A Bone-Chilling List of the 19 Best Horror Books

There are no fantastical elements required to make this thriller scary. In Agustina Bazterrica's dystopian novel, animal meat has become toxic to humans, resulting in government-sanctioned human slaughterhouses instead. Marcos, whose wife has left him and whose father is developing dementia, works at one of these slaughterhouses and tries not to think about his job too much . . . until he gets a live specimen who's doomed for slaughter and starts to befriend her. Like a darker version of Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go," "Tender Is the Flesh" ($13) is absolutely twisted and made all the more scary because of how possible it seems.