Zombie Bake-Off

by Stephen Graham Jones, Scott Sowers (Narrator)

It's time for the annual Recipe Days bake-off in Lubbock, Texas. Soccer moms and grandmothers gather to show off their family recipes, learn new secrets for the perfect shortcake, and perhaps earn a chance to be on the famous cooking show, How Would You Cook It, Then?

When the bake-off is crashed by a federation of pro wrestlers - including American Badass, Jersey Devil Jill, Tiny Giant, The Village Person, Jonah the Whale, the Hellbillies, and the fan favorite Xombie - all hell is set to break loose. Your heart beats faster as you anticipate who will come out on top in the ultimate showdown of the century: soccer moms or pro wrestlers. Anything can happen.

An infected batch of donuts has transformed most of the wrestlers into mindless brain-eaters and the doors of the convention center have been chained shut, leaving the survivors locked inside, forced to fend for themselves against the hungry dead.

Possessing the intensity of a shotgun to the face, Zombie Bake-Off is a stripped-down masterpiece of blood and doughnuts from celebrated author Stephen Graham Jones.



Running Time => 06:50:53

Genres: Horror, Zombies, Audiobook, Humor, Fiction, Romance, Adult

7 pages, Audiobook

First published January 27, 2012

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[Melissa Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did you ever have an author that you wanted to like? One that had books that seemed right up your alley? Yet, in the long run, their writing style does not appeal to you? This is how I feel about Stephen Graham Jones. I have loved every idea that he's put out there. I've bought numerous books of his and yet, I don't really enjoy them. I am not sure exactly what it is. I am guessing it is his writing style. It does not hold my attention and I find my mind drifting while I am reading. As much as I want to like his stories, they just don't appeal to me. This book ended up being the worst one for me so far. While I could see how it would be entertaining for some, it was all over the place for me and in the end, I just didn't care what happened. Even though I have a couple more books that this author wrote to read, I doubt I'll buy anymore.

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like a b-movie horror comedy, the kind of thing you would expect to have the title end with "the musical" while there's no musical number in it (though there absolutely should be one), if that made sense to you, this book is probably going to be for you.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

FINALLY some zombie lore that's different in the best sort of way. Perfect Halloween read during GBBO season.

[unstable.books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even better upon my second time reading. Off-the-wall, batshit fun!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice approach for a zombie book; it had me laughing out loud. Only SGJ could make this work. Fun read.

[Fiona Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

...our brains are fascinating to the recently dead because they’re both the most alive part of us,” Kent says, “the seat of intelligent, emotional, sentient life, and they’re also the most dead, where dead is understood as being beyond pain, which life is basically the avoidance of. And they’re both of these at the same time—just like the walking dead, right? Alive but dead. So it’s familiar. It’s like them. And that makes our brains taste good or something.

Only Stephen Graham Jones could produce a book with that passage above, plus fart humour, plus incredible amounts of gore and a really interesting new take on what happens to a zombie's severed limbs. Not just that, but make it work!

This is a short book but a great one - the characters leap off the page almost as soon as they're introduced, the horror will not let down the zombie fans, and the humour is always a relief from the carnage. If you're sick of zombies, I doubt you'll find this run of the mill. If you're NOT yet sick of zombies, then this is a new take on a much loved genre that deserves a spot on your bookshelf.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

IN the brave tradition of films like What We Do in the Shadows, Shaun of the Dead, Juan of the Dead, Werewolves Within, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Zombieland, and One Cut of the Dead, Stephen Graham Jones take a bite out of the Zom-Com genre (can't believe their is a whole Genre, but here we all are living in a fractured and funky world). Do I think it is his best? No. But damn it was funny and came around. I mean, how can you miss when you have B-grade professional wrestling, soccer moms, a cooking fair, a blind grandma whose taste buds are savant-like. It is a recipe for blood and cream.

[Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sounded cooler than I found it to be. Almost stopped a quarter of the way in. Enjoyed it more once it became a full on zombie battle. Was less enamored with the earlier wrestlers assaulting "baking" moms sexually and physically.

