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Horror Fiction: Recommendations & Favorites

ramonmercado

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Probably time for this thread to be started up.

I've only read one of the ten books, The Water Knife which is SF/Horror.

10 Must-Read Contemporary Horror Books About the Horrors of Modern Life

You’ll hear people saying that we’re in something of a horror renaissance right now, a new golden age of terrifying fiction across page and screen. I think that’s true, but it’s worth noting that the world itself is also pretty horrifying right now. So it’s no surprise that there are any number of contemporary horror novels on shelves that address, both explicitly and less so, a lot of the issues that face modern society. Here are ten of our favorites. ,,,

https://www.unboundworlds.com/2018/...51&template_id=8831&aid=randohouseinc21235-20
 
I've only read The Road from this list.

So You Want to Read Survival Horror: Here’s Where to Start

Maybe you know “survival horror” best as a genre of video games, but stories of people fighting for their lives in the face of terror,supernatural and otherwise, are as old as storytelling itself. Look to the shelves of your favorite local bookstore and you’re bound to find plenty of grim and grisly tales in which the best the heroes can hope for is to simply survive. ...

https://www.unboundworlds.com/2018/...51&template_id=8831&aid=randohouseinc21235-20
 
This list has already been discussed on the Horror Films Thread at The Horror Films Thread, starting at this link:
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/horror-films.59441/page-50#post-1793676

The 100 Best Horror Books of All Time

Horror books have been part of the literary world for years, but it seems like horror — in all its mediums — has been on the upswing in recent times. Maybe people are realizing just how satisfying it is to settle into a scary story, feel the rush of adrenaline, and then close the book, turn off the movie, or walk away from that haunted house at the end. To help you on your own hair-raising journey, we’ve put together a list of the one hundred best horror books of all time. What was our criteria? The staffers here at Unbound Worlds loved these books, and we think they deserve a place on the list — that’s pretty much it. You would think with one hundred picks, we would hit all your favorites, but it turns out that there are A LOT of good horror stories out there. So, we hope you find some of faves here, but that you also discover some new-to-you books to add to your list. Now get reading!

Note: This list is organized alphabetically.

https://www.unboundworlds.com/2018/09/the-100-best-horror-books-of-all-time/
 
Kim Newman and Stephen Jones compiled two excellent books of essays, Horror: 100 Best Books and its sequel, which have given me loads of ideas as to what to read over the years. Great browsing material in themselves.

If anyone wants to use this thread for suggestions, go ahead, though the heyday of horror paperbacks ended when crime thrillers began to dominate instead. Thank Thomas Harris for that.
 
I love horror-dark fantasy anthologies. I read any by Stephen Jones, Christopher Golden, Ellen Datlow.

I just bought "Hark the Herald Angels Scream" edited by Christopher Golden. Time to get into the Xmas spirit.

Oops, I had Stephen Jones in my head and mixed his and Christopher Golden's names up when I first posted this.
 
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I love horror-dark fantasy anthologies. I read any by Stephen Jones, Christopher Golden, Ellen Datlow.

I just bought "Hark the Herald Angels Scream" edited by Christopher Jones. Time to get into the Xmas spirit.

Stephen Jones used do a yearly best horror anthology but it seems to have died off unfortunately.
 
Stephen Jones used do a yearly best horror anthology but it seems to have died off unfortunately.
I have the problem that in Ontario Canada, at least, we have only Indigo Chapters to order books from. That limits my access to a lot of horror authors esp. Australian and UK.

I will admit right now that I read paper books. I don't like ebooks as I don't particularly like reading from a screen. But if I downloaded all the books, past and present, that I would love to read, I wouldn't live long enough.

Some of the more recent authors I've stumbled upon through anthologies are Laird Barron, Paul Tremblay, Adam Nevill, Caitlin Kiernan and many more.

I have ordered books from small press, but shipping, alone prohibits it, not to mention exchange rates.
 
Oh and one of my favourite horror authors is Joe Lansdale.
 
Finished one of those Paperbacks from Hell reprints of the golden age of horror novels, this one The Nest by Gregory Jacobs. I had seen the 80s film based on it, which is pretty decent, but the book went into a lot more gory detail. It's about an island community under threat from flesh-eating cockroaches, and speeds along very readably, though some sequences are a bit "P.S. I am w*nking as I write this". Overall, worth reviving, I have more of these and hope they're the same.
 
The latest Paperback from Hell is a surprise (click here)

They're republishing Let's Go Play at the Adams', one of the grimmest horrors ever written. It was one of those books that intrigued me when I used to look at the horror paperbacks when I was little (just the covers, not the content), because it was just a pic of a doll's head and I wondered why that was supposed to be scary. Years later I got a second hand copy and read it, it's a really disturbing work, no wonder it's notorious, and maybe not one to revisit, though as it says in the blurb, much sought after by collectors.

Oh, and the new printing has the American cover, which is a lot more faithful to the contents.
 
Paperbacks from Hell strike again, just finished Nightblood from 1990 by T. Chris Martindale. Sort of if Salem's Lot had been written by a gun nut, lots of descriptions of the damage firearms can do to vampires. It's about this Vietnam vet whose ghostly brother tells him where to hunt down vampires like the ones that killed him (the brother), so he ends up in a small town and doesn't quite finish the job on a powerful bloodsucker as he should, leading to a spread of the condition. Fortunately our man is tooled up (not just guns, either). Good pulp fun.
 
I'm currently making my way through The Weird anthology by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, it's a monster at 1100ish pages and over 100 Weird Fiction short stories and a few novellas. I've got a digital version, which seems to have 1800 "pages" not sure how that works with ebooks.

