I'm jaded. Please recommend me some *good* horror fiction

Cafe Society
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If you’ve read much of what I’ve posted on the SDMB, and Cafe Society in particular, you will have surmised that I’m a big fan of the Horror genre in most media–movies, TV,comics, websites, and, the subject of this post, fiction (with a preference for the short story form, but I also love a good scary novel). My problem is that I’m also a jaded horror fan who sometimes thinks he’s read everything that’s any good. I know damned well that I haven’t read all the horror fiction that’s any good, so I’m asking my fellow fans for assistance in finding some good horror to read, preferably on the newer side of the divide. To assist your assisting, here’s a sketchy rundown of what I like and don’t like in the field: both creepy supernatural/psychological and gory splattery “extreme” horror are acceptible if they’re good, and a well-done monster tale is always welcome. I’m tired of vampires and zombies (I haven’t read a good vampire story since MC Anderson’s Thirsty) but a fresh take on a werewolf story can still grab me.

Paricular authors I enjoy include Bentley Little, Michael McDowell, Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, Michael Slade, John Shirley, both Richard Mathesons, David Schow,Ramsey Campbell, John Farris, Charles Tremblay, Shirley Jackson, and the collaborations of Skipp and Spector. Also Joyce Carol Oates when she makes a foray into horror (I like her crime stories too, and even her literary fiction, but I digress…).

King and Straub I have mixed feelings about, and I have a love-hate thing going with Mr. Lovecraft. Don’t much care for the rest of the old Weird Tales crew, or anything pre-20th century–cannot abide The Turn Of The Screw . I don’t like Dean R. Koontz or Anne Rice or VC Andrews at all, not even a little bit. 1980s style paperback pop-pulp-horror like John Saul’s, and mainstream fiction with a slight horrific glaze, both leave me cold. And I’m a bit ambivalent about much of the new-generation stuff that I’ve read–there are individual pieces that work for me but a lot of it just doesn’t.

What haven’t I read, what should I read, and what can I read next?

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666, by Jay Anson? I finished reading it about 2300, went to bed, turned off the light, lay there for about five minutes, and then turned the light back on…

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I don’t remember any certain collections or publications specifically…But some of my favorite and slightly guilty pleasures were getting some of these clearence and “value table” books- meaty compendiums of the Best Horror or Science Fiction Short Stories from years past in the eighties and nineties. They were always a couple years old, but I owned a shelf clearing, dated, best stories, 1/4 price, 600 page book.
Short Horror story compendium is what you want by your OP. Or you coukd go back to rhe Source like the Gebrueder Grimm. Coming from Someone who walked and biked the Hansel and Gretl Woods on the Maerchenstrasse in Germany.

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What about Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood? I like them, but I guess you never can tell if someone else will.
Here’s the wiki on Books Of Blood:

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I like those too, very much so. Especially “Rawhead”, “In The Hills The Cities”, and “The Body Politic”.Mr. Barker’s wild imagination, poetic sensibility, and surrealistic violence have given me some uneasy hours of reading enjoyment.

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Have you read The Hollow Places, by T. Kingfisher? I also read a lot of horror, and get bored at times, but this one got under my skin a bit.

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Peter Clines’ novel “14”, is pretty good. It’s horror, sci-fi, and some dimensional scariness mixed together. It’s part of a series called “Threshold”. Just finished the 2nd book and they’re very different but are related.

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@Dung_Beetle and @pullin mentioned what are probably my two favorite recent horror novels, though I have no idea whether they’re the kind of thing the OP is looking for.

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Yeah, another thumbs up for The Hollow Places – nothing I’ve read recently has made me as wrung out as that one. Really creepy.

I just finished a book called Duet of Death by Hilda Lawrence written in 1939 and containing two separate short novels. They’re more suspense than horror, but I was definitely drawn in by the tension and suspense.

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I suggest Graham Masterton. He’s British and not that famous in the US, but I love his stuff. He’s very gory–makes Stephen King look tame by comparison–and can be a bit hit-or-miss, but books like Ritual, Burial, Mirror, The Devil in Gray, The Doorkeepers, and the Manitou series are really entertaining as long as you don’t mind that some of them are a bit dated. He’s got newer stuff too, though I prefer the older. He has a lot of books out.

Stay away from Unspeakable, though. The ending of that one made me want to chuck the book across the room.

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Hello, Me from 1993! Welcome to the future!

Another author I liked from that period is Brian Hodge, particularly “Night Life” and “Dark Advent” (sequel to Night Life).

Norman Partridge’s “Dark Harvest” is also excellent.

