Horrors

Lexus1976

Hi,

Can anybody recommend any good horror books or authors.....I've read all the Stephen King Books and am looking for something better............

rejkin

You could try Shaun Hutson,they are alright horror books,very graphic though.
Searched google and found this,http://www.blackchampagne.com/reviews/b-horror-novelists.shtml It will prob help a lot

Otis Driftwood

Clive Barkers books of Blood series are awesome.
Alot of James Herberts stuff is very good too.
Dean Koontz can be very hit and miss IMO.

LoLth

Brahm Stoker: some really good works of his about (not counting dracula). however you sort of get the feeling of having read this somewhere before, and possibly reading it better. but, well worth looking into. The horrific twists are by modern standards quite tame though and can be a let down.

Edgar allen Poe is worthy of a look up too but the same pitfalls of stories being outdated applies.

Stoker and poe works can be found for free on the project gutenburg website: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

I personally prefer to have a book in my hand when I'm reading but it might be worth a look before you go buying.


I've read all of the herbert books: some are very good but the endings tend to fall a bit flat. The rats trilogy - well 1 and 3 - are my favourites of his and the Dark

Koontz: very hit and miss. A lot of the time you are left with a much better idea for the story you just read than what Koontz put on paper.

Clive Barker: read weaveworld and books of blood. he just seemed to childish to me. seriously. just because you write " it was so cold he could feel it in his balls" doesnt mean its suddenly cool and hip and trendy. and if you constantly use genitalia as a way to describe emotions , atmosphere and the world around the characters it just becomes repetitive and annoying. The stories were great though.

Dan Simmons: Sci-fi author (Hyperion) but did write some horror a while ago. Not great (pop corn and more like teen novels than anything else) but has recently written "The Terror" which I very much enjoyed. I like his writing style. the story is told well and the fact that it is based (very loosely) on real events makes it that much better. However, dont research the book material until you are finished. I had the ending ruined by a co-worker who studied history.....


Anne Rice: wont even bother with this. sorry to her fans. I hated every page of her vampire books. every. single. page.

HP Lovecraft: \o/ the grand daddy of horror. but its not blood and guts horror. its a lot mroe subtle than that (to the mountains of madness , the call of cthulhu and the colour from outer space are my favourites). His omnibus editions are available in easons / waterstones etc and well worth picking up. IMHO his short stories are better than the novels - with the exception of mountains of madness of course. Different stories scare different people.

Brian Lumley: Necroscope: no idea why but I love these books. I think th ewamphyri are a great creation.
his psychomech series did nothing for me. at all.
His Cthulhu mythos efforts (titus crowe etc) are imho, crap. hated them. others may liek them and thats their opinion but I think he took a world setting and mythology that was fantastically created by lovecraft and somehow, amazingly managed to mess up. read them to pass time but dont expect to want to re-read at any stage.

Early Stephen King. Some Herbert. A little Lumley and most of Lovecraft. and now Dan Simmons.

Horror that isnt like a snuff movie on paper is really quite hard to come by. then again, horror films that arent like snuff movies on screen (erm...) are increasingly hard to come by too.

Fenster

Definately H.P. Lovecraft

rain on

As mentioned above, definitely HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.. MR James does some seriously unsettling short stories too

Joe Cool

You can get collections of M.R. James stuff for real cheap. That story 'The Wailing Well' freaked me out when i was younger.
I'd be a fan Joseph Sheridan LeFanu as well, he's got some good ones

Hermy

Hellfire by John Saul was quite scary when I read it as a teen but maybe it's not that good anymore.:rolleyes: If you haven't already, then do read The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde - it's a great novel.

'Ol Jack Chance

Try richard matheson too I just read I am legend. in a word quality.

Lizzykins

Dean Koontz-The Taken frightened the living daylights out of me. Enough to turn me into a mass goer again!

doonothing

Yep, MR James. That Wailing Well :O

thusspakeblixa

Go to Hodges and Figgis, go to Horror section, Search for ''HP Lovecraft''
They do anthologies of his best short stories for under a fiver. I'd really highly recommend the one with ''The Call Of Cthulhu'' and ''The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward''

sweetie

doonothing wrote: »

Yep, MR James. That Wailing Well :O

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/jamesX31.htm

loved that when I read it as a youngster

Joe Cool

Actually dug out my collection of M.R. James' stuff to give to a mate and gave a couple of stories another read.

I read a book called 'Haunted' by Chuck Palahniuk, it's said to be a horror but I'm not sure if its a conventional one. There are some fairly good stories in it though, the first one is especially sick.

Picked up a copy of another of his books 'Lullaby' by the same guy there but haven't started it as yet.

Otis Driftwood

Lullaby is my fave out of all his books.

Better than fight club.

You should check out Invisible Monsters too-it kicks ass.

Survivor is a bit meh IMO.

Haunted was mucho hit and miss though.

Choke is pretty good.

Diary is also a bit meh.

All the above are by him BTW.