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Tis the season to post your favorite horror novels

lovecraft68

lovecraft68

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Jul 13, 2009
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Give a shout out to your favorite horror novels/authors.

I'll start with the criminally underrated Robert McCammon and some his works

They Thirst-Vampires take over LA, tremendous cast of characters.
Wolf's Hour-A werewolf working as an Ally spy infiltrating Nazi Germany
Swan Song-Post nuclear war his answer to the Stand, but a lot better.
Ushers Passing-takes Poe's tragic family into the modern era
 
Peter Straub, Ghost Story. If you haven't read that, LC, you have to. Creepy, weird, horrific, and very well-written. It's a mystery, too. It takes a while to figure out what's going on, and that's part of the pleasure of the story.

The first thing I ever read by Stephen King was Salem's Lot, in the 1970s, and I still think that's his best horror novel. It's not as wordy or wandering as his later novels. It's tight, and King brilliantly builds the sense of tension and dread as the vampires take over the small town and the odds against the survivors get worse.
 
I post this all the time, but Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat is one of the greats. The narrations by Simon Vance takes it to another level.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Vamp...fcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=45EGS85BH0WMGQVBYQ3Z

Rice's Werewolf series (Wolf Gift) is also really good. It's more modern, more simplified in her writing. The writing is more easy to understand (though still very well written) and the plot is more fun than what she typically writes.
 
Visual novels work too? If so, I'll go back every once in a while to Franken Fran, it's nice to see body horror and comedy coming together like that every once in a while.

If not, The Boxes, a little horror/YA fiction from right before that became a subgenre. I don't actually know that the author meant it to be horrifying, but the Lovecraftian themes in the ending where these little, alien creatures are dragging the MC through a mystery hole to the unknown, freaked the hell out of me when I was in middle school.
 
I don’t read much horror (though I have a horror story idea for this site, which I may or may not get to writing one day), but there are two short stories I read when I was young that I consider to be the only stories I’ve found genuinely scary:

The Fisherman and the Draug – a traditional Norwegian folktale

The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford

I think I read these in a collection of ghost/horror stories compiled by Roald Dahl. Perhaps they’re not that scary to me now, but I was young and read anything by Dahl as a child, and probably saw his ghost and horror collection as the next thing to read. I’ve never forgotten these two stories from that compilation, but can’t remember any other stories from the book.

Edit: sorry if this doesn't fit the post, it's what came immediately to mind when I think of horror stories.
 
Bram Stoker's Dracula! It set the standard for horror with vivid imagery and varying points of view.
Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Psycho by Robert Bloch
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black
Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings
 
I'd add some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories. He was one of the very first horror writers. The Cask of Amontillado. The Tell-Tale Heart. The Murders In The Rue Morgue. The Fall of the House of Usher.
 
SimonDoom said:
Peter Straub, Ghost Story. If you haven't read that, LC, you have to. Creepy, weird, horrific, and very well-written. It's a mystery, too. It takes a while to figure out what's going on, and that's part of the pleasure of the story.

The first thing I ever read by Stephen King was Salem's Lot, in the 1970s, and I still think that's his best horror novel. It's not as wordy or wandering as his later novels. It's tight, and King brilliantly builds the sense of tension and dread as the vampires take over the small town and the odds against the survivors get worse.
Click to expand...
If his wordiness is the problem I can only recommend King's short stories (and anthologies thereof).
 
Bubo_bubo said:
If his wordiness is the problem I can only recommend King's short stories (and anthologies thereof).
Click to expand...
While I love Stephan King, I don't consider him the master others proclaim him to be. Abandoned plot points in many stories, characters that drop out of the story, after a promising beginning to their story, without a trace or explanation. Being he is a pantster, perhaps it is to be expected, or maybe they are cut out in the editing of the story for economy's sake. I'm not sure about this. Still, I find Peter Straub more to liking. Most of my favorite horror stories are already listed. "The Imp of the Perverse" is my favorite of Poe.
 
The Stand by Stephen King
I don't read a lot of horror, I'm a student of history, what really happened is more terrifying than you could believe.
 
Duleigh said:
The Stand by Stephen King
I don't read a lot of horror, I'm a student of history, what really happened is more terrifying than you could believe.
Click to expand...
I believe the best part of horror is the build-up and release of fear. We read or view, absorb the shocks, process the dreadful happenings, and then release our fears once we have finished. In so doing, that release becomes a coping mechanism for the real world as well. I read that somewhere, probably on the internet, so it must be true!
 
theWollstonecraftWoman said:
While I love Stephan King, I don't consider him the master others proclaim him to be. Abandoned plot points in many stories, characters that drop out of the story, after a promising beginning to their story, without a trace or explanation. Being he is a pantster, perhaps it is to be expected, or maybe they are cut out in the editing of the story for economy's sake. I'm not sure about this. Still, I find Peter Straub more to liking. Most of my favorite horror stories are already listed. "The Imp of the Perverse" is my favorite of Poe.
Click to expand...
All that is why I find his short stories often more digestible. In general I think horror and short stories are made for each other. Clive Barker also has some good short story anthologies (notably his "Books of Blood").
 
