Monday, October 31, 2016

Horror Novel Month --- Monster Novels



Whether it be a dead monster....


An invented monster....


A scientifically created monster....


A clown behaving like a monster....


Or a novel about a slightly off-kilter person stalking an infamous murderer...


All of these stories are sure to make you shiver.  Happy Halloween!





Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Horror Novel Month: Hell House by Richard Matheson



This novel came up when I Googled "horror novels best." Have any of you read it?


Can any soul survive?

Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, Belasco House has witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted - four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion...

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Tor trade paperback ed edition (October 13, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312868855
ISBN-13: 978-0312868857
Purchase here

Monday, October 17, 2016

Horror Novel Month: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson



This website believes The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is a novel that is scarier than most horror movies. It was their number 3 pick. 


First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Series: Penguin Classics
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics; 1 edition (November 28, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143039989
ISBN-13: 978-0143039983

Monday, October 10, 2016

Horror Novel Month: The Dead by Mark E. Rogers



Listed as an underrated horror novel on this list. For the record, that cover scares me.


A terrible judge comes like a thief in the night. While the world sleeps, everything changes. In the diseased light of a festering sun, planes drop from the sky, machines sputter and stop, and the graves of the shrieking damned burst open. Angels from hell clothe themselves in the flesh of corpses to form an unholy army. Dreaming of his father hammering his way out of a coffin, Gary Holland is jolted awake by the phone to learn that his father is dead. Bickering over infidelity and religion, the family gathers for the funeral... and confronts hell on earth at the Jersey Shore. Hounded from cellar to sewer, the staggering, bloodied survivors of the Holland clan are pushed remorselessly to choose between black despair and hopeless faith.

Paperback: 332 pages
Publisher: Permuted Press (November 14, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 193486126X
ISBN-13: 978-1934861264
Purchase here

Monday, October 3, 2016

Horror Novel Month: End of Watch by Stephen King



Now that it's October, I thought it would be neat to focus on some horror novels. I've never done that here before. We'll see how it goes.



Brady Hartsfield, perpetrator of the Mercedes Massacre, where eight people were killed and many more were badly injured, has been in the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic for five years, in a vegetative state. According to his doctors, anything approaching a complete recovery is unlikely. But behind the drool and stare, Brady is awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room.

Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney, who delivered the blow to Hartsfield's head that put him on the brain injury ward. Brady also remembers that. When Bill and Holly are called to a murder-suicide with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put not only their lives at risk, but those of Hodges’s friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Because Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Bill Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city.

In End of Watch, Stephen King brings the Hodges trilogy to a sublimely terrifying conclusion, combining the detective fiction of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers with the supernatural suspense that has been his trademark. The result is an unnerving look at human vulnerability and up-all-night entertainment.

Series: The Bill Hodges Trilogy
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Scribner; Book Club Edition edition (June 7, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1501129740
ISBN-13: 978-1501129742