Your favorite mainstream horror books?

If Paul Tremblay is mainstream then I am unabashedly a massive fan. Such a fluid writer. Also, I think Joe Hill is the current heavyweight champ of mainstream horror. That family is setting up a freakin dynasty or something.
 
Night Visions 1 & 3 (but preferably in their original Dark Harvest editions)

Dark Forces (Kirby McCauley, editor)

Books of the Dead 1 & 2 ( Skipp & Spector, editors)

Charles L. Grant—Night Songs, The Orchard, etc.

Ramsey Campbell—The Nameless, Incarnate, etc.

Clive Barker—Books of Blood 1-6

Robert Bloch—Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of, Strange Eons

Ligotti—SOADD, Grimscribe (both available as mass market PBs in the ‘90s)

TM Wright—The Island

TED Klein—The Ceremonies

Bret Easton Ellis—American Psycho, The Informers

Richard Laymon—The Woods Are Dark
 
miguel1984 said:
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.
Click to expand...

I have a soft spot for the Bachman books, I think they represent some of King's finest work. My favorite is The Long Walk for sheer ingenuity of characterization and psychological acuity. I also recall enjoying reading Rage, but it has been many years now and I forget many things about the plot and the resolution of the story.

A year or so ago, I read that King has decided to stop that particular novel from being reprinted and redistributed, as some sort of response to the multiple school shootings that have taken place in the United States since the book's original print run. I fail to understand the point of it and I think it would avail artists to not side with the ludicrous notion that creative work should be banned, butchered, restricted, and controlled for fear it influences society in a negative way, or that it makes negative emotions and memories resurface, or that it offends, annoys, or saddens people. It might be a road paved with good intentions but we all know where roads paved with good intentions lead.

I might also be a bit bitter because I also recently read that the media authority of the country in which I reside asked Netflix to remove The Last Temptation of Christ from its library of available titles for the locality. Good intentions, yet again.
 
xylokopos said:
cannibal cop said:
.......

Ligotti—SOADD, Grimscribe (both available as mass market PBs in the ‘90s)

........
Click to expand...

Don't be cheeky now, young man.
Click to expand...


Honest to God, man. For a brief period around '93 or so it was possible to walk into any reasonably sized mainstream bookstore and find two compact attractive Ligotti paperbacks sharing shelf space with Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and a misplaced John Grisham. They each went for about 3 dollars (US) if memory serves.

Hell, I can prove it wasn't some weird dream by posting pics of my own prized copies, which are right ... around here ... somewhere ...
 
FINISHING TOUCHES and THE NIGHTWALKER, by Thomas Tessier. "The Mist" by Stephen King. Out on a literary limb, lemme classify the play TINY ALICE, by Edward Albee, as something akin to horror.
 
cannibal cop said:
xylokopos said:
cannibal cop said:
.......

Ligotti—SOADD, Grimscribe (both available as mass market PBs in the ‘90s)

........
Click to expand...

Don't be cheeky now, young man.
Click to expand...


Honest to God, man. For a brief period around '93 or so it was possible to walk into any reasonably sized mainstream bookstore and find two compact attractive Ligotti paperbacks sharing shelf space with Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and a misplaced John Grisham. They each went for about 3 dollars (US) if memory serves.
Click to expand...


One of my first contacts with Ligotti occurred at a Walmart book rack in the early/mid-1990s. These twenty-something years later, you could almost convince me that I hallucinated the whole thing.
 
matt cardin said:
One of my first contacts with Ligotti occurred at a Walmart book rack in the early/mid-1990s. These twenty-something years later, you could almost convince me that I hallucinated the whole thing.
Click to expand...


Even if it had all been a (shared?) hallucination it would still be one of the high points of what was otherwise (for me, at least) a pretty lousy decade. The decade when I had my first real glimmer of the Conspiracy at work, fittingly enough.

