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Daniel Kraus

DANIEL KRAUS is a Chicago-based writer and filmmaker. He is the director of six feature films, including Sheriff (2006 season premiere of PBS's Emmy-winning "Independent Lens") and Musician (2007 New York Times Critics' Pick). His first novel, The Monster Variations, comes out in August from Random House/Delacorte. His second novel, Rotters, will come out from Random House/Delacorte in 2011. He has written regularly for such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Maxim, and Salon.com.

Awards: Stoker (2022) see all

Genres: Young Adult Fantasy, Children's Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction

New and upcoming books

July 2025

Angel Down

September 2025

The Joker's on You
(Graveyard Girls, book 4)

Series

Death and Life of Zebulon Finch
1. At the Edge of Empire (2015)
2. Empire Decayed (2016)

Teddies Saga
   1. They Threw Us Away (2020)
   2. They Stole Our Hearts (2022)
   3. They Set the Fire (2023)

Graveyard Girls (with Lisi Harrison)
   1. 1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War (2022)
   2. Scream for the Camera (2023)
   3. Season's Eatings (2024)
   4. The Joker's on You (2025)

Year Zero
Year Zero Vol. 0 (2022)

Novels

   The Monster Variations (2009)
   Rotters (2011)
   Scowler (2013)
   Trollhunters (2015) (with Guillermo del Toro)
   The Shape of Water (2018) (with Guillermo del Toro)
   Blood Sugar (2019)
   Bent Heavens (2020)
   The Living Dead (2020) (with George A Romero)
   The Ghost That Ate Us (2022)
   Wrath (2022) (with Sharon Moalem)
   Whalefall (2023)
   Pay the Piper (2024) (with George A Romero)
   Angel Down (2025)

Non fiction show

Books containing stories by Daniel Kraus

Unnerving Magazine: Issue #12 (2020)
(Unnerving Magazine, book 12)

Awards

2022 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Middle Grade Novel : They Stole Our Hearts

Award nominations

	2023 Ray Bradbury Prize (nominee) : Whalefall
	2020 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel (nominee) : Bent Heavens
	2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel (nominee) : Rotters

Daniel Kraus recommends

Invader (2025)
Brian Deleeuw and Adam Egypt Mortimer
"Part Starman, part Body Snatchers, part Under the Skin, this is sci-fi horror with gasoline in its veins, a bloody but moving study of humanhood by the aliens that might replace us. Smart, fast, funny, tragic, and a hundred other things too."

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025)
Stephen Graham Jones
"For me and vampires, there is Stoker, there is Rice, and now there is Jones. It's harrowing, agonizing, nuanced, and downright philosophical. Very likely Jones's masterpiece."

Coup De Grace (2024)
Sofia Ajram
"Relentless, terrifying, gorgeous, and perfect; one of the most powerful books I've ever been lost inside. This is a beautiful nightmare built by a genius architect and I'll be shocked if I read anything better all year."

Dearest (2024)
Jacquie Walters
"A corrosive cocktail of domestic dread and parental paranoia, Dearest will turn your stomach and scare you senseless."

House of Bone and Rain (2024)
Gabino Iglesias
"Iglesias's relentless and overpowering novel comes on like a hurricane - of wind, of bullets, of blood, of hope - and you read it breathlessly, waiting for the eye of the storm."

Dear Hanna (2024)
(Hanna)
Zoje Stage
"Once you get inside the head of this suburban whirlpool of psychological madness, there is no escape until the shocking final pages."

Small Town Horror (2024)
Ronald Malfi
"This isn't only Malfi's masterpiece, it's a heroic swing at the Great American Novel, and will be nakedly terrifying to anyone who's been a kid-and to anyone who's grown up with regret. This is heavyweight horror, a total knockout."

Womb City (2024)
Tlotlo Tsamaase
"A fierce, furious, and fearless debut that has its finger on the pulse - no, the gushing wound - of our world's most invasive cruelties."

The House of Last Resort (2024)
Christopher Golden
"An absolute ripper of a fire-and-brimstone, capital-H Horror novel. I tore through it so fast my fingertips bled. Which probably summoned the book's demons."

The Centre (2023)
Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
"The most fascinating debut I've read in years - enigmatic, biting, absurd, and right when you think you've got it figured out, utterly horrifying."

Maeve Fly (2023)
CJ Leede
"Our collective Hollywood fantasy gets the chainsaw autopsy it deserves in this deliriously indecent feminist slasher."

Dark Factory (2022)
(Dark Factory, book 1)
Kathe Koja
"Koja writes like she's an entire collective of artists, senses in overdrive, voracious for the next hit of art that will push them--and us--over the edge. This is pure energy, a glow-in-the-dark vision of a new kind of writing."

You've Lost a Lot of Blood (2022)
Eric LaRocca
"LaRocca proves that the sickest minds can have the biggest hearts - he's a twisted, tender new talent."

The Seventh Mansion (2020)
Maryse Meijer
"Maryse Meijer's The Seventh Mansion is one of the best books I've read in years. I feel like I've been waiting all my life for this book, like it was written specifically for me. It does what I treasure most in fiction: it takes the grotesque and makes it gorgeous. It humanizes all of us by humanizing one of us. Meijer makes the unholy holy, turns the grim dark into the blinding light. I don't recall reading a book simultaneously so horrifying and so romantic. This book made me dizzy with writer's envy and did that most wonderful of things: it made me want to try harder, be better. The Seventh Mansion is aflame with passion and I want to burn inside it forever."

Take Me With You (2020)
Tara Altebrando
"A blistering, plausible, paranoia-fueled tale about the monsters birthed by our digital footprints."

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