I moved away from horror over time, but of the newer authors I’ve read, I would recommend Jeff Strand, although a little can go far. He is very much into the “late-night/drive-in” type of horror, and the humor can wear a little thin at times. Having said that…

I recommend “Clown vs. Spiders”. It is literally about a group of clowns fighting against an invasion of spiders. The clowns stay in character the entire time. It’s very strange.

Also, “Ferocious”, by the same author. A man and his niece must escape from their cabin in the woods when the wildlife starts attacking.

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Add my voice to the T. Kingfisher fans: she does for rural Piedmont NC what King does for rural Maine. I think Kingfisher writes by getting a single super-creepy image stuck in her head and writing a story around it, and for the most part her books are snarky gen-Xers dealing with family stuff, but then they get to the creepy stuff and good lord is it creepy. I really like her.

Werewolves? Check out Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf trilogy. His werewolves don’t fuck around, they’re human predators once a month, and the rest of the time they’re humans who have to reconcile the slaughter and cannibalism they’ve committed with who they are as people. It’s bloody and disgusting and wry and gory fun.

There’s also Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, a prose poem about urban werewolves. I didn’t expect to like it, I though the prose poem would be a dealbreaker, but it’s really good. Not especially scary, if I remember correctly, but a great werewolf book.

Finally, I enjoy some Christopher Buehlman. The Necromancer’s House is a story about a recovering alcoholic/practicing necromancer, and debts from his past coming due. Definitely has some horror elements, and is probably my favorite interpretation of an often-visited mythological character. He’s written a few others, but I’d recommend starting with this one to see if you like his approach.

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Oh–want some fuckin trippy discombulating weirdness with your horror? Get your hands on some Jeff Vandermeer! Annihilation is one of his more accessible books, which isn’t to say it’s straightforward, but it’s easier to grasp than some of his other super-experimental stuff. He also edited an anthology called The New Weird, which has some kickass horror stories in it from across the world.

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I’ll be on the lookout for this, thanks.

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I read at least one of the Manitou books a long time ago, I’ll look for some more of his stuff the next time I hit the library.

If you don’t mind me asking, what was it about Unspeakable that made you want to hurl the book?

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Oh, one more, and then I’ll hush for a bit: Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians freaked me the fuck out. It’s bloody horror set in a ghost story in Blackfeet culture. At one point I was reading it before bed, and hit a certain scene, and was like Christ Almighty, I can’t go to sleep with that in my head, so I read another dozen pages and hit a scene that was about ten times scarier and had to go to sleep with that in my head.

Good stuff.

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I just read The Only Good Indians a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was pretty good. I especially liked the gritty, naturalistic, doomed atmosphere it laid out for most of the characters. It seems we have some tastes in common, so I’ll certainly consider your suggestions. Currently the San Francisco Public Library is serving up my recreational fiction needs, and I’ll definitely have a nice list of books to look for the next time I go there.

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“Late-night/drive-in” sounds right up my alley. I’d never heard of Mr. Strand until your post, so now I have a fresh author to seek out, thank you.

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Your horror requirements are pretty much in alignment with mine.

Horror was the genre of reading I cut my teeth on, right after mastering Dr. Seuss. I started with short stories and quickly worked my way up to Ratman’s Notebooks. I was hooked on horror by then.

I love horror, but very little horror horrifies me. For me, Stephan King’s IT is the gold standard of horror—the book, not any of the film adaptations.

Film-wise, The Exorcist is my gold standard. It scared the pants off me when I saw the premiere as a teen, and it holds up quite well all these decades later. I also like The Shining, thanks to King’s stellar writing and Kubrick’s masterful filmmaking. Had Kubrick directed IT, I have no doubt it would be a favorite film of mine. Yes, Kubrick was that good.

A handful of other horror films have grabbed me, including the original Alien (none of the sequels), The Fly (1986), The Thing (1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and even The Wicker Man (1973), but woefully few other horror flicks have made the grade.

Jump scares, slasher, gore, etc. do nothing for me. They make me laugh more than horrify me. They are techniques of weak writing and directing. Zombies and vampires make me yawn.

For me, horror is all about creating tension, an eerie ambiance, and a feeling of foreboding. Don’t show me the monster, make me anticipate the monster. Thankfully Bruce the shark in Jaws had mechanical problems, causing Spielberg to show him very little in the film—that snafu is what elevated Jaws into a classic.

Unfortunately, I have no other horror books or films to recommend. I’ve pretty much transferred to hard sci-fi for my thrills. But, if another IT is published, or another The Shining is filmed, I could be wooed back. :ghost:

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Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow.