Overbooked: Starred Review Lists

Scary Stars

Page Modified: June 25, 2009

Seeing Stars

Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).

The review journal assigns the star.

Selected Horror Fiction - arranged by year of publication, then alphabetically by author.

Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then by alphabetically by author.

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.

2006

• Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition
  Author: Betancourt, John Gregory and Sean Wallace (edt)
  Publisher: Prime Books $ 13.95 ISBN: 0-8095-5648-0 Date: 2006
  PW
  Updated 6.1.06
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
  Author: Brooks, Max
  Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0307346609 Date: 2006
  Kirkus
  The Studs Terkel of the Zombie War, Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide, puts a human face on the suffering that occurred during the horrible hostilities, interviewing civilians, soldiers, politicians, and others, in this stunning book compiled shortly after the conclusion of the epic ten-year conflict.
  Updated 6.28.06
• Already Dead
  Author: Huston, Charlie
  Publisher: Del Rey $ 12.95 ISBN: 034547824x Date: 2006
  PW
  The daughter of a prominent New York family is missing, and her Vampyre fascination makes Joe Pitt--private detective and Vampyre--the man for this most dangerous job.
  Suggested Reading: Cross Genres
  Updated 12.5.05
• Cell
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 26.95 ISBN: 0743292332 Date: 2006
  BooklistKirkus
  Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological attack. What matters to them is surviving the aftermath. Before long a band of them-"normies" is how they think of themselves-have gathered on the grounds of Gaiten Academy, where the headmaster and one remaining student have something awesome and terrifying to show them on the school's moonlit soccer field. Clearly there can be no escape. The only option is to take them on.
  Suggested Reading: Zombies
  Updated 1.25.06
• Lisey's Story
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 28 ISBN: 0743289412 Date: 2006
  Kirkus LJ PW
  Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark, and Lisey Landon must confront both. King's most personal and powerful book to date is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.
  Updated 8.28.06
• Candles Burning
  Author: King, Tabitha & Michael McDowell
  Publisher: Berkley $ 24.95 ISBN: 0425210286 Date: 2006
  PW
  Two of literature's most provocative authors draw readers into the summer's most chilling tale. King picks up the late McDowell's unfinished manuscript, weaving a Southern gothic fabric of murder, guilt, innocence, corruption, and survival told in the voices of the living and the dead.
  Updated 5.15.06
• Dark Harvest
  Author: Partridge, Norman
  Publisher: Cemetery Dance $ 40 ISBN: 9781587671470 Date: 2006
  PW
  Norman Partridge returns to Cemetery Dance with a high-octane tale of fantastic suspense. Startlingly original in style and execution, Dark Harvest is sure to be the horror event this Halloween season. Don't miss it! - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.25.06
• Headstone City
  Author: Piccirilli, Tom
  Publisher: Spectra $ 5.99 ISBN: 0553587218 Date: 2006
  PW
  The multiple award-winning author of November Mourns delivers his most genre-bending novel yet, as one man faces down hitmen, supernatural forces, and the dark corners of his own past.
  Suggested Reading: Cross Genres
  Updated 12.27.05
• Benighted
  Author: Whitfeld, Kit
  Publisher: Del Rey $ 14.95 ISBN: 0345491637 Date: 2006
  PWLJ
  Ninety-nine percent of the population is lycanthropic--when the full moon rises, they transform into bloodthirsty beasts that cannot be reasoned with or tamed. When a friend is killed by a marauding lune, Lola Galley, one of the few people unable to change, is desperate to see justice prevail.
  Updated 9.18.06
• Black Pockets And Other Dark Thoughts
  Author: Zebrowski, George
  Publisher: Golden Gryphon $ 24.95 ISBN: 1930846401 Date: 2006
  PW
  This collection of 19 horror stories, culled from the career of a writer best known for his literary science fiction, explores horror as a product of the human mind by allowing personal, political, and metaphysical obsessions to unleash terrors that beset these characters and by refusing to rely on genre-typical terrors such as serial killers and ancient curses. - Publisher Marketing
  Suggested Reading: Zombies
  Updated 3.16.06

