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The Best Horror Movies to Stream

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Updated for October 2020

The world of streaming horror movies can be an overwhelming place.

Let’s say you’ve got your Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and HBO Max subscriptions all set and ready. Now you want to get terrified with the best horror movies you can find in time for Halloween. But there are so many options! What’s a horror addict to do?

Here you’ll find the master list. That’s right, we’ve hand-selected only the absolute best and most terrifying horror movies available on all the major streaming services and combined them here for your streaming (or screaming) pleasure.

Be sure to let us know if you make it through all 31!

Apostle

Available on: Netflix

Apostle comes from acclaimed The Raid director Gareth Evans and it’s his take on the horror genre. Spoiler alert: it’s a good one.

Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, a British man in the early 1900s who must rescue his sister, Jennifer, from the clutches of a murderous cult. Thomas successfully infiltrates the cult led by the charismatic Malcom Howe (Michael Sheen) and begins to ingratiate himself with the strange folks obsessed with bloodletting. Thomas soon comes to find that the object of the cult’s religious fervor may be more real than he’d prefer.

Apostle is a wild, atmospheric, and very gory good time.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter

Available on: Netflix

Some kids dream about being left overnight or even a week at certain locations to play, like say a mall or a Chuck E. Cheese. One place that no one wants to be left alone in, however, is a Catholic boarding school.

That’s the situation that Rose (Lucy Boynton) and Kat (Kiernan Shipka) find themselves in in the atmospheric and creepy The Blackcoat’s Daughter. When Rose and Kat’s parents are unable to pick them up for winter break, the two are forced to spend the week at their dingy Catholic boarding school. If that weren’t bad enough, Rose fears that she may be pregnant…oh, and the nuns might all be Satanists.

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The Blackcoat’s Daughter is an excellent debut directorial outing from Oz Perkins and another step on the right horror path for scream queens Shipka and Emma Roberts.

The Cabin in the Woods

Available on: Amazon Prime

A remote cabin in the woods is one of the most frequently occurring settings in all of horror. What better location for teenagers to be tormented by monsters, demons, or murderous hillbillies? Writer/Director Joss Whedon takes that tried and true setting and uses it as a jumping off points for one of the most successful metatextual horror movies in recent memory.

Like you would expect, The Cabin in the Woods features five college friends (all representing certain youthful archetypes, of course) renting a….well, a cabin in the woods. Soon things begin to go awry in a very traditional horror movie way. But then The Cabin in the Woods begins doling out some of the many tricks it has up its sleeve. This is a fascinating, very funny, and yet still creepy breakdown of horror tropes that any horror fan can enjoy.

The Changeling (1980)

Available on: Shudder

A classic haunted house ghost story that frequently makes horror best of lists The Changeling sees a bereaved composer move into a creepy mansion that’s been vacant for 12 years. Vacant that is, except for the spirit of a little boy who met an untimely death…

An unravelling mystery with a sense of intrigue and pathos that draws you into the narrative, all the way to the sad and disturbing final act revelation.

City of the Living Dead

Available on: Amazon Prime

Italian horror director Lucio Fulci kicked off his famous “Gates of Hell” trilogy with this gruesome, crude but surreal 1980 gorefest, in which a reporter (Christopher George) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl) struggle to stop those gates from opening and letting a horde of hungry undead into the world.

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Fulci loosely based the movie on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, vying for the latter’s brooding atmosphere while indulging in his own trademark splatter. The results are somewhat slapdash but a must-see for Italian horror fans. Followed by the much better The Beyond (1980) and House by the Cemetery (1981).

The Dead Zone

Available on: Amazon Prime

The Dead Zone strangely remains both one of Stephen King’s more underrated movie adaptations as well as one of director David Cronenberg’s more unsung efforts. Yet it ends up being among the best from both author and auteur, while also providing star Christopher Walken with one of his most moving, complex performances to date.

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Walken’s Johnny Smith awakens from a coma to find out he’s lost five years of his life but gained a frightening talent to touch people and see both their deepest secrets and their future. Whether to use that power to impact the world around him is the choice he must face in this bittersweet, eerie and heartfelt film, which found Cronenberg moving away from his trademark body horror for the first time.

Doctor Sleep

Available on: HBO Max

Let’s be up front about this: Doctor Sleep is not The Shining. For some that fact will make this sequel’s existence unforgivable. Yet there is a stoic beauty and creepy despair just waiting to be experienced by those willing to accept Doctor Sleep on its own terms.

Directed by one of the genre’s modern masters, Mike Flanagan, the movie had the unenviable task of combining one of King’s most disappointing texts with the opposing sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick’s singular The Shining adaptation.

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And yet, the result is an effective thriller about lifelong regrets and trauma personified by the ghostly specters of the Overlook Hotel. But they’re far from the only horrors here. Rebecca Ferguson is absolutely chilling as the smiling villain Rose the Hat, and the scene where she and other literal energy vampires descend upon young Jacob Tremblay is the stuff of nightmares. Genuinely, it’s a scene you won’t forget, for better or worse….

