Five fresh literary takes on classic creatures

Leah Rachel von Essen is an editor, writer, and book reviewer. She is a copyeditor and fact-checker at Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as a contributing editor, Adult Books, for American Library Association’s magazine Booklist. She writes regularly for Chicago Review of Books and is a senior contributor at Book Riot.

At Book Riot she tagged five "stories [that] put an exciting new spin on the classic creature horror we all think we know, from vampires and zombies to sirens." One title on the list:

Night’s Edge by Liz Kerin

Saratov’s Syndrome is a fairly new problem for the world when Mia’s mother contracts it. Her mom now needs blood to survive, and she doesn’t trust the centers where vampires are being institutionalized, surveilled, and supported. So Mia becomes her mother’s support system instead, drawing blood so her mom can survive. She barely questions it for 13 years, giving her mom everything she has—her time, her social life, her ambitions. But then she meets a girl who makes her feel some kind of way, and she starts to wonder how long she can give her mother everything she has.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Night's Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue