Recommend a good and realistic horror novel that's sick and twisted?

[spookymulder93]

I want something that would put the average reader in a mental hospital.

[The Comedian]

From Hell by Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell

[Emil Miller]

Harry Potter ad infinitem.

[The Comedian]

Harry Potter ad infinitem.

*shivers*

[Jozanny]

I want something that would put the average reader in a mental hospital.

David Foster Wallace should do it.

[Lulim]

American Psycho, or, Stanislav Lem -- Lem, of course, within the adequate setting: lonesome old castle in the midst of the woods, and no single living soul nearby. The rustling of mice and the creaking of roof timbers above, the cries of eagle owls outside ... The remembrance of it still gives me the creeps ...

[keilj]

Harry Potter ad infinitem.

"The Horror... The Horror"

[Satan]

Maldoror, La-Bas, Moravagine and some works of Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille.

[dfloyd]

Heidi

[janesmith]

Not sure if you would describe it as horror genre but for subversive content alone I would suggest "The Passion of New Eve" by Angela Carter.

[Handler]

Crash, by J. G. Ballard. Or, something I read just recently and thought was pretty dark and mental-hospitally, although not really sick or twisted, if I can make that distinction: Thomas Bernhard's Correction.

[JuniperWoolf]

From Hell by Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell

Hear hear.

Hmm... some that got to me:
American Psycho
A Handmaid's Tale
Heart of Darkness (I know, not really "sick" to most people, but if you think of the whole jungle as his brain and Kurtz as like, his "truest" self, it's pretty... well... dark. Maybe I'm a wimp, but it made me nauseous).
Frankenstein (the well-spoken, educated reanimated corpse concept was pretty chilling, and just picturing him under that shed thing looking at that family for months is a pretty creepy image)

But seriously, if you're looking for something sick and twisted, you won't find anything that will measure up to a real biography of a killer. My mom is obsessed with reading these freaky "true crime" books (she's not insane, she just wanted to be a forensic scientist), the floor of my childhood home was just littered with images of cannibalism and mass suicide. Some that I found seriously disturbing (you're likely already familiar with them, but if what you're looking for is twisted you might want to read further into them):

JONESTOWN - Holy hell, that screwed with my poor little brain. For me, this was the worst. They also have a recording of them dying that I heard when I discovered youtube.
The Halocaust - There really is nothing more disturbing.
Ted Bundy - Attractive, seemingly normal guy who killed women.
Jeffrey Dahmer - Killed little boys, then ate them.
H. H. Holmes - During the World Fair, he altered this hotel into a kind of "death castle."

[Cygnus X-2112]

I just read The Picture of Dorian Gray for the first time and i have to say the concept of the novel made me shiver a few times.

[DonovanTalbot]

Disturb Not The Dream by Paula Trachtman
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
The Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
The Collector by John Fowles
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
Deliverance by James Dickey
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
The Other by Thomas Tryon

[punk sheep]

Afraid by Jack Kilborn

You want over-the-top, this is it.

[PeterL]

But seriously, if you're looking for something sick and twisted, you won't find anything that will measure up to a real biography of a killer. My mom is obsessed with reading these freaky "true crime" books (she's not insane, she just wanted to be a forensic scientist), the floor of my childhood home was just littered with images of cannibalism and mass suicide. Some that I found seriously disturbing (you're likely already familiar with them, but if what you're looking for is twisted you might want to read further into them):

JONESTOWN - Holy hell, that screwed with my poor little brain. For me, this was the worst. They also have a recording of them dying that I heard when I discovered youtube.
The Halocaust - There really is nothing more disturbing.
Ted Bundy - Attractive, seemingly normal guy who killed women.
Jeffrey Dahmer - Killed little boys, then ate them.
H. H. Holmes - During the World Fair, he altered this hotel into a kind of "death castle."

Mao's campaign to power The Communist revolution in China killed about 100,000,000 (one hundred million) people, but the number is just a guess. Many people say that only about 60,000,000 died. It either case, it was a lot of people. It made the Holocaust look like a picnic. If someone wrote a good account of that war, it probably would be a good read.

Pol Pot: He didn't kiil a majority of the population of Cambodia, but he tried.

[Leland Gaunt]

Richard Laymon, certainly fits the sick and twisted part. Good and realistic, not so much.

[Desolation]

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille...I threw that ****ing book across the room to avoid projectile vomiting all over it.

[Adderhead]

Misery by Stephen King.

The scary aspect of the novel was that there was no supernatural elements and everything that happened in the story could really happen.

[DonovanTalbot]

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille...I threw that ****ing book across the room to avoid projectile vomiting all over it.

Funny, I had just read that a couple weeks back... curious have you read Gerald's Game by Stephen King? It'll make you crawl out of your skin (another title I include in my list). I actually was quite disconnected from the shocking material in The Story of the Eye including the eyeball play because it was written in such an absurd nonchalant fashion.

I generally don't care for J.G. Ballard books. They simply don't appeal to me but Crash tho not a horror novel per se explores some pretty heinous deviant perversions with graphic descriptions.