[Caleb Fogler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just a fun, fast paced zombie story. A cooking show group and professional wrestling company are locked inside the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum when someone eats some bad donuts and all hell breaks loose.

Great characters with Xombie and Tiny Giant being my favorite, SGJ perfectly captures the personalities of characters in the wrestling business. Humorous and, while a bit gory at times, not nightmare inducing scary. I’d recommend for anyone with a taste for horror, although caution anyone with a weak stomach. 🧟‍♂️

[A Bookish Boi I Fear · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise of this book is the kind of idea that sounds really cool if you're stoned but you should probably just sleep it off. Stephen Graham Jones unfortunately ran with it and delivered this super tasteless horror comedy. Hard pass

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book did not work.

I've been on a Stephen Graham Jones kick ever since I stumbled upon Demon Theory a few weeks ago. It was a well-crafted story with a unique and interesting delivery and I liked a lot about it. I followed that up with Growing Up Dead in Texas, which wasn't perfect, but was one of the most deeply affecting novels I've read in recent years. Next I picked up Zombie Bake-Off. Judging by the other two of Mr. Jones's books I'd read, I guessed that Bake-Off would be goofy and over the top, but well-crafted. What I got instead was the kind of puddle-deep shlock you expect from over-ambitious high-schoolers. I caught a whiff here and there of the things that made me love his other books, but it didn't do much to dissipate the miasma this book puts off. I stuck with it for 17 chapters and gave up.

Let's talk story. Once upon a time, a cooking convention in Lubbock, Texas was terrorized by the early arrival of the professional wrestlers who had booked the convention center for later that evening. The event coordinator manages to get them corralled away only to have a box of contaminated donuts turn them all into zombies. Also, for some hand-wavy reason, the doors have all been chained shut by a skeevy promoter, and the phones are down, and there's no cell service, and the loading bay is blocked by...ya know what, you get it. Standard low-budget zombie movie stuff. Don't get me wrong; I love the occasional Sharknado-style plot, but it has to at least be fun. The only thing this one brought to the table was the professional wrestlers, but I found them more irritating than entertaining. Maybe if I liked professional wrestling it would have some appeal, but I doubt it. The story is just a dud.

Let's talk characters. They're all bad. It's like a greatest hits compilation of tired cliches. Even the wrestlers are stale. When the zombies started eating brains, I was just relieved that I didn't have to try to remember those characters anymore. Even the most developed characters couldn't muster more than mild annoyance from me. I imagine Jones developed them more later in the book, but I just couldn't be bothered to stick around for it.

I assumed, based on the quality of the writing, that this was one of Mr. Jones's earlier works. I was shocked to discover that this came out six years after Demon Theory and the same year as Growing Up Dead in Texas. I don't know what the rest of the story is on this one, but what a dramatic dip in quality.

Let's talk about my recommendation. I recommend that you read something else. Heck, read something else by this author. If you're looking for a zombie fix, may I recommend the truly exceptional South Korean film Train to Busan? As for zombie books, I can't help you there. You came to the wrong reviewer for that.

Content advisory: Name it. Sex, drugs, language, violence, etc., all gratuitous. Not recommended for children, or really anyone else, for that matter.

[Matthew Vaughn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the market for the zombie genre is getting over-saturated I’m still a pretty big fan of the living dead. What I mean by big fan is really more toward the visual side, movies, television shows, and video games. It wasn’t until here recently that I started reading books and stories featuring the undead. I used to think that a good zombie apocalypse would be hard to translate to the written word in an entertaining way. I have since realized I was wrong.
This book starts out like a lot of horror movies, with kids out partying and getting into trouble. While out joy riding in one of their dads bakery truck they run over what appears to be a drunk guy. They do the horror movie thing and try to cover it up, because that always works so well. The real meat of the story takes place the next day at a convention center, which is rented to a group called Recipe Days during the day time. In the evening the convention center is rented to pro wrestlers coming to do a show. The two groups over lap when the wrestlers show up early. After intimidating the ladies from Recipe Days they help themselves to some doughnuts from a certain bakery truck. What follows is one extremely entertaining read. Once the action kicks in it does not let up.
SGJ treats us to a unique and interesting Zombie story where the survivors are not your normal one-dimensional horror fare. His characters are very real, intelligent people fighting for their lives. Also, with his zombies he adds some new interesting twists.
Jones is a master storyteller, I have enjoyed everything I’ve read from him quite a bit, and this book was no exception. I have been having trouble reading paper books in a decent amount of time, recently I read e-books because I get through them faster. But I read this as a paper book and it kept me turning the pages and so engrossed in the story that I finished it in about a week. I recommend this book to not only zombie lovers, but anyone who likes action on top of a good story.

