Horror Novels/Short Stories: S/D

DEVIL'S MIDNIGHT
Yuri Kapralov
Akashic Books
Akashic heavily edited this satanic thriller by Russian exile Yuri Kapralov, who took decades to write it in the first place. Credit the hard-won material, the refinement, or both--the effort's worth all the trees that were ripped down to print it. Set against the gruesome 1919 war between the Bolsheviks and the White Russians, the punchy Devil's Midnight barrels lucidly through nightmares with relentless narrative drive. The players here are mad locomotives and even madder drug-guzzling field commanders; witches searching for a meteorite on the orders of a quaint Russian devil called the Chort; and the dry, canny voice of irony that slips out in lines like "I have nothing against Satan or Samson. This is all a slight misunderstanding." The characters are vivid; even the femme fatale--actress Nata Tai, who is trained to serve the Chort but turns to killing witches--has a resonant, aching soul. As the strands of the narrative come together, it's clear that Nata and the Chort are the leads in a slick, dank tragedy that unfolds with unsettlingly deliberate power. Humans crazed by strain are terrifying to watch. But damn can some of them scrawl a warning. Next time, can we please keep the elections clean? After this, a civil war doesn't sound like any fun whatsoever. --Ann Sterzinger

"Manuscript Found In A Deserted House" by Robert Bloch

I've spent a lot of time this year burning through the supernatularist/horror/weird tale canon: Blackwood, Le Fanu, M.R. James, Hoffman, Kwaidan, etc.

I really love those stories where the otherworldly presence doesn't burst through and kill everyone so much as just sit there in full view, while the characters try to go about their business.(A number of the Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman stories are like this)

But I dunno, what's going on with contemporary horror? I know Ligotti. I've read a couple T.E.D. Klein novellas (one I liked; one I didn't), and really liked the one Ramsey Campbell short story I read ("The Brood"). The sci-fi and fantasy threads always seem to be cooking, and horror film always get a lot of talk. Where are my horror writing fans at?

I'm not in the loop the way I used to be, but I don't see a lot of contemporary horror as subtle and creepy as the canonic work you mention.

Recent nasty, ugly horror that I liked: The Passage by Justin Cronin -- overly long, not especially original, but better written and more affecting than I expected; Horns by Joe Hill -- a distinct improvement over his first novel, still working the same in-your-face vein as his daddy, but funnier and more vicious than recent King.

Robert Aickman is the guy I'm always repping for - "ghost stories" more than horror, not always a whole lot happening but a really wicked vibe. Dennis Etchison also used to be a great horror short story writer, I think he moved on to movie novelizations.

Haven't read much horror, and what I read was 10+ years ago, but, I thought I'd share a few links that I've been meaning to investigate if the damned mood for horror would just come creeping.
They're Halloween posts at the fantastic Victorianist blog The Little Professor, where she links to various appropriate stories:

*Victorian Terrors!
*Eeeeek! Halloween Horrors, 2007 edition
*Halloween Horrors, 2009: Inconveniently Active (And Otherwise Unpleasant) Artwork Edition

anyone have any thoughts on Arthur Machen? better to start with his short stories or his novels?

The novellas "The Great God Pan" and "The White People" are usually mentioned as the big ones for Machen.

I'll second both Aickman and Etchison. Aickman is very tasteful and understated but relentlessly spooky. I'd almost forgotten about Etchison. I remember the SoCal settings of Darkside making the shouldn't-be-happening events extra creepy.

Machen wrote quite good stories throughout his life, but the concentration of his best material is early, from the 1880/90s: The Great God Pan, The White People, The Three Impostors (which is just a vehicle for some short stories, one of them terrible, one of the meh, two of them great - The Novel of the White Powder and the Novel of the Black Seal) and the Red Hand. If you like 'em, then it's worth checking out his other, later, stuff, which tends to be more supernal rather than infernal, and to deal with Graal legend.

The novels are not long, in fact don't really count as novels as such, more romances imo. The Hill of Dreams is fascinating, but not really horror novel/story material, more a proto-Ballardian portrait of psychic collapse and to a certain extent autobiographical.

Without at all wishing to push it on anybody (it's rather long), I did a piece last Hallowe'en on three very different ghost stories (MR James' Count Magnus, Rudyard Kipling's The End of the Passage, and Denton Welch's Ghosts, which if you are interesting you may find... interesting. It's here and I must admit I'm rather proud of its structure - it was damnable to compose.

Dance of the Dwarfs by Geoffrey Household.

Do not read it at night.

Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber has to be my favorite supernatural novel. I'd definitely second the recommendation on Aickman,. Faber have recently reprinted some of his collections, though you can still pick up decent second hand copies.

