Give 200 Best Horror Books . . . sort of
by The Undead Rat on December 4, 2008
Lets take a break for a moment and look a some useful resources. Your horror writer probably already has the basic resources such as a dictionary, thesaurus and Elements of Style. However, lets look at a pair of useful books that are often over looked:
Horror: The 100 Best Books |
Horror: The 100 Best Books
Author: Jones, Stephen and Newman, Kim
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Nonfiction
Page Count: 256pp.
Pub. Date: May 1, 1998
Publisher: Carroll and Graf
Original Pub: December 1988 (Hardcover — Carroll and Graf)
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From the Editors of Amazon.com:
First published in 1988, Horror: The 100 Best Books has remained the only book of its kind: a solid (and entertaining) annotated reading list spanning the range of horror fiction from the 16th to the 20th century. The device of asking 100 horror, fantasy,and science fiction writers to write about their favorite horror books might seem at first to capture an idiosyncratic sample, but through diplomacy and diligence, editors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman succeeded in obtaining short essays on most (if not all) of the well-known classics, as well as many more lesser-knowns that are well worth discovering. Readers who follow up on these recommendations will find tips about books by writers mostly known for other genres — such as Iain Banks, Robert Holdstock, Lisa Tuttle, and David Morrell.
Also valuable are write-ups on literary works not always acknowledged as horror, such as Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man, Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, and John Gardner’s Grendel. And the write-ups offer a fascinating peek into the minds of the contributors, who include just about all the top horror writers of the’60s-’80s. This 10th anniversary edition makes no changes in the list of 100 books, but updates the entries and includes a 9-page reading list of titles from 458 B.C. to 1997.
–Fiona Webster
Table of Contents:
- Clive Barker on The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
- John Blackburn on The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Diana Wynne Jones on The White Devil by John Webster
- Scott Bradfield on Caleb Williams by William Godwin
- Les Daniels on The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
- JohnSladek on The Best Tales of Hoffmann by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
- David Pirie on Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- Jane Yolen on Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Peter Tremayne on Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
- Garry Kilworth on The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
- John M. Ford on Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
- Edgar Allan Poe on Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Thomas Tessier on The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
- Thomas M. Disch on The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue
- Michael McDowell on The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
- M. R. James on Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu
- Jack Williamson on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Tim Stout on She by H. Rider Haggard
- H. P. Lovecraft on The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
- Gene Wolfe on The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
- Colin Wilson on Dracula by Bram Stoker
- R. Chetwynd-Hayes on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
- Douglas E. Winter on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Richard Dalby on The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
- Geoff Ryman on Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James
- T.E.D. Klein on The House of Souls by Arthur Machen
- Hilaire Belloc on John Silence by Algernon Blackwood
- David Langford on The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
- Terry Pratchett on The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
- Milton Subotsky on The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
- Mike Ashley on Widdershins by Oliver Onions
- Basil Copper on The Horror Horn by E. F. Benson
- George Hay on A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
- Steve Rasnic Tem on The Trial by Franz Kafka
- Robert E. Howard on Something About Eve by James Branch Cabell
- Karl Edward Wagner on Medusa by E. H. Visiak
- Marvin Kaye on The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
- Jessica Amanda Salmonson on The Last Bouquet by Marjorie Bowen
- Robert Bloch on The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck by Alexander Laing
- Hugh Lamb on A Second Century of Creepy Stories edited by Hugh Walpole
- Lionel Fanthorpe on The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis
- Dennis Etchison on Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
- Donald A. Wollheim on The Outsider and Others by H. P. Lovecraft
- Harlan Ellison on Out of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith
- Gerald W. Page on Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
- Maxim Jakubowski on Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Cornell Woolrich
- Graham Masterton on The Lurker at the Threshold by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
- Forrest J. Ackerman on Deliver Me from Eva by Paul Bailey
- David G. Hartwell on And the Darkness Falls edited by Boris Karloff
- Peter Haining on The Sleeping and the Dead edited by August Derleth
- Robert R. McCammon on Track of the Cat by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
- Suzy McKee Charnas on The Sound of His Horn by Sarban
- Joe Haldeman on Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Richard Christian Matheson on I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
- Joe R. Lansdale on The October Country by Ray Bradbury
- Stephen Gallagher on Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan
- Hugh B. Cave on Psycho by Robert Bloch
- Stephen Laws on Quatermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale
- Michel Parry on Cry Horror! by H. P. Lovecraft
- Lisa Tuttle on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