It's worth a look, the physical version is huge and out of print but you can might well be able to borrow a digital version from your library. The stories are understandably hit and miss, I last read It's a Good Life by Jerome Bixby, it's the oft referenced and parodied story of the community living in fear of a child with godlike powers who can read minds, adapted for The Twilight Zone. I'm familiar with the trope and The Simpsons' Halloween parody the story still manages to be creepy and unnerving despite the prior acquaintance with the premise.
 
Watched "Dark Light" a sold creature feature done with a nice clock and dagger approach 8/10. Despite some poor reviews I found this a very entertaining edge of your seat movie.
 
If the weather makes you want to curl up with a good book, here's an article for you:
Article

The scariest sentences ever written in horror fiction, according to horror writers. Features "Darling, it said", "I have no mouth and I must scream" and the old favourite "God God - whose hand was I holding?"
 
If the weather makes you want to curl up with a good book, here's an article for you:
Article

The scariest sentences ever written in horror fiction, according to horror writers. Features "Darling, it said", "I have no mouth and I must scream" and the old favourite "God God - whose hand was I holding?"

"I have no arse and I must shit."
 
Thought I'd read a horror for December, and picked another Paperback from Hell: When Darkness Loves Us by Elizabeth Engstrom. From 1985, it's actually two novellas, both weirdly disturbing and with bizarre WTF?! endings.

The first one was about a 16yo girl who gets lost in a cave - for 20 YEARS. She turns into a kind of female Gollum, but also gives birth to a monstrous son because she was pregnant when she got lost. Or was she?

The second was about a baby born without a nose who grows up to be mentally disabled. It's two parallel stories, first from when she was young, then when she was in her 50s where her parents (mum's a psychic healer) have died, but she manages to seduce a 24yo, though there is a threat from a local thug who wants her money and basically someone to bully. I had to read the ending a couple of times to make sure I understood it. Very strange - I have the author's vampire novel to read sometime too.
 
Thought I'd read a horror for December, and picked another Paperback from Hell: When Darkness Loves Us by Elizabeth Engstrom. From 1985, it's actually two novellas, both weirdly disturbing and with bizarre WTF?! endings.

The first one was about a 16yo girl who gets lost in a cave - for 20 YEARS. She turns into a kind of female Gollum, but also gives birth to a monstrous son because she was pregnant when she got lost. Or was she?

The second was about a baby born without a nose who grows up to be mentally disabled. It's two parallel stories, first from when she was young, then when she was in her 50s where her parents (mum's a psychic healer) have died, but she manages to seduce a 24yo, though there is a threat from a local thug who wants her money and basically someone to bully. I had to read the ending a couple of times to make sure I understood it. Very strange - I have the author's vampire novel to read sometime too.


"I say, I say, I say, my protagonist's got no nose..."
 
Looks interesting.

Five Tense Books That Blend Sci-Fi and Horror

I spent a lot of this year curled up with 1930s detective novels, a safe and cosy world in which the worst thing that can happen is that you get stabbed with a jewelled antique dagger because someone is after your inheritance. I get it: this has been a weird one for literally everyone in the world. Sometimes though you need something better than a comfort read, which for me is where these books come in: a bracing breath of fresh air, a jolt to the nerves and to the thinking brain, a reminder that you need more than consolation in your life.

These books are all scary in their own way, but what they also have in common is absolutely blistering pacing, combined with a creeping tension that cranks higher and higher as you turn the pages. They’re all brilliantly entertaining, ultimately humane, and stuck with me for weeks after reading.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

A group of desperately ambitious teenagers go to a horrible space academy hoping to be selected for a decades-long mission to a distant planet! This one is remarkably tense even before they go into space, and Oh’s outstanding characterisation lifts it into one of the most memorable SF books I’ve read in years. This wasn’t marketed as a horror book, but the sheer claustrophobia and fragility of life aboard the spaceship is as nail-biting as it gets: you absolutely know something is going to go wrong, it’s just a question of how…

Bonus points: excruciatingly accurate details of the British millennial experience. Baby astronauts reflecting on how they’ll never again go to Costa brought a nostalgic tear to my eye. ...

https://www.tor.com/2020/12/08/five-sci-fi-horror-books/
 
"I say, I say, I say, my protagonist's got no nose..."

Heh! Actually, she is built a new nose as a baby, from flesh on her leg, but it doesn't "take" and turns into a misshapen blob covered in scars because it didn't grow with her face.
 
The Troop by Nick Cutter. Found out about it because a film is planned, heard no more about that but I have the book, and it's a really fast read. You can tell the author grew up reading all the 1970s and 80s horror favourites, it's that kind of thing, and very well done.

The plot is a troop of teenage Scouts are taken on a trip to a local island by their Scoutmaster, but uh-oh, there's a man who has escaped a top secret facility who was assisting with diet pill technology, but it's gone horribly wrong and now he wants to eat... and eat... AND EAT! That's how it starts and it only gets more disgusting from there. Recommended to seasoned horror fans.
 
The Troop by Nick Cutter. Found out about it because a film is planned, heard no more about that but I have the book, and it's a really fast read. You can tell the author grew up reading all the 1970s and 80s horror favourites, it's that kind of thing, and very well done.

The plot is a troop of teenage Scouts are taken on a trip to a local island by their Scoutmaster, but uh-oh, there's a man who has escaped a top secret facility who was assisting with diet pill technology, but it's gone horribly wrong and now he wants to eat... and eat... AND EAT! That's how it starts and it only gets more disgusting from there. Recommended to seasoned horror fans.
:dinner:Yes. I've read that one.
 
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