The Evil Dead

Available on: Netflix

1981’s The Evil Dead is nothing less than one of the biggest success stories in horror movie history.

Written and directed on a shoestring budget by Sam Raimi, The Evil Dead uses traditional horror tropes to its great advantage, creating a scary, funny, and almost inconceivably bloody story about five college students who encounter a spot of bother in a cabin in the middle of the woods. That spot of bother includes the unwitting release of a legion of demons upon the world.

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The Evil Dead rightfully made stars of its creator and lead Bruce Campbell. It was also the jumping off point for a successful franchise that includes two sequels, a remake, a TV show, and more.

A Field in England

Available on: Amazon Prime

2013’s A Field in England presents compelling evidence that more horror movies should be shot in black and white.

Directed by British director Ben Wheatley, A Field in England is a kaleidoscope of trippy, cerebral horror. The film takes place in 1648, during the English Civil War. A group of soldiers is taken in by a kindly man, who is soon revealed to be an alchemist. The alchemist takes the soldiers to a vast field of mushrooms where they are subjected to a series of mind-altering, nightmarish visions.

A Field in England is aggressively weird, creative, and best of all clocks in at exactly 90 minutes.

Fright Night

Available on: Amazon Prime

Screenwriter-turned-director Tom Holland lets a jaded, smarmy vampire named Jerry Dandridge loose in suburbia and watches the blood spurt in this beloved ‘80s horror staple.

Chris Sarandon brings a nice combination of amusement and menace to the role of the bloodsucker, while Planet of the Apes veteran Roddy McDowall is endearing as a washed-up horror host recruited into a real-life horror show. Much of Fright Night is teen-oriented and somewhat dated, but it still works as a sort of precursor to later post-modern horror gems like Scream.

Green Room

Available on: Netflix

Green Room is a shockingly conventional horror movie despite not having all of the elements we traditionally associate with them. There are no monsters or the supernatural in Green Room.

Instead all monsters are replaced by vengeful neo-Nazis and the haunted house is replaced by a skinhead punk music club in the middle of nowhere in the Oregon woods. The band The Aint Rights, led by bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) are locked in the green room of club after witnessing a murder and must fight their way out.

Hellraiser (1987)

Available on: Shudder

Directed by Clive Barker based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser is an infernal body horror featuring S&M demons who’ve found a way out of a dark dimension and want to take you back there.

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This is the movie which introduced chief Cenobite Pinhead (played by Doug Bradley) – who would return for seven more Hellraiser sequels. But the first is of course, remains the edgiest and the best. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is also available.

Hereditary

Available on: Amazon Prime

Between Hereditary and The Haunting of Hill House 2018 was a great year for turning familial trauma into horror.

Written and directed by Ari Aster, Hereditary follows the Graham family as they deal with the death of their secretive grandmother. As Annie Graham (Toni Collette) comes to terms with the loss, she begins to realize that she may have inherited a mental illness from her late mother…or something worse.

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Hereditary is terrifying because it asks a deceptively simple but truly creepy question: what do we really inherit from our family?

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Available on: Shudder

Wes Craven’s 1977 cult classic sees an extended family become stranded in the desert when their trailer breaks down and they start to get picked off by cannibals living in the hills. It’s brutally violent but it also has things to say about the nature of violence, as the seemingly civilized Carter family turn feral. The film was remade in 2006 but the original is still the best.

Horror of Dracula

Available on: HBO Max

Replacing Bela Lugosi as Dracula was not easily done in 1958. It’s still not easily done now. Which makes the fact that Christopher Lee turned Bram Stoker’s vampire into his own screen legend in Horror of Dracula all the more remarkable. Filmed in vivid color by director Terence Fisher, Horror of Dracula brought gushing bright red to the movie vampire, which up until then had been mostly relegated to black and white shadows.

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With its penchant for gore and heaving bosoms, Horror of Dracula set the template for what became Hammer Film Productions’ singular brand of horror iconography, but it’s also done rather tastefully the first time out here, not least of all because of Lee bring this aggressively cold-blooded version of Stoker’s monster to life. It’s all business with this guy.

Conversely, Abraham Van Helsing was never more dashing than when played by Peter Cushing in this movie. The film turned both into genre stars, and paved the way for a career of doing this dance time and again.

The House of the Devil

Available on: Amazon Prime

Indie horror auteur Ti West’s low-budget creepfest is a homage to 1980s horror yet plays it straight; he sets out to make a movie with the feel of genre films from that era without making self-aware in-jokes and references — and he mostly succeeds.

But The House of the Devil is also the definition of a “slow burn”: very little happens for much of the first hour (save a jolt here and there) and then the third act explodes into a paroxysm of murder, gore and Satanic horror. That makes the film feel a little off-balance, although in the end it all becomes quite unnerving.