- Tad Williams on The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
- Jack Dann on The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
- Craig Shaw Gardner on The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard
- Colin Greenland on Sub Rosa by Robert Aickman
- Brian Aldiss on The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
- Neil Gaiman on The Complete Werewolf by Anthony Boucher
- Dan Simmons on Grendel by John Gardner
- F. Paul Wilson on The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
- John Skipp on The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
- Frances Garfield on Worse Things Waiting by Manly Wade Wellman
- Stephen King on Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
- Al Sarrantonio on Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
- Craig Spector on Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
- Brian Lumley on Murgunstrumm and Others by Hugh B. Cave
- Charles L. Grant on Sweetheart, Sweetheart by Bernard Taylor
- David J. Schow on All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris
- Peter Straub on The Shining by Stephen King
- William F. Nolan on Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg
- Charles De Lint on The Wolfen by Whitley Streiber
- Shaun Hutson on The Totem by David Morrell
- Peter Nicholls on Ghost Story by Peter Straub
- Christopher Evans on The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll
- David Garnett on The Cellar by Richard Laymon
- Chet Williamson on Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
- J. N. Williamson on The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
- Samantha Lee on The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison
- Ramsey Campbell on In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner
- John Clute on The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
- Brian Stableford on The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Erwin
- Malcolm Edwards on The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
- Thomas F. Monteleone on The Ceremonies by T. E. D. Klein
- Michael Moorcock on Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
- Ian Watson on Who Made Stevie Crye? by Michael Bishop
- Edward Bryant on Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
- Adrian Cole on The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
- R. S. Hadji on Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
- Robert Holdstock on A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle
- Guy N. Smith on The Pet by Charles L. Grant
- Eddy C. Bertin on Swan Song by Robert McCammon
- Jack Sullivan on Dark Feasts by Ramsey Campbell
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A few years shy of twenty years later, Jones and Newman joined forces again for a second batch of 100 horror books:
Horror: Another 100 Best Books |
Horror: Another 100 Best Books
Author: Jones, Stephen and Newman, Kim
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Nonfiction
Page Count: 272pp.
Pub. Date: September 20, 2005
Publisher: Running Press
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From the Editors of Amazon.com:
Horror: Another 100 Best Books features one hundred of the top names in the horror field discussing one hundred of the most spine-chilling novels ever written. Each entry includes a synopsis of the work as well as publication history, biographical information about the author of each title, and recommended reading and biographical notes on the contributor.
Author Ramsey Campbell also offers a new foreword to the book describing the evolution of horror over the past two decades — from the way it’s written by a crop of new and exciting writers to the way it’s received by a new market of readers. Horror: Another 100 Best Books will be the definitive guide to the tremendous library of horror fiction available today — a reference that no fan can live without.
Table of Contents:
- Robert Silverberg on The Revenger’s Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur
- Chelsea Quinn Tarbro on Pikovaia Dama/The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr Pushkin
- Elizabeth Hand on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Doug Bradley on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Jay Lake on Rekopiz Znaleziony w Saragossie/The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan, Count Potocki
- K. W. Jeter on New Grub Street by George Gissing
- David J. Skal on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Les Edwards on The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
- Tony Richards on The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Rick Hautala on The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” by William Hope Hodgson
- Jean-Marc Lafficier and Randy Lafficier on Le fantome de l’Opera/The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux
- Tim Lucas on Fantomas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain
- Christopher Wicking on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft
- Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden on They Return at Evening by H. R. Wakefield
- Sydney J. Bounds on Creep, Shadow! by A. Merritt
- Chaz Brenchley on The Trail of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
- Stephen Volk on The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
- Gahan Wilson on The Haunted Omnibus by Alexander Laing
- Robert Weinberg on The Edge of Running Water by William Sloane
- T. M. Wright on L’Etranger/The Stranger by Albert Camus
- David A. Sutton on Sleep No More: Twenty Masterpieces of Horror for the Connoisseur ed. by August Derleth
- Storm Constantine on Lost Worlds by Clark Ashton Smith
- Stefan Dziemianowicz on Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales by Henry S. Whitehead
- Gwyneth Jones on Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural ed. by Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser
- Joel Lane on The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch
- Christopher Fowler on Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
- Gary Gianni on Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
- Randy Broecker on Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
