Bram Stoker award winning author Adam Cesare joins the Capes and Tights Podcast for Episode 295 on August 19, 2026. To prepare for the conversation, we have compiled 14 books by Cesare you should read.
Adam Cesare is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Clown in a Cornfield series and several other novels and novellas including the cult hit Video Night which gets a new edition this September 29, Influencer, and The Toxic Avenger. The fourth installment in the Clown in a Cornfield series hit shelves on August 18, 2026 at bookstores everywhere. Cesare also announced re-releases of Zero Lives Remaining, Video Night as well as a physical version of Mercy House coming September 1, September 30, and October 20, 2026 respectively.
Over the past few years, Cesare has been a part of a number of various comics including Power Rangers Unlimited: The Coinless and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, not to mention his comic series Dead Mall at Dark Horse.
The Clown in a Cornfield feature film adaptation directed by Eli Craig and written by Craig and Carter Blanchard hit theaters on May 9, 2025. Based on Cesare’s novel, the film stars Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso.
Cesare’s latest novel, Bloodsick, hits shelves in early 2027 from Union Square & Co.
Clown in a Cornfield Series
In the first book…Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half.
On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.
Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.
Available to read: Clown in a Cornfield, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, Clown in a Cornfield 3: Church of Frendo, and Clown in a Cornfield 4: Lights! Camera! Frendo!
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Tribesmen
Don’t mess with the natives!
Thirty years ago, cynical sleaze ball director Tito Bronze took a tiny cast and crew to a desolate island. His goal: to exploit the local tribes, spray some guts around, cash in on the gore-spattered 80s Italian cannibal craze.
But the pissed-off spirits of the island had other ideas. And before long, guts were squirting behind the scenes, as well. While the camera kept rolling…
Tribesmen is Adam Cesare‘s blistering tribute to Cannibal Holocaust and Lucio Fulci: a no-bull glimpse into grindhouse filmmaking, stuffed inside a rocket of tropical non-stop mayhem.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Influencer
Follow him or die…
Influencer, by Bram Stoker Award–winning author Adam Cesare, is a tense and timely psychological thriller told from alternating points of view about a teenage girl who begins to suspect the charismatic new kid may in fact be a murderous psychopath. As more and more of her friends fall under his influence, her suspicions begin to come across like jealousy. But is she right? And if so, how much more dangerous would he be toward someone who has discovered his secret?
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
The Summer Job
Insane innkeepers, cannibalistic cooks: the staff of the Brant Hotel would like to meet you!
Massive nights, picturesque days: there is nothing Claire doesn’t love about her summer job in Mission, Massachusetts. Claire is just trying to keep her head down and start a new life after burning out in the city, but those kids out in the woods seem like they throw awesome ragers…
It’s only once she’s in too deep that Claire discovers the real tourist trade that keeps the town afloat, it’s then that her soul-searching in Mission becomes a fight for her life.
Crazed parties, dark rituals, and unexpected betrayals abound in this modern folk horror novel from the author of The Con Season and Video Night.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
The Toxic Avenger – The Official Movie Novelization
MUTANT MAYHEM IS COMING TO TROMAVILLE!
When a struggling janitor is pushed into a vat of toxic waste, he is transformed into a mutant freak who must go from shunned outcast to underdog hero as he races to save his son, his friends, and his community from the forces of corruption and greed.
Experience this action-packed, irreverent, gory and outlandish saga of vengeance and twisted justice, adapted from the 2025 reboot of the classic cult comedy-horror extravaganza The Toxic Avenger.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Exponential
Five strangers drawn together at a roadside bar on the outskirts of Las Vegas. One rampaging monster, escaped from a secret facility, absorbing victims and accumulating biomass as it moves north from Arizona. The miles between them rapidly dwindling.
No, this is not the world’s best math problem, it’s Exponential. The rollicking, brutal, gory, and strangely poignant horror novel from Adam Cesare. Criminals and screw-ups need to face down science run amok in this literary tribute to films like Tremors and The Blob.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Video Night
It’s 1988 and two best friends—one departing for college, one destined for bad boy townie life—decide to have a final video night before their friendship changes forever. Billy and Tom’s plan is perfect. They’ve got pizza and beer, and Tom even managed to convince his girlfriend, Darcy, to bring a friend, Billy’s neighbor and crush, Rachel. But what they don’t know is that there’s an invasion underway.
Across the street, Rachel’s sister, Rhonda, was one of the first to turn. A slithering, chitinous evil has overtaken her body and mind, and she’ll do anything to spread the alien infection. Blood, sex, rock and roll, invaders from outer space, and tender perspectives on teen male friendship: Video Night is one cult classic that has it all!
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
The Con Season
Horror movie starlet Clarissa Lee is beautiful, internationally known, and…completely broke.
To cap off years of questionable financial and personal decisions, Clarissa accepts an invitation to participate in a “fully immersive” fan convention. She arrives at an off-season summer camp and finds what was supposed to be a quick buck has become a real-life slasher movie.
Deep in the woods of Kentucky with a supporting cast of B-level celebrities, Clarissa must fight to survive the deadly game that the con’s organizers have rigged against her.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Mercy House
Harriet Laurel notices the odor the moment she steps inside Mercy House, brought to the retirement home against her will by her son and his wife. In the early stages of dementia, Harriet has grown to resent her daughter-in-law for not providing grandchildren. Yet as she crosses the threshold, she notices her mind begins to sharpen. Then her hate begins to grow…
Arnold Piper, an eighty-five-year-old ex-Marine, has always prided himself on self-reliance. But betrayed by his own body, he’s learning that surviving war-torn Korea was easier than facing the daily indignities of old age. And his worst trials are still to come.
Sarah Campbell, an idealistic nurse, is already stretched thin at the chronically understaffed Mercy House. Now her duties are about to take a terrifying turn. Can she survive the night…and her patients?
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Zero Lives Remaining
It’s 1989, and Robby Asaro is making FunCave Arcade’s pizzas when his sleeve is caught on the pizza oven conveyor belt, and he dies a brutal death. But that wasn’t the end for Robby, who is now a friendly ghost watching over the gamers of the arcade.
Fast forward to 2014, and this retro video arcade is still going strong as teens flock to both the new games on the main floor and the old classics on the second. What they don’t know is that FunCave is now haunted by the man who died there in the 1980s. Robby cares about the regulars, especially Tiffany Park. When Robby tries to protect Tiffany from a bully, his first kill has unintended consequences as he absorbs his victim’s hate and rage. He can’t help what he does next as more bodies pile up and the patrons of the arcade are trapped inside.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Dead Mall (Graphic Novel)
The Penn Mills Galleria is about to be demolished. Five teens sneak into the mall to take a last look around before it’s gone.
However, while Penn Mills has been closed for years, the mall is far from abandoned.
A night of exploration becomes a shopping spree from hell. The teens must contend with the sprawling, transformative cosmic horror of Penn Mills or be trapped forever within the Dead Mall.
A coming-of-age horror story that both engages and criticizes nostalgia culture while showing deep empathy for the fears and vulnerabilities of Gen-Z teenagers.
A young adult graphic novel by Adam Cesare, author of Clown in a Cornfield, winner of the 2020 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.
