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Listicle: 10 corporate horror books that are scarier than a Monday
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These 10 corporate horror novels feature demonic managers, zombie employees and offices that are literal portals to hell. And you thought your office was toxic
Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix. Amy is stuck in a soul-sucking job at Orsk, an Ikea-style retail giant. She hates the repetitive work and her coworkers. But when furniture starts mysteriously breaking overnight, her supervisor Basil recruits Amy and a few unfortunate colleagues for a nine-hour, dusk-to-dawn shift. Their mission: Patrol and investigate. Their problem: The store happens to be a portal to hell. Nothing says late-stage capitalism like risking your life for a company, just so its shareholders can be happy.
Stinkbug, by Sinéad Stubbins. A group of advertising employees are shipped off to a remote mountain convent for a company retreat. Phones are confiscated. Team-building exercises keep getting weirder. There are threats of redundancies. Then all their salaries are leaked. Amidst the chaos, Edith starts suspecting something fishy about the convent and its staff. She can either conform and shut up, or dig deeper. Stubbins’s story walks the fine line between “What the hell is happening?” and “Oh God, this has literally happened to me at my work”.
Abyss, by Nicholas Binge. Joe, an ambition-free slacker, takes an admin job at the shady company Ponos. On Day 1, there’s not a human in sight (his colleagues are apparently all working remotely) and his only companion is an AI bot monitoring his mental and physical wellbeing. And oh, he can’t seem to leave the office. What begins as Severance-style corporate creepiness spirals into Backrooms-esque surrealism and, eventually, Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Just another day at the office, then.
Several People Are Typing, by Calvin Kasulke. Gerald, a mid-level PR employee, wakes up to discover his consciousness has been uploaded to his company’s Slack. His colleagues refuse to believe him, and are more annoyed by his pleas to check whether his physical body is still alive at home. They have a PR disaster to deal with: A luxury dog food brand is allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. Gerald’s productivity has never been better! Told entirely through Slack messages, this novel is full of office gossip, workplace flirting, pet photos and existential dread. Will Gerald ever log off for good? Or is he doomed to be always active?
Severance, by Ling Ma. A fungal pandemic is sweeping through New York. The infected turn into ‘zombies’, who are doomed to repeat mundane routines until they drop dead. But publishing employee Candace Chen keeps clocking in at the office – it remains open for “the optics” – even as colleagues flee. It’s not like Chen, whose immigrant parents are dead, has anywhere else to go. Soon, she’s the only employee left. So, what’s next? Anyone who’s ever felt dead inside during their 9-5, followed by their 5-9, will hard relate.
The Employees, by Olga Ravn. Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, this sci-fi novel takes place in the near future, in the form of HR interviews with the human and humanoid crew of the Six-Thousand Ship. When the vessel picks up strange objects from the planet New Discovery, its employees begin to act strange. Everyone’s craving warmth, intimacy, a longing for an Earth that may no longer exist. The humanoids are left grappling with the radical idea that a person is more than their work. Part workplace satire, part existential crisis, and strangely real.
I Hope This Email Finds You In Hell, by Mackenzie Reed. Brie, a receptionist at a life-insurance company, stays late one evening and accidentally catches her boss, Luke, exorcising Debra from Accounting. Then her work bestie vanishes, a tear opens between Hell and Earth, and Luke reveals himself to be a demon hunter. Brie joins him into to the underworld, where the offices, cubicles, paperwork, management and monsters look suspiciously familiar. Along the way, she also falls in love with her boss. HR is useless throughout, obv.
Lakewood, by Megan Giddings. To pay off her family’s debt and medical expenses, Lena accepts a high-paying job at a company that is developing mysterious treatments, such as eyedrops that make brown eyes blue, a dementia cure, pills that promise happiness. But there’s a catch: The research involves dangerous human experimentation, exclusively on Black bodies. The book asks: How much will you be willing to sacrifice for a decent salary and health insurance?
Secret Santa, by Andrew Shaffer. Lussi Meyer accepts a position at a publishing house that wants her to find ‘the next Stephen King’. Her employees are essentially bullies. At the office Christmas party, she receives a White Elephant gift that happens to be a demonic doll. Soon, her coworkers start dropping dead in horrific ways. Lussi sets upon a mission to find where the doll came from and what it wants. Can she rid her office of its politics, while keeping her co-workers alive?
Startup Hell, by Caitlin Rozakis. Morgan, a junior salesperson at a tech startup, discovers her boss dead after a botched attempt to trade his soul with the demon Luke, in exchange for hitting his quarterly targets. Morgan somehow ends up getting sucked into hell with Luke, who also happens to be a hottie, and whose job of collecting human souls is just as soul-crushing as hers. Cue interdimensional office romance, shared work woes and enough jargon and office politics to make you want to log off forever.
From HT Brunch, October 31, 2026
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