Horror books of my youth unearthed!

Just gone back to childhood home to weekend with ex-pat Mum and the ugly sisters, and what should I find but that mother, preparatory to 'doing something' with the utility room, has taken all the boxes out. And in one of them are a whole heap of books I haven't seen, or thought of, since the eighties, when I were a nipper.

There's 'Full Circle', by Straub, 'The House Next Door' (Rivers Siddons), 'Comes the Blind Fury' and 'When the Wind Blows' (John Saul), 'Revenge of the Manitou' (Masterton) and 'The Survivor' (Herbert). Many of them 1st ed paperbacks (unfortunately quite a few of them not mint, as I like my books to have that lived-in look). And it's only the 1st box!

Best of all, I have very little memory of what any of these books were like. I'd forgotten John Saul even existed, though I've an idea his work was kind of lascivious and hokey.

Aladdin's cave or what? Can't wait to see what's in the others.

Will Lavender said:

I must have had the same youth as you, zahra, a continent away.

Also loved The House Next Door.

Here's one I often think about that I read as a teenager: Slob, by Rex Miller.

Found it in a used bookstore circa 1993. Tremendous read.

And it's not exactly horror, but Harlan Ellison recommended this quirky little science fiction novel on Sci-Fi Buzz one night. It was F. Gwynplaine Macintyre's The Woman Between the Worlds. Another classic from my high school years, when I could cut through two or three novels a week. Now, with two kids, I'm lucky to read one a month.

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The kids are your books now - read 'em and weep!

Rugcat, how awful! You see, that's why kids shouldn't be allowed out of their rooms til they reach the age of reason - 30 or thereabouts.

Currently reading 'Full Circle'. I forgot it had been made into a film with Mia Farrow. Finding the sexualizing of the kids much more uncomfortable to read than when I was a kid myself, and the heroine locking herself out of her house for the second time is rapidly making me want to shake her til her teeth fall out. It's set in a real street with which I was not familiar at the time, but now know very well.

'The House Next Door' was a great read, though the snobbery of the MC left a bit of a sour taste.

Funny the things that strike you when you're that much older.

It's Christmas with an evil Santa!

Lordy, John Saul's a bad writer!