13 Creature Feature Horror Book Recommendations
What are they?
Where did they come from?
How have they stayed under the radar and why has science not spotted them by now?
All we know is that they’re big and they’re hungry and they’re looking at you.
“All creatures are flawed, but out of the flaw may come the universe.”
– Marguerite Young
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Table of Contents
The Loch - Steve Alten
Urban legend creature feature horror
Marine biologist Zachary Wallace once suffered a near-drowning experience in legendary Loch Ness.
Now, long-forgotten memories of that experience have begun haunting him. The truth surrounding these memories lies with Zachary’s estranged father, Angus Wallace, a wily Highlander on trial for murder.
Together the two plunge into a world where the legend of Loch Ness shows its true face.
“By day the Loch’s ours … but God help ye at night when she rises tae feed.”
Thylacines - Deborah Sheldon
Creature feature horror
The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was hunted to extinction more than eighty years ago.
Now, Professor Rosie Giuliani and her staff at The Resurrection Lab have done the impossible: created a living, breathing litter from a preserved specimen.
Yet Rosie can’t share this scientific breakthrough with the world. The cloned animals are more like monsters than thylacines.
By chance, a small band of activists hears about the caged litter, and their decision to free the tigers will unleash a deadly havoc upon the campus of Fraser University.
“The short, sandy-coloured fur and those dark stripes from shoulder to tail…”
The Devil's Shallows - Debra Castaneda
Cryptid creature feature horror
The salt marsh at Devil’s Landing is home to a terrifying urban legend.
Adam Gray knows the old stories about the Slough Devil, the missing children, and the mutilated animals. But the naturalist and wilderness survival expert doesn’t believe in monsters. Not even when a tourist on his boat sees a strange creature in the tidal channel and captures it on video.
When Adam moves into a controversial housing development next to the marsh, shocking new evidence emerges, and it’s not long before he’s confronted with a series of horrifying and unexplained events.
It takes Christina, his feisty new neighbor, to get him to believe something lurks in the slough. Something disturbed by the new community.
When a massive storm maroons the residents, Adam and Christina find themselves trapped and tested in a fight for their lives.
“…this legend was darker and uglier than its cryptid cousins…”
Fear – Ronald Kelly
Cryptid creature feature horror
It was a legend in Fear County: a hideous, flesh-eating creature – part snake, part earthbound demon – that feasted on the blood of innocent children in the cold black heart of the Tennessee backwoods.
But ten-year-old Jeb Sweeny knows the horrible stories are true. His best friend Mandy just up and disappeared. He also knows that no one has ever had the courage to go after the monster and put an end to its raging, bestial hunger. Until now.
But Evil is well guarded. And for young Jeb Sweeny, who is about to cross over into the forbidden land of Fear County and the lair of the unknown, passage through the gates of Hell comes with a terrible price.
“The creature that had killed Buttercup was not covered with fur or hair, but with a gleaming coat of jet-black scales.”
Devoured - Bryan Alaspa
Creature feature horror
Despite his city being torn apart by riots and unrest, the St. Louis mayor has decreed that the beloved Fourth of July festival WILL go on as planned.
This leaves public safety manager Logan Field at his wits’ end. How can he protect the city’s residents and his own job, especially in the light of a deadly attack in Chicago, a vanished local boy, and a series of disturbing occurrences that are drawing closer and closer together? City-wide panic brews – something is horribly wrong.
Desperate for help, Logan turns to a struggling hunter and they link up with a professor who believes he just might know the cause of the incidents: an ancient evil, dormant for centuries, now awakened. There is no time to waste as the trio races to find to confirm their fear and discover how to face it down – because an entire city and its millions of lives hangs in the balance.
“The beast lifted its head and let out its loud call; the sound resembled both the caw of a large bird and the roar of a lion.”
Behemoth - HP Newquist
Creature feature horror
A car crash results in the death of three boys in a small rural town. Later that night, people living nearby begin disappearing. One at a time.
Something has been released.
Rumors spread and townspeople claim there are rational explanations. But the seemingly normal village has a haunted past: missing children and whispers about a strange creature in the woods.
The one person who tries to find an explanation discovers that he may be the next to disappear.
And that is when truly unspeakable things start to happen.
“Their distorted faces looked like a horror movie monster peering in at him.”
The Exeter Incident - David Watkins
Creature feature horror
As a series of gruesome murders are discovered in Exeter, Detective Inspectors Danni Brent and John Carter begin to suspect the killer may not be human. Their investigation is only a few hours old when they also realise the murderer can’t be acting alone.
There’s more than one.
A lot more.
Paul Kingston is on the run and hiding in Exeter. Whilst trying to secure a new identity, he comes face to face with an impossible monster. Hunted, alone and afraid, who can he turn to? Who can he trust?
