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Welcome to the Horror Book Thread for Scary Books! This thread was made when the old Cosmic Horror thread kind of just turned into a general horror thread. The other thread is still going, so feel free to post there about Cosmic Horror stuff, if you like! Prepare to be thoroughly spooked. You have been warned. Like so many other genres put forth by the book publishing industries, the lines of what makes a book a "horror" novel is pretty blurry, so feel free to discuss any book that you think might fit the mold. We also welcome discussion of dark fantasy, gothic fiction, supernatural novels, and thrillers that are kind of horror-adjacent. Be careful about bringing up horror erotica or paranormal romance stuff; it hasn't been done yet but I suspect it'd be met almost universally with derision. You have been warned. Feel free to post about books you're reading, ask for recommendations, discuss the genre in general, etc. If you ask for recommendations, please give us a sense of what you like to read or other books that are similar to what you want. Like any other genre, horror is a pretty broad world and somebody who loves a spooky ghosthouse novel may not enjoy a book about gay vampires in New Orleans, or whatever. Also, please be respectful when posting plot details in books. Spoiler tags are cheap and easy to use! As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how long the book has been out, chances are good someone in the thread hasn't read it, so if there's a twist or reveal that's important to the experience of reading the book, spoilertag them! Offenders will be punished... somehow. Not sure how yet, I guess. You have been warned. Now without further ado, here are a bunch of recommendations. I've split things up as best as I could thematically, since it was kind of the only way that kind of made sense. Know, however, that these are only loose groupings to try and give people an idea of what they might like, given other things they've read. Many of these recommendations are courtesy Ornamented Death and other people in the thread. Some of the following books wander into pretty dark/troubling/gory territory so if there's something you can't handle, you may want to ask before reading. You have been warned. The Classics: I would be remiss in not pointing out some of the big classics of the genre. Most of them, in my experience, still hold up pretty well today, and paved the way for a lot of major works that followed them. Some of these have been adapted to death, but know that very few have been adapted all that well, so even if you hate every film version of Frankenstein, be aware the book is pretty different. Also this is hardly exhaustive, I'm leaving a ton out because they're classics and not at all hard to google a list of them.
Cosmic Horror/Weird Fiction: this subgenre was born in large part from the pulp magazines of the '20s and '30s, though its roots stretch back much farther. Cosmic horror is distinguished by big, terrifying antagonistic things with unknowable motivations and/or a total disregard for humanity. H.P. Lovecraft is probably the most ubiquitous cosmic horror writer, though many of his contemporaries and followers have gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Weird fiction is often lumped in with cosmic horror in discussions, but is generally defined more by a fascination with ghost stories, the macabre, and a fusion of supernatural and scientific (and at times, mythological) themes. It's not uncommon for writers of one to indulge in the other, though, since they share a common heritage. A quick aside: yes, Lovecraft was xenophobic and racist. So new readers, you will have to wrestle with that in some fashion if you want to read his works. Discussion of Lovecraft's problematic views is totally fair game in this thread, and I'd even say it's an important discussion to have from time to time since he's such a big influence on so many writers after him. Just please be respectful of fellow poster's views in such discussion.
Vampires! Bloodsuckers! Not much more to say about them. But some people can't get enough vampire horror. I've left off some of the more ubiquitous titles/authors in interest of saving space.
Zombies! Also not a lot to say about zombies that hasn't been said already. I haven't personally read any of these because I find zombies to be drool-inducingly boring, but they came recommended.
Haunted Houses and Ghosts. Ah, the venerable standby of horror fiction. There's about a billion of these out there, all of varying quality, probably because most horror writers have, at some point, lived in a house. Or they're common because of a long heritage of gothic horror centered around Victorian nobility and houses as symbols of status, security, and stability and the decay thereof over time. They're my personal favorite style of horror, despite having read a decent number of bad ones over the years. I'm also sticking ghost stories in this list because they seem to make the most sense here.
Other Books that don't really fit neatly in any other category. These books don't make sense anywhere else right now, so I'm just gonna shove them all in here. Most of these have been recommended multiple times in the other thread so they're probably all good.
Bizarro Horror. I don't really know what bizarro horror is or how to categorize it. John Dies at the End seems to be the ur-example, but be warned that if you go looking for Bizarro beyond some of the more popular books that have been around for a while, you will likely run into at least one book about putting non-euclidean polygons in Lovecraft's cosmic haunted rear end in a top hat or some such nonsense.
MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 02:42 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 12, 2018 04:22
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Disagree with a recommendation above? Know of a book that is missing and want to kill my family because of it? Well, first, know that the OP above is still very much in progress. But if you just can't stand an omission, PM me, scream at me in the thread, or whisper your complaint in a long-dead Carpathian tongue to a book with eleven-score and seven pages, then bury it at the feet of a scarecrow at the height of the worm moon, and I will adjust the OP accordingly.
MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 02:46 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 12, 2018 04:23
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I just got a kindle and I’m looking for things to read. I like haunted house movies but haven’t read a whole lot in the way of books. I have Haunting of Hill House on my to read list but i need some more good books than that. Preferably things that are more creeping sense of dread than blood and viscera
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May 12, 2018 04:36
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Len posted:I just got a kindle and I’m looking for things to read. I like haunted house movies but haven’t read a whole lot in the way of books. I have Haunting of Hill House on my to read list but i need some more good books than that. Preferably things that are more creeping sense of dread than blood and viscera Haunting of Hill House is definitely one of the biggies in that vein. Turn of the Screw is also good, if you're okay with Victorian era writing. A more recent book that I really loved is The Grip of It by Jac Jemc. I know The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons is one that's popular among spookygoons but I haven't read it myself. Honestly, it's not really a "haunted house" novel but The Exorcist is good, and IMO much better than the movie. Paul Tremblay's last couple (A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock) also capture a great sense of dread but aren't really haunted house novels per se. Hell House is bound to be recommended, but it gets kind of pulp-horror gory at a few moments and opinions on it seem mixed. I love it, personally, but it's right up my alley and I think I selectively forget a lot of its issues. And honestly, if you haven't read it, The Shining is a good haunted house-ish novel, one of King's better books, and doesn't have much of his intentional gross-out horror that he got known for later. I couldn't tell you at this moment how much it qualifies, but I'm reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the first time and there is this undercurrent of unsettling eerieness to it. I'm not sure it's as explicitly a horror novel as compared to Haunting of Hill House though.
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May 12, 2018 04:47
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Len posted:I just got a kindle and I’m looking for things to read. I like haunted house movies but haven’t read a whole lot in the way of books. I have Haunting of Hill House on my to read list but i need some more good books than that. Preferably things that are more creeping sense of dread than blood and viscera Non-fiction but Paperbacks From Hell is a really great book Also more on topic of what you're asking for, while they are overall more other genres the following three books all have aspects of the Haunted House genre to them; House of Leaves House On The Borderland Blackwater series(was originally published as 6 books back in the early 80s, but got an combined release as a single book a couple years ago)
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May 12, 2018 05:55
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I'm not a huge horror book guy but have enjoyed Adam Nevill's work. Last Days is my favorite from him, well worth a read if you like creepy supernatural things.
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May 12, 2018 06:14
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This may be more appropriate to the urban fantasy thread but the first London Falling book by Paul Cornell genuinely spooked me at points, the audiobook is spectacularly narrated. It's a very slow start as it begins as a police story, then escalates as this tiny cadre of police run into an actual, child-eating witch.
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May 12, 2018 06:32
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bloom posted:I'm not a huge horror book guy but have enjoyed Adam Nevill's work. Last Days is my favorite from him, well worth a read if you like creepy supernatural things. And House of Small Shadows does kind of work as a recommendation for a haunted house-ish book. I've only read it and The Ritual, but it was far and away the better of the two. The Ritual wasn't a terrible read, but it's kind of put to shame by the movie adaptation.
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May 12, 2018 07:45
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In on the ground floor. Most recent horror things I've read and enjoyed have been Behold the Void (short story collection) by Philip Fracassi and Ballad of Black Tom (novella) by Victor LaValle. Looking forward to Paul Tremblay's latest, The Cabin at the End of the World. Has anyone read Kill Creek by Scott Thomas? I haven't (yet) but my understanding is that it falls under the haunted house theme.
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May 12, 2018 09:51
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MockingQuantum posted:There will probably be an OP covering some of the major genres along with suggestions, once I get around to writing it. I'll get you some stuff for this later today sometime. And a good haunted house book is Slade House by David Mitchell. It ties in to his novel The Bone Clocks, but you don't need to read that one first. William Meikle also has a series of novellas about haunted apartment buildings that is pretty good from what I've read. The first two are Broken Sigil and Pentacle.
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May 12, 2018 12:54
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MockingQuantum posted:And House of Small Shadows does kind of work as a recommendation for a haunted house-ish book. I've only read it and The Ritual, but it was far and away the better of the two. The Ritual wasn't a terrible read, but it's kind of put to shame by the movie adaptation. Apartment 16 is also a good haunted house book.
