[Slack Bladder]

Thought I'd try and get a conversation going on horror literature. I know there are a few older threads out there, but I thought I'd get a new one going and see what people are reading/recommending this days. Horror, these days, doesn't seem to garner as much attention as either Fantasy or SF.

I must admit that it's been a while since I've read a good horror novel. Stuff I've liked in past:

The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
Naomi's Room and Whispers in the Dark by Jonathan Aycliffe
A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll
The Face that Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
Anno Dracula and The Quorum by Kim Newman
Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti

and so on...

What's considered good these days? Is there anyone producing good stuff? Joe Hill looks interesting and I have Heart Shaped Box on my shelf, but who else should I be reading?

Cheers,
Slack B.

[Randy M.]

Thought I'd try and get a conversation going on horror literature. I know there are a few older threads out there, but I thought I'd get a new one going and see what people are reading/recommending this days. Horror, these days, doesn't seem to garner as much attention as either Fantasy or SF.

I must admit that it's been a while since I've read a good horror novel. Stuff I've liked in past:

The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
Naomi's Room and Whispers in the Dark by Jonathan Aycliffe
A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll
The Face that Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
Anno Dracula and The Quorum by Kim Newman
Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti

and so on...

What's considered good these days? Is there anyone producing good stuff? Joe Hill looks interesting and I have Heart Shaped Box on my shelf, but who else should I be reading?

Cheers,
Slack B.

I really should get around to the Barker, the Carroll, Whispers... and the stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer I haven't read yet -- "The Frolic" is still one of the most disturbing stories I've read. The others, I agree are quite good. Speaking of Carroll, have you read his Voice of Our Shadow? If not, I think you'd appreciate it. He manages to make his last line or two chilling.

I think what KatG would call category horror may be in the duldrums creatively, at least from most of the larger pb publishers, but that's not to say it's all bad. Joe Hill is looking like one of the better things: I enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box and I'm looking forward to reading his story collection, 20Th Century Ghosts. He appears, right now, to be the next break-out writer.

Caitlin Kiernan's Threshold and The Red Tree, and Glen Hirshberg's collection The Two Sams are excellent, and Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest is very good, a sort of homage and reworking of some of Ray Bradbury's recurring themes and motifs. Speaking of Bradbury-esque, Stewart O'Nan's The Night Country is a superior homage.

Campbell keeps chugging along. I've heard good things about The Overnight, The Darkest Part of the Woods and The Grin of the Dark and am looking forward to reading them. I recently got around to some of his older work, Midnight Sun & Ancient Images and was impressed, as usual. Peter Straub's published a couple of books in the last decade you might find interesting: lost boy lost girl and In the Night Room. I found the former stronger than the latter, but part of that might be that it was the fifth book in a row I'd read by him (catching up to Koko, Mystery and The Throat). He has a new one out, Dark Matter, that's gotten a couple of good reviews.

Leisure reissued some older work from Thomas Tessier a couple of years ago. If you haven't read Finishing Touches you're in for a treat;I'd highly, highly recommend seeking it out, and I've heard good things about the The Nightwalker for years. Unfortunately, I'd suggest skipping Wicked Things, his most recent novel. Felt like a 'trunk' novel. Also from Leisure, Gary Braunbeck's Coffin County ... I can't say I liked it, exactly; I liked his prose, and a couple of characters were fleshed out well enough to be compelling, but the story left me cold. Still, it was intriguing enough I think I'll try another by him.

There's work coming from unusual suspects that's worth reading, too. The most obvious is Cormac McCarthy. His No Country for Old Men and, especially, The Road are unsettling in different ways, and his writing is extraordinarily effective. If you read these, or if you've already read them, I'd also strongly urge you to look into William Gay's Twilight, a terrific Southern Gothic novel dedicated, as I recall, to another Southern writer, Davis Grubb (Night of the Hunter); weird, funny, suspenseful, it cozies up to fairytale and folklore.

3/22/2010:
Jeez! I can't believe I forgot to add M. John Harrison's The Course of the Heart. This is a fine novel that traces the supernatural and its effects on more-or-less ordinary people. Not a monster tale, but a gracefully written novel of people growing into adulthood and the warping effect an encounter with the supernatural has on them.


Randy M.

[Mithfânion]

Jonathan Maberry wrote a horror trilogy a couple of yeras back, and he has now been picked up by major publishers for a new series which doesn't look interesting to me.

Norman Partidge has a new collection due next month which I am looking forward to.

You could check out the short stories in last year's anthology Lovecraft Unbound if you're interested in shorter work as well.

In the UK, Bill Hussey has become notable with two creepy horror novels that you should probably check out.

[Keeper]

Laird Barron has a collection (http://imago1.livejournal.com/45844.html) coming out in a few months. His first is simply brilliant.

Ligotti, McCarthy, O'Nan, very talented bunch of writers.

Wasn't very impressed with Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. It was ok, but based on the few short stories I've read by him so far, I think he is much better in the short form.

[hippokrene]

I'd like to get into horror, but tend to stick to 'dark fantasy' because it's safer. Not only am I less likely to reach for the brain bleach but the protagonist is less likely to be a victim and the average person is less likely to be ugly and vile.

Dean Koontz is the only author I've come to trust and many people tell me he's not 'really' horror. How a modern-day story of regular people being hunted by eldritch monsters isn't horror is beyond me, but I'm assured he's a suspense author.

[AzWingsFan]

The Childrens Hour..

I forgot the author.

I tend to get freaked out easily, but the horror genre is awesome. Anyone recommend any good horror books, something thats not as much a mind horror. but a more fantasy horror. as in with monsters, and beasts and such?

[KatG]

Although we now have horror category sections in the U.S. and Britain has apparently had them for longer, it's probably not worth trying to make a horror category/general fiction distinction because horror is embedded in general fiction (which is why it may not seem to get as much love as fantasy/SF, but actually often gets more.) Besides which, I'm trying to get people off that kick in the first place.

I can unquestionably recommend Robert McCammon and he has a new novel out for 2010, Mister Slaughter, which is the third in a series that he's been working on featuring a character named Matthew Corbett. I also suggest you check out any of his backlist, which includes many standalones, for those of you who are picky about that sort of thing, and some monsters in some books.

[imaster]

Could you recommend me a couple of horror-books with supernatural elements?

I´ve read everything that Lovecraft and Poe have written and love it and also some of Stephen King's stuff but I think I would like to try something a bit more modern.

Preferably something really, really scary (I´m not easily frightened) which does not involved madmen - unless they are some kind of secret cult, etc. I want to be scared shitless, basically, and splatter doesn´t do it for me.

Got something for me? :)

[AuntiePam]

Could you recommend me a couple of horror-books with supernatural elements?

I enjoyed all of these but they're all "old" :) :

Thomas Disch's Minnesota Supernatural books -- The Sub, The Businessman, The Doctor, The Priest

Daniel Rhodes, Next, After Lucifer and The Adversary

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (but skip Legion)

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

The Good House by Tananarive Due

I assume you've perused the classics, like The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

ETA: There's no splatter in these books. I'm with you -- the less gore, the better.

[KatG]

It's not a 2010 book, it was published last summer, but Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Red Tree is supposed to be very Lovecraftian.