65 Books Like Cold Skin

I‘ve always been fascinated by the dividing line between human and monster. Because, what is a monster?

I know, this kind of question will usually get a quick answer, but I have been thinking about this particular question for quite some time now. I am Legend revolves around this question, and I love it for that. I also love it for the somewhat unexpected twist in the end, and that one can be interpreted as an answer.

Anyway, for me, this book got me thinking about morale and ethics and other stuff. I just like it when a book gets me to that point where I think: wait a moment, but what if…?

Truly a book for the ages, how could I not recommend this? It is THE iconic book about a constructed being and his consequent travails.

Made by Victor Frankenstein from all sorts of collected detritus, when the monster opens his “yellow, watery eyes,” the scientist flees from him and never looks back. The monster is left to negotiate the world on his own, but much like a newborn baby, he is ignorant and unequipped to do so.

I love how, unlike the popular concept of the monster, he is, in fact, a vegetarian, and at the start, very vulnerable and peaceful. He learns to read by sitting outside a cottage where he can hear the cottagers teaching a foreigner to read.

I wrote a whole novel about him, A Monster’s Notes, which transports him into the 21st century.

I absolutely loved this anthology when I first read it in the 90s. It was still very much in my mind when Constable asked me to do another comics anthology for them. Jones searched for the very best zombie stories but also he wasn’t constrained by one idea of what a zombie was/could be. It has the big names from the time Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, and Christopher Fowler but also some of my favourite authors whose writing blurs genre lines such as Charles L Grant and Dennis Etchinson. It put in my mind that the zombie was as much about ideas of outsiders, rejection, and control as dead flesh continuing to move.

I’m a 70s kid so the Six Million Dollar Man was a staple of TV viewing but Deathlok, a cyborg created from dying/dead soldier Luther Manning, chilled and thrilled me in equal measures. The idea of waking up in the remains of your shattered body with cold metal taking the place of most flesh and a computer talking in your head:  your consciousness, a voice forever trapped in a dead but unable-to-die body was something that struck deep. ‘Alert: human personality reasserting itself. Repress immediately before…’

I listened to this whole series while climbing mind-numbing stacks of backlogged legal work as an Assistant Attorney General. My vision was clogged with the vivid scenes of Bourne's books, legal folders, paper clips, and coffee stains. It actually inspired the fourth book of my zombie series.   

Told in the diary format common to many books of the zombie epic subgenre, this journal depicts one man's struggle for survival. The unnamed narrator is a naval officer who was just returning home to Texas from visiting his parents in Arkansas when the zombie apocalypse hits. John, another survivor, and Annabell, John's miniature greyhound, work together with the narrator to survive, hoping to find some last working vestige of the US government. 

There are some cool elements to this zombie epic that I haven't found anywhere else. They shelter in a functional missile silo at one point. The clunk, clunk… show more.

This isn’t a zombie book. It’s a book about isolation, depression, rage, and escapism. This is the book I continue to come back to and is always the first one I recommend for someone looking for a new book to read. There’s a slow ramping of violence in this book, married perfectly to the main character’s evolution – resulting in some truly bleak scenes.

Shelman is one of the Godfathers of indie zompoc. He was an early adaptor to the Amazon self-publishing model and his series, Dead Hunger, was one of the first I read. It starts at the beginning of the outbreak and covers the ups and downs over decades in the 10-book series. Great characters, compelling science, and heartfelt situations kept me reading. The villains were unique, the heroes were likable and funny and the story moves along quickly. There is lots of action and some over-the-top situations as the band of survivors try to stay alive and rebuild a life for themselves. Shelman narrates his own books (and many others) and is one of the absolute best voice actors I’ve listened to.

Zompoc novels that involve kids are a tough pill to swallow, but David and Wesley have done something totally different with their story of a field trip gone awry in the early days of the apocalypse. One part Lord of the Flies, one part Night of the Living Dead, the three books in the Feral Children series sees school kids surviving the zombie apocalypse trapped in the city zoo, and it follows them as they befriend the animals there, and then step out with those animals at their backs. The Feral Children gives you the opportunity to read about clever kids surviving the horrors of the undead, as well as getting the chance to read about what a bear might do when faced with the undead.

I love this book’s original take on the “spore” or “fungal” zombie outbreak. It feels like the author took The Last Of Us (which I also adore) and flipped the story on its head. Melanie is this unique character, at once the snarky, hilarious child of the piece and its terrifying monster.

She’s the threat, battlefield, and hope—and I find that combination so compelling. While it’s a grim, often bleak tale set in a decimated UK, this thread of unexpected hope and unusual connections kept me hooked. This story might not give me the future I wanted at the start of the story, but it offers a different vision with its own version of hope for humanity, and because of that, it has a special place on my shelf.

This is my favorite zombie series of all time. Adair is an incredible writer, and his Slow Burn series gives us plenty of Romero-style zombies that we love, but it also gives us more. In this series, some of the infected don’t turn into regular zombies. Zed is one of these. I don’t want to give any spoilers but trust me on this. If you like a good zombie tale, read Slow Burn, and I guarantee you’ll continue on to book 2 and every other book in this series about zombies with a twist.