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Horror Fiction: Recommendations & Favorites

I remember my nan telling me many years ago that she had challenged her very sceptical brother to read a certain ghost story then spent ten minutes sitting on his own in a dark room. By her own words, the story terrified her (and she’d lived in a house that was haunted).

Her brother had even gone (sceptically) to a seance where a table apparently floated up and pinned in against the wall with no hands touching it, and still wasn’t afraid, or so he said after. (Well, he would!)

Anyway, he couldn’t do the thing. He was out in under 5 minutes, to nan’s great delight.

It must have been an old book, maybe pre 1940’s. Nan said it was the only story she’d ever read that frightened her. The names so far listed don’t ring any bells, as even though it was long ago I’d think I would remember James or Poe or Lovecraft as she would have said. There may or may not have been a nun in it, or I might be conflating that with a different conversation I had with her about ghosts. Still, I’ve always wanted to read the only ghost story that frightened my nan!
Something by M.R. James perhaps.
 
Yes, the embossed foliage of the wallpaper animates to form the face. That foliage-forming-a-face is a green man - well, one type.
Did you share that acid with @Coastaljames by any chance? :chuckle:

Yup, I see, part of the wallpaper is shaded to represent a face. I thought you meant it moved like the Devil'd Advocate wall.
 
This could be a recommendation if it's ever published:
News story

Long story short, John Steinbeck penned a werewolf novel when he was unknown, and tried and failed to get it published under a pseudonym. It still exists, but the owners of his estate are refusing to put it out, frustratingly. I've read Of Mice and Men, and that's brutal, so who knows what this would be like? Not enough people, that's who.
 
I freely admit that I post the following as someone who is much more interested in writing than I am in Horror fiction. (I was going to post it in the James Herbert thread, but would have been too much of a tangent).

Four seminal writers at a point in time which must have represented some sort of peak in the genre: the year that Kubrick's version of The Shining was released; a year after the publication of Ghost Story; a couple of years after Dawn of the Dead; seven years after the release of The Exorcist (older in comparison, but still totally infamous at the time of this interview).

Well worth the watching, I think:


Edit - Sorry, just realised that I randomly threw in The Exorcist without it having any specific link to the characters interviewed - just thought of it as an obvious datum in regard to the subject matter. Levin's, Rosemary's Baby was almost in it's teens by the time this interview, but I think it too probably still had a similar aura of infamy clinging to it at this time.
 
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I freely admit that I post the following as someone who is much more interested in writing than I am in Horror fiction. (I was going to post it in the James Herbert thread, but would have been too much of a tangent).

Four seminal writers at a point in time which must have represented some sort of peak in the genre: the year that Kubrick's version of The Shining was released; a year after the publication of Ghost Story; a couple of years after Dawn of the Dead; seven years after the release of The Exorcist (older in comparison, but still totally infamous at the time of this interview).

Well worth the watching, I think:


Edit - Sorry, just realised that I randomly threw in The Exorcist without it having any specific link to the characters interviewed - just thought of it as an obvious datum in regard to the subject matter. Levin's, Rosemary's Baby was almost in it's teens by the time this interview, but I think it too probably still had a similar aura of infamy clinging to it at this time.
Interesting to note that Stephen King did work with two (Romero and Straub) of the three other interviewees. I’ve seen and read both projects.
 
Coming From Jason Colavito The critical acclaim showered on the book had me excited to read Final Girl, and when I finished it, it was … fine saying the book is fine is high praise indeed.

I was not surprised when HBO Max announced only a week after the publication of Grady Hendrix’s new novel The Final Girl Support Group that it would turn the story of a mad killer picking off the “final girl” survivors of previous slasher rampages into a TV series. The premise is irresistible. Indeed, when I first heard about the book, I made the effort to sit down a read it—a major undertaking with my hectic work schedule and a rambunctious toddler taking up most of my waking hours. The critical acclaim showered on the book had me excited to read Final Girl, and when I finished it, it was … fine.

