Inspired by the continued appearances of Trebbor/Al Turda's ghost on these boards. I'm sure
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Books
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 07:14 PM)
Inspired by the continued appearances of Trebbor/Al Turda's ghost on these boards. I'm sure
@Sophienoire
has thoughts on some of these or favorites of her own to add. Hopefully some other peeps do as well.
Forerunners to modern horror
Homer:
The Odyssey
, c. 8th century BCE
Euripides:
Hippolytus
, 428 BCE
Beowulf
, c. 975 to 1025 AD
Marie de France: "Bisclavret", 12th century
Dante Alighieri:
Divina Commedia
, c. 1321
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, late 14th century
William Shakespeare:
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
, c.1599
William Shakespeare:
The Tragedy of Macbeth
, 1606
Charles Perrault:
Histoires ou contes du temps passé
, 1697
Horace Walpole:
The Castle of Otranto
, 1764
Daniel Defoe,
A Journal of the Plague Year
, 1772
Marquis de Sade:
Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l'école du libertinage
, 1785
William Beckford:
Vathek
, 1786
Ann Radcliffe:
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, 1794
Matthew Lewis:
The Monk
, 1796
Ann Radcliffe:
The Italian
, 1796
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm:
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
, 1812
Birth of modern horror (19th century)
Mary Shelley:
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
, 1818
John William Polidori: "The Vampyre", 1819
Washington Irving: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", 1820
Charles Maturin:
Melmoth the Wanderer
, 1820
Charles Dickens:
A Christmas Carol
, 1843
Edgar Allan Poe (all of it)
Sheridan Le Fanu:
Carmilla
, 1872
Robert Louis Stevenson:
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
, 1886
Oscar Wilde:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, 1890
Arthur Machen:
The Great God Pan
, 1894
Robert W. Chambers:
The King in Yellow
, 1895
Bram Stoker:
Dracula
, 1897
Henry James:
The Turn of the Screw
, 1898
M. R. James:
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
, 1904
The Weird Tales Era
(These writers were all masters of the short story, so no specific books listed)
H.P. Lovecraft
Robert E. Howard
Clark Ashton Smith
Midcentury horror maestros
Shirley Jackson: "The Lottery", 1948
Richard Matheson:
I Am Legend
, 1954
Ray Bradbury:
The October Country
, 1955
Shirley Jackson:
The Sundial
, 1958
Robert Bloch:
Psycho
, 1959
Shirley Jackson:
The Haunting of Hill House
, 1959
Ray Bradbury:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
, 1962
Shirley Jackson:
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
, 1962
Ira Levin:
Rosemary's Baby
, 1967
Thomas Tryon:
The Other
, 1971
William Peter Blatty:
The Exorcist
, 1971
The Golden Age
Stephen King:
Carrie
, 1974
Peter Straub:
Julia
, 1975
Stephen King:
'Salem's Lot
, 1975
Anne Rice:
Interview with the Vampire
, 1976
Peter Straub:
If You Could See Me Now
, 1977
Stephen King:
The Shining
, 1977
Stephen King:
The Stand
, 1978
Stephen King:
Night Shift
, 1978
Peter Straub:
Ghost Story
, 1979
Stephen King:
The Dead Zone
, 1979
Michael McDowell:
The Elementals
, 1981
Thomas Harris:
Red Dragon
, 1981
Stephen King:
Cujo
, 1981
Peter Straub:
Floating Dragon
, 1983
Stephen King:
Pet Sematary
, 1983
T. E. D. Klein:
The Ceremonies
, 1984
Stephen King
and
Peter Straub:
The Talisman
, 1984
Clive Barker:
Books of Blood
, 1984-1985
Anne Rice:
The Vampire Lestat
, 1985
Clive Barker:
The Damnation Game
, 1985
Thomas Ligotti:
Songs of a Dead Dreamer
, 1986
Clive Barker: "The Hellbound Heart", 1986
Stephen King:
It
, 1986
Robert R. McCammon:
Swan Song
, 1987
Stephen King:
Misery
, 1987
Thomas Harris:
The Silence of the Lambs
, 1988
Peter Straub:
Koko
, 1988
R. L. Stine:
Fear Street
, 1989-
Dan Simmons:
Summer of Night
, 1991
Thomas Ligotti:
Grimscribe: His Lives and Work
, 1991
Stephen King:
Needful Things
, 1991
R. L. Stine:
Goosebumps
, 1992-1997
Modern masters
Laird Barron:
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
, 2007
Mariana Enríquez:
Los peligros de fumar en la cama
, 2009
Laird Barron:
Occultation and Other Stories
, 2010
Christopher Buehlman:
Between Two Fires
, 2012
Laird Barron:
The Croning
, 2012
Stephen King:
Revival
, 2014
Nick Cutter:
The Troop
, 2014
Stephen Graham Jones:
Mongrels
, 2016
Mariana Enríquez:
Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego
, 2016
Laird Barron:
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All
, 2018
Stephen King:
The Outsider
, 2018
Mariana Enríquz:
Nuestra parte de noche
, 2019
Rachel Harrison:
The Return
, 2020
Stephen Graham Jones:
The Only Good Indians
, 2020
Ronald Malfi:
Come with Me
, 2021
Stephen Graham Jones: Indian Lake Trilogy, 2021-2024
Gabino Iglesias:
The Devil Takes You Home
, 2022
Clay McLeod Chapman:
Ghost Eaters
, 2022
CJ Leede:
Maeve Fly
, 2023
Tiffany McDaniel:
On the Savage Side
, 2023
Daniel Kraus:
Whalefall
, 2023
Tananarive Due:
The Reformatory
, 2023
CJ Leede:
American Rapture
, 2024
Mariana Enríquez:
Un lugar soleado para gente sombría
, 2024
Stephen Graham Jones:
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
, 2025
Draft Barron Trump -
Sophienoire — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 07:20 PM)
great thread, and i skimmed over the list, but i will have to dig deeper into that some other time, maybe tomorrow. i really need to get off the internet now. LMAO love the list tho!!
️
the sound of your racing heart -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 07:27 PM)
Same. I was already through the 19th century before I realized I haven't done **** all day lmao That's why the
Weird Tales
era is so skimpy. I'll try to elaborate on that more tomorrow as well. Short version is that Lovecraft was extreme problematic, couldn't write dialogue to save his life and yet was super influential within the genre.
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 10:58 PM)
Yeah, Lovecraftian horror is great. Laird Barron, who I mentioned a few times in the list is a modern master of the form and Stephen King's
Revival
is definitely Lovecraftian as well. I also forgot Victor LaValle's novella
The Ballad of Black Tom
. It's a retelling of Lovecraft's very racist "The Horror at Red Rock" and it's excellent.
(Also, nobody should view this list as a comprehensive guide to any of the authors mentioned. My favorite King book isn't even on it… Because it's not horror
)
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 11:08 PM)
Stephen King is the primary reason why anyone listed after him has a career and those listed immediately before him are still in print. Oh, and the reason I began reading horror at age 12. Discussing horror literature without him is like discussing the history of the NBA without Michael Jordan. There were a number of his lesser efforts which didn't make the cut.
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LorqVonRay1999 — 4 months ago(November 10, 2025 12:08 AM)
I disagree with that.
King has written several of the best horror novels I've read. Though he hasn't written anything I've liked since the publication of It.
If I made a list of the top twenty horror novels I would certainly include Carrie, 'Salem's Lot and The Shining and maybe even Christine. -
merry christmas — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 11:22 PM)
I read The Hellbound Heart recently. I did not like it. I thought it was poorly written. I like the idea of the Cenobites but they weren't a big part of the story. The rest of the characters were bores.
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sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 03, 2025 11:43 PM)
Honestly, I haven't read Barker since I was a teenager and included that one because it's sort of iconic. It's entirely possible that a 14-year-old isn't the best judge of literature and that it's worse than I remember. (By the same token, R. L. Stine was included purely for nostalgia, although he was quite likely an early influence on some of the writers in the final section.)
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sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 12:17 AM)
Check out
So Thirsty
by Rachel Harrison, who I included another book from on the list. Wonderful addiction metaphor. Her books exist in this sort of weird middle-ground between horror and rom-com, which was jarring the first time I read her. But she's a good enough writer to somehow pull it off.
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 12:11 AM)
Oh yes! The White People. How did I forget that one? I actually first read it and a section from
The King in Yellow
in the same anthology (which prompted me to seek out the entire book):
The full table of contents includes:
Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations"
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds"
Arthur Machen, "The White People"
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
It's really not a bad anthology at all for someone who wants to dip their toes into this era of horror storytelling. (Bierce is really excellent as well.)
Draft Barron Trump -
cryptoflovecraft — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 12:02 AM)
Thomas Tryon: The Other, 1971
Never read that one (I have seen the film) but I have read Tryon's Harvest Home, an excellent Gothic horror novel that was made into a miniseries starring Bette Davis and Rosanna Arquette. -
Damien Thorn 666 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 03:16 AM)
If you're diving into horror, skip the surface-level shriek-fests and go for the stuff that lingers like guilt in a priest's confessional. The Fisherman by John Langan is a must — not just for the creeping dread, but for the way it weaves grief into Lovecraftian mythology like some eldritch therapy session.
For something more cerebral (and I mean that both metaphorically and viscerally), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski will scramble your neurons and make you question whether the hallway behind you just got… longer. It's not for the faint of brain — which, ironically, rules out some folks here who treat Goosebumps like graduate literature.
Toss in some Laird Barron if you like your horror tangled in cosmic nihilism and tough-guy noir — perfect for those who think brooding aloud makes them deep. (It doesn’t, buddy. It just makes you sound like a haunted toolbox.)
Also, if you want horror that bites and winks, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones skewers slasher tropes with both affection and a steak knife.
Anyway, read widely. Horror isn’t just about what goes bump in the night — sometimes, it’s the guy in the thread who bumps his keyboard trying to sound profound and ends up reviewing his own shadow.
“There are no atheists in foxholes, eh?”-Keith Jennings from the Omen. -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 03:24 AM)
Laird Barron and Stephen Graham Jones
Along with Mariana Enríquez, they comprise my holy trinity of modern horror writers. Jones is, at heart, a Beat writer who watched too many scary movies as a kid (and is also, along with Tommy Orange, one of America's preeminent indigenous storytellers). Barron is the more enlightened heir to Lovecraft. And Enríquez uses the guise of horror fiction to examine the brutal realities of recent Argentinean history.
I've heard many great things about Langan and Danielewski, but have not yet read them.
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