6 Father's Day Horror Books About the Dark Side of Fatherhood

It’s one thing when your dad has a temper. It’s something else entirely when he’s a literal monster. When Jess finds a five-year-old runaway hiding outside of her apartment, she never dreamed she’d find herself on the run trying to save both of their lives. Because this isn’t just any little boy. He has a terrifying ability that Jess can barely comprehend.

As the events they encounter get more surreal and grislier than she could ever imagine, Jess finally understands that there’s no escape. Not from the boy. Not from his father. And definitely not from herself.

It began as an ordinary afternoon. Dinah Whitcomb, a young mother with the perfect life, walks across a parking lot with five-year-old Robbie. Then the unthinkable happens. Robbie is taken from her grasp and left battered and broken on the ground. As her body heals, her heart struggles to move on without knowing what happened to her darling boy.

It’s a question any mother would want answered. But does she really want to know that Robbie was renamed Gideon and brainwashed into believing Daddy Love was his true dad? Or that all the other sons vanished after Daddy Love deemed them unworthy? Robbie may not remember who he was. All he knows is that if he wants to survive, he has to escape. By any means necessary.

Coming home as an adult is often complicated. This is especially true when your father was a serial killer who buried the bodies of his victims in the yard. Vera thought running would be the answer. But when her mother asks her to come home, she does. Back to the memories. Back to face the love she’s not sure she should feel.

Making everything even worse is the artist living in the guest house. The one who wants to use Vera’s childhood for his own gain. He insists he isn’t leaving notes for Vera in her father’s handwriting. But if not him, then who could it be? Vera isn’t sure she wants to know the answer. Because there are secrets buried under their house. Secrets that once unburied might reveal more than Vera can face. Secrets that might show just how deep the rot of their family truly goes.

The Overlook Hotel needs a winter caretaker. It’s not a glamorous job. But it is exactly what the Torrance’s need. At least, it’s what Jack needs.

The remote hotel is the perfect place to focus on his writing, and since his addiction has burned bridges, it’s possibly the only place he can work to support his family. But five-year-old Danny doesn’t exactly settle in. He’s always had an ability, the Shine, as Old Mr. Hallorann calls it. And at the Overlook, his visions explode out of control.

When a snowstorm further isolates the hotel and guests who aren’t supposed to be there suddenly appear, Jack’s grip on reality starts to shatter. There’s something lurking in the Overlook. Something evil. Jack may love his family. But there is a void inside him that the Overlook knows exactly how to fill.

In the mountains and coal mines of Pennsylvania, dark things may lurk in the shadows, but sometimes they lurk in your home, too. No one knows this better than Nathan and Maddie. Both grew up with secrets. Nathan hid the bruises his father left, and Maddie never talked about the thing she saw in her bedroom that she wasn’t supposed to. Their wounds haven’t quite healed; and maybe won’t now that they’ve moved into Nathan’s childhood home.

When their son Oliver makes a new friend, dark forces close in on the family. They both want to leave their trauma in the past. But to protect their son, they have to face the childhood that haunts them before it’s too late for their family, and maybe the world.

There are daddy issues. And then there’s getting swallowed by a literal whale level of daddy issues. That’s what happens when Jay Gardiner takes his father’s ashes to disperse into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Things go bad when he gets tangled in the tentacles of a giant quid. They get even worse when a sperm whale eats the squid. Now, Jay is trapped inside the first of the whale’s four stomachs. He only has an hour of oxygen in his tank. One hour to face the demons left by his father. One hour to escape. One hour to survive.