[Melissa Leitner · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's called Zombie Bake Off and features what are essentially WWE wrestlers. What more do you really need in a book? It is every B (or C) zombie movie combined featuring different types of zombies which I thought was a fantastic decision by SGJ to include. Does it have the best character depth I have ever read, not even in the slightest. But that is not what I read this book for. I read this book for some gross out horror featuring zombies and that is what I got. It is fun from start to finish, but once the zombies start popping up, I did not want to put this little novel down. Action-packed and short, this one was easily consumable in just a few sittings. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a fun time but not much more than that.

[Kelsi - Slime and Slashers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really in love with the premise of this book and thought it was so full of potential, but I just personally couldn't get into the story because of the writing style. I did overall enjoy the gore depicted in this book, but I can't rate it higher because I felt confused by the flow of the writing at times. Overall, I'd suggest giving the book a go and judge for yourself. If you like campy and gory horror (which I usually do), you may enjoy Zombie Bake-Off!

[Dez Nemec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having recently read The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, it's hard to believe this was the same author. Such a weird, fun book.

[Holly (The GrimDragon) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He swallows, raises the tip of his sword some, and just in time: the first wrestler blitzes them, kicking the flashlight so it's just spinning in place, strobing the whole room, turning it into a series of snapshots: Chapman hacking at the face of that wrestler, Johnny T. following-up to the neck, and then the rest crowding in on them, so that all they can do is climb up onto the Zamboni, swing at anything that reaches over the hood."

Zombie Bake-Off by Stephen Graham Jones is a campy, entertaining horror novel about an annual baking convention that ends up overrun with professional wrestlers who show up earlier than they were scheduled to.

Zombie wrestlers vs. soccer moms, contaminated donuts, vampires, fart humor, blood & gore, oh my!

Mmm, donuts.

You get a donut with a chopped off finger in it! And you get a donut with gnarly maggots! EVERYONE GETS AN OOZING, BLOODY DONUT!!

Zombie Bake-Off is grimy, crude & bonkers af!

Although not my favorite SGJ, I'll read anything he writes!

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book actually. Like withThe Only Good Indians, the author talked about things like you should know what they were. Like I should know the layout of the setting etc, but given that it was a bit more generic I didn’t struggle as much. I liked Terry and Xombie from the get-go which is what saved this book for me - in TOGI I didn’t really like any of the characters which is what made it a harder read

[Caleb Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sequel? Prison Laundry-Off? Yes, please.

[Zachary Ashford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loads of fun. Love how versatile SGJ is. Worlds apart from his recent big-name stuff, but written just as well with memorable characters and a tonne of soul.

[Deidra (ShadeTreeReads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/3.75-4 of 5 stars
This was fun! Why hasn't this been adapted into a movie yet?! Is it that Hollywood is too busy rebooting and remaking stuff we've already seen? I'll wait.

[Sam Donovan · Rating 3 out of 5]

i cannot recommend the audiobook, it truly made me want to give this 2 stars due to my experience listening but i don't think the story itself is quite worth 2 stars buuuut this also wasn't really for me. i'm not a big zombie person and this author can be pretty hit or miss with me ( i find i enjoy his newer works more than the older releases ) but i can acknowledge this is an interesting take on a zombie outbreak and was fun and gore but these characters were not to my taste.

