Recommend me some good horror

Cafe Society
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Hi all. I’m a pretty voracious reader, and have been for as long as I can remember. The vast majority of stuff that I read for pleasure is either in the mystery or horror genre. I’m a huge fan of Stephen King and have read almost all of his books, but I can only read The Stand and Needful Things so many time (which is already at least six or seven :stuck_out_tongue: )

I noticed that he co-wrote The Talisman with Peter Straub who is supposed to be another good horror writer so I’m starting to look into that but I wanted to see if anybody else had any suggestions. Thanks for the help!

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Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Peter Straub and Stephen King are the same person.

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The Exorcist

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“All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By” - John Farris. The opening scene makes my hair stand on end.

“The House Next Door” - Anne Rivers Siddons

VCNJ~

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You’re wrong. They’ve got very different styles. You may be thinking of Richard Bachman and Stephen King.

I highly recommend the anthologies The YEar’s Best Fantasy and Horror. They define both terms broadly, and they have wonderful stories in them ranging from the literary to the splattery (one of them had a story, I think it was called “Gut,” that still makes me ill to think about). They’re a great place to learn about writers you’ve never heard of before.

Daniel

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Yea, Richard Bachman was a pseudonym that King used when he first came out. Even now that it’s come out that he is Richard Bachman he will occasionally come out with a new book that is tongue in cheek referred to as having been written by Bachman, such as The Regulators and Blaze.

Left Hand of Dorkness that sounds like a good start! Would this be something that I can find at a library somewhere? Is it a number of volumes, or condensed into one large tome?

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Clive Barker’s always a safe bet as long as you don’t mind sexual content in your books.

If you want to go old-school, dig up some Lovecraft. And possibly a dictionary to go along with him. :slight_smile:

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I want to suggest WeaveWorld by Clive Barker.
It is a very creepy, highly imaginitive story, with some very disturbing imagery in it.
Since I started reading Barker, I couldn’t stand Stephen King anymore.
His books are highly derivative of each other and I think WeaveWorld is easily his best, so I would start with that one.

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Second Clive Barker and Lovecraft. I also like British author James Herbert’s earlier stuff (His Rats series, also The Jonah and The Spear)
Then there’s always early Koontz, I guess. I liked Whispers and Twilight Eyes, but his later books not so much.

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While I love Weaveworld, I still pine for the long-awaited third Book of the Art. That’s my favourite series (Great and Secret Show and Everville). But I’d argue that Imajica is the one to start with, though.

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Slight clarification: he started using the pseudonym only after he first became famous, according to an author’s note. He wanted to see whether his books were selling on name recognition or on their own quality–but before his experiment could be carried through, a reporter sniffed out the secret. At least, that was his story (maybe in a foreword to Thinner?)

These are published annually; I think there are close to 20 editions out now. I’ve seen them in a few different libraries. The earlier ones were edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow (the latter handled the horror). These are the only two editors whose careers I’ve followed.

Daniel

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Neil Gaiman can be pretty horrorific when he feels like it. Try American Gods, Neverwhere, or his short stories.

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Bill Pronzini, Robert Bloch, and Richard Matheson for short stories.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

paging Auntie Pam

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I’d like to recomend Perfume buy Patrick Suskind. Not your typical horror but definitlty horrifying.

And then there’s I Have No Mouth By I Must Scream. I won’t say anything more about it because I’m still suffering post stress disorder from reading it ten year ago.

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This thread doesn’t need me – all these suggestions are great. :smiley:

Daniel, did you hear that Ellen Datlow just won another Locus award for best editor? Stephen Jones’s collections are worth reading too. I think they’re called “Best New Horror”.

I just read The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. It’s probably classified as SF, but there are horror elements. I’m getting to where that’s what I want – bits of horror, unexpected. Straight horror has become too explicitly gory, at the expense of building tension and telling a good story.

More suggestions:

The Heart-Shaped Box and 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Armageddon Rag (rock 'n roll and demons) and Fevre Dream (vampires) by George R. R. Martin

I haven’t read Robert McCammon for awhile, but if you haven’t read a lot of horror, his stuff might work for a newbie. The Wolf’s Hour (werewolves and Nazis), They Thirst (vampires), The Night Boat (ghosts), Bethany’s Sin (witches? I can’t remember), Baal (old-style demons). Oh! Stinger – read Stinger if you read nothing else by him.

Anything by John Farris, who’s already been mentioned, especially Son of the Endless Night and All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By.

This is turning into a long list – sorry!

Thomas Tryon – The Other and Harvest Home

T.E.D. Klein – The Ceremonies

Dan Simmons – Summer of Night, Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort

Peter Straub – pretty much anything, including the two newer ones – In the Night Room and lost boy lost girl. I recently re-read Floating Dragon and it was cheesier than I remember, but it’s pretty good.

Terry Wright sometimes known as T. M. Wright – Manhattan Ghost Story, Eyes of the Carp (silly title, great little psychological horror story)

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LHOD you are indeed correct, I had forgotten about that. I think I read it in his forward to the Bachman books.

AuntiePam that is a great list, thank you! I think I’m just gonna have to go ahead and print this out and take it to the library and/or used book store with me and just go wild. Thank you for all the suggestions everybody :smiley:
ETA: I just checked out lost boy lost girl from the library a few days ago and haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Looks like I may have made the right choice!

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I was just coming to suggest Summer of Night. It was pretty good :slight_smile:

I also thought Watchers to be a good Dean Koontz - if such a thing exists.

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The Boss in the Wall by Avram Davidson is a short read at only 122 pages, but it’s the best scary story I’ve found in a long time.

I am partial to horror anthologies; short stories are a great way to find new-to-me authors, and the short form by definition packs a concentrated punch. The Dark Descent, edited by David Hartwell, is an especially generous and broad sampling of stories past and present. I also very much enjoy the anthologies compiled by Marvin Kaye, whose selections tend toward the uncommon. I appreciate the effort made to not anthologize The Yellow Wall-Paper yet again, ya know?

Karl Edward Wagner edits The Year’s Best Horror collections, which I tend to prefer to the Fantasy and, because I have found the latter to be heavy on the fantasy and mood pieces but light on horror.

I hope I have not used too many italics in this post.

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There is IMO at least one exception to Peter Straub’s greatness. It’s a novel of his in which an old-school ceremonial magician plays a prominent part. The book is fine and creepy before the magician appears, and after the magician appears. But at some point, you see a list of his spells. And they’re listed, I shit you not, by level. And the spell names are, again no shit, straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. Not common stuff like Lightning Bolt, either–things like “Simulacrum” and “True Seeing” and “Magic Jar.”

It was just one page, from what I remember, but it just about destroyed my suspension of disbelief for the rest of the book.

Daniel

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Stephen King’s Danse Macabre is a good nonfiction book about horror, in various media, including discussions of some older horror novels that are among King’s favorites.