Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Of all the things you can say about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you can’t make any accusation of false advertising. It’s precisely what it claims to be, which is Pride and Prejudice. With zombies. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It retains the kind of period, comedy of manners sense of humour of the original, with the added surrealist bent that there are, well, zombies now. It’s certainly good for a chuckle, and it’s essentially still the same great story that we had incessantly rammed down all of our throats at school; only this time, outside of an English classroom, with zombies.
Needful Things by Stephen King
Needful Things is something of a magnum opus of King’s in my opinion. The effortless way he builds an ever encroaching sense of dread into what initially seems such a humdrum series of events creates an understated level of horror, which manages to be so much creepier than having a stock boogeyman jump out from behind a bush. This is particularly true when plastered against the backdrop of the complex, scheming politics of the New England town of Castle Rock, which King satirizes with some apparent glee.
The plot is rather simple. A new store opens in Castle Rock, the eponymous ‘Needful Things’. Its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, is a kindly looking, rather charming old man in his 50s or 60s who possesses a series of specialist items to fulfill the wildest dreams and desires of the town’s residents – for a price, of course.