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was silly and ridiculous and would have KILLED on the sci-fi channel circa 2010. imagine a zombie bake off / santa jaws double header. i also think i’m kind of scared of hand mixers now but we will see.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, quick read that delivers on what it promises.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 rounded down to 4

Zombie Bake-Off had a simple plot, but it was so silly and fun! When professional wrestlers crash a local baking competition, all hell breaks loose...especially after the wrestlers eat contaminated donuts, changing them into brain-eating zombies.

There was a ton of witty banter, inappropriate jokes, lots of swearing, and tons of blood and gore. The zombies were reminiscent of the old-school Romero zombies that liked eating brains, with a fun little twist. In this version of the zombie, men are the "breeders," and women are the "hunters." All the characters were entertaining; Beatrice was my absolute favorite and the baddest B of them all.

Stephen Graham Jones also tossed in some horror movie references (particularly Alien), which I thought were fun little Easter eggs. I wish there was a little more to the origin of the infection in the donuts, and honestly, I expected it to be a bit gorier than it was... other than that one scene with my girl Beatrice, that actually had me gagging, so kudos to Stephen (iykyk 😅).

If you like:

Inappropriate jokes and cussing
Blood and gore
Professional wrestling
Baked goods
Zombies

...then this is the perfect book for you, and it's under 300 pages.

[Frau Blücher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any zombie fight is a food fight.

Mit diesem Satz hat Herr Jones knapp und treffend formuliert, worum es in seinem Buch ziemlich nonstop geht: fressen oder gefressen werden, und das im eher ungewöhnlichen Setting einer „Hausfrauenmesse“ mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf süßem Backwerk nach alten Familienrezepten.

In diese kreuzamerikanische Veranstaltung platzt eine verfrüht eintreffende Truppe Wrestler, die am selben Veranstaltungsort am Abend ihre Show gebucht haben. Dummerweise legen diese Herren (und Damen) größten Wert darauf, ihrem schlechten Ruf durch allerlei rüpelhafte Aktivitäten gerecht zu werden, und sorgen dafür, dass niemand die Allzweckhalle verlassen kann, bevor sie ihren „Spaß“ hatten.

Mehrere Kartons Donuts, die aus hier nicht näher erläuterbaren Gründen mit einem Zombievirus kontaminiert wurden, sorgen dann für mehr Action, als geplant war. Im Kampf ums Überleben kommt von Wrestlingtechniken bis Hightech-Küchenmaschinen alles den in der Halle Eingeschlossenen verfügbare zum Einsatz, aber ob das reicht?

The grandmother laughs. Mostly at herself. “So you think this is how it is?” she says to him, the mixer at her side like a pistol she can fastdraw. “You think I lived seventy-six years just to be dinner to your kind?”

Mahlzeit! (Ich hab schon mal eine Rezi so begonnen, aber es passt nun mal so schön hierher…) Eigentlich dachte ich, dass Stories aus dem inzwischen arg ausgelutschten Zombie-Genre mich nur noch milde unterhalten können, wenn überhaupt, aber Steven Graham Jones hat es geschafft, mich eines besseren zu belehren. Nicht etwa, weil er hier bahnbrechend neue Ideen oder Konzepte auffahren würde, sondern indem er seine Story schlicht und ergreifend in ein höchst beknacktes Umfeld verfrachtet und dann konsequent den Fuß auf dem Gaspedal parkt.

Man bekommt hier aber nicht nur hahnebüchene Action in dichtem Takt serviert, sondern als Zuckerguss auf dem Gemetzel eine handvoll Protagonisten, die zwar nicht gerade durch ausgefeilte Charakterzeichnung glänzen, aber in dem ganzen Durcheinander doch ausreichend Substanz besitzen, um mit ihnen mitzufiebern. Was mir durchaus zum ein oder anderen „alter Falter“-Moment beim Lesen gereicht hat, muss ich zugeben. Merke: leg dich nie mit Frauen an, die ihre Kinder pünktlich aus der Schule abholen müssen…

Was mir sehr positiv aufgefallen ist: sowohl Prota- als auch Antagonistinnen sind hier tonangebend, ohne dass es aufgezwungen wirkt oder man gar Arnolds große, vor Kraft kaum des Laufens fähige Schwester vorgestellt bekommt. Die Mädels treten mit Geschicklichkeit und Köpfchen Arsch, und das nicht zu knapp!

