Body horror books

Body horror books to start from. Open one to see books like it, or tell BookSense what you loved for four picks made for you.

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New to the genre? These 5 are the books to read first.

Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
A man wakes up transformed into an insect; the story sets the pattern of horror arising from a body that no longer works as before, though it is usually read as literary fiction rather than horror.
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The Hellbound Heart
Clive Barker
A novella about a puzzle box, sensual damnation and flesh that is torn and remade; it became the basis for the Hellraiser films and is a central example of the graphic physical horror of the 1980s.
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Books of Blood
Clive Barker
A series of short story collections, the first published in 1984, that established Barker's preoccupation with the body's violation and transformation and helped define 1980s British horror in print.
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Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
The first volume of the Southern Reach trilogy, in which a mutating zone reshapes living things and the explorers' bodies; it is a leading modern example of bio-horror and environmental body horror.
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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
The earliest major novel built around a body assembled and brought to life; it is a precursor of body horror rather than a work of the later subgenre.
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