Thriller/Horror recommendations?

[AuthorWar]

Hello, without meaning to be cliche & corny I would like to throw in my $0.02 that this site is awesome. It has so much cool lierature that would cost a fair amount of money, it's cool, informative and generally awesome.

Now that's done, I would like to admit that despite being 17, at school since I was 4 I have yet to ever click with literature. By chance, I picked Eng Lit as a subject to further study along with English Language and Media because .. well to be honest .. because it was a rushed descicion and through GCSE I did well in it. I didn't really know what I was getting into, the deadlines, the coursework, the stacks of knowledge you NEED prepared for exams buy HELL yeah it was worth it, its actually a subject I enjoy and love.

The only books I've read along the Horror & Thriller genre are vague, but Enduring Love which I thought was awesome and sadly to admit..goosebumps(stopped at agw 10..i swear). I'm currently a quarter of the way through Birdsong & loving it but wondered if I could get some recommedations.

I'm investing most definately in some Edgar Allen Poe(I learned lods from him here..thanks:)) & also some Stephen King. I just wanted to know any other great writers/titles of these genres.

I'm sure this is a common & annoying request, but thanks, & I hope to be sharing positively at my time here.

[mono]

Hi, welcome to the forum, AuthorWar. Other than the most common thriller/horror writers, such as Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe, I would also like to recommend some short stories by Ambrose Bierce, and I highly recommend The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty - if you found the movie spooky, the novel will surely freak you out, having so much more . . . detail.
Good luck.

[SuperBabs]

Also consider Sphere by Crighton (spelling?). It is more of a thriller with an interesting ending. For some fast-paced, mindless horror, try Dean Koontz. King is okay, though his novels tend to be bloated. Still, It is a long but good novel about horror and growing up—appropriate combination. His short story collections such as Skeleton Crew and Night Shift are nice—his shorter stuff hits you quicker with the horror/thriller elements. If you're interested in an intellectual horror, read The Island of Dr. Moreau (spelling?). What it suggests about a possible future for humanity is horrific enough (you don't get all the gore in this one).

[trismegistus]

Lovecraft has a nice macabre feel to him. Not truly scary but dark and fairly sinister.

[Jack_Aubrey]

Mary Shelley-Frankestein?

[Rechka]

If I ever do pick up a book from this genre, it will have to be a Lovecraft one.

[Sitaram]

I went to some trouble to purchase an out-of-print copy of a collection of sci-fi/horror stories which I read around 1961, entitled "Bypass to Otherness," by Henry Kuttner.

There was one story from that book which I vividly remembered through the years, and I very much wanted to own a copy once again and re-read the story, which is entitled "Call Him Demon." It is about some children who go into the basement each day, pass through a dimensional warp, and offer food to this "monster" which lives there. The monster has a human analog in this world (their world) who is believed by the adults in the household to be a "family member" but the children realize that he is not human, but is a projection from this monster in another dimension. In the coming weeks, perhaps I shall find the time an energy to retype the story at my site.

During my search for the book, I spoke at length with someone who was a famous sci-fi publisher/editor during the 1970's. He explained to me how very different things are today, and how many of the great talents, such as Henry Kuttner, from the 1940s and 1950s are now unknown. He described those decades as a kind of "golden era" for horror/sci-fi.

Around 1961 I also read "Out of a Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis and was utterly enthralled. I had no idea who or what C.S. Lewis was, but as a child, I perceived that there was something going on in the book regarding religion/theology and I was intrigued.

[Shea]

Hawthorne has some great tales and Jekyll and Hyde is a pretty good one too. Would Harry Potter be considered in this genre or is it just fantasy?

[lhaeber]

I read Black Water, the book of fantastic literature...very good, some poe, du maurier, h.g. wells and so forth...
I loved Koontz, try dan simmons, song of kali...just don't have a cat in the room late at night if you read, it'll freak you out

[mono]

Mary Shelley-Frankestein?

Silly me; I have no idea how I forgot about recommending this one. Another classic thriller/horror: Dracula by Bram Stoker.

[odin2]

I have seen his name mentioned above but I would have to say H.P.Lovecraft is one of the best writers in this genre

'The Dunwich Horror and Others'
'At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels'

The above books would bee a good start to reading the works of Lovecraft.

[Sitaram]

Around 6th or 7th grade, one summer, I decided I would be very clever and mature, and take "Dracula" by Braham Stoker, from the library and read it. Well..... as I remember, it was the LONGEST collection of letters, correspondence.... which only vaguely hinted, page after page,....that there may be something unusual afoot (vaguer than the X -Files).... !!! I was bored to tears... I think that in previous centuries, people were quite fond of the idea of reading scads of letter correspondence,.... just as those novels with all those hundreds of pages of sitting room parlor ballroom dinnertable chat.... oh well, times they are a changing....