House on Haunted Hill

Available on: Amazon Prime

What would you do for $10,000? How about surviving a night in a mansion haunted by murder victims and owned by a psychotic millionaire? Seems like a party trick until people actually start dying.

Vincent Price is the master and mastermind of a house that suddenly makes everyone homicidal—but the real pièce de résistance is what dances out of a vat of flesh-eating acid.

Some vintage horror never dies, and this 1959 classic is immortal.

Hush

Available on: Netflix

In his follow-up to the cult classic Oculus, Mike Flanagan makes one of the cleverer horror movies on this list. Hush is a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse with the typical nightmare of a home invasion occurring, yet it also turns conventions of that familiar terror on its head. For instance, the savvy angle about this movie is Kate Siegel (who co-wrote the movie with Flanagan) plays Maddie, a deaf and mute woman living in the woods alone. Like Audrey Hepburn’s blind woman from the progenitor of home invasion stories, Wait Until Dark (1967), Maddie is completely isolated when she is marked for death by a menacing monster in human flesh.

Further, like the masked villains of so many more generic home invasion movies (we’re looking square at you, Strangers), John Gallagher Jr.’s “Man” wears a mask as he sneaks into her house. However, the functions of this story are laid bare since we actually keep an eye on what the “Man” is doing at all times, and how he is getting or not getting into the house in any given scene. He is not aided by filmmakers who’ve given him faux-supernatural and omnipotent abilities like other versions of these stories, and he’s not an “Other;” he is a man who does take his mask off, and his lust for murder is not so much fetishized as shown for the repulsive behavior that it is. And still, Maddie proves to be both resourceful and painfully ill-equipped to take him on in this tense battle of wills.

The Invitation

Available on: Netflix

Seeing your ex is always uncomfortable, but imagine if your ex-wife invited you to a dinner party with her new husband? That is just about the least creepy thing in this new, taut thriller nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Indeed, in The Invitation Logan Marshall-Green’s Will is invited by his estranged wife (Tammy Blanchard) for dinner with her new hubby David (Michael Huisman of Game of Thrones). David apparently wanted to extend the bread-breaking offer personally since he has something he wants to invite both Will and all his other guests into joining. And it isn’t a game of Scrabble…

Intense, strange, and not what you expect, this is one of the more inventive thrillers of 2016.

Midsommar

Available on: Amazon Prime

It’s hard to categorize Midsommar, Ari Aster’s follow-up to his absolutely terrifying horror debut, Hereditary. Part straight up horror, part The Wicker Man, and part anthropological study, Midsommar seems to occupy many genres all at once. Aster himself called it a “break up” movie. But whatever genre Midsommar is, it is a brilliant, and at times deeply disturbing film.

Florence Pugh stars as Dani, a young woman trying to heal in the wake of an enormous tragedy. Dani follows her boyfriend, Christian, and his annoying friends to an important midsummer festival deep in the heart of Sweden. Christian and company are there partly to get high and have fun and also partly to study the unique, isolated culture for their respective theses. To say that they get more than they bargained for is an understatement. But Dani may just end up getting exactly what she needs.

Night of the Living Dead

Available on: Amazon Prime, HBO Max

George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic The Night of the Living Dead messed up the minds of late ’60s moviegoers as much as it messed with every horror movie that followed. Shot on gritty black and white stock, the film captures the desperate urgency of a documentary shot at the end of the world. It is a tale of survival, an allegory for the Vietnam War and racism and suspenseful as hell freezing over.

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Night of the Living Dead set a new standard for gore, even though you could tell some of the bones the zombies were munching came from a local butcher shop. But what grabs at you are the unexpected shocks. Long before The Walking Dead, Romero caught the terror that could erupt from any character, at any time.

They’re coming to get you. There’s one of them now!

Nosferatu

Available on: Amazon Prime

Nothing beats a classic, and that’s exactly what Nosferatu is. As the unofficial 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this German Expressionist masterpiece was almost lost to the ages when the filmmakers lost a copyright lawsuit with Stoker’s widow (who had a point). As a result, most copies were destroyed…but a precious few survived

This definitive horror movie from F.W. Murnau might be a silent picture, but it’s a haunting one where vampirism is used as a metaphor for plague and the Black Death sweeping across Europe. When Count Orlock comes to Berlin, he brings rivers of rats with him and the most repellent visage ever presented by a cinematic bloodsucker.

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The sexy vampires would come later, starting with 1931’s more polished vision of Count Dracula as legendarily played by Bela Lugosi, but Max Schreck is buried under gobs of makeup in Nosferatu making him resemble an emaciated cadaver. Murnau plays with shadow and light to create an intoxicating environment of fever dream repressions. But he also creates the most haunting cinematic image of a vampire yet put on screen.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Available on: Amazon, Hulu

After the classic Stephen King novel of the same name and Mary Lambert’s 1989 movie, what could there possibly be left to say about Pet Sematary? Quite a lot actually! Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer breathe new life into this old tale…not unlike a certain “sematary” itself.

