Horror authors/books you recommend

[Leto]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Haven't read Night Warriors but from the synopsis, it's more dark fantasy than pure horror.
The Hymn, while well constructed, is not IMO his best book. I'm quite bored of mystical nazis horror books.

 

[fungi from Yuggoth]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Well aside from HP Lovecraft, which seems to be a given, I'd also recommend Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson. Both wrote some excellent atmospheric horror as well as a number of psychic detective stories entitled John Silence and Carnacki respectively. MR James and Edgar Allen Poe are excellent classical horror if a little bit of an acquired taste.

For a more modern take, Dan Simmons' Song of Kali is well worth a read.

 

[ravenus]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Nice reccos from ffY. I recommends Song of Kali as well, only the ending comes a bit undone

 

[stelfox1]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Ghost Story, written by Peter Straub.

Maybe it is because I read it whilst still in my teens, but I found that a damn scary book. Very well written and very intense. A few years ago I watched the movie version and thought it pretty much sucked. Has anyone out there read this book, and if so was it as good as I remember then? And would it be worth finding it to read it again?

 

[Leto]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Oh yes, it was a good one. In general, Peter Straub's work is always good.

 

[GOLLUM]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Heh, like the Necronomicon. The official site for HPL gives an entire reasoning as to how the Necronomicon by Abdul Al-Hazred is just a figment of HPL's imagination. Apparently the Al-Hazred character was an alter ego he had in his childhood fantasies.

Yes I found that interesting too. Actually I believe the name was a pseudonmyn given to him by a cousin of his.

OK I'm going to list some of the earlier writers of what I'll broadly call horror although they did write other stuff too, a number of which will eventually appear as an extension of my current classic authors bio thread. I've either read or am currently reading works by these authors:

HP Lovecraft
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ann Radcliffe
Horace Walpole
Washington Irving
Bram Stoker
HG Wells
EF Benson
Ambrose Bierce
Mary Shelley
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Ann Radcliffe
William Hope Hodgson
Arthur Machen
Lord Dunsany
Algernon Blackwood
Montague R. James

This is not my complete list but what I'm currently reading/investigating.

Bye for now..

 

[Leto]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Add Sheridan Le Fanu to your list, especially before reading Bram Stoker.

 

[GOLLUM]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Add Sheridan Le Fanu to your list, especially before reading Bram Stoker.

Thanks for the tip although I've read Stoker some time back.. Don't think I have read anything by this gothic writer, can you recommend to me a particular story(s)?

Signing off, will check back in tommorow..

 

[Leto]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Start with his best known : Carmilla. This story was one of Stoker's inspiration for Dracula.

You can also have a look at Polidori's the Vampire, written after the same bet which gave birth to Mary Shelley's Frankestein.

 

[ravenus]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

GOLLUM, you should easily and cheaply be able to obtain a copy of In a Glass Darkly, a collection of Le Fanu's best short stories.

 

[Tsujigiri]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Saw a double book of Masterton's The Hymn and Night Warriors. What's the word on these?

Night warriors is Fantasy Horror, but definately horror. I enjoyed the series quite a lot and am actually looking for a copy of the books at the moment.

 

[GOLLUM]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Thanks for all the information on Sheridan everyone!!

 

[eccles_1960]

I've just finished reading "Bitten" by Kelley Armstrong. It's a story about a pack of werewolves set in modern day America.

Quite a clever book in which the central character is the worlds only female werewolf.
I liked the book and am looking out for the rest of the series (3, I think)

She has her own website with loads of info.

kelleyarmstrong.com

 

[lazygun]

Would like to add my recommendation of Masterton's "Night Warriors" as a v.good read.

 

[j d worthington]

Re: Horror auhors/books you recommend

Help I am researching I am looking for any information on a book called "THE YELLOW KING" it's supposed to be a book holding some kind of universal knowledge that upon reading you go completely insane, any info on a legend about this book or a possible truth would be greatly appreciated, this book is mentioned in "The Picture Of Dorian Grey" an something else by H. P. Lovecraft.
Any info anyone?

Although this is very late -- the book mentioned is "The King in Yellow", a story collection by Robert W. Chambers which largely centers around a fictional play which, though not violating any specific mores, casts a miasma upon all who read it, shattering their views of the world by slaying what he calls "the Phantom of Truth" (more or less). It is included in "The Yellow Sign and Other Stories", put out by Chaosium in the States; and Lovecraft and company later adapted it as part of the colorful background for their tales; it has now been included as a sourcebook for various mythos games. The connection with Wilde's novel is that yellow was considered the color of decadence (hence the "Yellow 'Nineties") and there was a fascination with the theme -- the "Yellow Book" was a publication of the time, and often featured the work of Wilde, translations from Baudelaire, and artwork by such as Aubrey Beardsley. Chambers' style can be a bit annoying at times, but the vision he holds in this book is really quite remarkable, and has influenced writers as diverse as James Blish, Lovecraft, and Karl Edward Wagner ("The River of Night's Dreaming"). His work should be reread to be truly appreciated, for what appears on the surface is not at all what's really going on; e.g., Hildred Castaigne in "The Repairer of Reputations" may be a madman, but the hint is that his view of the world has more of truth than that of those around him -- very much the nightmarish idea that we are all teetering on the brink of the abyss. Interesting stuff.

 

[Spiritdragon]

Wow

Where do you start!!

Brian Lumley - the Necroscope series!!!

Stephen King - Older stuff...THE STAND...Talisman...THE SHINING...

