Terrifying Books Like the Show Yellowjackets

Chase the same creepy vibes from the show—to tide you over until season two! 

Yellowjackets TV show horror books
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  • Photo Credit: Showtime

Showtime's Yellowjackets is the story of a girls’ soccer team dealing with darkness and danger while stranded in the Canadian wilderness for 19 months after a plane crash. The story alternates among (some of?) the survivors, now adults, trying to solve multiple mysteries connected to their time in the woods. It’s variously funny and dark and sweet—and very, very scary.

Season Two is running now, but we know you're binging it—and chomping at the bit between episodes. These books will help evoke everything you love about the show while you wait for new episodes each week.

Books with "Stay Out of the Forest" Vibes

books like bird box

The Ritual

By Adam Nevill

In Adam Nevill’s The Ritual (2011), four friends on a hiking trip in northern Scandinavia stumble upon a remote house filled with artifacts of dark rituals and pagan sacrifices. Then they realize that there’s a presence in the wilderness and they’ve become its prey.

The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians

By Stephen Graham Jones

Pursued by a vengeful entity and haunted by a disturbing event from their youth, four Blackfeet men struggle for their lives in the wilderness in The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones’s 2020 sensation. 

The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur

The Forest of Stolen Girls

By June Hur

June Hur’s historical YA, The Forest of Stolen Girls, is set in 1426 Korea. When they were younger, Hwani and her sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest near a gruesome crime scene. Years later, having learned that 13 other girls have disappeared under similar circumstances, their father, a detective, goes there to investigate and also vanishes. Hwani realizes that she holds the key to the disappearances in her buried memories.

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy

The Lamb Will Slaughter

By Margaret Killjoy

In The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (2017) a woman investigating her friend's death confronts a malevolent, three-antlered deer as members of a cult deal with their deity’s wrath.

Survival Stories

Man-Eater

Man-Eater

By Harold Schechter

Harold Schecter’s Man-eater: the Life and Legend of an American Cannibal (2015) is the story of Alfred Packer, one of a crew of prospectors who, when his group became lost in the snow of the Rockies in 1873, turned to cannibalism.

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors Piers Paul Read

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

By Piers Paul Read

The series’ creators were almost certainly inspired by the 1972 Andean rugby team plane crash chronicled in Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) by Piers Paul Read. Sixteen of the flight’s original 45 passengers survived ten weeks in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth by eating the flesh of their deceased teammates.

Books in Which "Girls Will Be Girls"

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Beauty Queens

By Libba Bray

In Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens (2011), 13 contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant survive a plane crash on a mysterious island and have to figure out how to survive. Much lighter in tone than the rest of the suggestions here, this one is for viewers who wanted more dancing to Montell Jordan and fewer maggots spilling out of deer carcasses.

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Dare Me

By Megan Abbott

No one writes about the intricacies and betrayals of teenage friendship like Megan Abbott. ​​In Dare Me (2012), Addy and Beth’s long-established dynamic is upended by a new cheerleading coach and the investigation into a suspicious suicide.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

Girls on Fire

By Robin Wasserman

Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire (2016) is set in the 90s during the Satanic Panic and explores the intense, obsessive friendship between bright, impressionable Dex and rebellious Lacey.

We Ride Upon Sticks Quan Barry

We Ride Upon Sticks

By Quan Berry

In Quan Berry’s We Ride Upon Sticks (2020), the Danvers High field hockey team discovers that the lessons of their Salem forebears may be the key to a winning season.

What to Read if Your Favorite Yellowjackets Character Is…

Horror Stories Liz Phair

Horror Stories

By Liz Phair

Shauna, who understands how one’s choices can breed their own horror: We know from the pilot that Shauna is a Liz Phair fan. As an adult, she’s in a better position than most to absorb the message of Phair’s 2019 memoir, Horror Stories: that the pain, guilt, and despair resulting from our decisions, both small and large, makes us human.

Related: Memoirs From the Horror Industry

a head full of ghosts paul tremblay books for fans of the invisible man

A Head Full of Ghosts

By Paul Tramblay

Lottie, whose apparent clairvoyance gives her a position of power in the wilderness: In A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), Paul Tremblay tells the story of teenage Marjorie and her family’s struggle to figure out if her unsettling behavior is caused by mental illness or demonic possession.

ellen datlow horror books generation loss

Generation Loss

By Elizabeth Hand

Nat, who responds to trauma with substance abuse, eyeliner, and sarcasm: Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary series starts with Generation Loss (2007) and features the self-destructive photographer solving mysteries.

Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han

Nights When Nothing Happened

By Simpn Han

Taissa, a hard-working lawyer who climbs trees in her sleep: In Simon Han’s Nights When Nothing Happened (2020), Chinese immigrants Patty and Liang Cheng find their fragile stability in America complicated by their daughter's sleepwalking activities, which expose complicated family secrets.

Best Horror Books

Misery

By Stephen King

Misty: Stephen King’s Misery (1987). An equipment manager who’s more devoted to the team than the players themselves, a nurse who exploits her position of power over patients, a woman with a deeply skewed sense of right and wrong who is hurt and baffled that people somehow just don’t like her? Misty Quigley is basically Annie Wilkes with a parrot and access to Reddit.

Related: 12 Scariest Stephen King Books

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