22 books like Jaws

This is really how the Disney film Old Yeller should have ended, with a rabid canine raising hell and ripping out throats. What a phenomenal book.

My first foray into the world of Stephen King. I loved it so much I tried to name my dog Cujo … but I was overruled. We settled on Otto cause it sounds sorta similar. But, again, I love this book for the same reason I love Who Goes There?—a beast is terrorizing people who are trapped and can’t flee. It’s a simple formula for monster-themed novels, but it gets me every single time. 

The concept of this story is amazing, especially at a time when they are “bringing back” different species. I am often amazed at what scientists have been able to accomplish in real life, and it’s even more fun to read about it in fiction. 

Another thing that I loved about this story is how it shows that nature cannot be contained. We can manipulate it, but we’d better not make too many assumptions about how things will progress because nature has its own way of doing things.

The characters were also great in both the book and the movie.

This infamous child killers work remains banned in my home country (UK) but is widely available online. Brady and Hindley (his partner) were child killers, both incarcerated for life and both died in prison.

This book was read for curiosity only, whilst writing my own ‘inside the mind of a psychopathic killer’ narrative, I wanted to understand how a ‘real serial killer’ would really think. He wrote The Gates of Janus whilst incarcerated at Ashworth high-security psychiatric hospital.

Brady’s intention was that it be published anonymously, however, this could never be allowed to happen. It is in 2 parts 1) He describes his involvement in the 6 murders from the perspective of ‘understanding himself’ and part 2) His advice as offered to law enforcement in solving such future cases (in this it falls flat).

I recommend it only if you want to understand his thought process – just as Hitler’s Mein… show more.

I had never heard of Koontz until my wife said to me that my work had huge similarities. She is an avid horror reader, I am not – and to be honest I had always preferred films.

If I was going to have my first novel pigeon-holed then this is where she felt it would sit. It was her finding of the onslaught of vulgarity in my own text (of my killer’s rantings) that drew these similarities. I asked her which book was best to start with and she suggested the title: The Darkest Evening of the Year.

I did see similarities in style – a suspense thriller that incorporates the elements of graphic horror, of sexual fantasy, a good dose of science fiction, and of course; suspense and mystery. It was interesting to see how a reader would separate the text of the creator - from them as the… show more.

A thoroughly enjoyable romp that is still relevant today, Prophecy is a story of mankind’s decimation of the environment and the disasters that can result from this neglect. It can be a little draggy at times, but with a monster mutant bear chowing down on everyone, it makes for an entertaining novel to while away the time on a camping trip, if you dare. I saw this first as a movie, starring Robert Foxworth and Armand Assante, and then read the novel shortly thereafter. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a monster completist like me, and as always, great fun to see the film adaption of a story you’ve enjoyed and how it compares to what you imagined. 

Some animal attack stories are terrifying, some are social critiques, and some are just plain gross-out ridiculous fun. Slugs by Shaun Hutson is the latter—a trashy pulp novel filled with a roller-coaster of shock entertainment. As an animal to fear, slugs aren’t really that scary, but boy are they gross. Hutson delivers on this premise through shocking scenes of descriptive gore. If popped eyeballs and ripped flesh are your thing, Slugs delivers in troves. Do not take anything in this book seriously—the plot is absurd, the characters shallow, and the sex stuff sounds like it was written by a middle-school virgin, however, it’s impossible to put down. There’s no social commentary or character growth, only pulpy escapist fantasy. And sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

I read this as a teenager, just as I was diving into the horror genre. I already knew at this point that I wanted to be a storyteller. What struck me while reading It was the jumping back and forth between time periods.

I had never read a book structured that way, and it seemed that every chapter ended on a cliffhanger, forcing me to keep reading. There aren’t many books that I would say I had a hard time putting down (I get bored easily), but It was certainly one of them!

Why do democracies seem particularly vulnerable to populist movements that promote conspiracies and science denial?  It’s as old as democracy itself, argues Sophia Rosenfeld, who points to seeds of our current predicament planted at the birth of our republic. Social and technological stratification encourages groups, in the name of “the people” to reject advice and decrees of leaders, and seek political action based on their gut feelings.  

Why do many parents endanger their children by refusing to vaccinate them? They aren’t, writes Jennifer A. Reich, who studied such parents for over a decade. They aren’t ignorant or irrational – they are highly committed to protecting their children, and are trying to make sense of what they hear and know in their environment. Read this book if you want to understand why people selectively hear, mistrust, or reject scientific information, and seek out alternative ‘experts’ who tell them essentially what they want to hear.

This is a play, a made-up story about a town in Norway a century ago. But the story couldn’t be more familiar. The protagonist is the medical officer who inspects the town’s baths, on which the livelihood of the inhabitants depend. He discovers that the baths are increasingly contaminated, and that money and time have to be devoted to fixing them. When he informs the community he expects politicians to act, and that he will be treated as a hero for saving the town. Nope. Newspapers revile him and accuse him of conspiracy, people insult him, and his life is destroyed. The drama shows, in pared-down skeletal form, how and why science denial happens.