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May 12, 2018 13:06
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Len posted:I just got a kindle and I’m looking for things to read. I like haunted house movies but haven’t read a whole lot in the way of books. I have Haunting of Hill House on my to read list but i need some more good books than that. Preferably things that are more creeping sense of dread than blood and viscera charles lambert's The Children's Home michael mcdowell's The Elementals the weirdly named Jac Jemc's The Grip of It Mariko Koike's Graveyard Apartment
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May 12, 2018 15:42
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chernobyl kinsman posted:charles lambert's The Children's Home Ooh yeah, read The Elementals for sure. It's criminally underrated IMO. I haven't read Lambert or Koike, adding them to my list now.
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May 12, 2018 16:52
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Crossposting from The Terror TV/IV thread with questions for the book:Professor Shark posted:I finished the book, why didn't Peglar get eaten? Tuunbaq doesn't eat souls that are "soiled", like Hickey, but Peglar seemed like a nice guy...
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May 12, 2018 19:35
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That sounds like TV additions.
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May 12, 2018 22:41
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No One Gets Out Alice by Adam Nevill is very much a haunted house story and I recommend it.
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May 12, 2018 23:29
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anilEhilated posted:That sounds like TV additions. I haven't watched the last two episodes, this was from the novel
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May 13, 2018 00:08
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Len posted:I just got a kindle and I’m looking for things to read. I like haunted house movies but haven’t read a whole lot in the way of books. I have Haunting of Hill House on my to read list but i need some more good books than that. Preferably things that are more creeping sense of dread than blood and viscera Quiet Houses by Simon Kurt Unsworth. I got it on my Kindle and it looks like it's no longer available--hopefully it comes back because it was fantastic. It's a series of vignettes of different archetypes of hauntings, narratively tied together by a professor searching for a "legitimate" haunting for pretty interesting reasons.
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May 13, 2018 00:28
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Professor Shark posted:Crossposting from The Terror TV/IV thread with questions for the book: It's been a while since I read the novel so I don't actually recall the reasons behind the first question, but the second was random spooky ghost nonsense. I don't think Simmons intended any concrete explanation for what happened on the ship before Crozier found it again, and I think that's kind of the point; it is a true Ghost Ship then, on which unspeakable acts have been committed, which haunt it long after any physical deaths. Knowledge of specifics would spoil the intended effect.
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May 13, 2018 22:04
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Oh god I was just looking for something like this. If anyone knows of any really good Japanese or other Asian horror like ring or The suffering I would greatly appreciate it. The suffering was so similar to the fatal frame mythos and was perfect. I am a huge ghost horror fan and would love any suggestions. edit. Also anyone for haunted houses has to read Hell house it is a classic and still one of the best examples in the genre
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May 14, 2018 00:15
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drrockso20 posted:Non-fiction but Paperbacks From Hell is a really great book This is an outstanding book, and if you're thinking about getting it, I cannot stress enough that you NEED to get the paperback edition because a huge part of what makes it such a great book are all the full-color photos and scans of insane horror paperback covers and you lose a lot of that on a Kindle. Also, if you get inspired to start collecting vintage horror paperbacks because of this book, don't. The market is all sorts of hosed up right now precisely because of this book, and will probably stay that was for the foreseeable future. No one should be paying top dollar for William loving Johnstone books.
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May 14, 2018 03:14
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Ornamented Death posted:This is an outstanding book, and if you're thinking about getting it, I cannot stress enough that you NEED to get the paperback edition because a huge part of what makes it such a great book are all the full-color photos and scans of insane horror paperback covers and you lose a lot of that on a Kindle. On the other hand it gives a great excuse to trawl through thrift store book shelves, and some of the better books brought up in it have been reprinted in more recent years and/or made available electronically, like for example Blackwater which I had mentioned in that post as well(and gets brought up multiple times in PBFH as one of the better books in it)
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May 14, 2018 08:14
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Oh god I was just looking for something like this. I've had a hard time finding much along those lines, it seems like most of the (translated) Japanese horror I've come across is more oriented toward pretty brutal crime fiction. I'm sure there's a lot out there I've never encountered, though. So it was discussed a little bit in the other horror thread, but anybody read/reading A God in the Shed? I'm about 3/4 through it and I don't know if there's something that I'm missing, but I don't care much for the book and I seem to be in the minority on that one. It showed up on at least a couple "best of 2017" lists, and a couple friends who read it, loved it. To me, it seems kind of trite, and reads like it was written by a pretty amateur writer who needed an experienced editor to whip the book into shape in a couple of places. Like, the writing isn't egregiously bad, there's not really glaring spelling or grammatical mistakes (which is not out of the question when buying random horror ebooks on Amazon, sadly...) but there are some strange structural issues, at least early in the book. Some chapters read like the writer wasn't sure where to put them in sequence, so he just wrote some stuff ambiguously enough that the chapter could be stuck in anywhere. Also the book would be significantly better if the prologue/introduction chapter was revealed over the course of the book instead of just dropped in your lap. I'm still not sure the conceit of the book would be good per se, I think it would always be kind of a goofy idea that's not all that frightening or engaging, but at least there'd be a bit more mystery.