2005

• Fledgling
  Author: Butler, Octavia E.
  Publisher: Seven Stories $ 24.95 ISBN: 1583226907 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Butler's first new novel in seven years is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire.
  Updated 8.8.05
• The Overnight
  Author: Campbell, Ramsey
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765312999 Date: 2005
  PW
  After a series of strange mishaps and lots of misfortune, a desperate bookstore manager musters his staff for an overnight inventory. But when the last customers leave and the staff is sealed in, they find out this bookstore is no haven--it is the doorway to a hell unlike any other.
  Updated 3.14.05
• Joplin's Ghost
  Author: Due, Tananarive
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743449037 Date: 2005
  PW
  An acclaimed suspense writer's latest chilling tale examines how the daughter of a musician and jazz club owner finds her life changed when she becomes haunted by the ghost of Scott Joplin.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Ghosts | Music
  Updated 7.25.05
• Phantom Nights
  Author: Farris, John
  Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765307782 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Dubbed "a legend among thriller novelists" (Dean Koontz), Farris returns with a chilling gothic tale set in the Jim Crow South of the 1950s. After a 14-year-old boy sets out to avenge the brutal death of his black nurse, she becomes trapped in a netherworld by the force of the boy's will and his need for revenge.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 1.5.05
• The Town That Forgot How to Breathe
  Author: Harvey, Kenneth J.
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312342225 Date: 2005
  PW
  Described by some reviewers as a mix between Stephen King and Annie Proulx, Harvey's compulsively readable novel is a profound allegorical tale of the effects of globalization on culture and personal histories.
  Updated 8.8.05
• Salem's Lot
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 35 ISBN: 0385516487 Date: 2005
  LJ
  With the addition of fifty pages of material deleted from the 1975 manuscript, an introduction by King, and two short stories related to the novel, this edition represents the text as the author envisioned it. Includes lavishly creepy photographs by Jerry Uelsmann.
  Updated 10.3.05
• Tales
  Author: Lovecraft, H.P.
  Publisher: Library of America $ 35 ISBN: 1931082723 Date: 2005
  PW
  The visionary master of cosmic horror joins The Library of America with this collection of classic stories of the strange and fantastic.
  Updated 1.3.05
• Gil's All Fright Diner
  Author: Martinez, A. Lee
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765311437 Date: 2005
  PW
  Bloodier than Fried Green Tomatoes! Funnier than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre! Welcome to Gil's All Night Diner, where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never know what might be lurking in the freezer . . . - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Contemporary Fantasy Stars
  Updated 3.21.05

• Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell, 1961-1991
  Author: Campbell, Ramsey
  Publisher: Tor $ 26.95 ISBN: 0765307677 Date: 2004
  PW
  Updated 6.1.04
• Afterlife
  Author: Clegg, Douglas
  Publisher: Onyx $ 6.99 ISBN: 0451411676 Date: 2004
  PW
  The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Nightmare House and Mischief returns with a terrifying new horror thriller. "The best horror writer of the post-Stephen King generation."--Bentley Little.
  Updated 11.22.04
• Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Donald Grant $ 30 ISBN: 1880418592
  PW
  The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, Song of Susannah is a pivotal installment in the most anticipated series of publications in Stephen King's legendary career.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Young Adults
  Updated 4.19.04
• The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner/Donald M. Grant $ 35 ISBN: 1880418622 Date: 2004
  PWLJ
  The final volume of King's masterful, multi-volume epic is hailed as a "hypnotic blend of suspense and sentimentality . . . a sprawling, eventful tale of demons, monsters, narrow escapes, and magic portals" (The New York Times Book Review).
  Updated 9.22.04
• In the Night Room
  Author: Straub, Peter
  Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400062527 Date: 2004
  PW
  A children's book author realizes that the most basic facts of her existence have come into question. When she meets a struggling horror author, the frightening parallels between her loss and the author's manuscript suggest they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.
  Updated 10.4.04
• Vamped
  Author: Sosnowski, David
  Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 0743262530 Date: 2004
  LJ
  A hot beach read, Sosnowski's Vamped is the story of a very different world--one where vampires rule and humans are the near-extinct minority.
  Updated 6.1.04
• Midnight Mass
  Author: Wilson, F. Paul
  Publisher: Tor $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765307057
  Booklist
  A new vampire thriller is penned by the bestselling author of The Tomb and the creator of Repairman Jack.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 4.21.04