Final Girl tells the story of Lynette, one of the survivors of a classic 1980s-style massacre, now a paranoid, isolated middle-aged woman holed up in a fortified apartment, terrified of a repeat. She is part of the title support group with the final girls from other slasher events, all of whom are psychologically damaged in various ways. In this world, mad slasher are media events, and each inspired a movie franchise that provides that celebrity and the income that the women rely on. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/p/slash-and-burn
 
"Dark Light" a solid horror thriller in which a women house is the gateway for some prehistoric humanoids (thought to be long extinct). The creatures are somewhat similar to an energy vampire. The mother try's desperately to find her daughter "who's been take by the beasties" while trying to convince the local police that she's not a murderous nut job. 9/10 (IMO).
 
Colavito casts a jaundiced eye over My Heart Is a Chainsaw .

Some Thoughts on "My Heart is a Chainsaw"​

Stephen Graham Jones's new novel is a love letter to slasher movies, but its postmodern pastiche barely conceals a nonsensical story.​


I probably would have finished Stephen Graham Jones’s new novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw a lot sooner if I had been more invested in it. It took me a long time to crawl through it, mostly because I had difficulty feeling much emotion while reading a paint-by-numbers slasher that expects postmodernism and a nontraditional Native protagonist to carry what is otherwise, frankly, an overlong and somewhat ridiculous mishmash of slasher movie clichés.

Jones’s novel suffers a bit as the second major postmodern slasher movie fan-service pastiche of the year, after Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group, a book that I wasn’t enthusiastic about but found much more engaging and exciting than Chainsaw. Nevertheless, Chainsaw has garnered enthusiastic reviews, most of which praise is Native protagonist, its postmodernism, its laundry list of liberal social issues—and almost never its actual plot.

Chainsaw tells the story of Jade Daniels, a Native teen in rural Idaho obsessed with slasher movies—to the point that she only accepts the purest version of 1980s slashers as legitimate, all others being imperfect bastardizations—and finds herself stuck in a slasher movie when her town’s Fourth of July celebration becomes the scene of mounting horror. Bits of Halloween and Friday the 13th mix in with some more obscure 1970s and 1980s slashers, larded over with a heavy layer of Scream, but very little from after the 49-year-old author’s own adolescence. The mechanics of the plot escalate into a Grand Guignol that leaps between genres and takes a supernatural turn that I found dispiriting, undercutting the realism of the story overall. ...

https://jasoncolavito.substack.com/...-a-chainsaw?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
 
Anyone who likes "weird" fiction - I know, a stupid genre description - anything by Laird Barron. He's an American author who resides in Alaska. He has never disappointed me with his writing. Unfortunately, "weird" fiction is what you have to search for his writing, for the most part.
 
Anyone who likes "weird" fiction - I know, a stupid genre description - anything by Laird Barron. He's an American author who resides in Alaska. He has never disappointed me with his writing. Unfortunately, "weird" fiction is what you have to search for his writing, for the most part.

I like his short stories, the few I've read at any rate, wasn't keen on his novel - The Croning.
 
Watched Superdeep on prime 8/10. A solid suspenseful horror-sci_fi movie. At a great deep under artic tundra stands a Soviet research station. Unfortunately for them 1000's of feet below the surface they encounter a long buried parasite-entity that morphs into a horrible beatie. That's enough don't want to ruin it for y.
 
I like his short stories, the few I've read at any rate, wasn't keen on his novel - The Croning.
Actually, it's horror anthologies that I love, though they are difficult to find. Any anthology is difficult to find:(, unfortunately. There are some very good authors that only write short stories, and, unless you know of a small press company, the big publishers won't even publish an author unless they are guaranteed a huge return.

There are many authors that I enjoy, but can only find in anthologies such as Best Horror of the Year collections. Stephen Jones does anthologies (still? Not sure), Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow. These are the editors that I search for in order to find the short story authors.
 
Actually, it's horror anthologies that I love, though they are difficult to find. Any anthology is difficult to find:(, unfortunately. There are some very good authors that only write short stories, and, unless you know of a small press company, the big publishers won't even publish an author unless they are guaranteed a huge return.

There are many authors that I enjoy, but can only find in anthologies such as Best Horror of the Year collections. Stephen Jones does anthologies (still? Not sure), Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow. These are the editors that I search for in order to find the short story authors.

Do you mean new ones? I recognise Guran's name from The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu and Ellen Datlow's name from elsewhere. Jones used to do the Mammoth Book of New Horror didn't he? Those seem to sadly have died out a decade or so ago.

