This is a modern horror list. Almost everything included is from 2000-2023. Recency bias? Yes. This is a list of horror right now.
from Hartman’s introduction
Scrounge around for horror reading recommendations and you’ll find plenty of books listing the tried and true from Frankenstein, Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, At the Mountains of Madness and The Haunting of Hill House. For later suggestions, there’s Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and Grady Hendrix (with an assist from Will Errickson) did an admirable job of covering some of the best (and much of the worst) from the 1980s horror boom.
But what about books published in this century? Less discussed, at least in book form, are works published since 2000, and so Sadie Hartmann steps in.
Of the 101 books Hartmann strongly recommends, I’ve read a meagre seven (twenty including mentions of books other than the 101); Hartmann is much more familiar with Indie publishing than I am. Fortunately for me, I agree with her about those books we’ve both read, maybe with somewhat less enthusiasm concerning The Children on the Hill and Kill Creek but with a similar level of enthusiasm for The Fisherman and Mexican Gothic; as for her championing Heart-Shaped Box, it is a really good first novel, but I prefer the author’s (Joe Hill) later novel, NOS4A2. Quibbles aside, she has led me to change priorities on a few books currently in my to-be-read pile (for the curious: The Twisted Ones, Revelator, The Hacienda, Come Closer and Queen of the Cicadas are likely reads for later this year and next).
Hartmann’s chapters reflect types of story: Paranormal; Supernatural; Human Monsters; Natural Order Horror; and the final chapter features short story collections. Subdivisions include haunted houses, ghosts, coming-of-age, body horror, cults, demons and possession, and several others. She provides a range of symbols to denote whether a given work is Gothic, cosmic horror, psychological, mind bending, involves religion or involves cults, is set in a small town or big city, and so on. She concentrates on thumbnail descriptions of individual works and because of this her reviews are not overly substantive; she does, however, convey how a given work affected her, which is fine, though I appreciated those less frequent occasions when offered stronger insights. For example, on The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson:
This book stands as a reminder that we have not evolved past the horrors of the Salem witch trials. A warning that society continues to be capable of twisting and perverting religious texts in order to persecute, and ultimately condemn, people who live lives not “approved” by whatever dogmatic leadership is in position of authority.
I would have liked some more of that.
Also included are short essays on related topics by Cassandra Khaw, Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, R. J. Joseph, and Daniel Kraus; and two-page summaries of ten authors Hartmann singles out as having put a personal stamp on horror in the 21st century: (in alphabetical order) Ania Ahlborn, Christopher Buehlman, V. Castro, Tananarive Due, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Josh Malerman, Adam Nevill, Paul Tremblay. Having read at least one work by five of those writers, I’d say she’s on to something.
In some ways, Hartmann is less thorough covering her chosen era than Stephen King’s Danse Macabre covering his or Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell when covering books he found worth focusing on. But she’s cherry picking the books that mean the most to her; whether her selection will hold up over time remains to be seen – there’s always a greater degree of risk in selecting titles from so close to your own time – but that’s not really the point, which is to encourage readers new to the genre, display the depth and width of the genre, and direct attention to worthy books for those readers who are more staid in their normal selection (like, say, me). Thus her 101 Horror Books should fit neatly on the same shelf as King’s and Hendrix’s, and Horror: 100 Best Books and Monster, She Wrote as fan-written and fan-oriented non-fiction offering an array of readings for someone new to or someone familiar with the genre looking for works beyond their experience.
Rob Bedford also reviewed this book last year as part of the 2023 Countdown. His review is HERE.
Trade Paperback | 168 pages
August 2023 | Published by Page Street Publishing
https://linktr.ee/sadiehartmann | Mother Horror on Instagram / Twitter
Review by Randy Money