Bubo_bubo said:
If his wordiness is the problem I can only recommend King's short stories (and anthologies thereof).
Click to expand...

I fully agree. His short story collection Night Shift is excellent. I strongly, strongly recommend it. King has a superb twisted imagination. He comes up with tons of great ideas, and he can write relatable characters that help immerse the reader in the story. But he doesn't always know where to go with the story. His plots wander. He suffers from the problem of too much magic, which stretches the willingness to suspend disbelief. I thought this was a problem with The Stand, It, 11/22/1963, Under The Dome. His shorter novels, like Salem's Lot and Misery, don't have the same problem, and I think they work better. But the short stories might be his best.
 
SimonDoom said:
Peter Straub, Ghost Story. If you haven't read that, LC, you have to. Creepy, weird, horrific, and very well-written. It's a mystery, too. It takes a while to figure out what's going on, and that's part of the pleasure of the story.

The first thing I ever read by Stephen King was Salem's Lot, in the 1970s, and I still think that's his best horror novel. It's not as wordy or wandering as his later novels. It's tight, and King brilliantly builds the sense of tension and dread as the vampires take over the small town and the odds against the survivors get worse.
Click to expand...
Ghost story is awesome, and not sure how long ago you read it, but if it was before you were getting into erotica...Stella Hawthorme a hot wife into her sixties

Straub also wrote Shadowland, a great look at the dark side of magic, and Floating Dragon.
 
SimonDoom said:
I fully agree. His short story collection Night Shift is excellent. I strongly, strongly recommend it. King has a superb twisted imagination. He comes up with tons of great ideas, and he can write relatable characters that help immerse the reader in the story. But he doesn't always know where to go with the story. His plots wander. He suffers from the problem of too much magic, which stretches the willingness to suspend disbelief. I thought this was a problem with The Stand, It, 11/22/1963, Under The Dome. His shorter novels, like Salem's Lot and Misery, don't have the same problem, and I think they work better. But the short stories might be his best.
Click to expand...
^^This
 
SimonDoom said:
I fully agree. His short story collection Night Shift is excellent. I strongly, strongly recommend it. King has a superb twisted imagination. He comes up with tons of great ideas, and he can write relatable characters that help immerse the reader in the story. But he doesn't always know where to go with the story. His plots wander. He suffers from the problem of too much magic, which stretches the willingness to suspend disbelief. I thought this was a problem with The Stand, It, 11/22/1963, Under The Dome. His shorter novels, like Salem's Lot and Misery, don't have the same problem, and I think they work better. But the short stories might be his best.
Click to expand...
He wrote a book titled Insomnia that was the cure for said disease.

King had a habit of putting in dramas that didn't need to be in the story and going on little tangents that can go on for page after page.

The Talisman is a great co-op between King and Straub. Years later they did a sequel The Black House. King had the first part and when I was 90 pages in and he was still describing the town and everyone in it and all their dirty secrets I gave up.
 
A novella rather than a novel, "The Monarch of the Glen", Neil Gaiman's take on the Beowulf/Grendl legend, a kind of follow-up on his "American Gods", which also ties in with some of his other work.
 
Bubo_bubo said:
A novella rather than a novel, "The Monarch of the Glen", Neil Gaiman's take on the Beowulf/Grendl legend, a kind of follow-up on his "American Gods", which also ties in with some of his other work.
Click to expand...

I will look into that. I didn't even know that book existed.

But now that you mention Beowulf, I have another recommendation: Grendel, by John Gardner, a novel that tells the Beowulf story from the monster's point of view. Very entertaining and great writing.
 
SimonDoom said:
I will look into that. I didn't even know that book existed.

But now that you mention Beowulf, I have another recommendation: Grendel, by John Gardner, a novel that tells the Beowulf story from the monster's point of view. Very entertaining and great writing.
Click to expand...
It's the last story in his collection "Fragile Things"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_Things
(Anything by Gaiman is usually good but there are some other good horror stories in that one).
 
Another book by Whitely Streiber is The Hunger. Great movie adaptation too with Bowie and Sarandon
 
SimonDoom said:
I'd add some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories. He was one of the very first horror writers. The Cask of Amontillado. The Tell-Tale Heart. The Murders In The Rue Morgue. The Fall of the House of Usher.
Click to expand...
Cask, Heart, and toss in The Black Cat and I caught on that Poe was claustrophobic and scared to death of premature burial
 
Guess I'll chime in. My all-time favorite horror novel is The Shining by Stephen King (and the sequel Doctor Sleep is equally outstanding). Second only to Salems Lot and Pet Semetary, which is his darkest book. And yeah, SK never gets enough praise for being such a fantastic short story writer, and Night Shift is iconic. Nice to also see McCammon getting some love, along with those other modern greats of horror literature like the late Peter Straub and Clive Barker. I also dig Dean Koontz quite a bit (especially his earlier work).
 
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