Two young adult horror novels worth checking out

Although many horror tales can be pretty graphic and gruesome, they are by no means a no-go area for young adults. As books like that the Twilight series have shown, there is an appetite for good young adult horror novels. Here are two worth checking out.

Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older

In a futuristic New York city, the living and the dead mingle and it is up to the New York Council of the Dead to regulate it all. Carlos Delacruz is one of the council’s agents, but he is the living embodiment of the very entities he is pursuing. Carlos himself is a half-dead inbetweener with a sketchy memory about how he came to walk that fine line. He doesn’t remember suffering or how he came to have a foot in both camps. That all changes, though, when he meets another inbetweener, although one with sinister motives.

This half-dead sorcerer wants to throw open the gateway between the living dead and has already assembled an army of undead which he plans to overrun the city with. Carlos’s job is to stop him, but in trying to, he discovers something about himself.

Minion by LA Banks

Damali Richards is one of the prize artists for Warriors of Light Records. She is Spoken Word star, but hides a dark, nocturnal secret. When she’s not wowing audiences or recording new tracks, Damali is out hunting vampires and other creatures of the underworld. However, her worlds start to collide when a series of killings seemingly carried out by vampires targets other Warriors of the Light artists. Soon, she realises she is not dealing with any ordinary vampire here and Damali quickly learns that she too is on their hitlist. Can she battle these dark forces and save her own soul before it’s too late?

Find more absorbing horror tales with the books from www.vidicus.com.

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Immoral beauty in aristocracy England

As the only novel Oscar Wilde ever wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a chillingly effective gothic horror story of obsession and vanity in 19th century English society. Here we look at extravagance and immorality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Dorian Gray’s natural beauty is crucial motivator in the book, inspiring awe from those who see him and not least of all Basil Hallward, the artist for whom his greatest muse Dorian is the subject for a full-length portrait. Through Basil Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, an aristocrat who boasts proudly of his hedonistic lifestyle that is to become Dorian’s inspiration.

Wotton’s influence and unrelenting praise for the pursuit of pleasure and beauty for their own sake lead the naïve Dorian to wish his portrait would age instead of himself, to allow him a lifetime of sensualism without consequence. The social circle Dorian and Henry keep allows Dorian to become his version of a perfect ‘type’, a socialite and scholar rolled into one that is allowed to act without morals and without fear of being castigated.

Yet while society is aware of Dorian’s depravity, it is his youthful beauty that allows him to continue his life without recourse, such is the enamouring purity of his face. As his picture becomes ever more cruel, sinister and decrepit, the most typical horror element of the story, it is Dorian’s behaviour that is most horrifying, more so when he realises that he is the architect of his own moral downfall. His murder of Basil, blaming his creation of the portrait as the root, seals Dorian’s fate as wicked in both body and mind. When he moves to destroy the picture once and for all, Dorian’s malice is turned back on him by the terrifying entity imbued in the portrait.

For a wealth of gothic horror tales visit www.vidicus.com and be prepared to be in for a fright.