by Wallace, Amy
9. The Day the Call Came, by Thomas Hinde (1964)
A black comedy of paranoia narrated by the man who’s waiting for the call. Here and in “The Investigator” (in his collection of two novellas Games of Chance) Hinde conveys how the deranged can pass as sane, not only to themselves.
10. A Kiss before Dying, by Ira Levin (1954)
Levin is best known in the field for Rosemary’s Baby, a tour de force of a horror novel, told very largely through dialogue. A Kiss before Dying is more compulsive still—a study of a sociopath driven by ambition to kill and kill again. The serial killer is today’s fashionable monster, with authors outdoing one another in attempts to elaborate the monstrousness (and too often the unlikeliness). Not the least of Levin’s achievements is to show a murderer as murderers tend to be—inadequate and self-obsessed, with an exaggerated sense of their own worth and a compulsion to prove it—and still make the tale absolutely compelling. It was decently filmed by Gerd Oswald, but the remake begins with a miscalculation as basic as starting Psycho with the first appearance of Mrs. Bates. Seek out the book, which is a classic of edgy suspense.
11. The Hole in the Wall, by Arthur Morrison (1902)
My friend, the poet Richard Hill, brought this to my notice, and I can’t improve on his description of it as a nightmare version of Treasure Island. Morrison specialized in social realism (Tales of Mean Streets, A Child of the Jago), and his view of crime and its sources was much less romantic than Stevenson’s. The child’s viewpoint from which we see events adds to the sense of dread, and the quicklime scene tips the book into real horror.
12. The Art of Murder, by José Carlos Somoza (2001, published in English 2004)
At the time of writing most of my readers may be far less familiar with Somoza than he deserves. Three of his novels are available in English. The Athenian Murders is a detective story Nabokov might have been proud to devise, while Zig Zag invents an impressively malevolent new kind of ghost born of an experiment in string theory. The Art of Murder is perhaps the most disturbing of the three, however. Promoted as crime fiction, it’s primarily speculative fiction about a near future (now the recent past) in which human beings are sold as art objects. The psychological insight into their state—in particular the central character’s—is at least the equal of Ballard.
13. Savage Night, by Jim Thompson (1953)
Noir fiction sometimes ventures into horror—Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi, for instance, filmed for Val Lewton by Jacques Tourneur as The Leopard Man—but none of its proponents takes the tendency farther than Jim Thompson. The ending of The Getaway appears to have been too grotesque even for Peckinpah, because what waits over the border in the last chapter of the novel is the territory of Poe. Sometimes Thompson’s work barely contains its excesses—the incestuous sadism that surfaces in King Blood is particularly troubling—but Savage Night is probably the book best suited to the present list. By the final pages it has become either a ghost story or a living nightmare, however living is defined in the context. “In the end,” Geoffrey O’Brien writes, “only the voice remains.” He could be writing about Beckett—indeed, to the very Beckett book I’ve listed—but he has Savage Night in mind.
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH’S TEN BEST HORROR BOOKS
THAT YOU WON’T FIND ON THE HORROR SHELVES
Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. He is a threetime winner of the British Fantasy Award for best short story, and his collection More Tomorrow and Other Stories won the International Horror Guild Award. After three science fiction novels as Michael Marshall Smith, he wrote the internationally bestselling Straw Men crime thriller trilogy (and his most recent novel, The Intruders) as Michael Marshall. The Servants, a supernatural novel under yet another name—M. M. Smith—will be published next year.
1. Dead Babies, by Martin Amis
Amis has always had a dark side, and the third of his early novels really shows it. I mean, even the title isn’t a walk in the park. The story of a drug-fuelled weekend in the 1970s which spirals badly out of hand, it shows some of the horror genre’s shock-meisters for the wimps they are.
2. The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson is someone every horror fan should read—for tone, if nothing else. This is really a crime novel, kind of—the story of a local sheriff’s shady dealings in a small town. But it’s also one of the best and most restrained evocations of a deranged and amoral intelligence you will ever find: and note the intriguing little ontological shift at the end . . .
