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Horror - where do i start?!

Dogtanian

Dogtanian

New Member
Hey folks,

I'm ashamed to say that i've i've never really sad down and read a 'proper' horror book. I've read a few grisly crime thrillers which could be almost be called horror but i've yet to sample any of the main authors work. I tend to stick to crime/mystery/suspense thrillers.

What i'm asking is....what authors would you recommend? I've heard of the main players (Herbert, Barker, King, Koontz etc..) but need a bit of advice as where to start and what titles are good.

Thanks
 
Wherever you want! But seriously...I really enjoy F. Paul Wilson. You could start with The Keep or The Tomb and if you like them you could branch off down the road to the rest of his Adversary or Repairman Jack books.

I'm sure you will get excellent suggestions from the other mutants on this site!
 
Herbert's Haunted is a nice, quick read. Take the crime you usually read and replace the detective with a paranormal investigator. It's more of a ghost story (and a good one) but I'd recommend it. Clive Barker's The Damnation Game - or his shorts The Books of Blood to get several short, sharp tastes of horror. If you want all out blood and guts and vampires then you can try Poppy Z. Brite, Richard Laymon. Mixing science with horror there's Dean Koontz although I don't know what he's been writing over the last ten years - I remember quite liking his Phantoms. Anything but Stephen King really...
 
I have only read one horror book that seemed to have any affect on me. Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. It's the only thing I have read by him, so I don't know if he has written any other horror books, but this one was okay.
 
Just remember to not pick up any Stephen King novel. Not all of them are horror. I think there's a thread here that's like, "top 5 horror novels". check that out. It may help.
 
If you want to start off with short stories from King, I'd recommend 'Night Shift' and the Barker's that Stewart suggested. Barker is a lot gorier than King, so it depends on what you like. I like both.

If you want to try something classic I suggest Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Hope you find some good scares!! :eek:
 
I enjoyed "The Exorcist" very much but the beginning of the book was horribly slow and made it hard to get into, but if you stick with it, it's very much worth it!

I'm really into the supernatural type of horror fiction. I usually read anything by Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Laurell K. Hamilton and sometimes Mary Janice Davidson.
 
Libra6Poe said:
ooooooh... Dracula... very sexy... ;)
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Dracula was really good, i read it a few years ago. i know that it is places in the horror genre, but i would put it in the gothic region. it was not really scary, but what you said, it was kind of sexy.
 
Pearl said:
I'm really into the supernatural type of horror fiction. I usually read anything by Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Laurell K. Hamilton and sometimes Mary Janice Davidson.
Click to expand...

hi, i don't think we met!
i like Mary janice davidson, she is hilarious. I read undead and unwed and undead and unemployed and i just laughed so hard, that i almost fall out of my chair! :eek:
 
Hi ya!

Yes, her undead series is the best! She's got two more books in the series coming out, one is this year, I think the other is next year. Her newer books are coming out in hardcover instead of paperback though... :( Sucks for the broke people like me...
 
Something to ease you in nicely

:cool: If you are new to horror, I would go with Palindrome Hannah, by Michael Bailey. It will ease you in nicely.
 
Start at the beginning: Edgar Allen Poe! I think Dracula will surprise you because the style is very different from what you expect if you've seen any movie, based however loosely, on the book ...

Also, your local library may carry "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" anthologies that will give you a sampler of horror writers. I think the short form often carries the stronger scare ...

There's a good way to test if you will like Stephen King or not: Skeleton Keys; his first collection of short stories. You need to take the test if you want to read horror.
 
I suggest "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson. Not too long, but very nicely done.

There is a collection of short horror stories called Masques, edited by JN Williamson, and has people like King, F Paul Wilson, Robert Bloch, Robert R McCammon and others. I understand it is a series up to Masques Vol IV. Check that out - the shorts are pretty good.

Also, another one that you may like is Graham Masterton.

ds
 
I enjoy Stephen King books myself. *shrug* I always liked "IT" and "The Stand" and "Christine" was an enjoyable read as well. "The Dark Half" was good too. The others are right, you just have to becareful because not all of his books are "horror" per say. Out of the 4 mentioned above if you want a horror novel by him "IT" would be the pick to go with.

I'm reading through Chandler McGrew's "The Darkening" right now and really enjoying it being about halfway in and he has 2 other books out. Night Terror and (I think I got the name right here...) Cold Heart are the other two. Little did I know I started with his 3rd Novel although that don't seem to matter much since I don't think they have any set series or anything of that nature. :)
 
I tend to look to short stories for horror, myself.
Oddly, in recent years, the one that I've found by far most scary (to the extent of giving me that physical creeped out feeling) was not a traditional horror story, but rather Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"[1]. I see it's often discussed as a feminist story these days, though Gilman herself didn't seem to write it for that purpose[2], but first and foremost it's just about the creepiest thing around.

Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany and the like are good for it too. But for the Lovecraftian style, my favorite story is actually one by Jorge Luis Borges: "There are more things", which you can find in various collections. It's probably not quite what you want though, paritcularly since it's very short.

Of newer authors, I have to be a bore and say Stephen King. Again, mainly the short stories. I'd highly recommend that you get his collection "Skeleton Crew" which contains my by far favorite stories of his: the novella "The Mist" and "The Raft", both of which I still get images in my head from, though it's been ten years since I read them. He tends to go for the gruesome, but he does manage to combine it somewhat with the obscure.

I'm going to have to give a vote against "Books of blood". I read the complete collection while I was spending a week alone in a cottage in the woods, basically the *perfect* place to get your wits scared out of you, and there was hardly anything that made much of any impact. There are some wonderful ideas though, and I'd recommend getting someone else's copy and thumbing directly to the major highlight: "In the hills, the cities".
Barker tends to be too overt for my tastes, making his stories "cool" rather than scary. But then, they are the books of blood, not the books of shadows.

[1]:full text available here: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1
[2]:http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
 
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