I've got most of ST Joshi's recent Lovecraft anthologies - The Black Wings of Cthulhu series and The Madness of Cthulhu ones.
 
Do you mean new ones? I recognise Guran's name from The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu and Ellen Datlow's name from elsewhere. Jones used to do the Mammoth Book of New Horror didn't he? Those seem to sadly have died out a decade or so ago.

I've got most of ST Joshi's recent Lovecraft anthologies - The Black Wings of Cthulhu series and The Madness of Cthulhu ones.
Yes, there are still new anthologies coming out. I checked, and apparently I'm a couple of years (only 2) late with obtaining them.

The problem with anthologies are that you have to know what the title of the anthology is, in order to find it.

Ontario only has Indigo-Chapters:rolleyes: to order books from. Shipping from anywhere outside of Canada, along with exchange rates make for ridiculous pricing of books that are not available here.

I like some of ST Joshi's writing, but can't read an anthology entirely related to Lovecraftian themes.
 
The most horrifying (as in disturbing vs. "boo!" style frightening) thing I've read is CLAY by George Romero. It's about a young boy growing up in a hideously dysfunctional family and what happens when he's alone. The closing scene in his house bothered me for days after reading & still sticks in my head.

It's the only fiction Romero ever published.
But there's one problem. It only came out once, in MODERN MASTERS OF HORROR (1981).
Somebody, anybody, needs to re-publish this.
 
Just bought Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay. Hopefully I will finish it in a reasonable length of time. These covid times are somehow preventing me from getting into a book and finishing it. I only read 8 novels/books (as opposed to other forms of writing) last year. It is not unusual for me to read twice that in a year - depending on actual length of book.

I also am awaiting delivery of 3 horror anthologies that I mentioned up thread. Perhaps short stories will be easier to read.:D

The Tremblay book is starting off positively and I'm on page 7. It's about a virus that makes people crazy. Gee wonder where that idea came from lol.
 
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Also found a new Carl Hiaasen book "Squeeze Me". He is one of my non fantasy/horror authors I enjoy. He has a biting wit and creates quirky and sometimes very eccentric characters. Always a fun and enjoyable read. Looking forward to getting into that one as well.
 
Also found a new Carl Hiaasen book "Squeeze Me". He is one of my non fantasy/horror authors I enjoy. He has a biting wit and creates quirky and sometimes very eccentric characters. Always a fun and enjoyable read. Looking forward to getting into that one as well.

I've read a few Hiaasen books and always enjoyed them. Was sad to hear his brother was murdered in a shooting spree at his work (in a newspaper office). Glad to hear he's still writing his thrillers.
 
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I have enjoyed several Paul Tremblays. Let us know how you get on?
Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay. A good quick read. A virus that is like rabies, but much, much faster in progression. The protagonists race against time trying to do their best, with events devolving rapidly. Paul starts off his story at a run and nothing is extra. He manages to keep the pace going and I read the book almost non-stop. 3/5
 
Caveat: I have not read this, but it sounds very promising and of a nature likely to be appreciated by members.

HC26_2_Outcast_Rite_1000x1600.jpg

10 May 2022

The Australian novelist and playwright Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940) published many supernatural short stories. This new edition selects the best of her unsettling writing, adding some little-known stories to her 1925 collection The Baseless Fabric.

Featured stories include:
‘An Experiment of the Dead’, in which a visitor comes to visit a woman in the condemned cell.
‘Good Company’, in which a traveller in Italy becomes temporarily possessed by a hitchhiker in her mind.
‘Grey Sand and White Sand’ is the horrifying story of a demented landscape artist who paints what only he can see.
‘The Outcast’, in which a soldier left for dead in the War takes his revenge on his village.
‘The Rite’, in which a discontented woman enters
a wood, and emerges transformed.

Details:
https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/sho...ction/helen-simpson-the-outcast-and-the-rite/
 
John Saul Faces of Fear (USA: Ballantine books, 2008).

Not so much a recommendation as me musing over this one. You see, it's tempting to view Saul as the anti-Stephen King of horror fiction. I was once surprised and intrigued to come across a very dismissive one-liner from King in his book about Horror called Danse Macabre (1981) It was something to the effect of `If you like Saul then we have nothing to talk about.` - and coming from an otherwise genial man too.