What I EXPECTED from Brahams Stoker, was what I had found in some cheap drugstore paperbacks....and the movies... with bats and vampires flying around, and blood squirting, and a few neked wimmin getten bitten.... (really , that is what the paperback was like).... Brahams Stoker was nothing like that (unless perchance I took out an extremely bowdlerized version, which I doubt since it was a very old edition from the 1920's)....

[odin2]

Me I liked Brahams Stoker's "Dracula"...Thats just me

[Sitaram]

I am remembering back 45 years, but am I correct that Bram Stoker's original was a ENORMOUS collection of correspondence back and forth between various parties?

[odin2]

Yes it is mostly letters.A rather strange way to make a novel..But it was very good never the less..

[lhaeber]

also, depending on what your perception of horror is, martha stewart's "good things" is at the top of my horror novel list

[simon]

Also consider Sphere by Crighton (spelling?). It is more of a thriller with an interesting ending. For some fast-paced, mindless horror, try Dean Koontz.

Is Koonz really horror? I thought he was more a of a detective offshoot of the ex-marine type authors that write about top secret military heroic events.

I recommend "We have always lived in the Castle" and "The Haunting of Hill House" both by Shirley Jackson. They both have a past horror that becomes revealed through psycological wordplay.

[UncreativeName]

I will agree with Dracula, I read it a month ago. The suspense got me hooked at the beginning. Since I never watched a movie about the actual book but saw those corny vampire movies (Van Helsing, Dracula 2000), which are terrible by the way, Dracula was quite suspenseful for me.

[lhaeber]

Koontz is terror horror, but he does mix it with a romance of two, genetic engineering, blah blah...I like "ex-marine type", his characters are always desribed as though Koontz wishes it were him.
He's gone downhill lately, or maybe I'm just not so afraid of the basement as I used to be.

[simon]

I've only read one Koontz novel so I can't critic him at great length, it involved a girl who was drving a car with a guy she didn't know and his mentally ill brother.

[Snukes]

Creepiest book I ever read was House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Experimental fiction goes nuts. Maybe not the best place to start if you're just starting out in the wild world of literature, but for anyone who wants something creepy of an entirely different nature, excellent book.

The premise, if you haven't read it, is that the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

[Taliesin]

"Sand kings" by George R.R. Martin.
Has won both Hugo and Nebula.

Must be our favourite horror story/novel.

[avid reader]

Creepiest book I ever read was House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Experimental fiction goes nuts. Maybe not the best place to start if you're just starting out in the wild world of literature, but for anyone who wants something creepy of an entirely different nature, excellent book.

The premise, if you haven't read it, is that the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

i agree, House of Leaves is extreamly creepy. but i would expand on the premise by saying that it is a book about a book about a movie about a house that is larger on the inside than on the outside.

as to horror novels, i would recomend the following:
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
pretty much anything by King, a couple of my favorites are, Salems Lot, Needful Things, and IT
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson (a collection of short stories, I Am Legend is the first and longest one)
The Vampire Chronicals - Anne Rice (first one is Interview with the Vampire)
Blindness - Jose Saramago
and they have been mentioned i know, but Frankenstein and Dracula are very also very good

[subterranean]

Poe, my all time fav :nod:

[Shea]

I've only read one Koontz novel so I can't critic him at great length, it involved a girl who was drving a car with a guy she didn't know and his mentally ill brother.

I read that one! That was By the Light of the Moon. But I didn't actually "read" it. I listened to the audio version by Stephen Lang. I can't decide if I liked it because of the story, or because Lang did an exellent job. I felt as if I was watching a movie. He made some of the funny parts really funny.

I'm not that well read in Koontz either though. The only other thing I "read" was Corner of His Eye. I hated that one. I didn't like looking into the mind of the bad guy.

[Rechka]

I'm going to recommend Aura by Carlos Fuentes because I feel I should promote Hispanic literature. It may or may not make the hairs in the back of your neck stand up but the prose, a mix of Poe and Baudelaire, is quite beautiful. It's a short novella, it won't take you more than 2 hours to read it.

It's the story of a young scholar who is employed by an elderly widow to edit her dead husband's memoirs. He meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. He falls in love with Aura and will soon discover the strange relationship she has with the old woman.

