Our staff share the books that gave them nightmares this year.

Monsters by Emerald Fennell. This book gave me nightmares, not that monsters were out to get me, but that I was the monster. I woke up with a start and tears in my eyes as the face of my latest murder victim (in the dream!) faded away. I loved it! – Dani Solomon, children’s specialist at Carlton

I asked my colleague Holly if I was a total baby for getting scared in Illuminae (the Australian YA novel everyone is talking about right now, and that’s going to be made into a Hollywood movie by Brad Pitt, and that you should definitely read ASAP). Holly said yes, I was a total baby. But she’s much tougher than me, and she’s also wrong, because this book is seriously tense and scary, and hits on a particular fear of mine – being trapped in an enclosed space with contagious sick people. In this case, being trapped on a spaceship, and the virus that is infecting people on said spaceship is really, really horrible. I had bad dreams two night running reading this book (worth it, though).

The second novel that gave me nightmares this year is the crime novel Disclaimer, a recommendation from my crime fiction loving mother. I got to a certain scene and called her and said, ‘This is horrible! Why are you making me read this? I can’t keep going!’ But I could, and I did, because as with any good psychological thriller, I needed to know what happened. I read quite a few crime novels this year on my mother’s recommendation, and this is definitely the one that disturbed me the most (it is also her favourite book of the year, so I’m not sure what it says about her, or me). I don’t think I can say I enjoyed Disclaimer, exactly, but it’s a good book for crime fiction readers who are hardier and more seasoned than me. – Nina Kenwood, marketing manager

The Girl With All The Gifts was recommended to me by someone who’d heard me ranting one too many times about how excellent World War Z was. The Girl With All The Gifts is similar in that it’s a smart and well-written zombie novel, but there’s where the similarity ends. Where World War Z looks at how the nations of the world would react to a global uprising of undead, The Girl With All The Gifts is the much more intimate story of one scared little girl and her adored teacher in a world where the line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is becoming less and less defined. It’s deep, and it’s scary, and it looks at how we – as individuals – would be likely to react when the thin veneers of civilisation and society are stripped away by the horrors of a world-wide pandemic. – Lian Hingee, digital marketing manager

Cecilia Ekbäck’s Wolf Winter was one of those books where I thought to myself: ‘It’s late, I’ll just read a little bit. After all, I’m terribly busy, and I’m not sure I even like historical crime. Let’s just have a go.’

The story is set in the 1700s on the side of a Swedish mountain. Few families live on the mountain, no one is close, and the next village is a genuine journey away. One woman, alone with her children, finds the body of one of her neighbours. Is it wolves that created this carnage? Or is it someone else, someone she knows? How do you feel safe in a place so desolate, so dark and monstrous, so haunted with ancient tales, and cold enough to freeze the limbs right off your body? Who do you know to trust, and what happens when people no longer trust you?

Next thing I knew, it was about three in the morning and I was blinking in the darkness. I was wrapped up in my blankets and my partner was sleeping beside me, our daughter in another room. And something was scratching at the window. It was that tree, of course, the one right outside our bedroom, the one our neighbour said he’d happily take down for us if we wanted, because surely it was too big? It was definitely that tree. Just branches. Nothing worse. Nothing suspicious. When I put the book down I did it just loud enough so my partner woke up and mumbled, ‘What time is it?’, and I could say in my very best acting voice, ‘Oh, sorry, did I wake you?’ – Fiona Hardy, bookseller at Carlton

While I didn’t get nightmares from any books this year, I did read some chilling non-fiction books that kept me awake at night – everything from true crime to Russian politics and Scientology. One that stayed with me is John D'Agata’s About a Mountain, which centres on the plan to build a permanent, geologically isolated storage facility for nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Nuclear power and waste was a frightening reality to get my head around, and I felt haunted by some of D'Agata’s passages for days after reading. – Bronte Coates, digital content coordinator