walter Van Tilburg Clark |
| The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck | Alexander Lang |
| Nine Horrors and a Dream | Joseph Payne Brennan |
| John Silence, Physician Extraordinary | Algernon Blackwood |
| Sub Rosa: Strange Tales | Robert Aikman |
| Dark Feasts | Ramsey Campbell |
| Medusa : a Story of Mystery, and Ecstasy & Strange Horror | E. H. Visiak |
| Horror Horn | E. F. Benson |
| And the Darkness Falls | Edited by Boris Karloff |
| The Second Century of Creepy Stories | Sir Hugh Walpole |
| Deliver Me from Eva | Paul Bailey |
| The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales | Marjorie Bowen |
| The Sleeping and the Dead | August Derleth |
| The Monk | Matthew Lewis |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë |
| Lost Worlds | Clark Ashton Smith |
| The Talented Mr. Ripley | Patricia Highsmith |
| Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake |
| Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Stephen Sondheim |
| Edge of Running Water | William Sloane |
| Harvest Home | Thomas Tryon |
| The Weirdstone of Brisingamen | Alan Garner |
| Who Fears the Devil? | Manly Wade Wellman |
| The Book of Skulls | Robert Silverberg |
| The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" | William Hope Hodgson |
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | Patrick Süskind |
| The Midwich Cuckoos | John Wyndham |
| The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen | Elizabeth Bowen |
| Tales from the Nightside | Charles L. Grant |
| The Hunger and Other Stories | Charles Beaumont |
| The Case of Charles Dexter Ward | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The Cement Garden | Ian McEwan |
| Lost Souls | Poppy Z. Brite |
| The Killer Inside Me | Jim Thompson |
| Outer Dark | Cormac McCarthy |
| The Manuscript Found in Saragossa | Jan Potocki |
| New Grub Street | George Gissing |
| A Sight for Sore Eyes | Ruth Rendell |
| A Stir of Echoes | Richard Matheson |
| Peace | Gene Wolfe |
| They Thirst | Robert McCammon |
| The Dark Descent | David G. Hartwell |
| Fantômas | Marcel Allain |
| Darker Than You Think | Jack Williamson |
| Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural | Edited by Phyllis Fraser, Herbert Wise |
| Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror | Edited by Douglas E. Winter |
| Flicker | Theodore Roszak |
| Carnacki, the Ghost Finder | William Hope Hodgson |
| Dark Forces | Edited by Kirby McCauley |
| Our Lady of Darkness | Fritz Lieber |
| Some of Your Blood | Theodore Sturgeon |
| The Grotesque | Patrick McGrath |
| The Devil Rides Out | Dennis Wheatley |
| The Revenger's Tragedy | Thomas Middleton |
| The Course of the Heart | M. John Harrison |
| Darkness Weaves | Karl Edward Wagner |
| The Nightmare Factory | Thomas Ligotti |
| The Face That Must Die | Ramsey Campbell |
| A Wrinkle in the Skin | John Christopher |
| Skin | Kathe Koja |
| The Trail of Fu Manchu | Sax Rohmer |
| Tales of Horror and the Supernatural | Arthur Machen |
| Strange Toys | Patricia Geary |
| By Bizarre Hands | Joe R. Lansdale |
| A Scent of New-Mown Hay | John Blackburn |
| Finishing Touches | Thomas Tessler |
| The Haunted Omnibus | Edited by Alexander Laing |
| The Opener of the Way | Robert Bloch |
| The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural | Editors of Playboy |
| The Night Stalker | Jeff Rice |
| X,Y | Michael Blumlein |
| More Tomorrow & Other Stories | Michael Marshall Smith |
| The Third Ghost Book | Edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith |
| The Off Season | Jack Cady |
| Blood Sport | Robert F. Jones |
| Creep, Shadow! | Abraham Merritt |
| Sleep No More | August Derleth |
| Pages from Cold Point | Paul Bowles |
| Reprisal | Mitchell Smith |
| Feesters in the Lake | Bob Leman |
| They Return at Evening | H. Russell Wakefield |
| Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales | Henry S. Whitehead |
| House of Flesh | Bruno Fischer |