None of them know that Exeter is about to experience its darkest day.
None of them know time is running out.
The clock is already ticking.
“Father might not be happy if they found out about them now, not after so long in hiding.”
Mudcat - John Quick
Creature feature horror
The town of Ashford Fork, Tennessee has enough problems dealing with the worst rainstorm in a century.
When the townsfolk start turning up dead and partially eaten, they discover they have more than rain to worry about.
Something was in the lake, something that has now grown beyond their wildest imaginations, and something that has been given free rein to feed as the water level rises, and the town begins to flood.
“It knew what to do, how to achieve the next step in its own evolution.”
The Montauk Monster - Hunter Shea
Creature feature horror
On a hot summer night in Montauk, the bodies of two local bar patrons are discovered in the dunes, torn to shreds, their identities unrecognizable.
In another part of town, a woman’s backyard is invaded by four terrifying creatures that defy any kind of description. What’s clear is that they’re hostile, and they’re ravenous.
With every sunset the terror rises again, infecting residents with a virus no one can cure. The CDC can’t help them; FEMA can’t save them. But each savage attack brings Suffolk County Police Officer Gray Dalton one step closer to the shocking source of these unholy creations.
Hidden on nearby Plum Island, a US research facility has been running top-secret experiments. What they created was never meant to see the light of day. Now, a vacation paradise is going straight to hell.
“Randy’s mind reeled. What the hell is it?”
Dweller - Jeff Strand
Creature feature horror
When Toby Floren was eight years old, he discovered a monster living in the woods behind his house. A ghastly, frightening creature with claws, fangs, and a taste for human flesh. As he ran out of the forest, Toby felt that he’d been lucky to escape with his life.
Years later, Toby finds comfort with the creature. It’s his own special secret; something that nobody else in the world knows about. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to confide in.
Sure, Toby has concerns about his own sanity, but really, what boy wouldn’t want to be best friends with a monster in the woods, especially if he’s being tormented by bullies? The creature, who he names Owen, may be the answer to his problems.
“They probably wouldn’t have recognized her at all if it weren’t for those elegant shoes she insisted on wearing, even on a camping trip.”
Cavern of the Damned - Russell James
Creature feature horror
Broke and desperate, paleontologist Grant Coleman gets the chance of a lifetime exploring a long-sealed cave, the fabled home of gigantic creatures.
NPS Ranger McKinley Stinson discovers a rancher’s prize bull has been butchered by an airborne killer, and tracks the blood trail back to the re-opened cavern.
As she’s about to arrest the trespassers, the unstable roof collapses, trapping them all. Their only way out is at the cave system’s far end.
But an eco-system of terrifying mega fauna stands between them and freedom.
Death, double-crosses, and a slew of monstrous cave creatures take their toll as the group battles to what they pray is an exit.
“The Montana valley opened to the west, but this predator stalked them from that direction, cutting off the easy escape.”
Churn the Soil - Steve Stred
Creature feature horror
Two hundred miles north of the town of Basco sits The Border. It’s a quiet, off-the-grid settlement, where the residents have developed a tentative agreement with those that live on the other side of the clearing.
But things are about to change forever.
As night falls, a teenage girl is brutally murdered as she flees across the clearing.
Now, it’s up to Basco PD officers Brown and Reynolds to find her killer.
But the truth is far worse than they could possibly imagine, and the more the officers uncover, the bolder the things beyond the clearing grow.
North of The Border lies a land unseen by man. A land where things are ready and waiting to feed.
“Under an icy snowfall… Under a clear, blue moon…”
Pistols - Michael Cole
Sea creature feature horror
They are known to be one of the loudest organisms in the sea. They can generate acoustic pressures up to twelve PSI. The snap from their claws is so powerful, they can produce flashes of light. Normally, they are harmless, for they grow no larger than two inches in length.
But these are not normal circumstances.
In the waters of Lilly May, Florida, something has gone horribly wrong. The police department gets flooded with reports of heavy sound waves and flashing under the water; the remains of a thirty-eight-foot whale shark wash ashore, and a derelict boat is found adrift, its deck covered in blood.
Assisting with the police investigation, marine biologist Jason Rose works diligently to uncover the cause of the phenomenon. The readings from offshore acoustic buoys reveal the occurrence of brief but intense soundwaves – like pistol shots under the water.
The truth reveals itself by escalating the horror to mass murder. A colony of giant pistol shrimp, grotesquely mutated from toxic exposure, have invaded the Florida coast. Their snapping claws are capable of producing intense heat and thunderous shockwaves. Like a swarm of locusts, they will stop at nothing to devour anything inhabiting the water.
“This was not a single drop. The ocean floor was full of blood.”
Published: 9 November 2024
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