What To Read

There’s nothing like staying up all night with a page-turning horror book during spooky season. Whether you’re looking to dip your toe into the contemporary horror lit boom–or you’re already a fan of the genre and looking for a new author crush–allow us to introduce you to award-winning author Paul Tremblay. His well-crafted narratives of sinister characters and supernatural forces will creep you out in the most addictive way. 

This is not an exhaustive list of work by Tremblay, who has written an impressive body of work including some collaborations with other authors. This is a super fan's guide for how to wind your way through his work if you are new to this literary horror master.

 Read this one first. Trigger warning if you spend weekends at a secluded lakeside cabin. 

The Cabin at the End of the World (2018)

Adapted by M. Night Shyamalan into the 2023 film Knock at the Cabin, starring Tony Award- and Grammy Award-winner Jonathan Groff as one of the leads alongside Dave Bautista and Fleabag star Ben Alridge, this novel is a perfect summer horror read. It follows a young girl, Wen, and her dads Eric and Andrew, who are spending the summer at a secluded lakeside cabin in New Hampshire when there’s a knock at the door and a man demands to speak to her parents... (The novel has some significant differences from its film adaptation, and as always, we recommend reading first.)

“Read Paul Tremblay’s new novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, and you might not sleep for a week. Longer. It will shape your nightmares for months—that’s pretty much guaranteed. That’s what it’s built for. And there’s a very, very good chance you’ll never get it out of your head again.” — NPR

Skip Netflix and spend the weekend with this recent, highly acclaimed release 

Horror Movie (2024)

A spooky twist on the “cursed film” genre that follows a group of young, guerilla filmmakers who spend four weeks making a notorious, disturbing art-house film in June 1993. Strangely, only three scenes are ever released to the public, but it builds a cultish fan base, and, three decades later, Hollywood plans an extravagant remake.

“In Horror Movie, horror master Paul Tremblay plays with perception and reality, fiction and real life opens and swallows us whole. This nesting doll of a novel, a book that Judy Blume and Philip K. Dick might have jointly conceived, tests the limits of what a horror thriller can be, and it succeeds thrillingly.” — Boston Globe

The nostalgic 80s music vibes are a nice touch in this metafictional horror masterpiece.

The Pallbearers Club (2022)

This “mind-bending horror novel…is a welcome casket of chills to the shoulder,” wrote the Washington Post in a review when the book came out in 2022. The book is structured as a memoir by Art Barbara who, at age 17, started a volunteer pallbearers club for poorly attended funerals. He finally starts making some friends, including one girl who thinks the enterprise is super cool, and all seems normal until she starts taking Polaroid pictures of corpses. Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing his memoir about the club, but, somehow, his friend from the past gets a hold of it - and she has some edits of her own to make.

For zombie fans who can’t wait for Season 2 of The Last of Us 

Survivor Song (2020)

Massachusetts has been decimated by a rabies-like virus spread by saliva, which only needs to incubate for an hour or less. As the state is placed under curfew, society begins to come apart at the seams. In this take on the epidemic-novel with a spin on the zombie story, an 8-month pregnant woman has been bit by a zombie and calls on her friend Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, who has less than an hour to get to the hospital and get the rabies vaccine to fight for her life.

“Gripping... a thinking person’s thriller, interspersed with moments of hilarity... a buzz-saw of a novel.” — Los Angeles Times

Raymond Chandler meets reality TV in this case of a debutante who’s lost the most unusual thing–her fingers  

The Little Sleep (2009)

Tremblay’s homage to Raymond Chandler follows a private investigator who can’t stay awake. Mark Genevich is a south Boston PI who happens to have severe narcolepsy, suffering from hallucinations that feel like waking dreams. One day, Mark’s presented with a case that’s so strange–a reality star who says her fingers have been stolen–he’s not sure if it was real or not. The Little Sleep is “fast, smart, and completely satisfying,” says author Stewart O’Nan.

A snarky, page-turning follow-up that shows what happens when the dysfunctional PI actually tries to confront his demons  

No Sleep Till Wonderland (2010)

In this sequel to The Little Sleep, Southie PI Mark Genevich returns... in group therapy. His mother-cum-landlord is convinced therapy will help his narcolepsy, so he decides to give it a shot. When Gus, a new group therapy friend, wants to go on a two-day bender with him, Mark finds himself being asked for a favor: to protect a female friend who’s being stalked. 

A Bram Stoker Award Winner

A Head Full of Ghosts (2015)

Stephen King said this novel “scared the living hell out of me,” which might illuminate why it also won the 2015 Bram Stoker award for best novel. Reminiscent of Mark Z. Danielweski’s House of Leaves and John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In, the novel tells the story of the Barretts, a normal New England family who are torn apart when their teenage daughter, Marjorie, begins to seemingly suffer from acute schizophrenia.

“[A] literary horror novel . . . Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts [is] one of the most frightening books I’ve read this, or any, year. . . . Despite the skill with which Tremblay wields his demons, real or otherwise, whether or not Marjorie is actually possessed ends up being the point . . . and Tremblay is elegantly, carefully ambiguous about the situation.” — The Guardian

A British Fantasy Award Winner for Best Horror Novel

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (2017)

This British Fantasy Award for best horror novel begins one summer night when Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that her 13-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished from a local park. She and her daughter, Kate, feel helpless and their frustration builds as local law enforcement proves useless. Simultaneously, the last people to see him alive, Tommy’s friends Josh and Luis, might not be telling the whole truth about the night they spent at the local landmark nicknamed “Devil’s Rock.”

For major fans: Get the inside scoop on Tremblay’s books with this collection featuring characters and prequels to two of his novels 

Growing Things and Other Stories (2019)

In Tremblay’s first collection of short stories, 19 pieces of short fiction explore the murky depths of Tremblay’s imagination. In one Bram Stoker Award-nominated short story, “The Teacher,” a student is forced to watch a disturbing video that will haunt her and her classmates’ lives. There are also stories that link to Tremblay’s previous novels like A Head Full of Ghosts, a prequel to Disappearance at Devil's Rock.

Monster, monsters everywhere populate Tremblay’s recent, wide-ranging short story collection

The Beast You Are: Stories (2023)

In fifteen stories, Tremblay explores monsters of all kinds. In “The Dead Thing,” a middle-schooler struggles to deal with her parents’ substance addiction and break-up. In the title story, the fate of a village, a dog, and a cat are intertwined with a giant monster who returns every 30 years.

Hardcore fans of Tremblay can also go in search of a few short pieces he wrote as Amazon Originals, which we don’t carry at Tertulia. Plus, a few of Tremblay’s earlier works are out of print, such as the acclaimed Swallowing A Donkey’s Eye, so you’ll need to scour your local library or ask your nearest horror book aficionado if you can borrow a copy. Stay tuned for Tremblay's contribution to a forthcoming anthology (August 2025) dedicated to original short stories inspired by Stephen King's The Stand.