The following is an excerpt from the book:

"You're reading the advertisement: an offer like this isn't made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don't even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. "Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French." Youth...knowledge of French, preferably after living in France for a while..."Four thousand pesos a month, all meals, comfortable bedroom-study." All that's missing is your name. The advertisement should have two more words, in bigger blacker type: Felipe Montero. Wanted, Felipe Montero,
formerly on scholarship at the Sorbonne, historian full of useless facts, accustomed to digging among yellow documents, part-time teacher in private schools, nine hundred pesos a month. But if you read that, you'd be suspicious, and take it as a joke. "Address, Donceles 815." No telephone. Come in person.

You leave a tip, reach for your briefcase, get up. You wonder if another young historian, in the same situation you are, has seen the same advertisement, has got ahead of you and taken the job already. You walk down to the corner, trying to forget this idea. As you wait for the bus, you run over the dates you must have on the tip of your tongue so that your sleepy pupils will respect you. The bus is coming now and you're staring at the tips of your black shoes,. You've got to be prepared. You put your hand in your pocket, search among the coins, and finally take out thirty centavos. You've got to be prepared."

Aura by Carlos Fuentes ISBN: 0-374-51171-3

[shortysweetp]

i am a sucker for stephen king when it comes to horror books. i consider those to be like some people's dimestore book to me. the only author that i read and enjoy that is still alive. Dean Koonz has a few good horror books but i would say they are in the same catagory as King and John Saul.
I saw Dracula the other day in the book store. thought about buying it but got Vonnecut's Slaughterhouse-Five

[subterranean]

What I EXPECTED from Brahams Stoker, was what I had found in some cheap drugstore paperbacks....and the movies... with bats and vampires flying around, and blood squirting, and a few neked wimmin getten bitten.... (really , that is what the paperback was like).... Brahams Stoker was nothing like that (unless perchance I took out an extremely bowdlerized version, which I doubt since it was a very old edition from the 1920's)....

Braham :lol: ..

[subterranean]

Thanks for posting this Recka. The excerpt is interesting. I'll try to look for it and get my self a copy ;)



The following is an excerpt from the book:

"You're reading the advertisement: an offer like this isn't made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don't even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. "Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French." Youth...knowledge of French, preferably after living in France for a while..."Four thousand pesos a month, all meals, comfortable bedroom-study." All that's missing is your name. The advertisement should have two more words, in bigger blacker type: Felipe Montero. Wanted, Felipe Montero,
formerly on scholarship at the Sorbonne, historian full of useless facts, accustomed to digging among yellow documents, part-time teacher in private schools, nine hundred pesos a month. But if you read that, you'd be suspicious, and take it as a joke. "Address, Donceles 815." No telephone. Come in person.

You leave a tip, reach for your briefcase, get up. You wonder if another young historian, in the same situation you are, has seen the same advertisement, has got ahead of you and taken the job already. You walk down to the corner, trying to forget this idea. As you wait for the bus, you run over the dates you must have on the tip of your tongue so that your sleepy pupils will respect you. The bus is coming now and you're staring at the tips of your black shoes,. You've got to be prepared. You put your hand in your pocket, search among the coins, and finally take out thirty centavos. You've got to be prepared."

Aura by Carlos Fuentes ISBN: 0-374-51171-3

[bookfaerie]

Watchers and Darkfall are really good horror stories. They're by Dean Koontz.

[Stieg]

Great Tales of Terror and The Supernatural edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner. Universally recognized and praised as the best horror anthology ever collected.

I love Montague Rhodes (M. R.) James and Arthur Machen too along with H.P. Lovecraft. Classic horror and speculative fiction is usually the road most rewarding.

[bazarov]

Jackal by Frederick Forsyth; it's completely different from all his works and it's really a great thriller, surely my favorite.

[bookfaerie]

Very cool. I'll check it out.

[bookfaerie]

Great Tales of Terror and The Supernatural edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner. Universally recognized and praised as the best horror anthology ever collected.

I love Montague Rhodes (M. R.) James and Arthur Machen too along with H.P. Lovecraft. Classic horror and speculative fiction is usually the road most rewarding.

Classic horror is usually the least traveled road but it makes for an interesting trip. I like the classic horror better also. Dracula, although cliché, is, pardon the pun, worth sinking your teeth into. Although I will make it a point to check out both those authors and some of their works.

[Stieg]

Classic horror is usually the least traveled road but it makes for an interesting trip. I like the classic horror better also.

I have sampled or read extensively the following authors:

in alph...

Robert Aickman
Charles Beaumont
Ambrose Bierce
Algernon Blackwood
Ramsey Campbell (short stories)
F Marion Crawford
L. P. Hartley
William Hope Hodgson
Shirley Jackson
Sheridan Le Fanu
Arthur Machen
Oliver Onions
H Russell Wakefield

These are the sources to look up for genuine scares and chills.

