The late Sherri S. Tepper is one of my favourite writers, mainly fantasy and SF.
She did a very well written book with great characters and some seriously scary and horrible supernatural shit in it Blood Heritage and likewise the sequel The Bones.
I commend the author in general to you as well as these 2 which I think were her only foray into horror.
I like Graham Masterton. He’s from the UK and doesn’t get as much exposure over here, but he’s written dozens of horror novels. Some of my favorites are the *Manitou *series, The Doorkeepers, The Devil in Gray, The Fifth Witch, *Feast *(very gory) and Mirror.
He uses a lot of old myths (Native American, Russian, Japanese, etc.) and his stuff is super gory (more than Stephen King). Good stuff. Lately he’s been writing more thrillers, but they’re still quite horrific.
Can you give more information about this? All I’m finding is a novel called All the Birds in the Sky, which doesn’t look like horror.
According to Wikpedia it’s in his Shatterday collection, which you can get for 3 squid on kindle at Amazon UK.
Or apparently $14.23 if accessing Amazon.com from a uk Amazon account. Wtf?
Anyways I just bought it for the UK price. Looks like a good collection and I don’t recognise a lot of the titles.
Well this thread had been more or less exactly what I hoped for.
I’ll probably be back with questions, but I have some reading to do.
Thanks all.
If anyone has more thoughts feel free to keep this going.
Or the Keep, which was one of the first one of his books I picked up.
I’ve been reading a lot of Brian Lumley’s books the past year. Mostly the Necroscope series.
M.R. James wrote a lot of ghost stories. His most famous was “Casting the Runes”, which was made into the classic horror movie Night of the Demon.
Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. A collection of Japanese ghost stories.
The Wicker Man, by Robin Hardy and Anthony Schaffer, is based on the movie script, but is an interesting book in its own right.
I would like to start my questions here.
I had already read the Tomb (and liked it!) before I started this thread. It was recommended by a friend of mine when I was looking for something to read while I waited for treatment new Dresden Files book to come out.* It didn’t read as horror to me, but what do I know?anyway I did really enjoy it.
I grabbed The Keep after and didn’t ever finish it. I found it a lot less interesting. Maybe it was just a mood thing at the time.
So, what do you guys suggest at this point? It seems these are a whole interlocking series and many people love The Keep. Give it another try? Skip it and read other stuff by Wilson? If so, what?
*side note, still waiting.
Maybe I should reread Ellison. I read all his short stories I could find when I was in my late teens and early twenties; “I Have No Mouth” is the only one I really remember, though.
Some of Neil Gaiman’s short stories are absolutely horrific - not necessarily “scary” as such but certainly very dark. Sometimes he combines the horror with a comic strain (consider “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale”) and sometimes not (“Feeders and Eaters”). His take on Snow White (“Snow, Glass, Apples”) is decidedly disturbing.
Several I would suggest have been mentioned, but here are a couple of others:
Clark Ashton Smith – a writer of fantasy and horror (and a sculptor!) of the same generation as Lovecraft, and one of his correspondents. Lovecraft actually adopted some of Smith’s creations into his “Cthulhu Mythos” . Sadly, his stuff is pretty much out of hard copy print. Fortunately, that means you can find it in e-book form. I have a huge collection of his stuff on my Nook.
Robert E, Howard – better known for his Conan stories and other Sword and sorcery and adventure yarns, Howard also wrote horror fantasy. He’s another of Lovecraft’s inner circle, who added to the Cthulhu Mythos. Read his Worms of the Earth, a King Kull story with wonderful horror elements.
Robert Bloch – he’s best known as the author of “Psycho”, but Bloch was writing for a LONG time. He , too, interacted with Lovecraft (he devoted a story to Bloch), and went on to write a lot of fantasy and horror. Most of his stuff was out of print a long time ago, but probably is available in e-book form.
August Derleth, another Lovecraft familiar, wrote a lot of stories in imitation of others. He wrote a series of Lovecraft-inspired stories set in Lovecraft’s fictional universe. They’re nowhere near as good, and he goes off in directions Lovecraft never would have, but they’re worth a look. (He did the same thing with Sherlock Holmes, creating the Consulting Detector Solar Pons who lived at 7B Praed Street with Doctor Parker, who tells the stories. I never really cared for these, but apparently he had his own fan following for a time.)
To expand on this, I especially enjoyed Joe Hill’s
NOS4A2 & Heart Shaped Box
The thing about Ellison is that his stories aren’t really horror as much as they are horrifying, if you get my drift. “All the Birds…,” for example, doesn’t contain a single paragraph that people could point to and say “That’s horror.” But if you read it, it will squick you out something fierce. “Flopsweat” is a more “conventional” horror story. “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” is just…
Let’s say that Harlan has seen some demons, just like everybody else. And he puts them down on paper.
Ellison is one of my favorite authors. I wouldn’t consider him horror, but he’s great. Jefty is 5 is one of the best short stories I have ever read. “Repent Harlequin” said the Ticktockman is also gripping.
Totally get that, and I really enjoy that sort of story; the New Weird subgenre is pretty full of that sort of thing. (If you haven’t read “Singing my Sister Down,” which I linked to earlier, you really really should). I just don’t remember Ellison’s as moving me as much as he moves others; mileage clearly varies :).
Peter Straub has been mentioned, one of the most literate of horror writers. As well as Ghost Story try Floating Dragon, one of his most frightening works.
Other writers not to be missed are J. Sheridan LeFanu, his A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (read online here) is an absolutely terrifying short story.
EF Benson wrote some very chilling stories, The Room in the Tower particularly.
I do a lot of reading on the train to/from work. Wilson’s books work great for that kind of thing, something that’s easy to read, but after awhile a lot of things run together, plus the books become repetitive after the first few.
I don’t know if I would call a lot of them horror, it’s more a parallel universe with holes that open up. The Keep and The Tomb are both in the Adversary Cycle of books.
If you’re looking for straight horror Wilson might not be the best. I liked a number of Clive Barker books, but I read most of those 20+ years ago. I remember liking Weave World and Imajica. I read Canyon Land a year or so ago that enjoyed that. Barker likes to throw some weird sex stuff in his books too and Canyon Land had a bunch of that.
Someone recommended Richard Laymon to me years ago, and I read one of his books (The Cellar), and it started off great, and then the last fourth or so was absolute dogshit, to the point that I’m unlikely to read anything of his ever again.
Similarly, Graham Masterton is good, but doesn’t know how to write an ending. I really liked Ritual, until the ending turned into a literal deus ex machina.
A thought: I, Zombie by Hugh Howey, the guy who wrote the much-acclaimed Wool series. It takes a strong stomach, but man, that guy can write.
I also like Jack Ketchum, but he unfortunately (for your purposes) doesn’t seem to dip into the “supernatural” pool much. You might try Offspring and see what you think.