Part “X Files” and part “CSI,” The Strain, by famed fantasy and horror film director Guillermo Del Toro and veteran mystery and horror novelist Chuck Hogan, is this summer’s anti-Twilight. For readers eager for a seriously scary and mature twist on the folklore of vampires, this is the beginning of what will prove to be a very successful and well-recieved trilogy. The book centers around Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, a leading epidemiologist with the CDC, as he investigates what appears to be a potential pandemic originating from a quarantined 777 on the runway at JFK. As the mysteries of the “dead” airplane unravel, Eph is confronted by strange missing bodies, deformed corpses, and a seemingly-lunatic, vampire-hunting holocaust survivor, all while trying to balance his new leadership position at the CDC and his not-so-quietly-unraveling home and love life.

The Strain is sophisticated horror and carefully-crafted characters all wrapped in the immense level of science fiction and horror imagination you would expect from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy.

Recommended by John.