Undead

Russo (Hell's Creation), who co-wrote the screenplay of George Romero's cult classic Night of the Living Dead, repackages a pair of 1970s zombie novels that speak resonantly to current trends in zombie fiction. "Night of the Living Dead," first published in 1974, is a near-scene-by-scene novelization of its namesake: the film that transformed the zombie, in the public imagination, into a creature of the walking dead ravenous for human flesh. "Return of the Living Dead," written in 1978 (and not to be confused with the 1985 film and Russo's subsequent novelization of same), revisits a rural Pennsylvania setting 10 years after it was ravaged by the undead. Both novels are exercises in pulpy horror, steeped in the gore and grue that have become de rigueur for contemporary zombie tales. Neither measures up to the experience of watching Romero's films, but both provide interesting snapshots of a modern monster in the making. Agent: Al Zuckerman, Writers House. (June)