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Jason Clarke stars as Louis Creed, an ER doctor from Boston who moves his family to rural Ludlow, Maine to live a quieter life. Shortly into their stay, Louis and his wife Rachel (Amy Semeitz) experience an unthinkable tragedy. That’s ok though as neighbor Jud Crandall (John Lithgow) knows a very peculiar place that can help.

Phantasm

Available on: Amazon Prime

Director and writer Don Coscarelli has said that this 1979 cult classic was inspired by a recurring dream — and we believe him, since Phantasm has the surreal, not-quite-there feel of an inescapable nightmare from start to finish.

With its bizarre plot about a funeral parlor acting as a front to send undead slave labor to another dimension, the iconic image of the Tall Man, killer dwarves and those deadly silver spheres, Phantasm was and is like no other movie of its era.

Poltergeist

Available on: Netflix

Before there was Insidious, The Conjuring, or a myriad of other “suburban family vs. haunted house” movies, there was Poltergeist. Taking ghost stories out of the Gothic setting of ancient castles or decrepit mansions and hotels, Poltergeist moved the spirits into the middle class American heartland of the 1980s. With a smart screenplay by no less than Steven Spielberg (and, according to some, his ghost direction), Poltergeist finds the Freeling family privy to a disquieting fact about their new home: It’s built on top of a cemetery!

You probably know the story, and if you don’t you can guess it after decades of copycats that followed, but this special effects-laden spectacle still holds up, especially as a thriller that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Fair warning though, if your kids have a tree outside their window or a clown doll under their bed, we don’t take responsibility for the years of therapy bills this may inflict!

Ready or Not

Available on: HBO Max

The surprise horror joy of 2019, Ready or Not was a wicked breath of fresh air from the creative team Radio Silence. With a star-making lead turn by Samara Weaving, the movie is essentially a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game where a bride is being hunted by her groom’s entire wedding party on the night of their nuptials.

It’s a nutty premise that has a delicious (and broad) satirical subtext about the indulgences and eccentricities of the rich, as the would-be extended family of Grace (Weaving) is only pursuing her because they’re convinced a grandfather made a deal with the Devil for their wealth–and to keep it they must step on those beneath them every generation. Well step, shoot, stab, and ritualistically sacrifice in this cruelest game of hide and seek ever. Come for the gonzo high-concept and stay for the supremely satisfying ending.

Sweetheart

Available on: Netflix

Don’t let the name fool you, Sweetheart is very much a horror movie. What kind of horror movie, you ask? Well, after a boat sinks during a storm, young Jennifer Remming (Kiersey Clemons) is the only survivor. She washes ashore a small island and gets to work burying her friends, creating shelter, and foraging for food. You know: deserted island stuff.

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Soon, however, Jenn will come to find that the island is not as deserted as she previously thought. There’s something out there – something big, dangerous, and hungry. Sweetheart is like Castaway meets Predator and it’s another indie horror hit for Blumhouse.

The Tenant

Available on: Amazon Prime

Roman Polanski, in addition to being a creep and outright sex criminal, has a grand fascination with apartments, directing an unofficial “Apartment Trilogy” with Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Tenant. And it’s not hard to see why. There is something a little strange about dozens if not hundreds of relative strangers all calling the same place “home.”

1976’s The Tenant is the culmination of Polanski’s obsession with communal living and in some ways is the creepiest. Polanski stars as Trelkovsky, a paranoid young file clerk who is on the verge of succumbing to the constant dread he feels. Things are exacerbated when Trelkovsky moves into a Parisian apartment and discovers the previous occupant killed herself. What follows is a tense and trippy exploration of fear itself.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Available on: Shudder

You’ve probably seen this one already, but this founding father of the slasher genre is a bit of a fairy tale when glimpsed at the right light. Some dumb kids wander into the wilderness, far away from the safety of civilization, on a trip to their grandparents’ home.

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But instead of reaching their destination, they wind up on the dinner table for the “Other,” who in this case is a redneck family of cannibals with a crossdressing serial killer who’s weapon of choice has an electric motor that makes a sweet hum as its blades tear into your flesh. When viewed like that, it might be worth seeing all over again, eh?

Under the Shadow

Available on: Netflix

This recent 2016 effort could not possibly be more timely as it sympathizes, and terrorizes, an Iranian single mother and child in 1980s Tehran. Like a draconian travel ban, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her son Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) are malevolently targeted by a force of supreme evil.

This occurs after Dorsa’s father, a doctor, is called away to serve the Iranian army in post-revolution and war-torn Iran. In his absence evil seeps in… as does a quality horror movie with heightened emotional weight.

