13 Workplace Horror Book Recommendations
You think your workplace is bad?
Try working at one of these places.
What if your dream job is really a nightmare?
What if the monster in the company is not just a bad boss, but really is a monster?
What if a sacked employee suddenly gains powers that enable him to enact a bloody revenge?
How far does your loyalty extend to your company? Are you willing to die for them? Are they willing to die for you?
Here are 13 horror books about workplaces that will probably make yours look like a walk in the park.
You probably want to think twice before applying for their vacant positions. And, if they offer you the job, don’t forget to read the fine print.
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Table of Contents
Institutional Memory – Gary Frank
Cosmic workplace horror
Standing five stories tall in a relatively small city, the Howard Phillips building is like any other building: it is secretly inhabited by an entity from another plane of existence that feeds off the energy of the people who work within its walls.
Unfortunately, the life form inhabiting this particular building has been infected by a sort of virus of hate; as companies move out and its inhabitants dwindle this alien intelligence has chosen to use fear as a means of obtaining sustenance.
It is up to Jon, Marcy, and Bettie to stop this haunting presence before it’s too late.
“Work is torture…”
Résumé with Monsters – William Browning Spencer
Cosmic workplace horror
Obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, Philip Kenan keeps malign cosmic entities at bay by constantly revising his novel, The Despicable Quest.
While Philip’s preoccupied with the monsters lurking behind every cubicle at his dead-end job, his exasperated girlfriend flees, heading straight into the horror that lies at the heart of the corporate world.
“Once you have gazed on the baleful visage of Yog-Sothoth, your own thoughts are forever suspect.”
My Work Is Not Yet Done – Thomas Ligotti
Supernatural workplace horror
When junior manager Frank Dominio is suddenly demoted and then sacked it seems there was more than a grain of truth to his persecution fantasies.
But as he prepares to even the score with those responsible for his demise, he unwittingly finds an ally in a dark and malevolent force that grants him supernatural powers.
Frank takes his revenge in the most ghastly ways imaginable – but there will be a terrible price to pay once his work is done.
“But their names were, no kidding, Barry, Harry, Perry, Mary, Kerrie, Sherry, and, of course, Richard…”
Severance – Ling Ma
Dystopian workplace horror
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.
Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?
“After the End came the Beginning.”
The Corporation – J.F. Gonzalez
Supernatural workplace horror
Michelle Dowling found her dream job. The offer on her desk from Corporate Financial Consultants included a high five figure salary, generous benefits and cushy perks. Finally, after escaping the psychological abuse of an emotionally cold mother and a series of dead-end jobs she could start planning a future with her fiancé, Donald.
However, Michelle forgot the cardinal rule for any job offer; always read the fine print. She really should have gotten more details about her overtime hours, company policies, and exactly what they meant when they said, “Welcome to the Corporate Financial Family”. Michelle isn’t afraid of hard work.
She’s a dedicated employee, the kind any manager would want for his firm. But this Corporation requires much more than just dedication.
“Directly behind the man, scrawled on the floor in blue chalk, was a large pentagram.”
The Night Stockers – Kristopher Triana & Ryan Harding
Splatterpunk workplace horror
The employees of the Freshway grocery store aren’t too happy about having to do an overnight shift, but they’re about to be even unhappier. Their rival store, Devil’s Food, is about to lay siege upon them with extreme prejudice. This is no ordinary grocery chain. Devil’s Food is run by a cult of murderous Satanists committed to killing the competition – literally.
Armed with hatchets, knives, maces and motorcycles, they enter the store and start picking off their victims in the most ghastly and depraved ways possible. The Freshway’s only chance of survival is to fight, and this leads to a bloody battle royal of crazed cashiers, knife-wielding demo ladies, brutal butchers, and teenage clerks determined to make their favorite death metal albums come true.
“The service in this grocery store was simply the worst.”
Darkfall – Stephen Laws
Supernatural workplace horror
Christmas. And an entire office block of revellers has disappeared into thin air.
DI Jack Cardiff and his investigating squad are about to discover the Hell that is ‘Darkfall’; where bricks, plaster and stone have a life of their own, where the inexplicable and the insane become horrifyingly real.
And for those trapped in the block and cut off by the violent weather, a terror beyond imagination is about to descend from the howling tempest.
“A storm was coming.”
Horrorstör – Grady Hendrix
Supernatural workplace horror
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
“Later they’d be resurrected by megadoses of Starbucks, but for now they were the barely living dead.”
Inhuman Resources – Pierre Lemaitre
Psychological workplace horror
Alain Delambre is a 57-year-old former HR executive, drained by four years of hopeless unemployment.
All he is offered are small, demoralizing jobs. He has reached his very lowest ebb, and can see no way out.
So when a major company finally invites him to an interview, Alain Delambre is ready to do anything, borrow money, shame his wife and his daughters and even participate in the ultimate recruitment test: a role-playing game that involves hostage-taking.
Alain Delambre commits body and soul in this struggle to regain his dignity.
But if he suddenly realised that the dice had been loaded against him from the start, his fury would be limitless.
And what began as a role-play game could quickly become a bloodbath.
“I was perfectly aware that I was angry, but I never expected it to turn to cold fury.”
The Consultant – Bentley Little
Psychological workplace horror
CompWare is in serious trouble after a promised merger falls through, so they do what other businesses have done to bolster their public image: they hire a consulting firm to review and streamline their business practices.
But there’s something strange about the firm they hire – more specifically, the quirky gentleman who arrives to supervise the project: Mr. Patoff, tall and thin and wearing a bow tie, and with an odd smile that never quite reaches his eyes.
In his first interactions, the consultant asks a few inappropriate questions, and generally seems a nuisance. Over time, Patoff gains more power, to the point where he seems to be running the whole company.
He enacts arbitrary and invasive changes to office protocol. He places cameras all over the building, making workers paranoid; he calls employees at all hours of the night, visits some of their homes and menaces their families.
People who defy the consultant get fired… or worse.
They soon realize they’re not just fighting for their jobs: They’re fighting for their lives.
“If Craig Horne hadn’t checked his email immediately after waking up, if he’d simply left his work at work…he wouldn’t have known about the staff meeting.”
The Other Black Girl – Zakiya Dalila Harris
Psychological workplace horror
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.
Having joined Wagner Books to honor the legacy of Burning Heart, a novel written and edited by two Black women, she had thought that this animosity was a relic of the past. Is Nella ready to take on the fight of a new generation?
“A note, slipped under my door in the dead of night by a Black writer I’d idolized for much of my youth: You couldn’t just let things be?”
Secret Santa – Andrew Shaffer
Supernatural workplace horror
Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre.
As soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her co-workers’ mean-spirited pranks. The hazing reaches its peak during the company’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a demonic-looking object that she recognizes but doesn’t understand.
Suddenly, her coworkers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents akin to a George Romero movie, and Lussi suspects that her gift is involved.
With the help of her former author, the flamboyant Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the cursed object in her possession before it destroys the company, and her soul.
“The gift that keeps on giving.”
The Summer Job – Adam Cesare
Killer workplace horror
Insane innkeepers, cannibalistic cooks: the staff of the Brant Hotel would like to meet you!
Massive nights, picturesque days: there is nothing Claire doesn’t love about her summer job in Mission, Massachusetts.
Claire is just trying to keep her head down and start a new life after burning out in the city, but those kids out in the woods seem like they throw awesome ragers.
It’s only once she’s in too deep that she discovers the real tourist trade that keeps the town afloat, it’s then that her soul-searching in Mission becomes a fight for her life.
“’Toss him to the flames,’ Hugh heard Davey’s voice boom.”
Published: 20 August 2024
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