13 Alien Horror Book Recommendations
Who knows what is out there?
All we can hope is that it stays out there and doesn’t notice this small blue planet in the backwater of the universe.
Here are 13 horror book recommendations in which alien life did notice us.
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
– Carl Sagan
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Table of Contents
Alien Horrors – Tim Curran
Alien horror collection
In the deepest, darkest depths of space, the stars are cold, malevolent eyes looking across a vast graveyard of the unknown, the unnameable, and the undead.
Here the planets are tombs and the moons haunted catacombs.
And here are extraterrestrial nightmares beyond imagining.
There is no benevolent first contact. No utopian worlds. Only alien horrors.
Some of the stories included in Alien Horrors:
- Flypaper: An expeditionary team is trapped inside an alien machine that offers them anything they want at a terrible price.
- City of Frozen Shadows: The last living man on Earth hides in a gutted city, hunted by alien exterminators.
- The Black Ocean: Astronauts adrift in a misty alien ocean are attacked by a gigantic predator.
- Charnel World: Mercenaries track the most lethal life form in the galaxy in the green hell of the planet Xenos.
- Migration: A mining camp is directly in the path of a migrating alien hive.
- Stowaway: The crew of a starship is stalked by a shapeshifting alien bloodsucker.
“He was vainly clinging to the idea that this was no beast, no alien predator stalking them.”
Bent Heavens – Daniel Kraus
YA alien horror
Liv Fleming’s father went missing more than two years ago, not long after he claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Liv has long accepted that he’s dead, though that doesn’t mean she has given up their traditions. Every Sunday, she and her lifelong friend Doug Monk trudge through the woods to check the traps Lee left behind, traps he set to catch the aliens he so desperately believed were after him.
But Liv is done with childhood fantasies. Done pretending she believes her father’s absurd theories. Done going through the motions for Doug’s sake. However, on the very day she chooses to destroy the traps, she discovers in one of them a creature so inhuman it can only be one thing. In that moment, she’s faced with a painful realization: her dad was telling the truth. And no one believed him.
Now, she and Doug have a choice to make. They can turn the alien over to the authorities, or they can take matters into their own hands.
“What held everyone breathless was the man’s behavior.”
Video Night – Adam Cesare
Alien horror
Who better to repel a body-snatching alien invasion than a group of teenage horror nerds?
Billy and Tom are best friends, but each knows that at the end of the school year they’ll be moving in different directions.
But why not go out with a bang and throw one last video night? They can invite some girls over, order a pizza, then maybe try and fight the alien infection that’s taken hold over their suburban town.
“One spiny leg and then another jutted out from Jake’s mouth.”
Sightings – Mark Lukens
Alien horror
In 1988, Lydia Conner was taken from her cabin near Specter Lake, Minnesota while her husband lay in bed, temporarily paralyzed. She screamed at him for help as she floated up to the ceiling in a blinding flash of light … and then she was gone.
In 2009, four film school students journeyed to the Specter Lake cabin where the abduction of Lydia Conner took place. They hoped to capture proof of an alien visitation on film; they hoped to re-create events from the abduction; they hoped to use themselves as bait … but they encountered much more than they ever could have imagined.
“Greg Conner woke up to the sound of his wife screaming.”
They Take Your Skin – J.R. Curtis
Alien horror
Willow Burrow; the most isolated town in America.
A small mining town tucked away against the base of the mountains, in the upper reaches of the United States.
After a cave-in at the mine reveals a previously undiscovered, underground chamber, something is awoken from an ancient slumber. Cut off and being closed in on, the people of Willow Burrow will have to fight for their lives against the thing that has been stirred from the depths.
“The people of The Burrow were nothing if not loyal and stuck in their ways.”
Black Tide – KC Jones
Alien horror
It was just another day at the beach. Then the world ended.
Mike and Beth were strangers before the night of the meteor shower. Chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more.
Following their drunken and desperate one-night stand, the two discover the astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying.
When a lost car key leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, when the rising tide reaches for their car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.
“My mom once accused me of being a human car wreck.”
Beings – Brandon Eldridge
Alien horror
Garrett Bradley was the definition of success; good looking, confident, smart, and had a good career. But when he is forced to defend himself from an attacker, Garrett discovers a dark truth his mind is unwilling to accept; his attacker wasn’t human at all.
Now he only has one option: survival.
Time is running out. Will Garrett become the hero and save everyone he loves, or will he fail and doom the planet?
Who can you trust when no one is who they seem?
