Laugh Yourself to Death: Top 10 Darkly Humorous Horror(ish) Novels

Posted on October 8, 2024

by Amy H

I’m getting too old for just plain horror; now I need it to be funny as well or I’ll never get to sleep. Fortunately, the darkly humorous horror genre is BOOming (ha! SeeWhatIDidThere!?) with options. Try one of these for a fun, spooky, amusing, and possibly weirdly unsettling reading (or viewing!) experience …

Book Jacket: Dungeon Crawler Carl

dungeon crawler carl by Matt Dinniman

I've been a librarian for almost 30 years and I can honestly say that this is quite possibly the most wonderful book in the universe. Smart, super geeky, and so, so darkly funny. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses into the ground, transforming into a globe-spanning 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, descend into a universal game show: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. Once you're in, you can't get out and each level has a time limit to a scheduled destruction. Winning this game is based on getting followers, views, and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big (thankfully Donut can talk and her charisma is off the charts), hopefully with loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. For Carl and Donut, this is anything but a game.

Book Jacket: John Dies at the End

john dies at the end by David Wong

You should not have read this post with your bare eyeballs. NO! Don’t look away. It’s too late….They’re watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the bleak future ahead. But it’s too late. You read this post. You’re in the game. You’re under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read these books, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me. The important thing is this: The drug called Soy Sauce gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time fighting off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault. (first in a series!)

Book Jacket: We Sold Our Souls

we sold our souls by Grady Hendrix

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success-but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in obscurity. Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western-she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band. Kris hits the road, hoping to reunite with the rest of her bandmates and confront the man who ruined her life. It’s a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a celebrity rehab center to a music festival from hell. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, this is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul…where only a lone girl with a guitar can save us all.

Book Jacket: Meddling Kids

meddling kids by Edgar Cantero

SUMMER 1977: The Blyton Summer Detective Club solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster-another low-life fortune hunter trying to get rich. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids. 1990: The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final case that cannot be easily explained. Intrepid Andy is tired of running from her demons. To find answers, she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius, now drinking her ghosts away with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years. The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps…save the world.

Book Jacket: Gil's All Fright Diner

gil's all fright diner by A. Lee Martinez

Duke and Earl are just passing through Rockwood county in their pick-up truck when they stop at the Diner for a quick bite to eat. They aren’t planning to stick around-until Loretta, the eatery’s owner, offers them $100 to take care of her zombie problem. Given that Duke is a werewolf and Earl’s a vampire, this looks right up their alley. But the shambling dead are just the tip of a particularly spiky iceberg. Seems someone’s out to drive Loretta from the Diner, and more than willing to raise a little Hell on Earth if that’s what it takes. Before Duke and Earl get to the bottom of the Diner’s troubles, they’ll run into such otherworldly complications as undead cattle, an amorous ghost, a jailbait sorceress, and the terrifying occult power of pig-Latin. And maybe–just maybe–the End of the World, too. Gory, sexy, and flat-out hilarious, “Gil’s All Fright Diner” will tickle your funnybone–before ripping it out of its socket and setting it on fire.

Book Jacket: Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer

johannes cabal, the necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard

First in a series. Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not soul–he hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager, Johannes has one year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever.

Book Jacket: Welcome to Night Vale

welcome to night vale by Joseph Fink

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. Nineteen-year-old pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro is given a paper marked “KING CITY” by a mysterious man holding a deer skin suitcase. Everything about him and his paper unsettles her, especially the fact that she can’t seem to get the paper to leave her hand, and that no one who meets this man can remember anything about him. Jackie is determined to uncover the mystery of King City and the message man before she herself unravels. Night Vale PTA treasurer Diane Crayton’s son, Josh, is moody…. and a shape shifter. And lately Diane’s started to see her son’s father everywhere she goes, looking the same as the day he left years earlier, when they were both teenagers. Josh, looking different every time Diane sees him, shows a stronger and stronger interest in his estranged father, leading to a disaster Diane feels helpless to prevent. Diane’s search to reconnect with her son and Jackie’s search for answers collide as they find themselves coming back to two words: “KING CITY”. It is King City that holds the key to both of their mysteries, and their futures…if they can ever find it.

Book Jacket: Unnoticeables

unnoticeables by Robert Brockway

Angels exist, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, which then either melts the people they target or turns them into unstoppable, soulless shells bent on consuming more victims. Carey doesn’t much like that idea. As a punk living in New York City, 1977, Carey is sick and tired of watching strange kids with unnoticeable faces abduct his friends. He doesn’t care about the rumors of tar-monsters in the sewers or unkillable psychopaths invading the punk scene–all he wants is to drink cheap beer and kick some butt. Kaitlyn isn’t sure what she’s doing with her life. She came to Hollywood in 2013 to be a stunt woman, but last night a former teen heartthrob tried to eat her, her best friend has just gone missing, and there’s an angel outside her apartment. Whatever she plans on doing with her life, it should probably happen in the few remaining minutes she has left. There are angels. There are demons. They are the same thing. It’s up to Carey and Kaitlyn to stop them. The survival of the human race is in their hands. Which pretty much means we are well and truly doomed.

Book Jacket: Secondhand Souls

secondhand souls by Christopher Moore

Something really strange is happening in San Francisco. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone-or something-is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He’s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall “meat puppet” waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind.

Book Jacket: Reincarnation Blues

reincarnation blues by Michael Poore

Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything. Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her. More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living-as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again. Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle-if only he can piece them together in time. Darkly enchanting and wisely hilarious this is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking. Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too.

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