Your favorite mainstream horror books?

I think Streiber is either delusional or a hoaxer. But "The Wolfen" was great, even the movie.

Damn, I should have mentioned "The Damnation Game." I enjoyed some of the stories in the Book of Blood paperbacks but Barker just isn't my cup of Hemlock. Still, this novel, for the most part, was excellent. I think the ending felt rushed but I read it over 30 years ago so I could be wrong.

"The Ceremonies" by T. E. D. Klein was my favorite novel of the Horror Boom.

It should be apparent by now, I'm not big on contemporary Horror.
 
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"The Watcher" by Charles Maclean is so scary I was in a terror panic reading it - it is an exceptional novel.

But if I had to chose just one, it would be the Modern Library anthology "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural." Decades ago reading it felt like a privileged excursion to an ancient exclusive haunt, hopefully today's hyped-up graphics and gore hasn't ruined it for young readers.
 
cnpappas said:
But if I had to chose just one, it would be the Modern Library anthology "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural." Decades ago reading it felt like a privileged excursion to an ancient exclusive haunt, hopefully today's hyped-up graphics and gore hasn't ruined it for young readers.
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Wow! I still have that.
I bought a USED copy while I was in high school and it really opened a door.
 
It's pretty good but it's not really in keeping with the thread, which is predominantly the wave that writers like King, James Herbert, Blatty, possibly Shirley Jackson, Ira Levin and others created that lasts to this day, even if it isn't as popular as it was.

Does Dennis Wheatley belong here at all or is he a different school?
 
Oops, sorry. Didn't realize the thread was King and later writers.
If I broke any rules, that was not my intent.
Matter of fact, I cannot seem to locate the Rules here at TLO.
I realized I cannot write the word ####, which by extension probably means #### will be censored as well.
That I find curious because I can't imagine children exploring this site.
In contrast, there seems to be a wide latitude regarding bullying and baiting.
Damn, here I am, warbling away, getting off topic.
An author (current author) I used to read eagerly, and now I am so over.
Joe R Lansdale.
The stories were fun, punchy, with a ribald earthiness, and now they strike me as TV formula.
Like he's coasting and I'm just wasting my time.
 
Zaharoff--

I understand your comments about Lansdale's work. I enjoyed Bubba Ho-Tep and "The Night They Missed The Horror Show" but those were it.

Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is far more to my liking lol.
 
I just bought Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix. It is in the spirit of this thread, I've noticed on goodreads that people have been tracking down the books he recommended. A sequel that goes from the mid 90s to the present would be appreciated, following writers in that style.
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
I just bought Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix. It is in the spirit of this thread, I've noticed on goodreads that people have been tracking down the books he recommended. A sequel that goes from the mid 90s to the present would be appreciated, following writers in that style.
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Picked that one up as well, looking forward to dipping into it. Some of my favorite mainstream horror books and authors for my part would be Stephen King's Misery, I quite like his books in general. Also liked Joe Hill's Nos4a2 and Heart-Shaped Box, although I find his style pretty similar to his dad's. I also enjoyed Clive Barker's Books of Blood and The Hellbound Heart. The two books I've read by Adam Nevill were pretty good as well; Ritual and Apartment 16. I am a huge fan of Brian Lumley's Mythos stories, as he was someone I stumbled across right after discovering Lovecraft, so I have a soft spot for his tales.
 
Laymon

I remember enjoying Richard Laymon while he was alive.
Haven't reread his books since then and don't know if I would still appreciate.
 
Stephen Laws is wonderful. I first encountered him through his book Darkfall, mentioned in Stanley Wiater's list of notable works of horror fiction (from Dark Thoughts: On Writing).

I find the "I write to entertain, and I write for the man on the street" defense offered by many mainstream authors to reek of populist deflection. A cheap excuse for weak writing that has found an audience in spite of its shortcomings.

But Laws is pure entertainment. His work has no identifiable worldview, and his style is not notably distinctive. But he DOES have a style... one that is propulsive without becoming sloppy and compelling without being exploitative. I wish he wrote more.
 
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Bumping again.

I'm seeing more and more names on the Bram Stoker Award winners, splatterpunks and Bizarro that I don't recognize; due to the increased separation of weird fiction from the rest of horror.

And names like Nick Cutter, Josh Malerman and Gabino Iglesias getting more hype.

Where do Adam Nevill and Paul Tremblay fall in terms of weird and regular horror?
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
... names like Nick Cutter, Josh Malerman and Gabino Iglesias getting more hype.

Where do Adam Nevill and Paul Tremblay fall in terms of weird and regular horror?
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I have one Josh Malerman which I did not care for. It was a Borderlands "little book" and one might think stories had been cherry picked to entice readers to explore his catalogue. Instead, that one left a bad impression and I won't buy any more of his books.

Personally, I would place Mr. Nevill into the weird camp. I have two collections of his stories and those are closer to Aickman than, say, James Herbert.
 
They seriously need to reprint Malerman's "Goblin." It's WAY stronger than Bird Box. And for my mainstream guilty pleasure, I gotta go with James Herbert too. It's my fiction equivalent of donuts. SOOO good.
 
I do not know if it is considered a horror book, but the first Stephen King novel I read was Roadwork, published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, and I thougth it was terrific.
 
Mainstream in Australia, I guess, award winning Alan Baxter released The Roo followed soon by The Gulp. Both were wonderfully entertaining books. The Gulp promises to be a new location for future stories centered in a strange village named Gulpepper. I am totally hooked on its weirdness.
 
One horror writer from the 1980's who eventually faded away from the genre is Ken Eulo. His best work is the trilogy that began with "The Brownstone" and continued with "The Bloodstone" and "The Deathstone". I recently found a copy of his novel "Nocturnal" in a used bookstore and quite enjoyed it. A psychologist experiments with subjects experiencing telepathic dreams and one of her subjects ends up having nightmares that come true of a serial killer murdering two of her friends and who ultimately tries to kill her at the novel's climax. Eulo's style seems somewhat derivative of Stephen King but he manages to capture King' best qualities as a writer, including complex, sympathetic characters and a level of suspense that kept me turning the pages until the end.
 
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