5 Books About Monsters and their Legends
The idea of the ‘other’ has always lurked around the corner in fiction. None more than monsters and creatures we can’t explain. What we fear are what we don’t know. And even though the only thing we use the phrases “being a monster” or “a monstrosity”, it is about humans, there are some comfort that there could exist other monsters, except for us.
Here we have compiled a list of some of the weird, great and scary monster books.
Kronos Rising
By Max Hawthorne
A series of several books that deals with prehistoric creatures and have been compared to Micheal Crichton Jurassic Park. Only this is in the deep sea and no one can hear you scream.
Synopsis: Steve refused to surrender. Even though he knew the creature was right behind him, he wouldn’t quit. He would make it. Just as that beacon of hope began to shine down upon him, the bright sun overhead vanished from view. Confused, he gazed wide-eyed as the daylight grew dim. Then he realized the ultimate horror: the creature had overtaken him, its jaws opened wide. He was in its mouth.
A coastal community faces the wrath of a prehistoric marine predator in Max Hawthorne’s heart-pounding new novel, Kronos Rising.
Devastated by his wife’s tragic drowning, Olympic hopeful Jake Braddock turns his back on fame and fortune and retreats to his childhood home of Paradise Cove, Florida. He accepts the job of town sheriff, hoping to find the solace he so desperately craves.
He finds anything but.
A series of horrifying deaths and disappearances send a flood of panic through the idyllic town. It is only after the ravaged carcass of a full-grown whale surfaces, however, that the real terror begins.
Soon Jake finds himself drawn into an ancient mystery — a mystery that ends with him adrift at sea, battling for survival against the deadliest predator the world has ever seen. It is a creature whose ancestors ruled the prehistoric seas. Now freed after eons of imprisonment, it has risen to reclaim the oceans of the world as its own.
And it’s hungry.
Read it here
Listen to it here (PS! The sequel)
Monster
By Frank Peretti
This author is perhaps most known for writing Christian fiction, but this books takes on the Bigfoot legend. But were it also is presented some views on evolution, mutation and natural selection.
Synopsis: Miles away from the hectic city, Reed and Rebecca hike into the beautiful Northwester woods. They are surrounded by gorgeous mountains, waterfalls, and hundreds of acres of unspoiled wilderness.
During their first night camping, an unearthly wail pierces the calm of the forest. Then something emerges from the dense woods. Everything that follows is a blur to Reed-except the unforgettable image of a huge creature carrying his wife into the darkness.
Enter into deep wilderness where the rules of civilization no longer apply. A world where strange shadows lurk. Where creatures long attributed to overactive imaginations and nightmares are the hunters . . . and people are the hunted.
Read it here
Listen to it here
The Mothman Prophecies
By John A. Keel
This is a particular weird one, as this is not fiction in the strictest sense. Or is it? Who is to tell, really? But it is written by a journalist, detailing the events of Point Pleasant in West Virginia in the late 60’s. The origin for the legend of the Mothman.
Read also: The Legend of the Mothman
Synopsis: West Virginia, 1966. For thirteen months the town of Point Pleasant is gripped by a real-life nightmare culminating in a tragedy that makes headlines around the world. Strange occurrences and sightings, including a bizarre winged apparition that becomes known as the Mothman, trouble this ordinary American community. Mysterious lights are seen moving across the sky. Domestic animals are found slaughtered and mutilated. And journalist John Keel, arriving to investigate the freakish events, soon finds himself an integral part of an eerie and unfathomable mystery.
Read it here
Listen to it here
Devolution
By Mark Brooks
From the author who gave us World War Z, now he delves into the myth, the legend and how to survive the Bigfoot legend.
Synopsis: As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined . . . until now.
But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing — and too earth-shattering in its implications — to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the beasts behind it, once thought legendary but now known to be terrifyingly real.
Kate’s is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity’s defiance in the face of a terrible predator’s gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death.
Yet it is also far more than that.
Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us — and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.
Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it — and like none you’ve ever read before.
Read it here
Listen to it here
The Monstrumologist
By Rick Yancey
This is a series for the YA fans out there. The series deals with more than one monster, like the Wendigo in the sequel as the book center around a group of people studying monsters.
Synopsis: These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me . . . and the one who cursed me. So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a doctor with a most unusual specialty: monster hunting. In the short time he has lived with the doctor, Will has grown accustomed to his late night callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, Will’s world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagus-a headless monster that feeds through a mouth in its chest-and it signals a growing number of Anthropophagi. Now, Will and the doctor must face the horror threatening to overtake and consume our world before it is too late. The Monstrumologist is the first stunning gothic adventure in a series that combines the spirit of HP Lovecraft with the storytelling ability of Rick Riorden.
Read it here
Originally published at https://moonmausoleum.com on September 7, 2020.
