The summer vacation season is here, and folks everywhere are packing a book or two into their beach bags. We often recommend non-fiction books that might have politics or social justice at their core. But we know sometimes you just need some relaxation and entertainment.

Amid the proliferation of new fiction this year, two brightly macabre novels stand out as fine summer reads.

The first is Stephen King’s Duma Key, published in early 2008. The novel tells the story of Edgar Freemantle, a Minnesota building contractor who survives a construction accident that should have killed him. Emerging from a recovery nearly as terrifying as the accident, Edgar is not quite the person he was before.

In addition to the loss of his right arm, Edgar suffers a contracoup injury to the head in which the brain is affected on the opposite side of the impact. The result is that Edgar cannot quite think the way he did before, and is prone to moments of intense anger when he cannot speak what he is thinking. His wife crumbles under the emotional fallout, leaving him after twenty-odd years of marriage. Seeking the assistance of a psychologist, Edgar is advised to do the only thing that may save him: move to the Florida Keys.

Duma Key, to be exact. Edgar rents a beach house in an effort to gain a new life perspective. Soon after moving in, Edgar experiences an urgent need to paint. An amateur artist in his younger life, he experiences a rush of creative energy and begins painting seascapes, sunsets and ships at sea. All of this, of course, is what one may expect a middle-aged man who takes up painting to do.

Until Edgar discovers that it is his phantom limb doing the painting.

Each new work is eerily plain, and emits a strange quality that Edgar doesn’t understand at first. But like many artists, he continues without questioning the muse. Meanwhile, Edgar comes into contact with the few other residents of Duma Key, with whom he discovers an intimate connection. As their lives become entwined, Edgar begins to suspect that his paintings reflect people and places, both real and otherworldly. This truth rears itself terribly for Edgar, his new friends, and his estranged family before anyone—save one person—really knows what is happening.

Stephen King’s gift for creating an environment in his novels is inestimable, as is his ability to tell a great story. The author’s description of the Florida Keys puts the reader right there, and once engaged the reader will have a hard time putting this one down, making Duma Key a fine read whilst sitting under an umbrella watching the waves.

A second novel for the beach bag is Susan Hubbard’s The Year of Disappearances, published in this past May. The book continues the story of young vampire Ariella Montero, which began with the author’s 2006 work The Society of S.

Here, the reader discovers a world in which vampires live among humans, and even have their own political factions. Hubbard’s presentation of the story sets it apart from typical vampire dramas; rather than portraying vampires as monsters, the author posits a vampire as a biological being like any other, similar to humans in many respects. Further, many vampires are good citizens and moral people. And while they have their share of those who are not, cannot the same be said for humanity?

In The Society of S, Ariella takes a journey both literally and emotionally that leads to her discovery of who she is and where she comes from. This discovery evolves into a more secure sense of self in The Year of Disappearances, as Ariella becomes part of the community where she and her mother (Mae) live in Florida (where else?).

While her parents are separated (a story far too detailed for a book review), her father Raphael is very much still a presence. A brilliant scholar and scientist, Raphael Montero is on the forefront of nutritional research that helps vampires live healthy lives without consuming blood. Soon after the story begins, Mae’s honeybee hives collapse, proving a dark harbinger as young people in the community begin to disappear. When one of Ariella’s friends goes missing, she and her family suspect criminal activity among rogue vampire factions.

While Hubbard’s S series is written toward a teen audience (Ariella is 14, albeit forever), the books possess a Harry Potter-esque quality in that adults will enjoy them too. At heart, they confront the many challenges of being a young person and relating to one’s parents, and like Rowling’s novels prove that fiction is often the truest mirror of reality.

John Hildreth lives in Giles County, teaches at Radford University, and plays in the contra dance band Dot Dot Dash.