Three Queer Books About Horror, Identity, and the Body

Three books that get under your skin

Horror, identity, and the body. These three books share one quality: they make you uncomfortable. Not in a bad way. They push at the edges of what queer writing can do. One is a debut novel that takes on a tired horror trope. One is a modern classic that never looks away. One is a memoir that turns the body into a text. Together, they show how queer literature can be sharp, strange, and deeply human. If you enjoyed our Three Queer Books About Crime, Secrets, and Survival, this round-up offers something darker and more visceral.

All Us Saints — Kath Barbadoro (2024, Soho Press)

This debut novel arrives at exactly the right moment. The trans killer is one of horror's oldest clichés. Barbadoro knows this and takes it apart. All Us Saints follows a small-town community shaken by a series of violent deaths. A trans woman is immediately suspect in the eyes of townspeople. The novel does not flinch from the ugliness of that suspicion. But it also refuses to be only about that.

What makes this book remarkable is its structure. Barbadoro writes in close third person, moving between several characters. None of them are purely sympathetic. None of them are purely guilty. The horror here is atmospheric and slow. It builds like fog. By the time you reach the midpoint — no spoilers — you will have questioned every assumption you brought to the first chapter.

The prose is lean and precise. Barbadoro does not overwrite. Each sentence does real work. The small-town setting feels specific and observed, not generic. This is literary horror with something genuine to say about fear, projection, and who gets to be seen as dangerous.

For who: Readers who like horror that thinks. Fans of Carmen Maria Machado or Paul Tremblay. Good for readers new to trans perspectives in genre fiction.

Where to buy: Available via Soho Press and most international online booksellers. No Dutch translation confirmed at time of writing.

A strong, confident debut. One of the more interesting genre novels of recent years.

Nevada — Imogen Binnie (2013, Topside Press / 2022 reissue, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This novel was published quietly in 2013. For years it circulated in photocopied form among trans readers. The 2022 reissue by FSG brought it to a much wider audience. It deserved that audience.

Nevada follows Maria Griffiths, a trans woman living in New York. She works in a bookshop. Her relationship is falling apart. Then she makes an impulsive decision and drives west. She meets a young man in Nevada who may be where she was ten years ago. The novel is funny, uncomfortable, and painfully honest.

Binnie writes in a flat, sardonic voice that masks a great deal of feeling. Maria is not easy to like. She is smart and self-aware but also avoidant and sometimes cruel. That honesty is what makes the book last. It does not perform trans experience for an outside audience. It simply inhabits it. That was rare in 2013. It is still rarer than it should be now.

The second half shifts pace significantly. If you are sensitive to open endings, be prepared. This is not a tidy book. It is a true one.

For who: Readers who want trans interiority without sentimentality. Fans of character-driven literary fiction. Also recommended if you have read Three Queer Books About Home, Belonging, and Leaving and want to go deeper.

Where to buy: FSG reissue widely available online and in bookshops. No Dutch translation exists.

A genuine underground classic, now properly in print. Essential reading.

Abandon Me — Melissa Febos (2017, Bloomsbury)

Melissa Febos is an essayist with a precise and restless mind. Abandon Me is her second book. It collects personal essays about obsession, desire, and the limits of the self. The central thread is a long-distance relationship that becomes all-consuming. But the book is also about her complicated relationship with her biological father, a sea captain she barely knew.

Febos writes about the body with unusual clarity. She does not romanticise desire or loss. She dissects both. The essays move between memoir and cultural criticism without feeling academic. She quotes Lacan and she describes a panic attack with equal care. The effect is a book that feels both intellectually rigorous and emotionally raw.

Queer desire is central here, but Febos does not frame it as exceptional. It is simply the texture of her life. That normalisation — without erasure of what makes it specific — is one of the book's quieter achievements.

This is not an easy read. Some essays are very intense. But Febos earns every moment of discomfort.

For who: Readers who like Maggie Nelson or Roxane Gay. Essay readers who want personal writing with intellectual depth. Not for readers who prefer plot-driven work.

Where to buy: Available via Bloomsbury and most online retailers. A paperback reissue is currently in circulation. No Dutch translation.

One of the best essay collections of the past decade. Febos is a writer at the height of her powers.

What these three books share

Horror, self-knowledge, and the weight of other people's projections. All three books are about what happens when the world decides it already knows who you are. Barbadoro writes about that through genre. Binnie writes about it through character. Febos writes about it through the essay form. Three different methods. One shared urgency. If any one of them sounds right for you, start there. The other two will follow.