The Cipher, if I were to be totally upfront, might be my favorite horror book. Not favorite weird fiction book, not my favorite of the Dell Abyss series, not my favorite proto-grunge slackercore transgressive novel either. The Cipher is good enough that it doesn’t need to be in a sub-category. It’s just a great fucking book.

Here’s the gist: early ‘90s artist burnouts, who do little but peacock their pretension, drink, and screw, discover a hole in the floor of a storage closet in their apartment building. Of course, they immediately start putting shit into it and discovering that it changes. Weirdness and insanity ensue.

(Side note: if you ever want a master class on how to use punctuation like a fucking artist, look no further than Kathe Koja. She masterfully controls the pace and tone of her prose, dragging the reader screaming—in a good way—from the first word of a sentence to the final period. I liken her control to a theme park ride. She knows when to blow mist in your face, she knows when to slow you down, she knows when to cue the drop. Absolutely perfect.)

While The Cipher isn’t explicitly anti-capitalist in its themes, I think it absolutely earns a spot on this list by depicting the very real, unglamorous reality of capitalism. The characters in Koja’s novel are the dregs of society. They’ve been lied to, been fed a diet of capital-A art—a product as much as it is an ethos—then suffered for it. It’s a cruel bit of reality that forms the unspoken bond between all of its characters. They’re losers in a society that creates them wholesale.

The funhole (their name, not mine) is as good a distraction as any when prospects are zero, your home is crumbling, and hope is a buzzword for middle class snobs.

The Cipher may not feature its characters fully recognizing their struggle, but even without its weird conceit, the struggle is painted vividly.

Back before Ellis made it his job to whine about cancel culture on podcasts (a favorite pastime of men-of-a-certain-age), he was actually a pretty insanely talented writer. I’m not sure what ‘80s Ellis would think of the one we got now, but American Psycho’s scathing take on the Greed is Good era hits the bullseye more often than not.

As far as books go, this one is a doozy. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless you know that you’re in for extreme violence, sexuality, sexual violence, and probably more nastiness that I’ve since blocked out.

American Psycho is the tale of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street bro with a penchant for serial killing. Throughout the novel, Bateman waxes extensively on pop culture, consumer products, and the status of his peers. These long, dry, fixated essays serve in fascinating juxtaposition to Bateman’s sadistic escapades.

Obsessed with superficiality, American Psycho depicts the very real fear that our trickle-down economy is trickling down from actual sociopaths. But that we’re just as complicit in feeding into the culture that turns a blind eye.

The Marigold is the most recent book on this list, but it absolutely earns its place. Set in a future Toronto (that unfortunately seems to be only five minutes into the future), we’re plunged into a world of real estate tycoons making shitty apartment buildings, gig economy workers, and a killer mold.

Told in snapshots from a variety of characters across all social classes, The Marigold is perhaps one of the most complete looks at late stage capitalism put to fiction. While many would say The Marigold operates primarily in the eco-horror mold (heh), I think it’s also safe to say that the novel points a finger at the engine that chugs us toward total climate collapse—unchecked capitalism.

What stood out to me most when reading Sullivan’s novel was that much of his banal dystopia is presented with a facade of “progress.” Skyscrapers go up in the name of a better future, just as DoorDashers are promised freedom from the nine-to-five. In The Marigold, progress is just another marketing term, meant to ease the nerves of those who will be clawing for survival.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a Ligotti fanboy. Upon first reading Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, the genre’s boundaries expanded before my eyes. Out of nowhere, I was witnessing someone be scary in a way I had never seen before. Thomas Ligotti’s fiction is singular, idiosyncratic, and backed by his own bleak philosophy. It’s an entirely unique experience that has prompted a fervent fanbase of acolytes—myself included.

My Work Is Not Yet Done is Ligotti’s only foray into long fiction, but it also represents the author at his most accessible.

Firmly planted in corporate horror, My Work Is Not Yet Done reads like decades of pent-up workplace rage. This is a novel straight out of r/antiwork and, fittingly, it also has the structure of a revenge tale. Frank Dominio (a clear stand-in for the author) loses his job and finds himself in league with a dark force more than happy to serve up just desserts. Of course, these desserts are brimming with Ligotti’s absurdist humor and eye for weird and horrific detail.

Where his previous work is dense and literary, My Work Is Not Yet Done reads almost like a populist manifesto. It’s Ligotti at his approachable, his most down-to-earth, his most straightforward. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? What’s more populist than wanting to kill your co-workers?

Joan Samson only published one novel—but by God it’s a masterpiece. The Auctioneer is the dignified ancestor of Stephen King’s Needful Things and my own The Psychographist—a tale of a community torn apart by a quasi-supernatural stranger.

The Auctioneer takes place in a rural New Hampshire farming community that has been unmoved by change. A little slice of heaven kept in stasis by its hardworking, tight-knit inhabitants. When the titular auctioneer comes to town—an otherworldly and charismatic man named Perly Dinsmore—the town faces a financial and spiritual corruption that suggests we’re all just waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.

While The Auctioneer begins with an outward threat, it quickly becomes internalized by its own citizens. This complicity makes Samson’s novel a sort of anticapitalist fable—a tale of the empty holes in our hearts and what we’ll give up to fill them. A stark reminder that we’re all willing to rally against the man... until we have a chance to join him at the table.