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May 14, 2018 21:59
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I actually just finished A God in the Shed last night. The prologue definitely would have worked better rolled out slowly because going in knowing 100% what this unknowable thing is about took away from it. Apparently there's going to be a sequel so maybe it'll pick up and get less okay. I didn't read much that came out in 2017 but if this was one of the best it worries me. I'm starting Universal Harvester right now and after that I'm going to go through the haunted house recs you guys have made.
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May 15, 2018 01:08
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drrockso20 posted:On the other hand it gives a great excuse to trawl through thrift store book shelves, and some of the better books brought up in it have been reprinted in more recent years and/or made available electronically, like for example Blackwater which I had mentioned in that post as well(and gets brought up multiple times in PBFH as one of the better books in it) Blackwater confuses the hell out of me because even on eBay you can find first editions of all the paperbacks for pretty cheap. The only editions that are going to cost any serious money is the set put out by Centipede a few years ago and, well....it's Centipede. But yeah, diving through the offerings at a second-hand store is fine to pick up old horror paperbacks; it's when you start looking for specific titles and have to check eBay or Abe or something that the prices start getting dumb. Also, MockingQuantum, check your PMs  .
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May 15, 2018 01:41
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Ornamented Death posted:Blackwater confuses the hell out of me because even on eBay you can find first editions of all the paperbacks for pretty cheap. The only editions that are going to cost any serious money is the set put out by Centipede a few years ago and, well....it's Centipede. D'oh. I never check 'em cuz I never get 'em. Thanks!
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May 15, 2018 01:43
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Ornamented Death posted:Blackwater confuses the hell out of me because even on eBay you can find first editions of all the paperbacks for pretty cheap. The only editions that are going to cost any serious money is the set put out by Centipede a few years ago and, well....it's Centipede. True, also I'm honestly kinda amazed that no one has ever tried adapting Blackwater, it would make an amazing HBO or Netflix series, it's even season formatted due to originally being released as six books
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May 15, 2018 01:50
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drrockso20 posted:True, also I'm honestly kinda amazed that no one has ever tried adapting Blackwater, it would make an amazing HBO or Netflix series, it's even season formatted due to originally being released as six books I think it'd be a hard sell to producers, honestly. The temptation would be to bill it as horror, but the actual horror elements are so infrequent and subdued that I can't see it going over well. Conversely, trying to sell it as a southern gothic would work right up until you explained the river monster part of it, which would drive potential showrunners away even faster I'd think. Don't get me wrong, I think it'd make a tremendous limited series, I just think the people with the money need a little more time to acclimate to the world of quiet horror before having something like this sprung on them.
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May 15, 2018 01:59
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Ornamented Death posted:I think it'd be a hard sell to producers, honestly. The temptation would be to bill it as horror, but the actual horror elements are so infrequent and subdued that I can't see it going over well. Conversely, trying to sell it as a southern gothic would work right up until you explained the river monster part of it, which would drive potential showrunners away even faster I'd think. Yeah I love Blackwater but tbh it's a hard sell to even get die-hard horror fans to read the book, in my experience, so I don't see it making the leap to other media any time soon. In other news, the thread has an OP now. It is still very, very much in progress. I also still have many more recommendations that could/may end up in the OP, but I wanted to take some time to parse through them and familiarize myself with some authors/subgenres I know nothing about before screaming at the internet to go read them. Once again, if anybody has suggestions of what to add or do differently in the OP, do let me know.
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May 15, 2018 02:51
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MockingQuantum posted:Bizarro Horror. I don't really know what bizarro horror is or how to categorize it. John Dies at the End seems to be the ur-example, but be warned that if you go looking for Bizarro beyond some of the more popular books that have been around for a while, you will likely run into at least one book about putting non-euclidean polygons in Lovecraft's cosmic haunted rear end in a top hat or some such nonsense. You motherfuckers ain't ready for the depths of bizarro! You're god damned right there's a sequel!