The Ash-Tree Press will be re-releasing their Montague Rhodes James collection A Pleasing Terror in a reprint very, very late this year which includes every story written by the master of ghost stories with added features and corrections. The OOP first printing is fetching over $800-$1000 everywhere. Fortunately, Oxford Classics has a volume and Penguin Classics has two volumes currently available of M. R. James. All three very affordable too.

[bookfaerie]

I have sampled or read extensively the following authors:

in alph...

Robert Aickman
Charles Beaumont
Ambrose Bierce
Algernon Blackwood
Ramsey Campbell (short stories)
F Marion Crawford
L. P. Hartley
William Hope Hodgson
Shirley Jackson
Sheridan Le Fanu
Arthur Machen
Oliver Onions
H Russell Wakefield

These are the sources to look up for genuine scares and chills.

The Ash-Tree Press will be re-releasing their Montague Rhodes James collection A Pleasing Terror in a reprint very, very late this year which includes every story written by the master of ghost stories with added features and corrections. The OOP first printing is fetching over $800-$1000 everywhere. Fortunately, Oxford Classics has a volume and Penguin Classics has two volumes currently available of M. R. James. All three very affordable too.

Thanks I'll check it out. I'm pretty sure that I don't have some $800 lying around, but I'll check out Oxford.

[Stieg]

Michael Cox edited the Oxford edition of M R James anthology.

And have heard he has two other worthy volumes -- Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories and Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories.

To re-iterate, if you want to mix it up with the best overview of horror literature available, you can never go wrong with the following anthologies.

Great Tales of Terror and The Supernatural edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner

The Dark Descent edited by David G Hartwell

and the personally sought after OOP Dark Forces edited by Kirby McCauley (groundbreaking modern horror and was the anthology that personally inspired Clive Barker to be a horror writer).

The horror genre is not the literary ghetto some frequently think but offers the greatest literature ever written.

A couple more authors I failed to mention, Edger Allan Poe, William F Nolan, and Richard Matheson.

[bookfaerie]

Michael Cox edited the Oxford edition of M R James anthology.


The horror genre is not the literary ghetto some frequently think but offers the greatest literature ever written.

A couple more authors I failed to mention, Edger Allan Poe, William F Nolan, and Richard Matheson.

I don't think that I've ever heard literary ghetto in the same type stoke as Edgar Allen Poe, but that's pretty impressive. I like a lot of his stuff. The Raven, Tell Tale Heart, to name a couple favs.

[Stieg]

I am not biggest fan of Poe around, but he is undeniably a brilliant master of horror. Though my pet peeve is he can be too morbid, depressing, and overly meticulous in descriptive settings (and too artistically bent).

I mean I can't read tons of his work in a single sitting.

What I meant about "literary ghetto" comment is the genre's current state of affairs, simply not enough writers today have the fortitude to develop characters and a genuine story. Too many cookie-cutter cliches and cheap gross-outs.

[Dante Wodehouse]

I know this has been said a lot before, but Bram Stoker's Dracula is really good. It is genuinely scary, not like the wierd offshot movies. If you take a broad view of horror, you might like the Inferno. Not usually considered horror and definately not written as such, but still, what's scarier than hell?

Oh yes, the term for books written in the form of letters and correspondences is epistolary novel, a bit of trivia.

[Gunslinger]

I know this has been said a lot before, but Bram Stoker's Dracula is really good. It is genuinely scary, not like the wierd offshot movies. If you take a broad view of horror, you might like the Inferno. Not usually considered horror and definately not written as such, but still, what's scarier than hell?

Oh yes, the term for books written in the form of letters and correspondences is epistolary novel, a bit of trivia.

Dracula was also good because it gives a sense of it being non-fiction:

they were all journal entries,

he gives an excuse why its deemed fiction saying the entries werent actual documents because they weren't original copies, typewritten instead

and Count Dracula and his castle are (were) real

[bookfaerie]

I am not biggest fan of Poe around, but he is undeniably a brilliant master of horror. Though my pet peeve is he can be too morbid, depressing, and overly meticulous in descriptive settings (and too artistically bent).

I mean I can't read tons of his work in a single sitting.

What I meant about "literary ghetto" comment is the genre's current state of affairs, simply not enough writers today have the fortitude to develop characters and a genuine story. Too many cookie-cutter cliches and cheap gross-outs.

Which, sadly, is true in most cases. I don't know of anybody that can read an abundance of his work in one setting. It'd be like trying to read Shakespeare for five hours straight. You might just kill yourself, and not for your lover. I just thought that the ghetto quip was a refreshing metaphor. No offense intended.