3. The Informers, by Bret Easton Ellis
Ellis is another literary guy whose toe always seems to be in the dark end of the pool. American Psycho would be the obvious inclusion in this list, almost too obvious—so instead, try this collection of loosely linked short stories: and watch how they slowly degrade (like damaged film stock) into implied and sometimes even very literal horror. . . .
4. Flicker, by Theodore Roszak
Speaking of film stock, this superb conspiracy novel about the hidden meaning of film would sit perfectly happily in the horror section too, if it wasn’t too busy being the novel everyone should have bought and read (along with Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum) instead of that piece of **** The Da Vinci Code!
5. The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks
The themes, imagery, and reveals in Banks’s justly celebrated (literary) debut would not be out of place in any full-on horror novel—showing a morbid distrust of the mind, and, in particular, of the body, that would have David Cronenberg nodding in approval. . . .
6. Something Nasty in the Woodshed, by Kyril Bonfiglioni
Kyril Bonfiglioni’s Mortdecai trilogy is one of the most criminally under-known series in any genre. So okay, it’s not horror, at the start; more the wildly amusing story of everyday portly, dissolute, and immoral art-dealing folk. In the first novel, the Honorable Charlie Mortdecai comes across like some modern and lunatic brother of Sherlock Holmes, but by this third volume—a bizarre investigation into the “old religion” on Jersey—it’s become very, very dark indeed. . . .
7. Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis
Yep, Ellis again. But this really is a horror novel, pure and simple. Okay, it’s hip and knowing and postmodern too: but that doesn’t stop it’s being a horror novel, okay? So how come this (admittedly very good) book winds up on the tables in the front and center of the store, when horror people end up exiled to the shelves in back? Hmm?
8. In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead, by James Lee Burke
It’s got ghosts in it. It’s a great crime novel, of course—one of Burke’s magisterial David Robicheaux series, set in and around New Orleans—but it also shows a deft touch with the supernatural, bringing the otherworldly close enough to center stage that if we did it, it’d be horror.
9. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
More ghosts—along with alternate realities, the pain of missed opportunities, and an ultimate redemption. Sure, it’s got a happy ending, but there’s no reason why horror shouldn’t—it’s the tension of not knowing which way our lives will go that scares us the most. . . .
10. The Bible, by various authors
No disrespect meant or implied, but seriously . . . The loons who campaign for the banning of fantasy or horror novels ought to try reading this baby from cover to cover. There’s some very heavy stuff in there, and the unearthly spirit concerned can sometimes seem kind of . . . touchy. And that Revelations section at the end—can’t you just see it filmed in jittervision, with a pounding Marilyn Manson soundtrack?
DEL HOWISON’S TEN FAVORITE BOOKS THAT
SOUND LIKE THEY’RE HORROR BUT AREN’T
(IN NO PARTICULARORDER)
Del Howison is coauthor of The Book of Lists: Horror, and proprietor of Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California.
1. The Supernatural History of Worms, by Marion C. Fox, published by Friends’ Book Center (1930)
2. Barbs, Prongs, Points, Prickers, & Stickers,
by Robert T. Clifton, published by University of Oklahoma Press (1970)
3. Rats for Those Who Care, by Susan Fox, published by TFH Publications (1995)
4. The Transitive Vampire, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, published by Times Books (1984)
5. Public Performances of the Dead, by George Jacob Holyoake, published by London Book Store (1865)
6. The Onion Maggot, by Arthur L. Lovett, published by Agricultural Experimental Station (1923)
7. Reusing Old Graves, by Douglas Davies and Alastair Shaw, published by Shaw & Sons (1995)
8. The Man with Iron Eyebrows, by Edouard Charles, published by Royal Magazine (1902)
9. Flushing and Morbid Blushing, by Harry Campbell, published by H. K. Lewis (1890)
10. My Invisible Friend Explains the Bible, by J. G. Bogusz, published by Branden Press (1971)
ROBERT BLOCH’S TEN FAVORITE
HORROR-FANTASY NOVELS
Born in 1917, Robert Bloch was one of the grandmasters of twentieth century horror fiction. He is perhaps best known for his 1959 novel Psycho, which was the basis for the legendary Alfred Hitchcock film. Bloch also wrote many screenplays, teleplays (including for the original Star Trek series), hundreds of short stories, and more than twenty-five novels before his death in 1994.