“From below the surface, yellow eyes looked up at the Michigan sky.”
Frost Bite – Angela Sylvaine
Alien horror – Book 1 of The Frost Bite Series
Remember the ’90s? Well, the town of Demise, North Dakota doesn’t, and they’re living in the year 1997. That’s because an alien worm hitched a ride on a comet, crash-landed in the town’s trailer park, and is now infecting animals with a memory-loss-inducing bite-and right before Christmas!
Now it’s up to nineteen-year-old Realene and her best friend Nate to stop the spread and defeat the worms before the entire town loses its mind. The only things standing in the way are their troubled pasts, a doomsday cult, and an army of infected prairie dogs.
“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight … The star crashed into a field across the street.”
The Rose – PD Alleva
Dystopian alien vampire horror – Book 1 of The Dark Veil
Aliens do exist. Vampires too. And in this dystopia, Alien Vampires exist.
In the aftermath of WW3, vampires from Hollow Earth have secretly forged an alliance with alien grays and the human elite to subjugate the human population in a quest for interstellar domination.
Phase One of their diabolical plan is to destroy their greatest threat: The human genome.
Now humanity is forced into reprogramming camps. Forced to endure genetic manipulation, torture, and vile psychological experiments.
But from the depths of time an age-old enemy challenges the vampire’s dominion. This evolved human rebellion is trained in the ancient alien practices of mind and body. Armed with The Blades, a sacred alien martial arts weapon, and wielding the metaphysical superpower known across the universe as The Rose, the rebellion seeks to stab at the heart of the evil triad, and usher in a new age of evolution.
“When battling alien vampires, one thing is certain… Get Ready to Bleed!”
The Dover Demon – Hunter Shea
Alien horror
In 1977, Sam Brogna and his friends came upon a terrifying, alien creature on a deserted country road. What they witnessed was so bizarre, so chilling, they swore their silence. But their lives were changed forever.
Decades later, the town of Dover has been hit by a massive blizzard. Sam’s son, Nicky, is drawn to search for the infamous cryptid, only to disappear into the bowels of a secret underground lair.
The Dover Demon is far deadlier than anyone could have believed. And there are many of them.
Can Sam and his reunited friends rescue Nicky and battle a race of creatures so powerful, so sinister, that history itself has been shaped by their secretive presence?
“Natural born hiders, they knew exactly how to keep their presence secret.”
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Alien horror
A mysterious silver object appears in quiet, picture-perfect Midwich. A day later, the object is gone, and all the women in the village, they will come to learn, are now pregnant.
The resultant children of Midwich are shockingly, frighteningly ‘other’.
Faced with these unfathomable and potentially unstoppable children, the question arises: What will humanity do when faced with the threat of the unknown?
“What made it more odd was that Midwich was, almost notoriously, a place where things did not happen.”
Dreamcatcher – Stephen King
Alien horror
Twenty-five years ago, in their haunted hometown of Derry, Maine, four boys bravely stood together and saved a mentally challenged child from vicious local bullies. It was something that fundamentally changed them, in ways they could never begin to understand.
These lifelong friends – now with separate lives and separate problems – make it a point to reunite every year for a hunting trip deep in the snowy Maine woods. This time, though, chaos erupts when a stranger suddenly stumbles into their camp, freezing, deliriously mumbling about lights in the sky.
All too quickly, the four companions are plunged into a horrifying struggle for survival with an otherworldly threat and the forces that oppose it, where their only chance of survival is locked into their shared past and the extraordinary element that bonds them all.
“They knew something was wrong with them – different, at least – but not what. They knew they were caught, but not exactly how. And all this long before the lights in the sky.”
Stinger – Robert McCammon
Alien horror
The West Texas desert towns of Inferno and Bordertown have been slowly dying. The Snake River isn’t the only thing that divides them. Racism and gang wars have turned the sun-scorched flatlands into a powder keg. If anything can unite them now, it’s the UFO that comes crashing through the clouds.
It brings with it a young alien named Daufin, a fugitive who has taken human form. She knows the terror that awaits this planet, because it’s looking for her.
Stinger is an alien bounty hunter with an infinite capacity for death and a devious plan to find Daufin. Entombing the region in an inescapable dome, Stinger unleashes a violent fury unknown to humankind.
Now, the few remaining survivors must come together to protect Daufin, themselves, and the world beyond.
“The motorcycle roared out of Bordertown, carrying the blond boy and dark-haired girl away from the horror behind them.”
Published: 27 October 2024
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