Red Rain | Musings of the Monster Librarian

It’s Cold Outside: Books To Heat You Up

Brr. Freezing temperatures have meant I’m stuck inside, wearing multiple layers and telling my kids to get their cold feet off of me. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful out there, but I am about to go stir crazy. Friends of mine are sharing photos from their holiday vacations in Mexico and the Caribbean, with sunny, bright blue skies, and I so want to soak up some of that warmth.

Alas, I’m in the freezing Midwest, and I’m not going anywhere. And wherever you are, unless you’re in Florida, you”re probably feeling some frosty weather coming your way as well. In the spirit of escaping it all for warmer climes, I thought I’d give you a list of titles that take place in warmer locales. While we’ve reviewed some of the books on this list, I can’t vouch for them all, and as always, not every book is right for every reader. Still, here are some books to add some heat to your TBR pile.

The Lamplighters by Frazer Lee (reviewed here). Working on an island paradise is not all it’s cracked up to be.

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. A classic tale of mad science and genetic manipulation.

Shady Palms by Allen Dusk (reviewed here). Want to vacation in California? You’ll want to avoid staying at Shady Palms.

Amazonas by Allan Peter Ryan (reviewed here). An atmospheric tale of a journey down the Amazon and into supernatural horror.

The Disappearance by Bentley Little (reviewed here). A college student mysteriously disappears while on vacation at the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Slither by Edward Lee (reviewed here) Lee creates a deadly mix with killer worms, scientists, the military, and a bunch of college students, and plenty of gore and sexual violence, taking place on a tropical island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tropic of Darkness by Tony Richard (reviewed here). Havana, Cuba may be a delightful place to visit, but the music there can be deadly.

Lost Girl of the Lake by Joe McKinney and Michael McCarthy (reviewed here). Mark expected summer vacation in Gaitlinville, Texas to be boring, but it turned out to be a haunting experience.

Red Rain by R.L. Stine (reviewed here). A novel for grown-ups from the master of children’s horror. Travel writer Lea Sutter is trapped on an island in South Carolina during a hurricane, and returns home with two strange children orphaned by the storm.

Tribesmen by Adam Cesare (reviewed here). A producer sends his movie crew to a Caribbean island to film a B-movie horror film, using the natives as extras.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Dinosaurs recreated for an amusement park near Costa Rica behave, well, like dinosaurs, with disastrous results.

The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine by Peter Straub (reviewed here). In this atmospheric tale of subtle horror, Ballard and Sandrine are on a cruise down the Amazon that seems to take place during a time warp, beginning in 1969 and ending in 1997.

Zombie Fever: Malaysia Outbreak by B.M. Hodges. Abigail and Jaime join a reality show that has them racing across the Malaysian Peninsula, which has been overrun by zombies. We have a review of this one coming soon.

The Island by Richard Laymon (reviewed here) Told in diary format, this is the story of Rupert, his girlfriend Connie, and her family, stranded on an island and stalked by a killer. Note, Laymon is not for the faint of heart.

Here’s hoping one of these warms you up, or at least distracts you while you try to stave off the chills. Happy reading!

Some Interesting News From R.L. Stine

This year marks the 20th anniversary for the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine. In the world of children’s books, he is the author most adults think of when they think of “children’s horror”, if they think of “children’s horror” at all. I was in college when Stine started writing, so I missed the beginning of the craze over Stine’s books, but by 1997 I was working in my first “real job” as a children’s librarian. The demand for his books in 1997 was tremendous– I can’t remember how many times I walked kids over to the paperback spinners or sorted through beat up copies with a kid who was looking for one he hadn’t read. It must have been absolutely overwhelming when the books first came out. It’s hard to imagine that you could have missed out on it, if you were s a kid or worked with kids and books at all in the past 20 years.

Stine didn’t start out trying to be scary. He ran a humor magazine called Bananas for ten years (here’s an interview where he talks about that and a lot of other cool stuff) and joke books for kids. But then, according to this interview in the Boston Phoenix, he realized that “what kids really want is to be scared shitless”. And he’s been writing scary stories for kids ever since. Frequently. At one time he produced a book every month!

This fall, though, Stine’s second horror novel for adults, Red Rain, will be released, and in an interview with Publishers Weekly he said that it’s been a challenge for him, after writing middle-grade fiction for kids for so many years,

The kids’ stuff comes naturally to me now. When I write horror for kids, I have to make sure that they know it’s not real—that it’s pure fantasy and could never happen. Writing for adults, I have to do exactly the opposite. It has to be real or they won’t buy it. It was fun to turn it around in Red Rain and have the chance to be really horrifying. Some really ghastly things happen in this book!”

Stine also has a television show based on his books on The Hub right now, which has been renewed for the fall season. It’s the third television series to be based on his books– pretty neat stuff!

So… exciting news, if you didn’t already know it (you might have, since most of these interviews took place at least a couple of months ago, he’s active on Twitter, and he was recently at BEA). If you grew up with R.L. Stine, you might be buying his books for your kids, and now he’s produced a “grown-up” one for the kids who grew up reading his books. If you remember Goosebumps fondly, or even if you’re just curious, now is a great time to see what he has cooking!