But after reading this I can see what King meant. Saul is almost as popular as King (in the States that is: in the UK and Europe his name doesn't rank alongside that of King's or Koontz's) with a string of bestselling novels reaching double figures. But whereas King aspires to being writerly and has a poetic vision based around private phobias, Saul is an unabashed commercial writer whose demons are taken from contemporary issues and problems. Saul is somehow the more grown up of the two - even though his books appeal to younger readers owing to the youth of the central characters that often appear in them.

Faces of Fear concerns the plight of a young daughter of a woman who remarries. Her new stepdad is a wealthy master plastic surgeon and Alison Shaw, pushing sixteen, is thrown into the society of Bel Air - a much more prosperous and sophisticated one that she is accustomed to. Furthermore there is now pressure on her to avail herself of a range of cosmetic plastic surgery options - and she initially agrees to have breast implants.

Conrad Dunn, her new stepdad, however is concealing some dark secrets of his own - and is still mourning the loss of his physically perfect previous wife. Meanwhile a series of murders rocks the community. Young women are being targeted, killed and then specific parts of their bodies removed - lips, noses, ears and organs....

The prose is a little lacklustre and the fails to generate the atmosphere of some of his other stories. Indeed, for the first half of the novel the situation seems quite static and the tale seems almost plodding. Some of the the dialogue reads like the script of a bad TV soap and its location in upmarket Los Angeles feels stifling (albeit this may have been partly intended). The characters are mostly just cardboard copy cyphers for the plot: the Caring But Clueless Mother, the Thoroughly Decent Gay Couple, the Singlemindedly Ambitious News reporter, the Suave But Coldly Obsessive Surgeon...and so on.

However as we reach the denoument the suspense takes the reigns - and there is much suspense even if there is not much in the way of real scares. (Saul in interviews has eschewed the `horror` tag. Indeed this novel has more in common with the works of Robin Cook than either King or Koontz).

The main virtue of this novel is that it constructs a decent suspense yarn out of the topic of cosmetic plastic surgery and as such is fairly original. The line it seems to take - that no-one should be pressured into looking different from what they are comfortable with - is not exactly a courageous one, but it animates the story and gives it extra clout. Also if, like me, you love the Deranged Doctor/Medical Malpractice subgenre of thriller then this is one to add to your collection.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2237784.Faces_of_Fear
 
Covers fiction and film.

W. Scott Poole has one of those jobs slightly warped kids dream of: he’s a professor and expert in modern horror.

His new book, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire, focuses on the ascension of the classic monsters—vampires, wolfmen, Frankensteins—and about the real monsters we face. His previous book, Wasteland, argued that the Great War greatly influenced our fears and monsters, and Carnivals is both a continuation and a shift from classic monsters to truly nefarious—and often invisible—enemies.



Horror is not my jam, but I’ve read the classics: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the entire Twilight trilogy. I am interested in the places where horror incurs into the national imaginary and in its intersections with romance and crime fiction. But for Poole, the current wave of popular horror shows, and films illuminates many of our deepest fears. And that was before COVID.

Lisa Levy: How do the classic monsters—vampire, werewolf, zombie—figure in Dark Carnivals? Have they adapted to the times?

W. Scott Poole: I’m truly infatuated with how monsters from European literary tradition and folklore flourished in the United States. So much of what we think we know about these imaginary creatures comes from the films of this era….Bela Lugosi in Dracula makes it clear for the first time that vampires can turn into bats. Lon Chaney Jr., the lead in The Wolfman, confirms that a silver bullet kills a werewolf. The other (bleaker) side to my love of these films is that they are an example of American soft power through the networks of mass culture, we pushed our monsters on the world in more ways than one. As the book shows, we sometimes see in them an ugly mirror. ...

https://crimereads.com/w-scott-poole-horror-reveals-deepest-darkest-beliefs/
 
Curious about the Poole book. WASTELAND made an interesting pitch about WW1 & modern horror, but tried too hard. The tone was like an over-eager academic trying to present his pet theory to a hostile audience. Thoughtful and provocative though.
 
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