• Gathering the Bones: Original Storeis from the World's Masters of Horror
  Author: Dann, Jack (ed)
  Publisher: Tor $ 15.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0765301792
  LJ
  Chilling new anthology of all-original tales of horror
  Includes New Stories by: Ray Bradbury, Graham Joyce, Peter Crowther, Kim Newman, Sara Douglass, Thomas Tessier
  M. John Harrison & Gahan Wilson.
  Updated 8.14.03
• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection
  Author: Datlow, Ellen & Terri Windling, editors
  Publisher: Griffin $ 35/19.95 ISBN: 0312314248/0312314256
  PW
  Updated 7.28.03
• Jinn
  Author: Delaney, Matthew B.J.
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312276702
  PW
  Updated 1.3.03
• The Good House
  Author: Due, Tananarive
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743449002
  PWKirkus
  From the award-winning author of The Black Rose comes a terrifying story of supernatural suspense, as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from evil forces.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 8.11.03
• Fat White Vampire Blues
  Author: Fox, Andrew
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 13.95 (paper) ISBN: 0345463331 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  If Dracula slept with A Confederacy of Dunces, this funny first novel about Jules, a feckless, overweight vampire would be the result. He's watched his neighborhood go to hell--and now, a new vampire is looking to drive him out. Jules must find a way to contend with life's hurdles--without getting a stake through the heart.
  Updated 4.28.03
• Tropic of Night
  Author: Gruber, Michael
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060509546
  KirkusPW
  One of the most frightening and imaginative novels of suspense to arrive in decades, Tropic of Night pits an anthropologist against a powerful shaman who becomes Miami's most feared serial killer.
  Updated 1.29.03
• The Two Sams: Ghost Stories
  Author: Hirshberg, Glen
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 23 ISBN: 0786712254
  PW
  Updated 9.22.03
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 14
  Author: Jones, Stephen (ed)
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 11.95 (paper) ISBN: 0786712376
  PW
  The 14th volume of the Best New Horror series revisits the momentous events and chilling achievements on the dark side of fantasy.
  Updated 10.14.03
• The Dark Tower V: Wolves of Calla
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Donald M. Grant/Scriber $ 35 ISBN: 1880418568
  PWBooklist
  Updated 9.22.03
• Daylight
  Author: Knox, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345457951
  PWBooklist
  Beautifully written, Daylight combines Knox's greatest gifts, her wildly imaginative storytelling and her clear eye for atmosphere and place. The vampires of this book are distinctly Knoxian, as intriguing and intelligently drawn as the angel in The Vintner's Luck.
  Updated 3.31.03
• Sunshine
  Author: McKinley, Robin
  Publisher: Berkeley $ 23.95 ISBN: 0425191788
  PW
  Unfortunately, she wasn't alone. She never heard them coming. Of course she wouldn't, when they're vampires. A new direction for an already successful fantasy author.
  Updated 10.2.03
• The Night Country: Or, the Darkness on the Edge of Town
  Author: O'Nan, Stewart
  Publisher: FSG $ 22 ISBN: 0374222150
  LJ
  A strange and unsettling ghost story in the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson, The Night Country creeps through the streets of one bedroom community, reaching into the connected yet isolated lives of three people changed forever by a car accident.
  Updated 8.14.03
• Lamplighter
  Author: O'Neill, Anthony
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743243498
  PW
  Elegantly written and ingeniously executed, The Lamplighter inhabits the pre-Freudian era and explores the dangers of the suppressed imagination. Set in 19th-century Edinburgh, it features a professor of philosophy and his assistant as they unravel a series of gruesome murders and their connection to a troubled young woman.
  Updated 3.13.03
• Lost Boy, Lost Girl
  Author: Straub, Peter
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400060923
  BooklistPW
  From the bestselling author of Black House and Mr. X springs a groundbreaking story of the persistence of evil, told with tantalizing ambiguity and structural audacity.
  Updated 9.22.03
• Laughing Man
  Author: Wright, T.M.
  Publisher: Leisure $ 5.99 (paper) ISBN: 0843950846
  Booklist
  New York City detective Jack Erhmun has his own peculiar ways of solving homicides--ways which can frighten his colleagues. Assigned to a series of gruesome murders, Jack delves into facts that make it seem no human killer can be involved. He soon becomes more and more erratic. Is it the case that affects him, or is it something no one dares to consider?
  Updated 1.25.03

• The Hour Before Dark
  Author: Clegg, Douglas
  Publisher: Leisure $ 24 ISBN: 0843950447
  PW
  The brutal slaughter of his father brings a young man back to the family home he thought he'd left forever to confront an unspeakable evil from his past.
  Updated 9.7.02
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
  Author: Jones, Stephen (ed)
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0786710632
  PW
  The award-winning Best New Horror anthology series--winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Critics Guild Award--has now reached its 13th spectacular volume, and to mark the event, Stephen Jones has chosen only the very best short stories and novellas by the horror genre's finest exponents and by new discoveries in the field.
  Updated 11.18.02
• From a Buick 8
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 28 ISBN: 0743211375
  PW
  On the heels of his hugely successful Dreamcatchers King delivers another classic novel about boys, men, and a terrifying force only they can contain.
• Everything's Eventual
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 28 ISBN: 0743235150
  PWLibrary Journal
  Writing about encounters with the dead, about near death, or about the plain dread of mundane life, King is in top form in this collection of dark tales--his first in nine years. Includes three never-before-printed stories and four pieces previously published in The New Yorker.
• Last Things
  Author: Searcy, David
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670031321
  Booklist
  Searcy's first novel, Ordinary Horror, earned him critical acclaim across the country. Now Searcy offers readers another taste of literary horror. Delivered in lyrical and atmospheric prose reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, Last Things is a suspenseful psychological drama that will mesmerize readers right up to its shocking final revelation.
  Updated 8.13.02
• Blackwood Farm: The Vampire Chronicles
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375411992 Date: 2002
  Kirkus
  In her new novel, Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative--her vampire legend and the lore of the Mayfair witches--to give readers a world of classic deep South luxury and ancestral secrets.
  Updated 7.17.02

