I have read a few Horror novels in my time. My favorites include: The Walking by Bentley Little, Others by James Herbert, Frankenstein by Guess Who(not frightening by any means but has been considered Horror), Necroscope by Brian Lumley…and I am wondering about your favorites.
Under the Skin, by Michel Faber, probably wouldn’t be classified as true horror or SF, but it has elements of both. It’s existential horror, I suppose.
What is Under the Skin about? It’s a good title
Have you ever read Bentley Little? He is kind of like a car crash, you don’t want to read but you do anyway.
Not a big horror fan (frankly because I find that many of the POV characters act like idiots) but my favorites are Dean Koontz’s “Phantoms” and “Twilight Eyes” and the various HP Lovecraft Cthulhu story collections.
I struggled through the first 2 books of Necroscope and they mostly just bored me. If you want to read a good book about psychic vampires, check out Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. In fact, I recommend almost all of his books.
I don’t read much fiction, but I liked these two.
I don’t usually like Dean R. Koontz, but I loved ** Watchers, ** a book about a dog who is scientificly engineered to be as intelligent as a human, and a monster, created in the same lab, designed to be a super-soldier. Both escape, the dog to become a pet, and the monster trying to track down the dog, whom he blames for all of his woes.
** It, ** by Stephen King. One of my favorites of his works, and the only one that every genuinely scared me. Granted, I already had a healthy fear of clowns. but I think it was a pretty good horror story, nevertheless.
Excellent choice, Hodge. Carrion Comfort is one of my all-time favorites, too. And I agree that the Necroscope books were just boring.
Some other favorites of mine (trying to stick to straight horror):
Carrie and The Shining, by Stephen King
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Ordinary Horror by David Searcy
That last one isn’t a traditional horror novel, but it is extremely creepy and doesn’t really fit in any other genre.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
Most of H.P. Lovecraft, but top of the list would include:
- Rats in the Walls
- The Thing at the Doorstep
- The Haunter in the Dark
- Pickman’s Model (just for the descriptions of some of the paintings)
- Shadow over Innsmouth
- The Dunwich Horror
M.R. James’ stories, particularly “O Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
Robert W. Chamber’s “The Yellow Sign”
Ramsey Campbell’s Ancient Images
Peter Straub’s Ghost Story