Underworld

Available on: Netflix

No one is going to mistake Underworld for high art. That obvious fact makes the lofty pretensions of these movies all the more endearing. With a cast of high-minded British theatrical actors, many trained in the Royal Shakespeare Company, at least the early movies in this Gothic horror/action mash-up series were overflowing with histrionic self-importance and grandiosity.

Take the first and best in the series. In the margins you have Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen portraying the patriarchs of warring factions of vampires and werewolves, and a love story caught between their violence that’s shamelessly modeled on Romeo and Juliet. It’s ridiculous, especially with Scott Speedman playing one party. But when the other is the oft-underrated Kate Beckinsale it doesn’t matter.

The movie’s bombast becomes its first virtue, and Len Wiseman’s penchant for glossy slick visuals, which would look at home in the sexiest Eurotrash graphic novel at the bookstore, is its other. Combined they make this a guilty good time. Though we recommend not venturing past the second or third movie.

Available on: HBO Max

Jordan Peele’s debut feature Get Out was a near instant horror classic so anticipation was high for his follow-up. Thanks to an excellent script, Peele’s deep appreciation of pop culture, and some stellar performances, Us more than lives up to the hype.

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Us tells the story of the Wilson family from Santa Cruz. After a seemingly normal trip to a summer home and the beach, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids are confronted by their own doppelgangers, are weird, barely verbal, and wearing red. That’s just the beginning of the horror at play for the Wilsons and the world. Fittingly, Us feels like a feature length Twilight Zone concept done right.

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maddie-grove · 5 years

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Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up (July/August)

PLAYLIST

"Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson (The Wonder)

“The Lusty Month of May” from Camelot (Between a Highlander and a Hard Place)

“Blood on My Name” by The Brothers Bright (Vampires in the Lemon Grove)

“Too Good at Goodbyes” by Sam Smith (A Prince on Paper)

“All I See Is You” by Dusty Springfield (The End of Everything)

“Your Song” by Elton John (Patience and Sarah)

“Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” by Diana Ross (Touchy Subjects)

“When You’re Young and in Love” by the Marvelettes (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda)

“No Sleep Tonight” by the Faders (Can’t Escape Love)

“Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)” by Kim Weston (Bury Me Deep)

“Cold Bread” by Johnny Flynn (Fludd)

“Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen (The Rest of the Story)

“How Can I Meet Her?” by the Everly Brothers (Someone to Honor)

“A Matter of Trust” by Billy Joel (The Scandalous Secret of Abigail MacGregor)

BEST OF THE BI-MONTH

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (2016): Lib Wright, an English nurse who worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, is hired to observe Anna O’Donnell, an eleven-year-old Irish girl who claims to have not eaten for four months. Initially exasperated at the everyone’s credulity, Lib gradually realizes that there’s a lot more going on with Anna, her family, and her village than she thought...and that the girl may be in serious danger if she doesn’t intervene. Despite my love of Donoghue’s work, I put off reading this one for a while because the subject looked so grim. Although Donoghue does deal with difficult material, the growing relationship between prickly Lib and bright-but-haunted Anna makes the novel transcendent.

WORST OF THE BI-MONTH

Between a Highlander and Hard Place by Mary Wine (2018): After her highborn suitor shows his true colors, Athena Trappes sets fire to his house in self-defense and flees to Scotland. There she attracts the attention of Symon, Laird Grant, a melancholy widower. This Elizabethan romance has its moments, notably a lovely meet-cute at a May Day celebration, but it’s mostly dull with some irritating tropes.

REST OF THE BI-MONTH

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013): In this collection, Russell tells the stories of various oddities, including women who turn into silkworms, presidents who are reincarnated as horses, and, yes, vampires in the lemon grove. The collection is remarkably consistent, and Russell shows enormous range in it. My favorites are the utterly chilling prairie horror of “Proving Up,” the hilariously absurd “The Barn at the End of the Term,” and the heartbreaking “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis.”

A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole (2019): Nya Jerami has existed under a cloud of suspicion and gossip since her abusive father, an adviser to the king of Thesolo, was sent to prison for poisoning his political rivals. Eager to start her life properly but unsure how, Nya finds unexpected help from Johan van Braustein, the seemingly devil-may-care stepson of the king of a European micronation. This is my favorite contemporary romance I’ve ever read, with two dynamic, endearing protagonists and a strong sense of setting. Cole expertly blends realistic modern-day concerns with frothy wish fulfillment (plus a dash of fairy-tale Gothic).

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott (2011): When her best friend Evie disappears, thirteen-year-old Lizzie only has scanty clues regarding where or why. As she becomes more and more consumed with finding the answer, she discovers dark secrets underlying her seemingly placid 1980′s suburb. Of all the Abbott novels I’ve read, this is the simplest and perhaps the most disturbing. I didn’t love it, but it’s very effective.

Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller (1969): In 1810′s Connecticut, educated “spinster” Patience White finds herself intrigued by sweet, rough-hewn Sarah Dowling. Although their families contrive to keep them apart, they eventually make it to New York and start a farm together. Of the five f/f romance novels I’ve read, this is my very favorite. Miller captures the feel of early American literature very well, and the romance has a nice balance of tension and sweetness.

Touchy Subjects by Emma Donoghue (2006): This collection of short stories is, naturally enough, organized around “touchy subjects” like babies, domesticity, strangers, desire, and death. There are some jewels in this collection: the sad/funny “WritOr” (about a struggling author who takes on a resident-writer position at a rural college), the bittersweet “The Welcome” (about a naive young lesbian with a crush on a reserved trans woman), and the strangely uplifting “Enchantment” (about a rivalry between Cajun fishermen). There’s a lot of chaff to separate from the wheat, though; many of the stories are very slight.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (2015): Simon Spier, an upper-middle-class teen in suburban Atlanta, isn’t 100% sure why he hasn’t come out as gay to his liberal family or friends, but for now he prefers to keep his sexuality (and a flirtatious email correspondence with an anonymous boy called Blue) under wraps. When a classmate finds out the truth and blackmails Simon into setting him up with his friend Abby, that task becomes a lot more complicated. Despite the rather disturbing premise, this is a super-cute YA novel that I would have loved when I was a YA. (At twenty-eight, I still liked it a lot; it’s just got a sense of immediacy that was a little lost on me thanks to my relatively advanced age, but would’ve been very appealing to me at sixteen.)

Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole (2019): Regina Hobbs, highly successful proprietor of a website about nerdy stuff, has it all together, except she’s suffering from a wicked case of insomnia. She’s convinced that only the voice of Gustave Nguyen, a puzzle designer she got to know after tuning into his livestream, can get her to sleep, so she contacts him to see if she can have a recording of his voice. Even though they both think it’s kind of weird, her request gets them talking...and MORE. This is a short but absolutely delightful novella about two neat people hooking up. The stakes are low, but the tensions stemming from Regina’s family keeps things interesting.

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (2009): In the depths of the Great Depression, Marion Seeley finds herself alone in Phoenix while her morphine-addict husband chases redemption in Mexico. Working an administrative job at a local hospital, she falls in with party-girl nurse Louise, her TB-afflicted girlfriend Ginny, and (much to her sorrow) corrupt, handsome Joe Lanigan. Abbott’s historical crime novel takes a little while to heat up, but once it does it’s a very satisfying thriller. However, I was never convinced of Joe’s attractiveness even at a surface level, which was kind of an impediment to enjoying the story because Marion sure is.

Fludd by Hilary Mantel (1989): A mysterious stranger comes to a deeply Catholic, determinedly miserable English village in the 1950′s, claiming to be the new curate. While there, he greatly affects the lives of an alcoholic priest, his prim housekeeper, an unhappy young nun, and a pompous bishop. This is a highly peculiar, often enjoyable fable, although it drags quite a bit in the third quarter.

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen (2019): Emma, an anxious seventeen-year-old who lost her mom to addiction five years ago, ends up spending part of the summer with her seldom-seen maternal relatives, who own a downscale motel in a lake town. While there, she learns about her mother’s secret history, observes the tensions between her family’s working-class community and the upscale resort people across the lake, has a low-key romance with a childhood friend, and practices her driving. This novel isn’t among Sarah Dessen’s best--the ending is a little rushed, and the romance feels perfunctory--but the setting is cool and Emma is an interesting protagonist.

Someone to Honor by Mary Balogh (2019): Years after her dad’s bigamy was revealed, resulting in her de-legitimization, reserved Abigail Westcott shows no interest in trying to re-enter society, instead opting to hang out with her convalescing Napoleonic War veteran brother. Unfortunately, his surly friend, Lieutenant Gilbert Bennington, is also intent on keeping her brother company to avoid his own problems, and he and Abigail don’t exactly get along. They come to understand each other, though, and decide to take a chance on marriage when Gilbert finds himself in trouble. I found this Regency romance to be solid but overly somber (not an infrequent issue with Balogh). I never got a great sense of who Abigail was and, while I sympathized with Gil, I also found him very irritating at times.

The Scandalous Secret of Abigail MacGregor by Paula Quinn (2015): In the late 1700′s, Queen Anne summons Davina MacGregor, secret eldest daughter of James II (and, were she not Catholic, rightful ruler of Great Britain), to court. Because Davina is sickly, her daughter Abigail, who has ambitions of being clan chieftain, goes to court in her place. She’s accompanied by Captain General Daniel Marlow, a Jacobite-hating English soldier and close friend of Anne’s. He’s got some trust issues and a stalker. This romance had a lot of potential, but too much of it is spent on the road and not enough on juicy court drama. The straight-version-of-Rachel-Weisz’s-character-in-The-Favorite villain was also, unfortunately, usurped by her much more boring lover.

