Horror Fiction Books: Halloween Reading All Year Long
"...horror can deal with the mundane or the supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal. It doesn't have to be full of ghosts, ghouls, and things to go bump in the night. Its only true requirement is that it elicit an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread."
--Horror Writers Association
Horror Fiction Books don't have to spew blood and body parts to scare a reader. Sometimes the most pervasive fear is the kind that creeps up on you late at night long after you've put that book down.
While its true that sometimes you just want a good zombie romp, a steady diet of such fare could, in time, put you off horror forever. For the genre to survive, all forms of horror fiction books must be embraced -- including literate horror fiction.
The books listed below are just some of the literate horror novels that are pointing in some of the directions horror can go. They're in alphabetical order by title and in groups of five due to the limitations of the module.
I've included a brief summary of the book but feel free to click on the book title or cover and check out the reviews on Amazon for further information.
My name is Greg Fisher also known as "The Undead Rat". I manage With Intent to Commit Horror, a website dedicated to bring you horror fiction books and now I am pleased to present a wonderful collection of literate horror novels for your reading amazement and pleasure.
Let's Play a Game with the Horror Fiction Books
Can you find . . .
Why are they on this list? You might ask. Think about the book and the kind of feelings it seeks to evoke. If the work evokes a sense of horror in the reader, then it is most definitely a horror novel -- among other things.
Sometimes the sense of horror is sublime as in The Lovely Bones and sometimes its quite evident as in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Sometimes the horror is mundane as in The Alienist, as fantastic as in American Gods or supernatural as in A Prayer for the Dying.
And if that isn't proof enough, then let me state that all but five of these horror fiction books were nominated for one or both of the prestigious horror fiction awards: The Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. A few books such as The Lovely Bones won.
So, you might want to ask yourself, which five titles weren't so nominated? Take a look and decide for yourself. I have a list of the five that were never nominated at the end of this lens.
See how many you get right.
Horror Fiction Books Book List pt. 1
A Book List of Literate Horror Novels
20th Century Ghosts
A collection of short stories and novellas showcasing the remarkable talents of Joe Hill -- Stories about the boy who was a balloon, the editor who goes the extra mile for the perfect story, the kidnapped boy locked in a basement with a broken phone. . . that suddenly begins to ring, the ghost who haunts a movie theater and the gripping story of a brother whose cardboard fortress is not . . . quite . . . right
Amazon Price: $11.92 (as of 02/10/2010) 
The Alienist: A Novel
1896 New York, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, an alienist, brings together a group of people to track down a killer in an age that had never heard of the term serial killer or forensic science.
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 02/10/2010)
American Gods: A Novel
Something is killing the gods and Wednesday, who is in truth Woton, hires an man who no longer has anything to live for, Shadow, to help him round up the remaining gods in an effort to prepare for war -- a godswar against the new gods of America.
Amazon Price: $10.19 (as of 02/10/2010)
Boy's Life
From the moment Cory's father tries to help the driver whose car ran into the lake only to find the man already dead, the eleven-year-old discovers that there are forces of good and evil at work in Zephyr, Alabama and they are taking notice of him.
Amazon Price: $12.48 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Club Dumas
Book hunter Lucas Corso is caught between two tasks -- authenticating a manuscript which may be a chapter of The Three Musketeers in Alexandre Dumas' own hand and authenticating The Book of the Nine Doors to the Kingdom of Darkness which may be the key to open the gates to Hell.
Amazon Price: $10.76 (as of 02/10/2010)
"Horror must elicit an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread."
Horror Fiction Books Book List pt. 2
A Book List of Literate Horror Novels
Coraline Movie Tie-in Edition
When young Coraline goes exploring her new home, she discovers a door that leads her to her "other" mother and a world so like her own but better . . . too much better . . .
