Supernatural Thriller Recommendations?

Stephen King's The Dead Zone. It isn't exactly light, but I wouldn't call it horror, either. Just a guy with a supernatural talent that offers great trouble and a fearsome opportunity.

Dale

Light super-natural thrillers? Hmmm - Dresden Files by Butcher; Charlaine Harris has the best selling Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels, but I really prefer the Harper Connelly mysteries (Harper can feel where dead are buried); Odd Thomas books are very light and entertaining; Kelley Armostrong has the women of the otherworld series - definitely supernatural and not horror.

The Dead Zone is a good recommendation. A few of King's other books would fit as well.

Maybe at least one book by Frank Peretti (I don't have a specific recommendation). I would almost include Bram Stoker's Dracula in this category.

Almost anything by Dean Koontz would count as supernatural thriller. May I recommend,

Darkfall
Watchers
Lightning
Fear Nothing
Seize The Night
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Strangers
Odd Thomas
Brother Odd
The Darkest Evening of the Year
Cold Fire
Winter Moon
The Taking

etc., etc., etc.

They're not exactly "light", but they are all good, fast reads with lots of supernatural and lots of thrills along the way. Lightning is one of the best time travel love stories I've ever read. Watchers is much, much better than the absolutely horrendous movies. Darkfall is voodoo magic. The Taking is a very different take (sic) on the Rapture.

Can ya' tell I'm a fan?

Glen Cook's Garrett, PI series is hardboiled detective thriller set in a fantasy world. Lighthearted, lots of humor, but with thrills and supernatural galore.

FOTSGreg said:

Almost anything by Dean Koontz would count as supernatural thriller.

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Yeah. I think at one time Dean Koontz just about "owned" this genre. I think his star has fallen just a bit in the past couple of years.

BTW, I own a copy of Koontz's book on writing. I had to pay big bucks for a good used copy. It's become a collector's item.

Shadowland by Peter Straub. One of my favorite books ever.

Ted Dekker. Read "Adam", "Skin", "House" that he co-authored with Frank Peretti. Excellent authors!

At the risk of sounding like a chest puffer, my first three published books, which came out in the late nineties, were all classified as supernatural thrillers by the publisher (Harper Collins)...basically thrillers with a supernatural element. And the first one drew comparisons to Dean Koontz, which was the highest element of praise I think I've ever gotten.

Okay, let me unpuff now. If you want to read them, they can be had for as little as one cent used on Amazon since they are all out of print now. The titles are Cold White Fury, Eyes of Night, and Second Sight.

When the first one came out (Cold White Fury) Ingrams catgegorized it as horror because it had a paranormal element to it and that was how they defined horror. As a result, it was shelved in the horror section in most bookstores. Book #2 (Eyes of Night) hints at a supernatural element but is more of a straight thriller and as such, got shelved that way. It made for an interesting dilemma since my first two books were often found in different parts of the store rather than next to one another. Second Sight had a much lighter paranormal element to it and for some reason ended up in the mystery sections of most stores. Go figure.

Some called my books genre hybrids or cross genre books. This label had its pros and cons. One of the biggest pros was a broad appeal across several spectrums of readers. One of the biggest cons was the above mentioned identity crisis, which often made it hard to find the books. If a mystery reader found Second Sight in that section of the store and liked it, then went looking for another mystery by the same author, they wouldn't find one, at least not in the mystery section. Internet sales sights, like Amazon, eliminate some of that confusion because it's so much easier to search for works by the author's name.

There has been a surge in paranormal stuff across all genres lately, including romance, so having a paranormal element doesn't automatically place a book in the horror class anymore.

Beth

P.N. Elrod's Vampire Files. So far eleven books in the series. It's set in 1930's Chicago about a vampire who's also a detective. Interesting take on vampires, plus gangsters.

thriller suggestion

Check out Jonathan Maberry's PATIENT ZERO

The Intruders, by Michael Marshall Smith...thriller with supernatural element, lots of cabalistic paranoiac fun, if you can stand his sometimes cynical prose style.

The Blood of the Templar was classified by my publisher as a suspense/thriller and a horror novel, though I'd personally call it a dark fantasy. I think part of putting something in a genre is marketing -- which category they think would make the most sales.

I've always thought of novels like The Stand and The Talisman more as fantasy novels than horror. When I think horror, I think H. P. Lovecraft -- which I definitely wouldn't call "paranormal thriller".

I'd call stuff like the aforementioned Vampire Files and the Anita Blake Vamp Hunter as paranormal thrillers.

(BTW, I liked the Jonathan Barrett vampire novels by P. N. Elrod the best. I'd put the first one as one of my favorite vampire novels of all time.)

Kat Richardson has a series of paranormal mysteries which I think would fall under this category.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451461509/?tag=absolutewritedm-20