#theme: gayer than usual #books #reading

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vickyvicarious · 7 years

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max, johnny, and the very important mission (bmw 2)

bullymagnet week, day two: heist

Since the plan is to make one cohesive story out of these, I’d suggest reading day one first.

“Mr. Spender, I need your help!”

It’s not exactly unusual for one of the Activity Club members to come bursting into the room with a dramatic one-liner. Actually, it’s probably far weirder for any of them to make their presence known like normal people, but Max usually does his best to bring down the curve on this one. Pair that up with his reluctance to ask for help in general, and… he would’ve expected more of a reaction, honestly.

“Oh, good afternoon, Max,” Spender mutters, flipping a page of his magazine. He doesn’t even bother to look up. “Yes, your pop quiz was a little below normal for you.”

“I’ve only been here like a week, you don’t know my normal,” Max retorts, frustrated. “Not that I ever expect to see ‘normal’ again… But, anyway, this isn’t about school!”

At this, Spender does perk up. “A spirit? Report!”

“…Not a spirit, per se,” Max shrugs. “More of a… Starchman situation?”

“STARCH-SIT!” Ed bursts into the room, followed by Isabel twirling her new umbrella around her wrist with a fierce grin. As Ed continues talking, he and she begin spontaneously fencing with their tools, leaving Isaac blocked in the doorway, scowling. “Man, I love those! What was it this time? Quoteathon? The Great Tremble? Oh, did he bring out The Noodle?”

“What? No. No. What is that stuff? No.” Max sighs, turning back to Spender. “He confiscated something that belongs to me, can you help me get it back?”

Ed just laughs mysteriously.

“Max! How could you lose y–” Cutting himself off with a quick glance to Isabel, Spender changes tacks with a sigh: “What did you do to make him confiscate your tool? Were you magnetizing things in class?”

“No. It’s weird enough that I’ve been carrying a baseball bat around everywhere, you really think I’m gonna draw attention to it like a numbskull?” The looks Max gets suggest that yes, everyone does think exactly that. Jerks, the lot of them.

“Well, your pop quiz suggests – ”

“There was a spirit on my desk eating that test! You saw it! You sparkled at it!”

“The fact remains, even Isaac gets good grades with spirits around.” The boy still trapped in the doorway perks up a little, until Spender continues, “Well, not in art.”

“Heh.” Max can’t help snickering at that one, despite the betrayed look Isaac shoots him. But he’s quick to get back on track – this is a serious matter, after all. “I only said I don’t really like The Hobbit, can you just help me get my property back?”

Spender sighs again, with feeling.

“Who doesn’t like The Hobbit, Max?” He shakes his head despairingly, and Max rolls his eyes. So sue him for preferring sci-fi. “I really shouldn’t encourage so much flaunting of the school rules – Isabel, your turn to watch the security cameras. I suppose I’ll be busy walking young Max down to the office to plead his case…”

“Max has his bat,” Isaac points out.

“Yes, it’s really not a good idea to separate a new spectral from their tool for long, we all know that Isaac – wait. You do have your bat.”

“I never said he took my bat,” Max grumbles, glaring at Isaac. There’s a stupid triumphant glint in his eyes; Max is totally going to remember how petty he is. He’ll be twice as petty back over this. “He took my hat! I need it back!”

As one, everyone turns to him with silent, yet expressive faces.

Do you really think I, a Teacher, would stand against the ancient teacherly art of Confiscation unless a tool were involved? Spender asks.

Gee, Max, that’s lame. Never knew you were so lame. It’s just a stupid hat, Isabel opines.

I wonder if I made a paint oven, could I cook a spectral potato? Hot potato hot! …Ed.

Ha ha ha that’ll show you, don’t make fun of my dumb drawings ha ha ha I win, gloats Isaac.

“Fine! I don’t need your help anyway!” Max yells, and storms out of the room.

The problem is, he doesn’t even know where Starchman keeps the stuff he confiscates. Normally the teacher’s desk would be a good bet, but this is Starchman. Max vaguely recalls a treasure chest his first day. The English teacher is way too terrifying to just ask for his hat back, and there’s no way he’s just waiting around until he manages to earn twenty-five stars to get it back.

Honestly, he’s not sure if it even counts as confiscation when you require students to pay you to get their stuff back, but the stars aren’t actually real money. Even if no one seems to ever remember that fact. Even the vending machine by the cafeteria accepts them, to say nothing of that school store.

Maybe, if it were just a matter of a day or two, Max would be willing to grit his teeth and wait it out… but collecting twenty-five stars would by all indications take a lot more time and effort. No, there’s got to be some way he can steal it back…

“Ow!”

Even though Max is the one who ends up knocked to the ground, Johnny gets mad. And he wasn’t even the one Max bumped into.

“Ollie,” the bully snarls, cracking his fists with that signature menacing grin, “what little punk dares to bump into my friend?”