Amazon Price: $6.99 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Dante Club: A Novel
As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell translate the cantos in Dante's Inferno, a killing spree ignites and the victims are dispatched in ways very reminscent of the levels of Hell in Dante's work.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Good House: A Novel
Two years ago Angela Toussaint's son Corey died in the Good House, Angela's Grandmother's house. Now she's back and there are questions she needs answers to . . . including who or what killed her son?
Amazon Price: $11.97 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
Eleanor is one of four people who set up residence in Hill House seeking scientific evidence of a haunting. What she finds is that the house wants her.
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Historian
Three generations of historians receive a book -- a blank book save for a dragon woodcut and the word "Drakulya" -- which seems to propel them onto a hazardous quest for the legendary Vlad Tepes.
Amazon Price: $10.87 (as of 02/10/2010)
"I delight in what I fear
--Shirley Jackson"
Horror Fiction Books Book List pt. 3
A Book List of Literate Horror Novels
House of Leaves
A haunted house tale like no other -- with a very meta fictional quality about it.
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 02/10/2010)
Kindred
Starting on her birthday, Dana, a modern African-American woman is transported back to the Antebellum South where she saves Rufus, the son of a slave owner before returning to her own time. Each time she goes, her time in the past gets longer and more dangerous.
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 02/10/2010)
Lisey's Story: A Novel
Two years after Scott Landon's death, Lisey is jolted back into life when clues to Scott's horrific childhood and the mysterious source of his creativity, Boo'ya Moon, begin to appear. Much as she desperately does not want to, she's forced to take a harrowing journey that will uncover not only her husband's secrets, but hers as well.
Amazon Price: $11.21 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition
14-year-old Susie is murdered and spends the first few decades in Heaven coming to terms with her death and watching over her family and friends.
Amazon Price: $9.93 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Man on the Ceiling (Discoveries)
Melanie knows the man on the ceiling and now Steve knows him too -- This is their story told in vignettes about the horrors that can and do visit ordinary families.
Amazon Price: (as of 02/10/2010)
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear...
--H. P. Lovecraft"
Horror Fiction Books Book List pt. 4
A Book List of Literate Horror Novels
The Night Country: A Novel
A year ago Halloween night a car ran into a tree killing three teenagers outright, damaging the brain of a fouth and the soul of a fifth. Now the first cop on the scene of the accident, Brooks, must try to hold his life together just long enough to make sure this Halloween claims no more victims.
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 02/10/2010)
A Prayer for the Dying: A Novel
Civil War vet Jacob Hansen tries to protect his family from the outbreak of the plague in Friendship Wisconsin while tending to the needs of the townsfolk as constable, minister and finally undertaker.
Amazon Price: $11.90 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Shadow of the Wind
1945 Barcelona, Spain -- 11 year old Daniel is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books where he picks out and falls in love with the book The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. What he doesn't realize is that owning the book will make him the target of a madman bent on destroying all of Julian Carax' books and a sociopath bent on killing anyone connected to Carax.
Amazon Price: $10.40 (as of 02/10/2010)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
James Nightshade and William Halloway must come to grips with the seductive evil that has arrived at their home town -- evil in the guise of a dark carnival.
Amazon Price: $13.67 (as of 02/10/2010)
The Terror: A Novel
Seeking the Northwest Passage leads to men of the HMS Terror to an ice-locked death unless the crew abandon ship and follow Captain Crozier . . . but something hideous and violent is stalking them in this gothic historical novel.
Amazon Price: $7.99 (as of 02/10/2010)
"...why I'm so sympathetic to the monsters...Because I am one.
--Laurell K. Hamilton"
Horror Fiction Books Book List pt. 5
A Book List of Literate Horror Novels
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Years ago the Blackwood family was poisoned leaving only Constance and Merricat and crippled Uncle Julian alive. Their precariously existence becomes threatened when fortune hunting cousin Charles arrives for a visit.
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 02/10/2010)
For More Horror Fiction Books
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- bdkz bdkz Sep 20, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
- Congratulations! You've been SquidBoo Blasted. Happy Halloween!
Answers:
Want to know which ones they are? Take a look below:
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
by Undeadrat
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