2001

• Coldheart Canyon
  Author: Barker, Clive
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060182970
  PW
  Clive Barker returns with his most triumphant novel to date. Coldheart Canyon is a savage, poignant ghost story set in the glittering world of Hollywood where nothing is what it seems--even Death.
• From the Dust Returned
  Author: Bradbury, Ray
  Publisher: Morrow $ 23 ISBN: 0380973820
  PW Library Journal
  One of the world's great literary icons presents the full-length tale of the Elliotts--a family of outlandish, great-hearted, and loving-spirited Halloween creatures and their "abnormal" adopted son--Timothy--who can see his reflection in the mirror.
• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
  Author: Datlow, Ellen (ed)
  Publisher: St Martins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0312275412
  PW
  
• The Living Blood
  Author: Due, Tannarive
  Publisher: Pocket $ 24.95 ISBN: 0671040839
  PW
  From the bestselling author of My Soul to Keep comes a supernatural thriller in which a mother and her eerily gifted young daughter navigate the secrets of immortality.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
• The Mammoth Book of Vampire Short Stories by Women
  Author: Jones, Stephen (ed)
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 11.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0786709189
  PW
• Black House
  Author: King, Stephen & Peter Straub
  Publisher: Random $ 28.95 ISBN: 0375504397
  Kirkus PW
  In the long-awaited sequel to The Talisman, retired homicide detective Jack Sawyer is drawn back to a parallel universe called the Territories, where he must find the soul-strength to enter a terrifying house at the end of a deserted track of forest, there to encounter the obscene and ferocious evils sheltered within it.
• Dreamcatcher
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 28 ISBN: 0743211383
  PW Kirkus LJ
  America's most thrilling storyteller is at the height of his powers in this page-turning epic of haunted memories, heroism, and stark survival. Once upon a time in the haunted city of Derry (the site of It and Insomnia), four boys stood together and did a brave thing. Twenty-five years later, these men are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past--and in the Dreamcatcher.
• Blood and Gold
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679454497
  Kirkus
  Out of the pages of the Vampire Chronicles steps the golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millennia, once mentor to the Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious slayer of the evildoer, and now ready to reveal the secrets of his 2,000-year-long existence in his own intense yet intimate voice.

2000

• You Come When I Call You
  Author: Clegg, Douglas
  Publisher: Cemetary Dance $ 40 ISBN: 1881475891
  PW
  
• House of Leaves
  Author: Danielewski, Mark
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375703764
  PW Kirkus Library Journal Booklist
  A blind old man, a young apprentice working in a tattoo shop, and a mad woman haunting an Ohio institute narrate this story of a family that encounters an endlessly shifting series of hallways in their new home, eventually coming face to face with the awful darkness lying at its heart.
• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
  Author: Datlow, Ellen (ed)
  Publisher: St Martins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0312262744
  PW
  Highly acclaimed for collecting the finest short fiction in fantasy and horror, the World Fantasy Award-winning annual series continues its eclectic and always interesting tradition with this 13th volume. Highlights of this year's edition include Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Robert Girardi, Patricia McKillip, Delia Sherman, Michael Marshall Smith, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gene Wolfe, and many others, along with year-end wrap-ups in publishing, movies, and comics.
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
  Author: Jones, Stephen (ed)
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 11.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0786707925
  PW
  Now in its eleventh year, this winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Critics Guild Award again showcases the finest talents writing contemporary horror fiction -- established masters as well as new voices -- and presents its lively review of the past year in the field of fear and terror.
• The Traveling Vampire Show
  Author: Laymon, Richard
  Publisher: Cemetery Dance $ 40 ISBN: 1587670003
  PW
  
• The Walking
  Author: Little, Bentley
  Publisher: Signet $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0451201744
  PW
  Across the country, the dead have risen and they're on a mission. No one knows why they are walking or where they are going and no one can stop them. The Bram Stoker Award-winning writer and author of The Store, The Ignored, and The Town is "a master of the macabre" (Stephen King).
• Magic Terror: 7 Tales
  Author: Straub, Peter
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375503935
  Kirkus Booklist
  

More Stars . . .