This classification excludes, by definition, science fiction, humor, or horror with fantasy element—tricky distinctions!
1. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
2. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
3. Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Burn, Witch, Burn, by A. Merritt
6. The Werewolf of Paris, by Guy Endore
7. Là-bas, by J. K. Huysmans
8. To Walk the Night, by William Sloane
9. The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
10. A Mirror for Witches, by Esther Forbes
— Originally appeared in The Book of Lists 2, by Irving Wallace,
David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace, and Sylvia Wallace (1980)
POPPY Z. BRITE’S TOP TEN “DINE ’N’ DIE”
STORIES IN HORROR FICTION
Poppy Z. Brite is the author of eight novels, both horror and nongenre. Some of her works include Lost Souls, Exquisite Corpse, Liquor, Prime, and Soul Kitchen. She has also published four short story collections and assorted nonfiction. A native New Orleanian, Brite was one of the first 70,000 people to repopulate New Orleans after the post-Katrina failure of the federal levees. She currently lives there with her husband, Chris, an award-winning chef. Keep up with her daily doings and psychotic responses to the U.S. government’s treatment of south Louisiana as a Third-World country at http://docbrite.livejournal.com.
When I posted in my online journal that I was stuck for an idea for this book, reader Gaynor Newman suggested that I combine two of my great literary interests—horror and cuisine—to make a list of horror stories in which characters are killed by food items. I loved the idea, and here are the results. (I regret that I was unable to find copies of several stories suggested by other readers, so this list is in no way complete; it just represents a few of my favorites . . . and one nonfavorite that was nevertheless important to me, as you’ll see).
1. Flowers in the Attic, by V. C. Andrews. Not a good novel, but a strangely compelling (and hugely popular) one, this was the first thing I read—at age thirteen—that made me realize, “I can already write better than this”—an important moment in any young writer’s life. Four siblings are locked in an attic by their cruel grandmother and weak mother, later to be slowly poisoned by arsenic-laced powdered doughnuts.
2. The Long Lost, by Ramsey Campbell. A couple traveling in Wales happens upon Gwendolyn, a strange elderly woman who claims to be a distant relative of the husband. Upon her return to England with them, Gwen prepares cakes—“an old recipe”—for a barbecue, with various adverse effects for the guests. Chapter 29 of this novel has what may well be the single most chilling scene I’ve ever read. Beware of the Tor hardcover, an otherwise nice edition whose jacket copy gives away nearly the entire story.
3. “Lamb to the Slaughter,” by Roald Dahl. Perhaps the most famous example of this odd little subgenre, Dahl’s unforgettable tale features a woman who brains her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then pops the murder weapon in the oven and feeds it to the investigating policemen.
4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. Two sisters live with their elderly uncle in a remote old house, shunned by the villagers because one sister poisoned the rest of the family at dinner years ago.
5. “Sunbird,” by Neil Gaiman. A cadre of hilariously drawn food-snobs in search of the ultimate dining experience find a rare bird, consume it, and are in turn consumed by it.
6. “Gray Matter,” by Stephen King. We all know beer is food. In this short story, it’s also a medium for a nasty spore that turns a hard-drinking man into a quivering, sentient mass of gray jelly.
7. Thinner, by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). I had planned to limit this list to one entry per author, but surely the King of Horror deserves two spots, particularly since this novel was originally published by his late alter ego. A Gypsy curse can only be removed by feeding someone a Gypsy pie—but be careful who gets a slice.
