Horror Fiction Reader

Specializing in the horror genre of literary fiction.

[toomuchhorrorfiction]

Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison

Dell Books; Sep 1976

The one and only masterpiece.

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Sorry I have not been updating much.

I found this tumblr to be a good source of horror fiction though if you want to fill your dash with more covers.

toomuchhorrorfiction.tumblr.com

[neil-gaiman]

“What kind of story would you like me to tell you?”

I was on the phone on Friday afternoon, in the car on the way to the airport, with the folk from Audible.com. They had the idea of doing something really, really fun for Hallowe’en, as an All Hallows Read celebration, something from Audible...

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

You can log in with your amazon account so you dont have to create a new account.

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Fog (1975)

by James Herbert

[not at all related to the Carpenter film]

John Holman is a worker for the Department of the Environment investigating a Ministry of Defencebase in a small rural village. An unexpectedearthquake swallows his car releasing a fog that had been trapped underground for many years. An insane Holman is pulled up from the crack, a product of the deadly fog.

Soon the fog shifts and travels as though it has a mind of its own, turning those unfortunate enough to come across it into homicidal/suicidal maniacs who kill without remorse, and often worse. Even respectable figures such as teachers and priests engage in crimes such as minor public urination to as drastic as paedophilia.

Soon a bigger problem is discovered - the fog is multiplying in size and nothing seems to be able to stop it. - from wikipedia

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Clive Barker or Grover, who did it better?

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Move Under Ground (2006)

by Nick Mamatas

The year is nineteen-sixty-something, and after endless millennia of watery sleep, the stars are finally right. Old R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin' junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he'll have an ending for his book? -from Amazon.com

*I did not care for this book until around page 80 (of 160) and even then I was still a little cold on it. It attempts to imitate the beat writing style, which I do not care for in the first place, so if Kerouac meets Cthulhu sounds more like your cup of tea, the book is free from the author's page.

Download pdf from author for free at moveunderground.org

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Supernatural Noir (2011)

by Various

[A] masterful marriage of the darkness without and the darkness within. Supernatural Noir is an anthology of original tales of the dark fantastic from twenty modern masters of suspense, including Brian Evenson, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Gregory Frost, Jeffrey Ford, and many more. - from the Darkhorse website

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My children's recommendation for All Hallow's Read.

Do you have a kids/YA recommendation for All Hallow's Read?

[neil-gaiman]

Is it too early to start spreading this around? I think not. It’s feeling autumnal…

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Shadows Over Baker Street (2005)

by Various

Here's a real treat for fans of Sherlock Holmes, H. P. Lovecraft, and everyone in between: 20 original stories by writers of horror and fantasy. Neil Gaiman is here, along with Barbara Hambly, Richard Lupoff, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Brite, and many more. The premise is engaging: What if the world of Holmes, the world's most logical and rational detective, intersected with the world of Lovecraft, where logic and rationality have little meaning? These are stories about strange beasts, men cursed to death, and the walking un-dead. Most feature a powerful narrative voice. One stars Irene Adler and takes place nearly a decade before the events recounted in the classic Conan Doyle story, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Another is narrated by H. G. Wells. Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother, appears in one tale; still another has Dr. Watson becoming Holmes' client. The stories, set between 1881 and 1915, are uniformly excellent, and the book, authorized by the Doyle estate, is a welcome addition to the Holmes canon. David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Stories of Castle Rock by Stephen King

The Dead Zone (1979)

Cujo (1981)

"The Body" (1982) (novella from Different Seasons)

"Uncle Otto's Truck" (1983) (short story which appears in Skeleton Crew)

The Dark Half (1989)

"The Sun Dog" (1990) (novella from Four Past Midnight)

Needful Things (1991)

"It Grows on You" (1973, revised 1993) (short story which appears in Nightmares & Dreamscapes)

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Pilo Family Circus (2006)

by Will Elliott

It follows the story of Jamie who after a random incident of nearly hitting a clown with his car finds himself being stalked by three sadistic clowns. - from wikipedia desciption

“You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?” Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place—peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous—where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself. When he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead! Echoes of Lovecraft, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and early Stephen King resound through the pages of this magical, gleefully macabre work nominated as Best Novel by the International Horror Guild. - from Amazon.com description

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Great God Pan (1890)

by Arthur Machen

Mary, a young woman in Wales, has her mind destroyed by Dr Raymond's attempt to enable her to see the god of nature, Pan. Years later the beautiful but sinister-looking Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing many young men and causing some of them to commit suicide. - from wikipedia

The link above is to project Gutenberg, where you may download the novella freely, in several device formats. It is also available directly from Amazon in Kindle format at no cost.

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Art Trilogy by Clive Barker

The Great and Secret Show (1989)

Everville (1994)

Unannounced (release data unknown)

The Art Trilogy is a planned trilogy of novels by Clive Barker, of which only the first two have been published. Book one is The Great and Secret Show, which tells the tale of two superhumans, Fletcher and The Jaffe, and their battles. The second book, Everville, goes deeper into the mythology of the cosm (essentially, Earth) and the metacosm (another plane of existence containing the dream sea Quiddity).

Barker has spoken of the third book frequently over the years, but he has not yet written it and there is no schedule for its release - from wikipedia.

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

Teatro Grottesco

by Thomas Ligotti

This collection features tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives. These are selected examples of the forbidding array of persons and places that compose the mesmerizing fiction of Thomas Ligotti. - from Amazon.com description

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Historian (2005)

by Elizabeth Kostova

If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.

Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler (from Amazon.com)

Nominated in 2005 for the International Horror Guild Award for best Novel.

[horrorfictionreader-blog]

The Blood of the Lamb (1992)

by Thomas F. Monteleone

The previous Pope died in his arms, blessing him with his last breath. He can perform miracles. His mother was a virgin. His DNA came from the Shroud of Turin. Peter Carenza is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy and a secret, Vatican-sponsored experiment. But is he the Second Coming, or something far, far worse?

Believers the world over hail Carenza as the new Pope and rejoice as he creates a new Church for the new Millennium. Few people know the truth -- that mixing science with the works of God has created not a Savior but the Anti-Christ.

Now the latest -- and last -- Pope scours the world for the human guardians of the Biblical seven seals, which must be destroyed before the final cataclysm can begin. Opposing him are a lone Archbishop, the female American journalist who chronicled Carenza's rise to power, and Peter's mother, a nun who truly hears the Word of the Lord.

- from Amazon.com

Won Bramstoker Award 1992