The big lug blinks contemplatively down at Max, who rolls his eyes.

“He’s a nerd,” he decides.

“A nerd?!” Johnny’s voice gets more than a little bit insane, his grin ratcheting wider. Max can hear those tires screeching again. “Y’boys know how I feel ‘bout nerds.”

“You wish some of them actually wore suspenders ‘cuz snapping them seems like it’d be fun,” Stephen contributes with a grin, Ollie and RJ nodding seriously.

“No, not that feel, the mean feel!”

“I mean, that feel’s kinda mean too,” Max interjects.

“Yeah, Puckett, but it’s not like punch mean, you get me?” Johnny does a double-take. “Wait. Max?”

All of a sudden, Max finds himself lifted to his feet, brushed off in like fifteen different directions by what feels suspiciously more like nine arms than eight (a ghost?), and his right hand receives another weird Johnny slap-biff-punch-shake-clasp greeting. He’s fairly certain it’s not the same one as last time, but he doesn’t know if that’s because he’s moved up in Johnny’s book, or if they’re both just completely random. At the end, Johnny just stands there, giving him this weird stare.

“You look different, man,” Stephen says.

“Yeah, that’s cause Starchman confiscated my hat,” Max snarls, rage returning as he remembers the injustice done to him. “That thing is basically part of my head!”

“Oooooooh,” Johnny’s gang agree. “Yeah, that’s it. You look naked, dude.”

“You look like a nerd,” Johhny says. “That’s just not right.”

“I thought you thought I was a nerd, though? I mean… you broke into my house to call me one in the middle of the night only like a couple days ago.” Max hoists his heavily-graffitied cast as proof.

“Y-yeah,” Johnny says, cheeks flushing. “But. You don’t normally look like a nerd. Yer all… stealth-nerd. Normally.”

“Did. Did you just say my hat makes me look cool.”

“T-this kid needs a hat, stat!” Johnny roars, and leaps at RJ, trying to tug off their hood. “RJ, c’mon, it’s a sacrifice for the greater good! Gotta cover his, his stupid, uh bald head. Yeah!”

…That sounds like a yes.

Max ducks his head, scratching at his hair, grinning a little. When he looks up, it’s to Johnny staring at him again, frozen, with one hand in RJ’s mouth and the other hovering mid-air.

“W-what?”

“……Nothun’. Ollie, Stephen: extraction.” The two boys help Johnny to prise his hand out of RJ’s mouth, a task that takes a couple of minutes. They all act like this is usual stuff for them, but Max is very concerned about what this implies for RJ’s bite strength, and makes a note not to touch the hood any time soon.

Still, Johnny’s got a point. Max needs a hat. Not just any hat. He needs the hat his mom gave him, the one that makes him look cool. And, well, he was just thinking about how hard it would be to do this alone…

“Johnny,” he says carefully, well aware that maybe this counts as making a deal with the devil or whatever. “Johnny, uh, do you want to steal back my hat with me?”

Johnny’s face is – yeah. Definitely the devil.

“Do I ever, MAX,” he exclaims, suddenly at his side, arm clasped over his shoulders. “Do. I. Ev-arr. Yes! Yes Max I EVER SO DO -”

“Great we got it you like crime,” Max mutters, trying to at least pretend like he regrets this decision.

Twenty minutes later, after one strategy meeting, one hoist into the vents, ten minutes getting lost in the vents, and one spent hovering in the ceiling trying to think of a cool way to jump down without bumping his cast. After some frantic hiding beneath the desk and a lot of attempts at lockpicking the treasure chest and Johnny finally just kicking the lock off with a roar that brings Mr. Starchman back into the room moustache a-tremble and wielding what Max realizes in horror must be The Noodle -

Twenty minutes later, he finds himself bolting down a stairwell, screaming in mutual terror with Johnny at his side, when their escape is foiled by Cody, Violet, and Jeff walking up the steps chatting. The only free space next to them is filled up by a small spectral goat on two hooves wearing a ridiculously huge backpack, so there’s no way through. Well, on the steps anyway, but Max manages to leap up and rebound off the wall, flipping over them and landing in the hallway beyond. Freedom awaits him in the form of the open front doors to the school, and for a second he’s tempted, but…

Johnny’s tangled in a heap with the other kids on the last few steps, and if Max runs now he’ll probably start punching his way out. Jeff has had it rough enough lately, what with the spirit possession and all.

He pretends that’s why he goes back to offer Johnny a hand up, followed only moments later by a pool noodle lasso landing round both their necks with (he could swear) a spectral yeehaw! echoing in the air.

He pretends real hard.

#bullymagnet week #bullymagnet #my fic #paranatural #haha johnny doesn't even show up for like half of this sorry #anyway you can consider it alt text canon #that the new handshake is personalized and represents max moving up many rungs on johnny's people ladder #let's pretend that makes up for me skipping over the actual heist so quickly too haha

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