[Stieg]

Which, sadly, is true in most cases. I don't know of anybody that can read an abundance of his work in one setting. It'd be like trying to read Shakespeare for five hours straight. You might just kill yourself, and not for your lover. I just thought that the ghetto quip was a refreshing metaphor. No offense intended.

Thanks, no offense taken. :D

[werwolfblutlust]

ahh yes a thriller /horror
has anyone suggested
autopsy room four by steven king?
it is a short story but good none the less
another good one of his is
"the road virus heads north"
:banana:
two of my faves
both of these short stories can be found in the collection
"everythings Eventual"
if you stumble into this book of short stories make sure to read
Lunch at the gotham cafe
ahh the classic butcher tale...
great collection i suggest you check it out

[bookfaerie]

Thanks, no offense taken. :D

That's good to see. I would hate to have some new age ghetto Allan Poe booky after me.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Not clasic by any definition, but some of my personal favs,

Red Dragon, Hannibal, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris.

[Mrs. Dalloway]

Frankenstein! by Mary W. Shelley! It's a very good Romantic Gothic Novel! :thumbs_up

[*Classic*Charm*]

Frankenstein! by Mary W. Shelley! It's a very good Romantic Gothic Novel! :thumbs_up

If I may ask, what makes you call it romantic?

[Stieg]

Rather than post three consecutive times in the other thread (they have a name for that). Digging through my dog eared copies of Michael McDowell novels and chose the shortest and most appropiate prologue to post here from Cold Moon Over Babylon.

Copyright © 1980 by Michael McDowell


One hot afternoon in July of 1965, Jim Larkin and his wife JoAnn were slowly paddling their small green boat upstream on the Styx River that drains the northwestern corner of the Florida panhandle. Having spent the several hours around noon lazily fishing in a favorite spot, half a mile downriver from their blueberry farm, they were bringing back enough bream for themselves and half the town of Babylon besides. Jim's widowed mother, Evelyn Larkin, was back at the farm, taking care of their son Jerry, eight years old, and their infant daughter Margaret, born only the year before.


JoAnn Larkin, who had pale skin and dark red hair, and always wore dark red lipstick and matching nail polish even when she was working in the patch, had already started to clean the fish, and was idly scraping scales back into the water. Her husband, Evelyn Larkin's only child, paddled slowly, and kept his face turned away from the sun. He had to be careful about burn, and considered that it was a sore trial for a farmer and his wife to have fair skin.


"What's that?" JoAnn said curiously, and pointed at something in the water, twenty feet away.


"It's a croker sack," Jim Larkin replied, and turned the boat a little so that they would come nearer it.


"It's not one of ours, is it?" she said. "I don't think it's one of ours. Who'd be throwing our croker sacks in the river?"


"I don't know. We ought to take it back. Good croker sacks are getting harder to come by every day. Looks dry. Must have just fell in from somewhere."


JoAnn leaned over the prow, and snared the sack. She swung it over the side of the boat, and set it between herself and her husband. The string that held the top together had already come loose in the water, and the sack fell open in her hands. With dampened rattles, five snakes slithered out over the lip of the burlap.


The man and woman drew back in fear, pushing frantically against the rattlesnakes with their feet. Each was bitten several times, and probably would have suffered more had not their thrashing panic overturned the small boat.


Jim Larkin dived deep, and in a few seconds attempted to come up for air. Among the dead bream that floated on the surface of the water, he could see the snakes coiled and waiting. Their tails swaying slowly in the water beckoned him upward. He lost consciousness and drowned.


JoAnn Larkin swam to a sandbar, crawled across it, and fell into a sand-sink, which are as common as leeches along the margin of the Styx. She was sucked in slowly, and all the while never left off calling her husband's name. But she gave over all resistance to the sinking sand when she saw his corpse rise suddenly to the surface of the water, and bob among the dead fish. His head was thrown back, his eyes wide, and one of the snakes pushed its way into his slack mouth.


Their bodies were never recovered. JoAnn Larkin's skeleton, white and contorted, still lies frozen in the sand a dozen feet below the surface of the Styx. Jim Larkin was spun a couple of miles downstream, and then wedged into a rocky crevice in the bed of the river; there the normally sluggish black waters of the Styx, rushing through this submerged ravine, industriously pried the rotting flesh from his bones.


Evelyn Larkin had nothing of her son and daughter-in-law to mourn over and bury. The overturned boat, protecting the nested croker sacks and two drowned rattlesnakes, told no plausible story of their deaths...