Folks interested in pursuing horror fiction beyond the bestselling likes of King and Koonz should check out both Arkham House and the Ash-Tree Press…the former was founded by August Derleth in 1939 to publish the works of Lovecraft in book form (and went on to publish many other excellent pulp-mag horror writers); the latter is a Canadian house that specializes in bringing back out-of-print horror writers…they specialize in literary ghost stories, as you can tell from the name, which was lifted from the M.R. James story.
Repeat after me: Peter Straub, Peter Straub, Peter Straub.
and who can forget Ramsay Campbell and Richard Matheson.
Dean Koontz shouldn’t be in this discussion.
I don’t consider Thomas Harris horror, more like suspense. Though, I suppose for the sake of argument, one could call him a horror author.
Perhaps we should also define our terms. Are we talking about the “Greatest” or the “Best?” (We’re certainly not speaking abou our "favorite) The best implies, to me, only quality of writing while the greatest means something more. To determine the greatest one has to weigh many factors such as popularity, longevity, influence, importance to the genre, etc. . .
When talking about the Greatest, I would have to say in no particular order Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft and E.A. Poe.
I don’t think I have read enough to determine the best, though Straub tops my list at this moment. (“Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff” was sublime).
Favorites are hard for me to decide. It’s a toss up between Stephen King and Peter Struab. I also really like Robert McCammon, John Saul, Dean Koontz(but am I the only one who hates his titles? I can never remember which is which!) and Clive Barker.
However, I would love to be pointed in the direction of more female horror authors. I sort of like Anne Rice, but I have trouble getting into a lot of her books (Clive Barker’s too, actually) since she, like Frank Herbert, write what I mentally catolog as “really boring interesting stories” meaning once I’ve finished them- and waded through the semantics- I better appricate them. She’s the only one that comes to mind though, and I’d like to see what other women write, too. I write horror,(abet not novels. yet)too, there has to be a lot of women who do.
Hmm, I never got into Ghost Story. I have only read “Shadowland” by him, which was actually superb. I will give him another try… I still own Ghost Story (actually, somehow I own two copies of it :p)
mangeorge, I also forgot about McCammon. I have three of his I haven’t gotten around to readin yet (been on a non-fiction kick lately).
Try Joyce Carol Oates,
Cynthia Asquith,
C.L. Moore,
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman,
Marjorie Bowen,
Tanith Lee,
and James Tiptree, Jr.
(That last one is the nom de plume of Alice B. Sheldon)
F. Paul Wilson. Hands down. Read The Tomb. Or The Keep.
Stephen King, of course, and also James Herbert.
Other King novels (apart from Misery) that were made into decent movies:
Stand By Me
Shawshank Redemption
Salems Lot
Really? Besides that short story “Where are you going, where have you been” (? I think that’s the title) I’ve never read anything by her that is remotely like horror. Maybe I’ve read the wrong novels… Thanks for the suggestions, though 
*Ukelele Ike, for shame, how can you enumerate a list of female horror writers and leave out Shirley Jackson, the author of “The Lottery” and “An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” * and the novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle?
Lovecraft is the only one whose books gave me nightmares after reading them, but one has to recognize the genius in E.A. Poe’s writing despite the fact that the impact has faded somewhat with time and with the subsequent generations of writers who have built on his foundations.
I like Stephen King’s writing (some of the time), but I can’t say that I find it overly creepy. OTOH, while it’s not really a horror book, William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch really disturbed me.
As one who DESPISES King, Barker, and other present day horror writers, I have to fly in the face of the OP, and name Poe and Lovecraft.
Since no movie or book has ever scared me, the “scary” potential matters very little to me. But I do know that if anyone ever manages to scare me, it won’t be Stephen King, whom I find very unimaginative, and extremely boring.
Out of curiosity, Zaphod, what of King’s books have you read?
I haven’t liked everything he’s done, but neither ‘unimaginative’ nor ‘boring’ come to mind for me.
Christine was plaguarized from a Twilight Zone episode.
Salem’s Lot violated the ‘vampire rules’ wantonly.
The Stand had that crummy line in it “And they never saw them again!”
I didn’t make it through the Tommyknockers…something’s going to happen soon, right?
He got so good (or bad) that he overwrote his editors and published the stuff they cut out.
But hey, what can I say? I read Robert E. Howard and H. Rider Haggard.
Enjoy.
