Suggestions Please?

Tom Piccirilli - Right now I'm reading Headstone City, and it's really good. I always enjoyed his short fiction, so I knew I'd like his longer works.

For offbeat horror, you might want to check out Joe R. Lansdale and Jeff Strand.

I've been reading good reviews about Scott Smith's The Ruins, but I haven't read it yet. It's next on my to-read list.

emeraldcite said:

I've been on a horror binge lately.

What I've read in the past few months:

Bentley Little, The Walking
Tim Lebbon, Berserk (reading right now)
Ramsey Campbell, The Overnight (reading right now)
Edward Lee, Messenger
Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door (excellent! gave me nightmares)
Ricahrd Laymon, Ressurection Dreams (excellent!)
Brian Keene, The Rising and City of the Dead (both very good)

Other than King and Koontz (got shelves of these guys) any other suggestions. Oh, yeah, got Straub too.

I'm looking for some offbeat writers. I love the Leisure line and have signed up for their horror book club.

Any others that you've read and recommend?

Click to expand...

Simon Clark - Nailed by the Heart (Plus his short stories.) and the one where the kids all kill their parents - can't recall its name. Darker is OK.
Jonathon Carroll - Voice of our Shadow, Land of Laughs, Child across the Sky - all excellent.
Christopher Fowler - City Jitters short stories plus Roofworld.
Clive Barker - Books of Blood, hellbound heart.
Graham Joyce - Requiem, The Tooth Fairy.
Ramsey Campbell - the doll who ate his Mother.

There's a British author called Joel Lane who has written some wonderfully offbeat horror that can be genuinely unsettling. Most of very urban in setting. I'm not sure if his stuff is easily available, as it was published by a local press in his hometown. Similarly, there's also "Last Rites and Resurrection", an anthology from the Third Alternative Press that's also incredibly offbeat.

Although if you think Laymon is "excellent", you'll probably hate all these authors!

I've just started reading a book called "Hawkes Harbour" by "SE Hinton" - so far I'm not impressed. It's quite hard to read, and changes POV quite often, which is annoying.

emeraldcite said:

Thanks Lee! I meant to pick up a Piccirilli last time I was in the bookstore, but there wasn't anything on the shelf. I'll add him to my next amazon order...

I haven't read Lansdale, although I've come across the name. Any titles that you really got into?

Same with Strand? If he wanted to sell me his best book, what would it be?

As for Smith, seems like king liked it. Guess I'll add that to my list.

Click to expand...

I love Lansdale's short fiction, so I started with his collection High Cotton. For novel length, I recommend A Fine Dark Line. It's not traditional, in-your-face horror; his writing style is more subtle.

If you like horror with some humor, check out Strand's Graverobbers Wanted.

Btw - I second the recommendation for Clive Barker. The Books of Blood series is top-notch.

It depends on how dark your tastes run. I finished a great werewolf novel called Wolf's Trap by WD Gagliani. It was a mix of sex and violence that bordered erotica but also boasted a psycho villain that just plain creeeped me out. Also working on B. Little's Dispatch. It's a different read compared to his other works but charges up the imagination.

Joe Lansdale is AMAZING. His non-horror stuff is dark, but funny, and he is one heck of a writer.

Try The Bottoms where a small community has to deal with a serial killer during the Depression. They didn't know how, back then. He also wrote the totally wonderful Bubba Ho Tep. I've got a stack of his stuff that I'm doling out slowly to enjoy every page.

And I like P.N. Elrod. It's not exactly horror, but it's got a vampire and is different from what the others do. And Jim Butcher, Wm. Mark Simmons, and Fred Saberhagan and Marie Kirali, Andrew Fox's Fat White Vampire Blues, and Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends.

I prefer irreverent to the serious, there's dark stuff in all but with a twist. Anything by Moore is all THAT!

Brian Lumley's dark fantasy, Necroscope series, is a lot of fun and a nice spin on the vampire mythos.

Psionic warriors (British E Branch)-meets-Super Vampires from another dimension-meets-high tech British MI-6-meets-the Necroscope-meets the Kremlin's Psi Ops Corps-meets...

I'm not usually interested in vampire tales, but I followed his entire series. It was just too weird to put down.

Try something by E. F. Benson. His work is on the Online Books Page:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

There were more of his work on BlackMask.

Ever heard of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski? Here is a very short description:

The story focuses on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Sounds simple enough, but if you just glance through the book you'll see how oddly it's put together...very experimental. I haven't read it yet, because I think I have to be truly psyched up to tackle it, but I know a lot of people recommend it as a different take on the haunted house story.

Monster Island by David Wellington. Its another Zombie trilogy but if you enjoyed Brian Keene's writing you should also enjoy this.

Boy! You guys just insist on tossing out horror author after horror author! I'm glad to see the diversity represented here: very few ever recognize the brilliance of Richard Laymon (one of the ONLY authors who's EVER frightened me!!) ... I just have to ask. Do any of you appreciate Poppy Z. Brite? I'm a huge pusher of her work.. lemme know!

I've got one of her books, a Crow novel called the Lazurus Heart I keep meaning to read. Lately I've been into a lot of Dark Urban fantasies, like Heart of Stone and Whitechapel Gods. I'm still waiting for Koontz to finish off his Frankenstein trilogy. It was a fun spin on the old theme.

Pike

Douglas Clegg's books are fun. My recommendations: Hour Before Dark, Neverland, Goat Dance, You Come When I Call You.

I'm reading the Lazarus Heart right now and absolutely loving it. If you like Urban Fantasy you might enjoy Emma Bull (War for the Oaks is the one I've read). It's not real dark, but still exceptional!

It's considered one of the UF classics so it's on my list. I just wiss I could keep up with my list.

Pike