Like Father: 12 Horror Books about Fatherhood

Downpour by Christopher Hawkins

A sudden storm appears above an isolated farmhouse in rural Illinois, bringing with it a relentless rain. A rain that eats away at everything it touches. A rain that turns people into monsters.

Trapped inside his crumbling home, a father must do everything he can to keep his family from falling apart. But the rain calls to them, and not everyone wants to stay inside. Haunted by memories of his tragic childhood, he must put aside his painful past and find a way to keep them all safe.

Naomi’s Room by Jonathan Aycliffe

Charles and Laura are a happily married couple who live in Cambridge with their daughter Naomi. One day, Charles sets off with Naomi on a Christmas Eve shopping trip. By the end of the day, all Charles and his wife have left is police sympathy. For Naomi has disappeared. Days later, her murdered body is discovered. But is she dead?

In a howling story of past and present day hell, Jonathan Aycliffe’s haunting psychological masterpiece is guaranteed to make you sink to untold depths of teeth-shaking terror.

It Eats Us From the Inside by Antonija Mežnarić (Excerpt)

The only reason Doris agreed to go back to her hometown on the Northern Adriatic coast was her wife’s insistence to go and visit her father, slowly dying from a mysterious illness that eats at him from the inside.

But under the surface of the family reunion lie old tales and hidden regret, while from the sea comes a creeping threat to the town and beyond, slowly but surely spreading farther from the coast.

Taken at the tide of change, nothing and no one will stay the same.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley (Review)

The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place.

Convinced Ewan still lives there in some form, Juliette seeks the help of the Beacons, a seemingly benevolent group of occultists. Richard, to try and keep the boy out of his mind, has turned his attention to the field opposite the house, where he patiently digs the barren dirt in search of a legendary oak tree. But as they delve further into their grief, both uncover more than they set out to.

The Night Parade by Ronald Malfi

They call it Wanderer’s Folly–a disease of delusions, of daydreams and nightmares. A plague threatening to wipe out the human race.

After two years of creeping decay, David Arlen woke up one morning thinking that the worst was over. By midnight, he’s bleeding and terrified, his wife is dead, and he’s on the run in a stolen car with his eight-year-old daughter, who may be the key to a cure.

Ellie knows David is lying to her. Lying about her mother. Lying about what they’re running from. And lying about what he sees when he takes his eyes off the road…

Cunning Folk by Adam L.G. Nevill (Review)

Their new home is a fixer-upper. Deep in rural South West England, Tom and his family are miles from anyone familiar. His wife, Fiona, was never convinced that buying the house was a good idea. Not least because the previous owner committed suicide.

When hostilities break out with the elderly couple next door, Tom’s dreams of future contentment are threatened by a campaign of petty damage and disruption. Increasingly isolated and tormented, Tom risks losing his home, everyone dear to him and his mind. Because, surely, only the mad would suspect that the oddballs across the hedgerow command unearthly powers.

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.

One afternoon, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he wins her over almost instantly. Then he tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.” Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin.

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion.

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver (Review)

1906: Wake’s End is the home of Edmund Stearn and his family – a historian, scholar and an upstanding member of the local community. But Edmund dominates his family tyrannically, in particular daughter Maud. Maud’s mother dies in childbirth and she’s left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father.

During a walk through the local church yard, Edmund discovers a painting, a ‘doom’, taken from the church. It’s horrifying in its depiction of hell, and Edmund wants nothing more to do with it. But the doom keeps returning to his mind. And when he lies awake at night, he hears a scratching sound – like claws on the wooden floor…

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food— and each other.

The Road is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, he left his son a box of books and strange recurring dreams. Now Apollo is a father himself, and as he and his wife, Emma, settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo’s old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd. But before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act and vanishes.

Thus begins Apollo’s quest to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His odyssey takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever.

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. When he comes across an ad for a caretaker for the Masson House, Eric hopes they have finally caught a lucky break. The owner of the “most haunted place in Texas” is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there.

The job calls to Eric, not just because of the huge payout, but because he needs access to the secrets of the house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it will help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, too afraid to stop running…

No Road Home by John Fram (Review)

For years, single father Toby Tucker has done his best to keep his son, Luca, safe from the bigotry of the world. But when Toby marries Alyssa Wright — the granddaughter of a famed televangelist — he can’t imagine the world that he and Luca are about to enter.

A trip to the Wright family’s compound soon turns hellish when Toby realizes that Alyssa and her family have dangerous plans for his son. When his son starts describing a spectral figure in a black suit lurking around the house with unfinished business in mind, Toby realizes this family has more to conceal — and to fear. As the Wrights close in on Luca, no one is prepared for the lengths Toby will go to protect his son.