Books to read based on your favourite horror film

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What to read next based on your favourite horror film 

Sleep Donation

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Swamplandia! was a New York Times Top Ten Book and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and two National Magazine Awards for Fiction. She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and selected for the New Yorker’s 20 under 40 list. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter.

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
'Sleep Donation has a dreamlike beauty while remaining ominous and off-kilter. Parts of it gave me nightmares' Stephen King 
 
An epidemic of insomnia has left America crippled with exhaustion. 
 
Thankfully the Slumber Corps agency provides a lifeline, transfusing sleep to sufferers from healthy volunteers. Recruitment manager Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the disaster, has spent the last seven years enlisting new donors. But when she meets the mysterious Donor Y and Baby A - whose sleep can be universally accepted - her faith in the organisation and in her own motives begins to unravel. 
 
Fully illustrated and featuring a brand-new 'Nightmare Appendix', this uncanny and prescient novella from the bestselling author of Swamplandia! will haunt your sleepless nights.

Orange World

From the New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted Karen Russell comes a stunning new story collection that showcases her irresistible gifts of language and imagination

Superbly crafted...the weird and the outlandish exist side-by-side with everyday concerns... Russell is among the most skilled of this generation’s fabulist writers. In her surreal worlds, life is passing strange, but it is not devoid of wry comfort

I loved Orange World by Karen Russell, which is a collection of short stories in which demons live in drains, bog women come back from the dead and trees can grow inside the human body

One of our most original short story writers... Russell has impeccable command of her form... Russell’s particular gift lies in taking themes that are close to universal and presenting them in stories whose strangeness comes to seem entirely natural, even necessary

A rare combination of literary brilliance and unbridled entertainment

A mesmerising, often hilarious, new collection that embraces survival, love and magnificent transformation

The must-read short-story collection of the summer... Orange World makes me want to shout with joy. Russell's ease with her material, her sheer glee on the page, shines through in each piece... Delicious... We're in the hands of a master

Russell’s writing inhabits its own universe, with metaphor and simile taking us to strange new places; we are led by the hand and find ourselves completely submerged, only later to come to, groggily, in our own world... The worlds of the stories are entirely convincing, small pockets in which it is possible to become lost... Orange World demonstrates how her attention to this tricky craft has paid off. Though her characters are living their own magic-realist, fabulist lives, it is possible to see ourselves within them, peering out.

Russell creates fully realized worlds. Her writing is particular and alive. Her imagination spills over the sink and hits the backsplash

Russell exposes the central core of the strange in the familiar landmarks of American history. Incandescent…horror always cohabits with humor...A superb collection

magic...The scope of Russell's imagine is hard to conceive – you'll need to read to believe.

A feast of invention and a fun house of surprising wisdom, Orange World contains a ghost-ship lodge, tourist trade in a post-apocalyptic drowned city, a tornado farm, a local succubus. Karen Russell moves from the farcical to the forbidden with tender conviction. Don't miss this book of marvels

I kept Hawthorne in mind while reading Russell's astonishing new stories... Russell seems the most natural storyteller alive, so completely does she give herself to premises that might undo a lesser writer

Another set of masterpieces in miniature…Russell’s language rockets off the page…one of our most entrancing storytellers

Amidst the leading pack of talents Karen Russell writes the most like she’s on fire, as in: this close to revelations. Orange World is her best collection yet. Her imagination’s baroque syntax has been planed down to the absolute essentials, allowing the power of her vision to speak for itself...This is prophetic work written with clarifying fury

Marvelous... Startlingly inventive stories which confirm Russell's status as master of the slipstream

Brilliant... Stunning... Her imagination is boundless... Russell's last book, Vampires in the Lemon Grove was far and away one of the best books of 2013, and Orange World proves that the author has only gotten better... Russell is one of the most original American authors working today. She's also one of the best. Orange World is a thing of beauty, a stunning collection from one of the most brilliant literary minds of her generation

Eight crisp stories that will leave longtime fans hungry for more. Since her debut more than a decade ago, Russell has exhibited a commitment to turning recognizable worlds on their heads in prose so rich that sentences almost burst at the seams. Her third collection is no exception, and its subjects—forgotten pockets of violent American history, climate-related apocalypse, the trials of motherhood—feel fresh and urgent in her care...A momentous feat of storytelling in an already illustrious career

Ingenious, reality-warping, darkly funny, and exquisitely composed story collection rooted in myth and horror... Russell writes with mischievous clarity, wit, and conviction, grounding the most bizarre situations in the ordinary

'I loved Orange World... a collection of short stories in which demons live in drains, bog women come back from the dead and trees can grow inside the human body' Daisy Johnson, New Statesman BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'A rare combination of literary brilliance and unbridled entertainment' Mark Haddon 
 
These exuberant, unforgettable stories showcase Karen Russell's comedic and imaginative talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner lives. In 'The Bad Graft', a couple on a road trip stop in Joshua Tree National Park, where the spirit of a giant tree accidentally infects the young woman, their fates becoming permanently entangled. In 'The Prospectors' two opportunistic young women fleeing the Depression strike out for new territory, but find themselves fighting for their lives. In the brilliant and hilarious title story a new mother desperate to ensure her baby's safety strikes a deal with the devil to protect her baby. 
 
