Zombies. Popular culture has been fascinated with them for a few years now. During that time, countless books have been written about them and it’s difficult to wade through the deluge to find the really good ones. Luckily the library is here to help!
An excellent series is The Walking Dead. The original story started out as a comic book; the library has the comics collected in graphic novels. The Walking Dead follows a band of survivors led by Rick, a cop who was shot on the job. He awakens in an abandoned hospital and manages to make his way back home. But the world is a changed place; wandering the streets are the undead. Frantic to find his wife and son, Rick sets out to Atlanta, the one place he thinks his family would have gone. The comics have also spawned a popular television series and several novels; both are available at the library.
If you’ve already read The Walking Dead and are looking for something similar, World War Z may be the book for you. It is written as a series of interviews with the people who survived the Zombie War, a zombie outbreak that almost caused the extinction of humanity. Their voices are haunted by the horror they lived through. Thanks to the format, you can easily read this book in either small chunks or its entirety. The author, Max Brooks, has also written The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, so he is clearly an expert on zombie attacks.
If you’re not enamored with books told from the survivor’s perspective, why not check out one told from the zombie’s like Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory? Stony Mayhall was born during the first zombie outbreak. Found by Wanda Mayhall and her three daughters, the baby should be dead but isn’t. The Mayhall family takes him in and raises him, hiding the growing zombie boy from the authorities who would kill him. Another option is Zombie, Ohio by Scott Kenemore, an interesting blend of zombie and mystery fiction. Zombie, Ohio is the story of Peter Mellor, who died in a car crash and is given a second life as a member of the undead. Peter retains his intellect, and once he realizes the car crash was no accident, he sets off to solve the mystery of his murder.
A series that I really enjoyed was iZombie, the tale of Gwen; Gwen works as a gravedigger by day and digs the corpses back up at night to snack on their brains. If she doesn’t eat at least one brain a month she will turn into a shambling monstrosity. But the brains come with memories and the dead want to be at peace. So it’s up to Gwen and her two friends, Ellie, a ghost from the 1960's, and Scott, a were-terrier, to lay the dead to rest.
Thanks to the upcoming movie, Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion has been extremely popular lately. And all of this hype is warranted; Warm Bodies is an excellent book. This is the tale of R. After consuming the brain of a teenage boy, R inherits all of the memories of his victim. Chief among those memories is the teenage boy’s love for his girlfriend, Julie. This is the beginning of a touching zombie love story.
Of course, these titles aren’t an exhaustive list. You can find these and many other great zombie stories, such as Allison Hewitt is Trapped, Patient Zero, The Forest of Hands and Teeth and Death Warmed Over at your library.
Shauna Kosoris
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