That’s the reason I asked him, carnivorousplant. Not intending it as a flame, but because there are books of SK’s that I don’t like either, and if I were to judge off of trying to read that one or two of them, I probably wouldn’t have thought terribly well of his works overall. Christine, Cujo and the Tommyknockers all fall into that category.
The Stand, however, remains my favorite of King’s books for any number of reasons, which I won’t bore everyone with. I think it preys on my mind because a germ-warfare doomsday scenario seems a whole heck of a lot more possible – and frightening – to me than a nuclear doomsday one.
Gore and grue does not equate to horror for me. (I’ve been told I’m weird because of that; so be it.) To me, horror lies in that concept that creeps into the back of my mind and will NOT go away, not even years later.
While I didn’t like ‘Salem’s Lot’ at all, I don’t think there are any hard and fast vampire rules. Compare Stoker’s Dracula to Yarbro’s Saint-Germain, or Tanya Huff’s Henry Fitzroy to Rice’s Lestat or ones described in Matheson’s I Am Legend.
And don’t worry. I’m a gourmand, not a gourmet, when it comes to reading and always have been. If it fits my mood at the time, I’ll read it. I have no shame. 
Vampire rules: They are repeled by crosses and holy water, no matter the beliefs of the Good Guys.
Vampires cannot cross running water. (Dracula did sail, but he was in his native earth for the most part, he wasn’t moving under his own power.
They must sleep in their native earth.
No reflection in a mirror, etc.
If you don’t follow the rules, why write a vampire story? If the trains in your story can fly, they ain’t trains.
THe ending of the stand annoyed me. I read all these damn pages for THIS?
gobear: Hey, I didn’t say it was a COMPREHENSIVE list.
In my defense, I wandered over to my “horror” shelf and picked our chick names at random…Shirl is over on my “literature” shelves. (See, I may talk a big game about genre fiction being the equal of literary fiction, but I gotta categorize my bookshelves just like everyone else, or I’ll never find anything.)
elfkin477: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is Oates’s most widely reprinted story in the horror arena. The novel Bellefleur (1980) is definitely dark fantasy, and the following short stories are some of those cited in the Joyce Carol Oates article in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror:
“Demons”
“The Assailant”
“The Children”
“Puzzle”
“By the River”
“Stalking”
“The Sacrifice”
“The Snowstorm”
Er, not to further an unintended hijack here, but like I said, the “rules” do not apply to all authors’ vampires. Since not all authors have their vampires come to be vampires in the same way, I can’t see that any hard and fast set of rules would be able to apply to them. I figure it’s fiction; if they manage to come up with something that sufficiently suspends my disbelief and makes sense, I’m satisfied. Why write a non-traditional vampire? Heck, why write a non-traditional anything else?
We’ll have to agree to disagree on The Stand. I honestly rarely notice the number of pages of whatever I’m reading. If I like it, I’ll read it; if not, even if it’s only 30 pages long, it’s not worth my time. What about the ending of The Stand annoyed you, though? Not wanting to shoot your opinions down, honest, just curious as to why.
To try to help keep a really good thread on track, though, I’ll add “The Bingo Master” to Ike’s list of Oates works that I’ve liked along that line (if he’ll let me ), and add Ambrose Bierce to the general list. (BTW, someone please slap me for being senile enough for not immediately thinking of Shirley Jackson, too.)
Re The Stand: I was annoyed that I remember, evrybody died at the end. The junkyard guy and his bomb. THe efforts of the protagonists were for naught.
Anyway.
One of my favorite authors Fred Saberhagen played fast with the ‘vampire rules’ if not accually violating them as did Yarbrough. I expect vampires to behave according to rules described in folklore. Otherwise I don’t enjoy the work. On the other hand, I enjoy James Bond’s submarines that fly, so what the heck.
I guess my best comparison is from another genre; Whats-his-name, the guy who writes the Spenser mysteries in BGoston has the unmitigated gaul to think he can finish Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs. This baseball playing, ale bonding designer jean wearing Spenser is nothing like Phillip Marlowe and could never hope to be.
My point being that King shouldn’t mess with Vampire legends any more than Robert B. Parker should mess with Marlowe.
Put a big ol’ “In My Opinion” in front of and behind that last post.
Zaphod? Want to help me out here?
Two great writers of horror short stories are George R.R. Martin (no, not the Beatles’ producer) and the British Conrad Hill. The later wrote a great story called “The Grief Connection” which I could see as a Simpson’s Halloween segment, except it would never get past the censors.
King does write good stories. My favorite horror book is his wife Tabitha’s “Small World.”