| Nightshade | Derek Marlowe |
| A Haunting Beauty | Charles Birkin |
| Year of the Sex Olympics: Three Television Plays | Nigel Kneale |
| Fancies and Goodnights | John Collier |
| Throat Sprockets | Tim Lucas |
Read (90)
| Title | Author |
| "The Lottery" | Shirley Jackson |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| "The Body" | Stephen King |
| "The Monkey's Paw" | W.W. Jacobs |
| Sandman | Neil Gaiman |
| The Turn of the Screw | Henry James |
| "The Tell-Tale Heart" | Edgar Allan Poe |
| The House Next Door | Anne Rivers Siddons |
| "Shadow Over Innsmouth" | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The October Country | Ray Bradbury |
| Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark | Alvin Schwartz |
| 30 Days of Night | Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith |
| Ghost Story | Peter Straub |
| The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Carrie | Stephen King |
| It | Stephen King |
| Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury |
| Books of Blood 1 - 3 | Clive Barker |
| House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski |
| Carmilla | Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
| Uzumaki | Junji Ito |
| "At the Mountains of Madness" | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley |
| The Shining | Stephen King |
| Dracula | Bram Stoker |
| A Head Full of Ghosts | Paul Tremblay |
| The Ruins | Scott Smith |
| MacBeth | William Shakespeare |
| The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad |
| Salem's Lot | Stephen King |
| The Man Who Was Thursday | G.K. Chesterton |
| The Lurking Fear and Other Stories | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Deathbird Stories | Harlan Ellison |
| Johnny Got His Gun | Dalton Trumbo |
| The Damnation Game | Clive Barker |
| A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens |
| The War of the Worlds | H.G. Wells |
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis |
| Pet Sematary | Stephen King |
| Misery | Stephen King |
| The Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux |
| Coraline | Neil Gaiman |
| Horrorstör | Grady Hendrix |
| The Jewel of Seven Stars | Bram Stoker |
| "The Yellow Wallpaper" | Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
| Doctor Faustus | Christopher Marlowe |
| Twice-Told Tales | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Red Dragon | Thomas Harris |
| "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" | Harlan Ellison |
| Penpal | Dathan Auerbach |
| Widdershins | Oliver Onions |
| The Island of Dr. Moreau | H.G. Wells |
| Goblin Market | Christina Rossetti |
| Burnt Offerings | Robert Marasco |
| The Road | Cormac McCarthy |
| Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Jack Finney |
| The Devil in America | Kai Ashante Wilson |
| "Please Momma" | Cheysa Burke |
| Meddling Kids | Edgar Cantero |
| Wylding Hall | Elizabeth Hand |
| From Hell | Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell |
| The Stranger | Albert Camus |
| Melmoth the Wanderer | Charles Maturin |
| Infidel | Pornsak Pichetshote |
| The Terror | Dan Simmons |
| The Night They Missed the Horror Show | Joe R. Lansdale |
| Anna Dressed in Blood | Kendare Blake |
| Skin Folk | Nalo Hopkinson |
| Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice |
| Come Closer | Sara Gran |
| The Blind Owl | Sadegh Heydayat |
| The Exorcist | William Peter Blatty |
| City of Glass | Paul Auster |
| The Devil in Silver | Victor LaValle |
| The Fisherman | John Langan |
| The Mask | Dean Koontz |
| Psycho | Robert Bloch |
| Gothic Tales | Elizabeth Gaskell |
| The Queen of Spades | Alexander Pushkin |
| NOS4A2: A Novel | Joe Hill |
| The Beauty | Aliya Whiteley |
| The Fifth Child | Doris Lessing |
| The Six-Gun Tarot | R.S. Belcher |
| Tales of Terror | Charles Higham |
| The Bloody Chamber | Angela Carter |
| The House on the Borderland | William Hope Hodgson |
| The Girl with All the Gifts | M.R. Carey |