Von mir bekommen die schleckermäuligen Zombies jedenfalls vier von fünf Donuts, mit extra Zuckerguss!

[George Prew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wavering between 2 and 3 stars - A real shame.

Stephen Graham Jones is an absolutely brilliant writer, who has written several of my favourite books, including what may well be my favourite novel (Mongrels), novella (Night of the Mannequin), and short story collection (Zombie Sharks With Metal Teeth). This book is not SGJ at his best.

The concept is of course excellent - Zombies, professional wrestlers, and bakers in a battle royale? Fantastic! Pure, schlocky fun, and it's clear that Stephen is having pure, schlocky fun with it, bumping tropes from wrestling (multiple characters are very thinly-veiled WWF characters or tropes) and horror B-movies together, and his skill in plotting and narrative are as clear here as they ever are.

On the other hand, this really feels like something SGJ had to get out of his system - Again, it is fun, and he is clearly having fun, but surprisingly it feels a lot less fun than his more serious stories because it's a lot less kind. Characters, true to B-movies, true to wrestling, are broad archetypes and often quite stupid, which feels jarring given the real humanity and depth of understanding with which SGJ usually writes characters - It feels uncharacteristically and unnecessarily nasty.

And that is the main issue with this book - In leaning so far into B-movie schlock, it loses the humanity which is SGJ's greatest strength, which comes as a surprise, given that the prologue is as good and characteristic of him as any SGJ I've read.

And then there's the other nasty elements - This story really feels like a 90s throwback, which is no bad thing necessarily, but... The throw back comes most in its treatment of homosexuality and disability - It's treatment of both felt very... Friends.

My advice - Read the prologue, smile at the name, maybe flick through, and then read Night of the Mannequins.

[Jesse Bullington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absurdly cool and entertaining. One of the things I most admire about SGJ is that his work manages to be both dependably excellent and wildly unpredictable. This goes for his overall body of work, with one project being totally unlike anything else he's done, but also for the individual works themselves. Take, for example, this monster ballad of semi-pro wrestlers and amateur bake-off participants locked in an arena with an ever-growing horde of zombies. With a premise that gold you know everything is going to be all right even if it follows a by-the-numbers zombie trajectory, but this being a SGJ novel, the action manages to simultaneously hit the sweet spots that a zombie/wrestler/soccer mom showdown promises while also throwing a baker's dozen of insane and insanely touching twists into the squared circle. An aside: when I was growing up, every few Sundays my dad would drive me to the gas station, which was the only shop in town other than the feed store. There we would buy a dozen donuts--the pre-packaged, mass-produced one; nothing fresh at the Warrior's Mark Uni-Mart--and return home to watch pro-wrestling on one of the half-dozen channels we picked up. This book unexpectedly dredged up a lot of great memories, plus, yanno, zombies.

[Glasgowgal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if it's the author's writing style, or the way Kindle lays out the book, but I found that the storyline could be confusing at times. Where are the characters? Oh, it's another character and another setting? What the what? When you figure out where the characters are in the story, it can get exciting, but many times, I found myself losing interest and checking the page count to see how many pages were remaining until the end. : (

[Brian Sammons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it and really enjoyed it. Full review coming, but for right now let me just say that if you like your zombies with a side of silly, not to mention with a dash of pro wrestlers, then this is the books for you.

My full review can be read here: http://horrorworld.org/hw/2012/08/zom...

[lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zombie Bake-Off was such a silly, fun, gross, gory book! Perfect for spooky season or literally anytime. I really enjoyed the writing and pacing of this one and recommend it if you like horror that doesn't take itself too seriously.