A few more titles I would recommend here:

KW Jeter–Soul Eater (an unusual mass-market horror novel with roots in esoteric Buddhism)

James Herbert–The Dark, Sepulchre (well-written pulpy occult horror)

Dennis Etchison–Darkside (the original Berkley paperback, not the revised later editions which I haven’t seen)
 
matt cardin said:
One of my first contacts with Ligotti occurred at a Walmart book rack in the early/mid-1990s. These twenty-something years later, you could almost convince me that I hallucinated the whole thing.
Click to expand...

Same, except I got my copy of SOADD from Borders, which no longer exists.
 
Reply button for each post not taking me anywhere...! Anyway, CC, I too really dug James Herbert's SEPULCHRE. Can't believe I forgot SONG OF KALI, by Dan Simmons, have read it twice. Of course I then tried Carrion Comfort and couldn't get going w/ it. I'll check out that one you mention about Buddhism, that should be "fun." I also thought a couple of Kathe Koja's books were good, SKIN being one. "The Red Tower" is the one story I usually tell people to read of Ligotti's.
 
SwansSoilMe/SwansSaveMe said:
Can't believe I forgot SONG OF KALI, by Dan Simmons, have read it twice.
Click to expand...

YES! I knew there were some big titles I was forgetting. Haven't read anything else by Simmons yet, but I heard The Terror was pretty good, too. You might get more out of the Jeter book than I did, it's easily the best thing of his I've read. Since we were talking about Lansdale, another worth mentioning here is his The Nightrunners.
 
Only copy of that Jeter you recommended first is like $300+ on Amazon. I ordered the Mystery Shorts from 2000, though. Stephen King favorites of mine are THE SHINING, 'SALEM'S LOT, THE STAND. That's for horror. Dead Zone, etc., some good suspense and drama. I don't know why hardly anyone can do the characters like he used to. Salem's Lot is extraordinary because it's the only thing about vampires that actually scared/spooked me besides DRACULA. For a vampire story to not just be exotic but menacing in the modern age -- that's a feat. "The Langoliers" is one that was as good or better than "the Mist" until the damn thing got all figured out when they landed or something. Really ticked me off. I should finish a version of my own.
 
SwansSoilMe/SwansSaveMe said:
Only copy of that Jeter you recommended first is like $300+ on Amazon. I ordered the Mystery Shorts from 2000, though. Stephen King favorites of mine are THE SHINING, 'SALEM'S LOT, THE STAND. That's for horror. Dead Zone, etc., some good suspense and drama. I don't know why hardly anyone can do the characters like he used to. Salem's Lot is extraordinary because it's the only thing about vampires that actually scared/spooked me besides DRACULA. For a vampire story to not just be exotic but menacing in the modern age -- that's a feat. "The Langoliers" is one that was as good or better than "the Mist" until the damn thing got all figured out when they landed or something. Really ticked me off. I should finish a version of my own.
Click to expand...

Jeter????
 
cannibal cop said:
xylokopos said:
cannibal cop said:
.......

Ligotti—SOADD, Grimscribe (both available as mass market PBs in the ‘90s)

........
Click to expand...

Don't be cheeky now, young man.
Click to expand...


Honest to God, man. For a brief period around '93 or so it was possible to walk into any reasonably sized mainstream bookstore and find two compact attractive Ligotti paperbacks sharing shelf space with Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and a misplaced John Grisham. They each went for about 3 dollars (US) if memory serves.

Hell, I can prove it wasn't some weird dream by posting pics of my own prized copies, which are right ... around here ... somewhere ...
Click to expand...

Of course I believe you, Matt as well. I was just very obliquely commenting on applying the term mainstream to anything Ligotti has ever written - regardless of the fact that SOADD and Grimscribe were available in paperback format in small bookstores or supermarkets in the foul year of our lord 1993, etc.

Three much better criteria for what is mainstream, IMHO, are broad appeal outside the circle of specialists and enthusiasts, commercial success, and brand/name recognition independent of further familiarity with the product or its creator.

P.S. Perhaps tangentially related to this, but when was Ligotti first translated into other languages? Perhaps a further argument could be made that the long ascent to capture the flag on Mount Mainstream begins with being translated out of your language.
 
I don't know if these are my favorites, but I utterly enjoyed Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne and Different Seasons and Clive Barker's Books of Blood and The Damnation Game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top