Originally Posted by
marcshoe
Now for novels. I shouldn't have started this; it's impossible. Since RF included Trembley, I'll leave him out. I ended up with 13, my last, painful, cut being Coraline. btw, I'm thinking the Calamander Box shouldn't have been on yesterday's list, but that's okay. If you want, replace it with Saki's Sredni Vashtar.
1. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. If you don't know what this is about, I'm not going to tell you. Edges out The Shining, Pet Semmetary, It, etc. Some of this has to do with reading it in the dead of winter alone in a dorm room. Some of it is that I love vampires.
2. Shadowland by Peter Straub I haven't been able to read as much Straub as I like, because he goes further than I am willing to follow. He does so a bit in this book, which is difficult to describe. It's a surreal experience of a boy and his friend visiting, I think, a magician uncle who is more of a sorcerer. The name of the boys' bully, Skeleton Ridpath, is etched deep in my mind. I'm not sure why, but I think it's the best character name this side of Dickens. And the book is immersive and frightening.
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury I devoured Bradbury for a while, and he remains my literary hero. The movie was better than it was given credit for being at the time, an era of over-the top horror, and the book is even better. Mr. Dark is my last nightmare. Always.
4. Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber I read this fairly recently. I have always been slightly disappointed by Leiber's short fiction, but this was right in his wheelhouse. It's a perfect seventies story set in San Francisco with horror oozing out of what would be simply weird.
5. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill I didn't know who he was when I started reading this, and I kept thinking that he wrote ridiculously like Stephen King, so I looked him up, saw his picture, and thought he was even trying to look like him. This one's great, as a less-than-heroic aging rock star orders a ghost in the mail.
6.Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. This one's a flat-out Stephen King pastiche, but I still found it scarier than Carrion Comfort (although The Terror came close). Think 'It' or 'Stranger Things'. The last day of school before the kids move to a new building leads to some horrific discoveries and a threat caused by something called the Borgia Bell. Teachers and Principal are evil, both before and after death.
7. December by Phil Rickman The Merrily Watkins books, about a CofE exorcist, I mean deliverance minister, are Rickman's best work, but this is his scariest. Some of the character return in the Watkins series. This book involves a recording studio in a haunted mansion and the ghost of John Lennon. Seriously.
8.Dracula by Bram Stoker. Did I mention I like vampires? This one holds up. You might have heard of it.
9. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern who really needs to write another book. Surreal and as good as you've heard. It's been impossible to film to this point, but I'd love to try. The black and white circus with splashes of red is too cinematic to leave alone.
10.The Historian by Elizabeh Kostova Did I mention I like vampires? This one's about a woman whose father disappears after receiving a book that's blank except for a drawing of Vlad Tepisch, aka Dracul. This book made me want to go to eastern Europe, and I will one day. Also features an evil, Renfield-ish, librarian. It's a slow book, but the writing's so good I didn't care.
11.Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein. Not horror, but terrifying, from the barrow-wights through the ringwraiths, balrogs, and Sauron himself.
12.The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. He said it was a ghost story, and who am I to argue. Very much like M.R. James, involves a gentlemen's club (no, not that kind!) a confused governess, an evil dead man, and, of course, the turn--children.
13.Intensity by Dean Koontz I absolutely hated Watchers and wasn't crazy about one or two others I read, but this one, which isn't supernatural, gets inside the head of a psychopath in a way that made me want to crawl in a hole and shovel dirt over me.
Let's leave it there, even if there is no At the Mountains of Madness or Graveyard Book, I guess.
- - - Updated - - -
The Hex and House of Leaves are on my to-read list.