SHAUN HUTSON...for those with stronger constitution

John Connolly - Brilliant detective serial killer/horror - EVERY DEAD THING, KILLING KIND, WHITE ROAD, BAD MEN

Graham Masterton - Night Warriors

Robert McCammon - Wolf's Hour & Swan Song

The list goes on

LOL

 

[Salacious Angel]

As far as horror/terror writers go, my all time favourite has to be Mark Z. Danielewski. His debut novel, House of Leaves, is almost pragmatic in its depiction of the supernatural, and indeed the terrible creatures alluded to in the book are rarely, if ever, seen. (I haven't actually finished it yet. I'm about half way) It's not even a story in the conventional sense: it's an essay analysing a fictional documentary in which strange things happen in an unassuming house. The "main character's" experiences are only detailed in the footnotes and, in a way, he does become somewhat of a footnote himself in the context of the larger narrative.

It's hard to adequately describe this book - it reads nothing like Barker or King or Gaiman - so I won't try. But if you haven't read it, pick up a copy. It's a bestseller for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with a dedicated fanbase.

 

[Cloud]

I'm glad for this thread, and would like to see it added to. I find good horror books hard to find in the stores, because they often don't have their own section.

I'm glad to see someone recommending McCammon's Wolf Hour & Swan Song--I like those. I also liked Brian Lumley's stuff, particularly the first several books in the series.

Another one I really liked is the short story entitled, "Cabal" by Clive Barker--the basis for the cheesy classic movie Nightbreed.

 

[Nesacat]

I'll second you on that Cloud. Horror just like SFF is only now coming into its own here and bookstores are slowly beginning to acknowledge its merit as a separate genre deserving it's own section. Have been a love of the horror tale for as long as I remember, probably due to having bad eyesight and being able to see much better in the dark than in the day and growing up In Penang where the ghostly is very much a part of life. Some of the books I've read and loved over the years are:

Christopher Marlowe: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth
Mattew Gregory Lewis: The Monk: A Romance
Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
H Rider Haggard: She
Robert W Chambers: The King in Yellow
HG Wells: The Island of Dr. Moreau
Bram Stoker: Dracula
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Bram Stoker: The Jewel of Seven Stars
M.R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
EH Visiak: Medusa
HP Lovecraft: The Outsider and Others
Clark Ashton Smith: Out of Space and Time
William Golding: Lord of the Flies
Richard Matherson: I Am Legend
Ray Bradbury: The October Country
Robert Bloch: Psycho
Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House
Kingsley Amis: The Green Man
John Gardner: Grendel
Stephen King: Salems's Lot
Stephen King: The Shining
William Hjortsberg: Falling Angel
David Morrell: The Totem
Peter Straub: Ghost Story
Richard Laymon: The Cellar
Thomas Harris: Red Dragon
Tim Powers: The Anubis Gates
Robert Irwin: The Arabian Nightmare
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor

 

[j d worthington]

Well, for those interested in the classics of the genre, I'd suggest first reading HPL's little book Supernatural Horror in Literature, which is available in multiple editions, the best being the annotated version edited by S. T. Joshi, which supplies bibliographical information on most of the items mentioned, as well as giving tons of other information that may prove useful.

Also, several of the small presses and pod publishers are now reviving a lot of the classics that haven't seen print in decades, sometimes in a century or more. Wildside Press is reprinting some of Bulwer-Lytton's work, for those interested (he can be a bit arid for modern tastes, so a word of caution), as well as several by Ainsworth. Frederick Marryat's The Phantom Ship is back in print, being one of the best handlings of the tale of the Flying Dutchman. And there's a volume collecting together all of John Buchan's supernatural short tales, which were scattered throughout all his story collections, simply titled Supernatural Tales (originally published as Best Supernatural Tales, the original edition is quite pricey on the collector's market).

While most are currently out of print, there's some attempts to revive some of the ghostly tales of H. Russell Wakefield as well... in fact, if you've got the money, Ash-Tree Press has reprinted his They Return at Evening and Others Who Return (Old Man's Beard), if you can track them down... Chaosium has collected together all the best weird work of Arthur Machen into three volumes; these include not only his better known works, but some of the obscurer pieces, as well as the novels The Terror and The Three Impostors. Chambers' weird tales were edited for Chaosium by S. T. Joshi, in a book called The Yellow Sign and Other Stories (quite a large volume, holding both all the short stories and two or three novels). Joshi has also done three books on the subject of the weird tale: The Weird Tale (covering the works of Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce, M. R. James, Lord Dunsany, and HPL), The Modern Weird Tale (dealing with several more recent writers, such as Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, T. E. D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti, etc.), and The Evolution of the Weird Tale, dealing with some of the often forgotten masters of the form, such as W. C. Morrow, Edward Lucas White, and (though he's well-remembered in the UK) Arthur Quiller-Couch. He has also edited several volumes of stories in the field, as well as spearheading the revival of some of the lesser-known classics, such as Walter de la Mare's The Return.

And speaking of... Anything by Thomas Ligotti is likely to reward reading, as he is one of the most literate and nightmarishly evocative writers around. Don't expect blood-'n'-guts ... this is a man who deals in nightmares, the shifting of reality so that one forever after sees it anew....

F. Marion Crawford's Wandering Ghosts has now been reissued, with a previously missing story or two, as The Complete Wandering Ghosts. There's suppoed to be a forthcoming one or two volume set of White's best stories... anyone who hasn't read White should try "Lukundoo"... All of Kipling's best supernatural stories have been collected together in various editions, as have Doyle's and Stoker's.... And Matthew Phipps Shiel's weird fiction has been collected together as The House of Sounds (including his novel, The Purple Cloud). There are new volumes of Algernon Blackwood's best coming out, at least one has been issued: Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Tales.... And there is an edition of the complete short stories of Ambrose Bierce put out by University of Nebraska's Bison press (this includes, of course, a section devoted strictly to his horror tales, as well as ones devoted to his fables and Civil War stories)...

At any rate, these are some of the suggestions that come to mind right off...