The Strain

A Boeing 777 touches down at New York's JFK airport and falls silent. Soon a CDC epidemiologist named Ephraim Goodweather is drawn into an outbreak that no medical textbook can explain. Alongside his investigation runs the story of Abraham Setrakian, an aging Holocaust survivor who has spent a lifetime tracking the creatures that once hunted him, and who recognizes the signs at once. As the outbreak spreads, the characters fight to survive an enemy that is both high-tech and monstrous.

This is the first book in a trilogy, followed by The Fall and The Night Eternal. Guillermo del Toro, the director of the Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy films, wrote it with Chuck Hogan, a Hammett Award winner known for taut thrillers. The collaboration combines Hogan's fast, tightly plotted storytelling with del Toro's taste for the surreal and the macabre.

Readers who enjoy horror with the momentum of a thriller will find this a good fit. The story was later adapted into a television series on FX.