October Focus on Horror: Stephen Graham Jones
Created by Bob Helmbrecht, collection development librarian
Our Focus on Horror author for today is Stoker Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones.
Jones is the bestselling author of nearly 30 novels and collections, and has won numerous awards, including four Bram Stoker Awards and two Shirley Jackson Awards for horror fiction. Here are a few of Jones’s most notable titles:
“My Heart Is a Chainsaw” is Jones’s most recent print novel. This homage to slasher films won the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for best novel.
“The Only Good Indians” is a dark tale of four friends who must pay the price for an ill-fated hunt a decade before. Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author, and I love seeing an authentic take on using their folklore in the present day. This book was the winner of the 2020 Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards for best novel. Check out our review of this one from 2020.
Jones had a second book published in 2020, and it was also very successful. “Night of the Mannequins” won the Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards for best long fiction (novella). A group of teens brings a mannequin into a theater to play an end of summer prank on one of their friends. As you would expect from Jones, the prank goes terribly, fatally wrong.
“Mapping the Interior” was another Stoker Award winner, for the 2017 long fiction award. It’s a disturbing haunted house tale dealing with issues of family, heritage, and identity. If you like short stories, also check out Jones’s 2010 collection “The Ones That Got Away.”
If you’re into audiobooks, give a listen to “The Babysitter Lives.” This book, which just came out this summer, is only available on audio.
If you like contemporary horror with a literary bent, check out the books of Stephen Graham Jones.