- Tanith Lee on Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
- Lucius Shepard on Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell
- David Bischoff on House of Flesh by Bruno Fischer
- Anne Billson on Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier
- Nancy A. Collins on The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
- Laurence Staig on The Third Ghost Book by Lady Cynthia Asquith
- Andy Duncan on The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
- John Gordon on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- Norman Partridge on The Hunger and Other Stories by Charles Beaumont
- Robert Irwin on The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
- Mark Morris on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
- Howard Waldrop on A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn
- Ed Gorman on A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
- Muriel Gray on The Weirdstone of Brinsingamen by Alan Garner
- Terry Dowling on Tales of Terror by Charles Higham
- Peter Atkins on Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
- Jack Womack on We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- Darrell Schweitzer on The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell
- Peter Crowther on Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Ian MacLeod on The Collector by John Fowles
- Glen Hirshberg on Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman
- Simon Clark on A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher
- Nancy Holder on Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
- Ellen Datlow on The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural selected by Editors of Playboy
- Terry Lamsley on Pages From Cold Point by Paul Bowles
- John Farris on Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
- Stephen Baxter on The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
- Elizabeth Massie on Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
- P. N. Elrod on The Night Stalker by Jeff Rice
- Michael Swanwick on Blood Sport by Robert F. Jones
- Nicholas Royale on Nightshade by Derek Marlowe
- Roz Kaveney on Peace by Gene Wolfe
- David Drake on The Year of the Sex Olympics: Three TV Plays by Nigel Kneale
- Marc Laidlaw on Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
- Paul McAuley on The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
- Jo Fletcher on Darkness Weaves with Many Shades by Karl Edward Wagner
- Sir Christopher Frayling on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
- Thomas Ligotti on Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
- D. F. Lewis on The collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen
- Christopher Golden on Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror ed. by Kirby McCauley
- John Burke on Tales From the Nightside by Charles L. Grant
- Yvonne Navarro on They Thirst by Robert R. McCammon
- Poppy Z. Brite on The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
- David Stuart Davies on The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
- Michael Marshall Smith on Pet Sematary by Stephen King
- Anthony Timpone on Clive Barker’s Books of Blood Volumes One, Two and Three by Clive Barker
- Nancy Kilpatrick on Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
- Bill Sheehan on Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier
- Kelly Link on Strange Toys by Patricia Geary
- Allen Koszowski on The Dark Descent ed. by David G. Hartwell
- Graham Joyce on Misery by Stephen King
- Frank M. Robinson on The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- Mark Chadbourn on Prime Evil ed. by Douglas E. Winter
- Jay Russell on By Bizarre Hands: Stories by Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale
- Peter H. Cannon on The Grotesque by Patrick McGrath
- David Morrell on Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
- Stephen R. Bissette on From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
- David McGillivray on American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
- Brian Hodge on Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
- China Mieville on The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison
- Adam Simon on Flicker by Theodore Roszak
- Paul Di Filippo on X, Y by Michael Blumlein
- Caitlin R. Kiernan on Skin by Kathe Koja
- Tananarive Due on Throat Sprockets: A Novel of Erotic Obsession by Tim Lucas
- Simon R. Green on The Off Season: A Victorian Sequel by Jack Cady
- S. T. Joshi on The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti
- Roberta Lannes on A sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
- Michael Shea on Reprisal by Mitchell Smith
- John Pelan on A Haunting Beauty by Sir Charles Birkin
- Jeff VanderMeer on House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
- Richard A. Lupoff on Feesters in the Lake and Other Stories by Bob Leman
- Tm Lebbon on More Tomorrow and Other Stories by Michael Marshall Smith
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Both books have short 1-2 page essays on a book and why the book was worth reading. Both books have additional horror novel reading lists at the back which gives you more titles to look at. Both books have insightful introductions which should be read by the beginning writer/reader of horror.
Each of these books is like having 100 friends recommending a horror book (even books which aren’t typically considered horror such as Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski) and telling you why you should read them — what to watch for when you do read them.
As a readers’ advisor, I frequently run across the adage that to get a basic understanding of a genre, you need to read at least 100 books in that genre. Either of these books will give you a beginning introduction to horror (especially if you go and read the books they write about). Together they’ll give you a good solid foundation from which to launch a writing or reading or readers’ advisory career.
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Lovecraft’s review of Chambers’ King in Yellow is a classic. The Greatest Horror Writer Ever (well, title is contested…) says someone else’s work is damn fine horror. Should make everyone sit up and pay attention!