Stories of survival, love and of surreal and magnificent transformation show Russell writing at exhilarating new heights. 
 
Praise for Orange World: 
 
'The worlds of the stories are entirely convincing, small pockets in which it is possible to become lost' Guardian 
 
'One of our most original short story writers... Russell has impeccable command of her form' New York Times Book Review

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

A wickedly funny and dark new collection of dystopian tales from the Pulitzer and IMPAC shortlisted author of Swamplandia!

Her work has a velocity and a trajectroy that is little less than dazzling and a tough, enveloping, exhilarating voice than cannot be equaled.

A consistently arresting, frequently stunning collection...Even more impressive than Russell's critically acclaimed novel.

Karen Russell’s third book, the story collection “Vampires in the Lemon Grove,” should cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable fantasists writing today

Russell can take Antarctic tailgaters, an army of seagulls or simply a window and twist a tale that explodes on the page and lingers in the mind

A touch of paradoxically grounding pixie humour. This way of writing is so clever that nothing needs to be added to the set-up… These stories have unbelievable strength

These stories use the fantastical to make mythic sense of the human struggle, and perfectly balance light and dark, funny and serious, wacky and realistic

Russell is practised at whimsy and the surreal, at the magical and the unnerving

Russell’s storytelling, fusing realistic and fantastic elements, is imaginative and beautifully crafted

These stories will win her yet more fans, and offer typically colourful, off-the-wall entertainment

Karen Russell’s second collection feels completely fresh… The writing is spot-on throughout, with rich world-building and fleshed out characters

Russell's  descriptions are well thought out, and she heightens all of the senses,  often bringing taste, touch, sight and smell into her stories

What makes Russell's writing a cut above the rest is her fresh and inventive prose... Even [her] less effective narratives are hard to forget

Loneliness and mortality have never had such a fun twist

As subtle as the colour of Kitsune's silk

Russell is an amazing storyteller, and this book certainly whets the appetite for her next offering

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was most recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award. Her novel, Swamplandia!, was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

An awkward teen with a terrible haircut has a reversal of fortune when he finds artefacts from the future lining a seagulls’ nest. 
 
In a godforsaken barn, Presidents Eisenhower, John Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes are bemused to find themselves reincarnated as horses. 
 
Clyde and Magreb – he a traditional capes-and-coffins vampire, she the more progressive variety – settle in an Italian lemon grove in the hope that its ripe fruit will keep their thirst for blood at bay. 
 
‘Russell can take Antarctic tailgaters, an army of seagulls or simply a window and twist a tale that explodes on the page and lingers in the mind’ The Times

Swamplandia!

The eagerly anticipated, triumphant debut novel from the prize-winning author of St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Ms Russell has produces a rich and humid world of spirits and dreams, buzzing mosquitoes and prehistoric reptiles, baby-green cocoplums and marsh rabbits, and musty old tomes about heroes and spells. With Ava she has created a goofy and self-conscious girl who is young enough to hope that all darkness has an answering lightness. Inevitably she must learn otherwise. Swamplandia! is ultimately about the aching beauties of youth - the way life begins with such dumb sweetness, while the lessons that give it meaning lurk around each bend like terrifying gators in a mossy fragrant swamp

The tale of the two flyaway sisters proves lyrically powerful as it maps the enchanted but dangerous worlds that young minds can conjure to deal with grief

It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant young writer with an amazing imagination

I was looking forward to Swamplandia! and I wasn't disappointed. I found this novel beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too

The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly dishevelled

When you start reading a book, it's either sink or swim. With Karen Russell's Swamplandia, set in the alligator-infested Florida Everglades, we dove right in and never came up for air... Russell deftly dips into several story lines. And though she trolls some pretty dark waters (abandonment, consumerism, hungry swamp things), there's magic in discovering how everyone stays afloat

Russell details peculiarities about the alligators (known as Seths) to fascinating effect and skillfully satirizes the greed and fraudulence of entertainment corporations

The book certainly abounds in clever and striking images: alligators have "icicle overbites" and Hilola's children "watch her sink into her own face" as she dies of cancer

Russell's primeval imaginings and gutsy language lurk long in the memory

[Russell] is certainly very talented...This novel has already received great reviews...and it's easy to see why. Many of her descriptions are quite dazzling

Her imagination is undoubtedly of unbounded proportions, and she creates a refreshingly unique community and seductively charms the reader...[Russell] is a refreshing change from the usual.

