Good, recent horror non-fiction?

July 4, 2017 3:17 PM

I am about to put in a little online book order and would like your suggestions to help round it out.

I am halfway through Erik Larson's The Devil In The White City and enjoying it immensely. My new order contains The Indifferent Stars Above and Under A Flaming Sky by Daniel James Brown, and will likely contain Dead Wake, also by Erik Larson.

Does the collective Metamind have any further suggestions for what might be termed "horror non-fiction", if one was to accept that the titles listed above could be considered such a genre?

Thanks in advance!

posted by turbid dahlia to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Best answer: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. "Grann’s story is...about how the cynical greed of the initial oil rush, and quick money it promised, led to a sinister – but also singular — persecution and mass murder of the Osage....it is principally about one matriarchal Osage family, and the devilish plot to murder its womenfolk one by one, in a coldly calculated order, as would gradually bequeath their riches to white speculators in the end by the only viable means: inheritance. And here lies the macabre intimacy that marks this out from other stories of mass killing of American Indians: inheritance, of course, entailed marrying Native women, raising children with them while knowing the plan’s murderous outcome."
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:34 PM on July 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

My Friend Dahmer if you like graphic novels and haven't read it? Not new but recently made into a movie.
posted by jessamyn at 3:57 PM on July 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: jessamyn, yes, I do enjoy graphic novels and indeed I have read Dahmer - at the library no less!

MonkeyToes, that does indeed sound (without wanting to minimise it) suitably grotesque. Thanks.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:39 PM on July 4, 2017

Best answer: Not new, but The Johnstown Flood is worth reading.
posted by gudrun at 8:33 PM on July 4, 2017

Best answer: Oh yeah, Isaac's Storm is good for that sort of weather porn with evil actors thing. Other "true crime" things I've liked are mostly longform essays like this one about Dean Coril called The Girl on the Torture Board (more linked on his Wikipedia page)
posted by jessamyn at 6:32 AM on July 5, 2017

Best answer: I haven't read either of these yet, but after listening to the Futility Closet podcast episode on Batavia's Graveyard, I definitely added both Islands of Angry Ghosts and Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny to my library request queue.

Edit: whoops, missed the "recent" part--I think Islands of Angry Ghosts is an older book, but the other one is fairly recent I believe.
posted by helloimjennsco at 9:24 AM on July 5, 2017 [2 favorites]