8. “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back,” by Joe R. Lansdale. Post– nuclear-apocalyptic survivors dine on radioactive whale meat. “Crawling on their bellies like gutted dogs” is one of the milder effects.
1 9. The Amulet, by Michael McDowell. The late McDowell is surely one of the genre’s most underrated writers. This tale of a small Alabama town menaced by an evil piece of jewelry isn’t his best work, but it’s still enjoyably nasty, and concludes by having its long-suffering protagonist take revenge on her cruel mother-in-law by feeding her bandage-swathed, possibly comatose husband a fatal mixture of applesauce and lye.
10. From Hell, by Alan Moore. Possibly the finest graphic novel ever published, a Masonic/architectural take on Jack the Ripper set in Eddie Campbell’s wonderfully drawn Victorian London. At least one of the prostitutes is dead from Dr. Gull’s laudanum-tainted grapes before the ritual mutilation is performed on her.
THOMAS LIGOTTI’S TEN CLASSICS OF HORROR POETRY
Thomas Ligotti is the author of five collections of horror stories. Conspicuous features of his works include an idiosyncratic prose style and inventive narrative structures as well as subjects and themes of a uniformly grim nature.
1. “A Dream within a Dream,” by Edgar Allan Poe. In this poem, Poe says all there is to say about the horror and unreality of human existence.
2. The Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire. Tribute must be paid to the collection that inspired all others of a lavishly degenerate and fantastical kind that followed. Without Baudelaire’s flowers, those of George Sterling, Ambrose Bierce, Clark Ashton Smith, David Park Barnitz, and Richard Tierney (among other luminaries past and present of American small-press horror poetry) would not exist.
3. “City of Dreadful Night,” by James Thomson (“B.V.”). In the greatest horror poem ever written, Thomson guides the reader on a tour of nightmarish illuminations. As Dante’s Inferno is an excursus on how awful it is to be in hell, “The City of Dreadful Night” expatiates on how awful it is to be at all. The bad news: Life is a farrago of madness and suffering. The good news: God does not exist.
4. Lead (Plumb), by George Bacovia. Poems from a Romanian backwater town where the season is either autumn or winter, the time of day is twilight, the atmosphere is thick with anxiety or melancholy, the streets and parks are deserted, claustrophobic rooms look out on cemeteries and slaughterhouses, and there is always a funeral to attend. Some titles: “Autumn Twilight,” “Winter Twilight,” “Violet Twilight,” “Black,” “Grey,” and “Ancient Twilight.”
5. The Fungi from Yuggoth, by H. P. Lovecraft. A summation of Lovecraftian themes and sentiments in thirty-six sonnets. The horrors are all here as well as
the dreams. Gods cavort in a Godless cosmos. New England serves as both a landscape of infinite doom and as charmed ground where one may “stand alone before eternity.”
6. Something Breathing, by Stanley McNail. The standard for horror poetry as a genre. Spooky and macabre tales in verse. Things gibber and shamble. McNail specialized in miniature ballads of evil little girls.
7. Nightmare Need, by Joseph Payne Brennan. As a writer, Brennan’s best work is represented by his poetry rather than by his fiction (with a few classic exceptions like “Canavan’s Back Yard” and “Levitation”). Nightmare Need is his most distinguished collection and extensively demonstrates his signature subjects: desolate scenery, crummy ruins, lamentations for departed pets, loneliness and alienation, agonizing nostalgia, and death, death, death.
8. “Mr. Blue,” by Tom Paxton. An unrivaled poetic fantasy of sociopolitical paranoia. Paxton’s words might have been spoken by Big Brother to Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984. It begins: “Good morning, Mr. Blue / We’ve got our eyes on you.”
9. “In the Court of the Crimson King,” by King Crimson (lyrics by Peter Sinfield). One of the great examples of the Symbolists’ rule that poetry does not have to make sense to make an impression. In this case, the impression is that of sardonic grandeur.