Ava's narrative occupies fertile territory half-way between realism and fantasy, innocence and experience... Russell leaves just enough for us to question our reading of events, so that when the scales fall from Ava's eyes we are implicated in her naivety

We unanimously loved it - to the point where words like 'genius' and 'masterpiece' were being bandied around. With figurative language enriching every sentence, Russell effortlessly transports the reader

This novel [is] beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too

On one level, this is a sweet, slightly sentimental comin-of-age story; on another, it is a postmodern satire

Russell is really finding her feet with this one, making good on the promise of her eerie debut

Russell creats a vivid sense of how reality and fantasy can intertwine in a child's mind and become indistinguishable... What comes through most powerfully in Russell's fertile prose is the humid, mosquito-ridden atmosphere of the Florida swamp and the beguiling strangeness of the creatures - humans included - that make it their home

The novel is an experiment in how children's minds comprehend loss, and Ava is a compelling guide...Russell's strength is her use of language: each sentence is vividly rendered and the pages are as dense with images as the island is with life

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was most recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award.

In the Florida Everglades, gator-park Swamplandia! is in trouble. Its star performer, the great beauty and champion alligator-wrestler Hilola Bigtree, has succumbed to cancer, and Ava, her resourceful but terrified 13-year-old daughter, is left in charge with her two siblings. But Ava's sister has embarked on a romantic relationship with a ghost, her brother has defected to a rival theme park, and her father is AWOL. And then a mysterious figure called Bird Man guides Ava into a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, promising he can save both her sister and the park... 
 
Swamplandia! was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

These ten extraordinary stories introduce a blazingly original voice, a stunning debut, a breathtaking discovery. 
 
Longlisted for the Guardian first book award.

Her debut collection paints a refreshingly surreal vision of small-town life... Selected by Granta as one of America's best young novelists, Russell is an intuitive writer with a gift for arresting prose

An exuberant collection; each story bursts forth from the pages with a cacophony of imagery that sweeps up the reader

Outrageously imaginative and profoundly funny... surreal... impressive in many ways... Her imagination is agile, like the body of a champion gymnast, and she lets it dance... Does anyone over here write like this, with such freedom, such vivacity? A wild and brilliant first book

Arcane, magical tales of adolescent transformation... reminiscent of Angela Carter but wonderfully confident and refreshing in its own right

Delights in the quirky...truly magical and creepy settings

Ten hugely entertaining short stories - including the hilarious titular tale of 15 lupine adolescents - from hot young US writer Russell

Russell proves herself the heir to Angela Carter in this simply dazzling collection of short stories. With macabre humour, dark fantasy and a haunting tone this is unforgettable stuff - even just titles such as 'Lady Yeti And The Palace Of Artificial Snows' are staggering.

These 10 inventive stories, set mostly in the Florida Everglades, mix satire and sophisticated whimsy

Karen Russell has produced an engaging debut. Her ability to integrate mythology and the supernatural with the very contemporary...is reminiscent of Angela Carter, but unlike Carter's many imitators, Russell never descends into whimsy... In St Lucy's, humans, ghosts and animals are utterly real; and Russell sells the genuine article, a seemingly effortless writer

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was most recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award. Her novel, Swamplandia!, was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and her second short story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, was recently published to critical acclaim.

Charting loss, love, and the difficult art of growing up, these stories unfurl with wicked humour and insight. Two young boys make midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail in the exoskeleton of a giant crab; a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to 'Sleepaway Camp for Disordered Dreamers' (Cabin 1, Narcoleptics; Cabin 2, Insomniacs; Cabin 3, Somnambulists. . . ); a Minotaur leads his family on the trail out West, and finally, in the collection's poignant and hilarious title story, fifteen girls raised by wolves are painstakingly re-civilised by nuns.

Karen Russell

Powerful... weaves together a kind of rural American magic realism with passionate care for the natural world we’re so busy destroying

A brilliant writer with an amazing imagination

An elaborate embroidery of social, geological, historical, and environmental research on the impact of American Western expansion… [Russell’s] sharp narrative grasp guides the reader from character to character as the book unfolds’

Russell gets better and better with every word, she is a pure dust storm of utter genius

DAISY JOHNSON, author of Everything Under

Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange

It’s magic, a book doing this big work and also making it propulsive, eminently readable. Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude

Russell’s… potent prose and sheer originality consistently dazzle

This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of [America] I didn’t know I needed to know

Brilliant. A vital exploration of America's truths and legacies, a novel for our times

Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder

NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars

Karen Russell’s novel is generous, profound, and will stay with me for a long time

Brilliant... [Russell] writes like nobody else on the planet

A singular, haunting vision that fearlessly excavates the past and challenges the reader to face the future head-on. A storytelling tour de force

Spellbinding... an inspired and unforgettable fusion of the gritty and the fantastic

Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time... every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery

RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

Russell’s prose is something to be savored... Her language is both lush and sharp, weaving a dreamlike quality into the story that makes the characters’ emotional journeys feel all the more visceral. Russell navigates these emotional landscapes with care and respect and the distinct gift she carries that is heaven—I mean Love

Karen Russell proves once again that there is no limit to her extraordinary imagination. She creates marvels out of what we imagine to be the ordinary world, she turns the historical novel upside down and shake from it a thing of exquisite beauty that is unlike anything you’ve ever read

Karen Russell

Books by Karen Russell

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