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May 15, 2018 02:58
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Ornamented Death posted:You motherfuckers ain't ready for the depths of bizarro! I genuinely dont know if these are better or worse than the fake example I came up with
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May 15, 2018 03:08
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MockingQuantum posted:I genuinely dont know if these are better or worse than the fake example I came up with I have not personally delved that deep into bizarro, so i couldn't tell you. These just always come to mind, after hearing about them on Brian Keene's podcast a couple of years ago, because it's just so loving weird.
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May 15, 2018 03:10
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Len posted:I actually just finished A God in the Shed last night. The prologue definitely would have worked better rolled out slowly because going in knowing 100% what this unknowable thing is about took away from it. Apparently there's going to be a sequel so maybe it'll pick up and get less okay. I didn't read much that came out in 2017 but if this was one of the best it worries me. Oh and in response to this, no, 2017 doesn't seem like it was a banner year for horror novels. If it's any indication, Universal Harvester was on a lot of those "best of" lists, and it's kind of misleading to even call it a horror novel in the first place. There were some good books, but nothing really stood out for me. There were also a lot of bad books from established authors, too, it seems. Black Mad Wheel springs to mind, I thought jt was pretty crappy despite liking the author's last book a lot.
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May 15, 2018 03:16
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Len posted:I actually just finished A God in the Shed last night. The prologue definitely would have worked better rolled out slowly because going in knowing 100% what this unknowable thing is about took away from it. Apparently there's going to be a sequel so maybe it'll pick up and get less okay. I didn't read much that came out in 2017 but if this was one of the best it worries me. universal harvester is not a horror novel and if you expect it to be one you will be disappointed
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May 15, 2018 13:40
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What's up with the horror genre producing less cool books than even like fantasy or whatever.
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May 15, 2018 14:06
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Not sure if The Library at Mount Char counts as pure horror, but it’s definitely horror-adjacent at least. A bit dark fantasy, a bit cosmic horror. Welp that’s my recommendation.
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May 15, 2018 14:15
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chernobyl kinsman posted:universal harvester is not a horror novel and if you expect it to be one you will be disappointed Yeah I've listened to enough Mountain Goats to know this isnt going to be what I expect. I felt the same after reading his old book too. So far it feels off but horror isn't the vibe I'm getting
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May 15, 2018 16:37
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Len posted:Yeah I've listened to enough Mountain Goats to know this isnt going to be what I expect. I felt the same after reading his old book too. So far it feels off but horror isn't the vibe I'm getting It's honestly kind of a disservice that the book was marketed as horror, though I can understand the mental gymnastics that probably went behind that decision. That said, it's probably still at times one of the most eerie, unsettling books I've read in the last year. On the subject of "stuff that's kind of being pushed as horror but sort of isn't but is still really good," Her Body and Other Parties is really loving good. It's probably more horror-adjacent than Universal Harvester, at least. It kind of reminds me of Shirley Jackson and, to a lesser extent, some of Ray Bradbury's darker stuff, though it's distinctly different from both. There's a novella-ish piece in the middle that's basically plot summaries of very strange imagined episodes of Law & Order: SVU, and it's pretty fantastic. A little funny, a little unsettling, very much weird.
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May 15, 2018 16:51
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So why isn't Books of Blood by Clive Barker in the OP? There are some All Ages Horror classics that I consider essential, like Something Wicked This Way Comes by Bradbury and The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
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May 15, 2018 17:33
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Franchescanado posted:So why isn't Books of Blood by Clive Barker in the OP? Because I've never read it, and the two people who reached out to me over PMs have mentioned in the other thread they think Barker is bad. I can add it though, since it's pretty much considered a classic at this point. Where would it fit best in the current recommendation categories (that I kind of hate but can't think of a better way to do them yet)? And derp, not sure how I forgot Something Wicked, it's one of my favorite books. I'll add it and Thief of Always, since I do kind of want a subsection that's basically "good horror/supernatural/gothic fiction for younger readers and/or people who don't like to actually be scared by a book". So I'd welcome more suggestions along those lines. Also, I'd love to have at least some recommendations for non-American/UK/Western Europe horror novels, just to show what's out there. I'm aware of some Japanese horror novels, though I haven't read any, but beyond that I'm pretty unfamiliar with horror from the rest of the world.
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May 15, 2018 17:39
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