Bram Stoker Awards 2018 Nominees

The nominees for the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards are out! The final ballot was announced by the Horror Writers Association and the presentation will take place on 11th May. The Bram Stoker Award is awarded for superior achievement in horror writing in novels, poetry, screenplays and others.

I admit I haven’t read any of the books nominated so I’m pleased to put them on my to-read list (it gets longer every day!). I’ve compiled the nominees for two of the eleven categories below, check them out!

Superior Achievement in a Novel

The Hunger by Alma Katsu | Review

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone–or something–is stalking them.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves “What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased…and very hungry?”

Glimpse by Jonathan Maberry

Rain is a young woman trying to rebuild herself after years of drug addiction and abuse. Ten years ago, at age sixteen, she gave up her baby after the father, her first love, dies in Iraq. Now, three years clean and on the way to a job interview, Rain borrows a pair of reading glasses from an old lady on a Brooklyn train. The lenses are cracked and through the crack she catches a glimpse of a little boy running and screaming. The boy looks so much like Rain’s dead lover. Like their son must look now.

Rain realizes that the glasses give her quick glimpses of her lost son, Dylan, who needs her to find him. But how does a recovering junkie fight supernatural monsters? And how far will one woman go to save her lost son?

Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman

Carol Evers is a woman with a dark secret. She has died many times . . . but her many deaths are not final: They are comas, a waking slumber indistinguishable from death, each lasting days.

Only two people know of Carol’s eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune. The other is her lost love, the infamous outlaw James Moxie. And all the while, awake and aware, Carol fights to free herself from the crippling darkness that binds her—summoning her own fierce will to survive. As the players in this drama of life and death fight to decide her fate, Carol must in the end battle to save herself.

Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker

It is 1868, and a twenty-one-year-old Bram Stoker waits in a desolate tower to face an indescribable evil. Armed only with crucifixes, holy water, and a rifle, he prays to survive a single night, the longest of his life.

A sickly child, Bram spent his early days bedridden in his parents’ Dublin home, tended to by his caretaker, a young woman named Ellen Crone. When a string of strange deaths occur in a nearby town, Bram and his sister Matilda detect a pattern of bizarre behavior by Ellen — a mystery that deepens chillingly until Ellen vanishes suddenly from their lives. Years later, Matilda returns from studying in Paris to tell Bram the news that she has seen Ellen — and that the nightmare they’ve thought long ended is only beginning.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay | Review

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

Superior Achievement in a First Novel

What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine

Maisie Cothay has never known the feel of human flesh: born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, she has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father, an anthropologist who sees her as more experiment than daughter, has warned Maisie not to venture into the wood. What he does not tell Maisie is that for over a millennium her female ancestors have also vanished into the wood, never to emerge—for she is descended from a long line of cursed women.

But one day Maisie’s father disappears, and Maisie must venture beyond the walls of her carefully constructed life to find him. Away from her home and the wood for the very first time, she encounters a strange world filled with wonder and deception. For only there can Maisie finally reckon with her power and come to understand the wildest parts of herself

I Am the River by T.E. Grau | Review

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare that he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs.

The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste | Review

It’s the summer of 1980 in Cleveland, Ohio, and Phoebe Shaw and her best friend Jacqueline have just graduated high school. Across the city, abandoned factories populate the skyline; at the shore, one strong spark, and the Cuyahoga River might catch fire. But none of that compares to what’s happening in their own west side neighborhood. The girls Phoebe and Jacqueline have grown up with are changing. One by one, the girls’ bodies wither away, their fingernails turning to broken glass, and their bones exposed like corroded metal beneath their flesh.

Nobody can explain what’s happening or why—except perhaps the Rust Maidens themselves. Whispering in secret, they know more than they’re telling, and Phoebe realizes her former friends are quietly preparing for something that will tear their neighborhood apart.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage | Review

Meet Hanna. She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette. She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette’s husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.

The Moore House by Tony Tremblay | Review

Three excommunicated nuns, Nora, Agnes, and Celeste, join a paranormal unit sanctioned by the Catholic Church, in the hopes for redemption in God’s eyes. When their boss, Father MacLeod, is persuaded to investigate a house in a small New Hampshire town, the three women are chosen to assess these claims. Goffstown police files detail numerous extraordinary occurrences at the Moore house, including seven gruesome, unsolved killings.

For this reason, the three empaths are instructed to not enter the dwelling, but to employ their abilities while circling outside the house. Nora, Agnes, and Celeste proclaim it free of supernatural forces, but they are wrong… dead wrong.


See the rest of the Bram Stoker Awards 2018 nominees here.

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