In terms of recent writers, I've been enjoying Reggie Oliver and Wilum Pugmire. There are quite a few other writers working in the subtle, creepy vein, but mostly in small presses. Check out Tartarus and Ash-Tree for starters.

Thanks to Ann for the tip on Yuri Kapralov, who seems to have been an interesting guy - I'll have to check out his novels. The Russian theme reminds me to recommend Bruisov/ Bryusov's The Fiery Angel - more of a historical/occult novel than strictly horror, but an absolute classic. Paul Tabori is another name I don't know here who seems potentially interesting.

^knew you'd come through^

was vaguely aware of Tartarus (through Wormwood), didn't know about Ash-Tree. Looks great.

All related google searches lead back to the ligotti page/forum- is that, like, the big place for the community?

I've read a story each by Aickman and Etchison. Great stuff!

That Cronin looks entertaining enough, but "overly long" sounds about right. Long horror novels are almost impossible for me to get through (GR's blog bits about ghosts not liking much exposure are key).

and fwiw ole Fred, I'd put Wuthering Heights in here as well.

Thomas Ligotti Online seems to have become a major crossroads for genre fans - goes way beyond Ligotti's work, moderation is light-touch, but effective, and the interface is good. There are others - check out the Ramsey Campbell message board for one.

ive been a p major horror kick lately & have gotten the impression that a lot of interesting stuff is coming out of 'literary' horror small presses but, considering how tedious this stuff can be to track down, i was hoping ilb wld have some suggestions

stuff that i have read lately and really loved:

chambers 'the king in yellow' collection
ligotti 'my work is not yet done' collection
lovecraft 'call of cthulu' collection
samuels 'the man who read machen & other stories'
golaski 'worse than myself' collection

im def attracted to the sort of atmospheric 'cosmic' horror that lovecraft occasionally does & that samuels collection in particular excels @. i also like how spare some of the newer horror seems to be ligotti in particular is just so lean which i really admire.

also really everyone shld give the chambers collection a try imo

There's a couple of anthologies I read recently which are especially good. Penguin's American Supernatural Fiction at the cheap end, and the Library of America's American Fantastic Tales set at the expensive...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0143105043.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1598530593.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

damn st joshi gets around huh

making the short collection introduction money

bet he has a p nice studio apt

still, would order

I liked that American Supernatural Tales collection a lot. bought the joshi edited Three Impostors and Other Stories collection this morning, along with a collection each of Ramsey Campbell and Edogawa Rampo.

those wordsworth tales of mystery & the supernatural editions are so cheap! real nice to have that around, cause I really can't drop $55 on a book. The Scottish Ghost Stories one came in the mail last week. It's been all good so far.

Anyone read Laird Barron?

this got posted everywhere last week, but in case anyone missed it, that Lovecraft documentary is up for free here: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/watch/lovecraft_fear_of_the_unknown/

Read F. Paul Wilson's "The Keep" a couple of weeks back. It's currently $3 at the barnes and noble nook store. A really well put together and imaginative novel. Wiki P says that he can get pretty libertarian, but I didn't really notice anything obvious while I was reading it. Can anyone recommend anything else by him? Anything I should avoid?

The film version of The Keep, which is streaming on Netflix these days, is pretty awful.

I am working my way through the Jeff and Ann Vandermeer edited short story collection "The Weird". The gang's all here.

Yeah, that Vandermeer anthology looks amazing. Their website's got some neat stuff on it: http://weirdfictionreview.com/

I read a book of Horacio Quiroga stories a few months ago. Good, odd stuff.

I'm a bit late, but:

Anyone read Laird Barron?

Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. I'm halfway through The Imago Sequence now (OOP, but cheapish on Kindle) and it's wonderful; the best modern Lovecraftian horror I've ever read. He even does something I would have thought impossible and makes a straight-up homage to a classic HPL story ("Hallucigenia" is essentially "The Dunwich Horror") work.

Yeah, I gotta check that out. I dug "The Men From Porlock", I think it was called, from some Lovecraftian anthology a few months ago.

Tore through a Vernon Lee anthology last summer. Loved that. Heard wonderful things about Glen Hirschberg's The Two Sams but couldn't stand it, only made it through a story and a half.

Buying a nook was almost worth it just to be able to read that Vandermeer Weird anthology without breaking my back. So much neat stuff in there. The G.R.R. Martin story was a surprise! Michael Shea's "The Autopsy", goddamn! Haven't read the Barron story yet.

I keep meaning to pick up the Weird anthology- such an amazing lineup, and some really astute choices as well (I'm thinking of Kubin, Meyrink, Schulz, Cortazar, and Gahan Wilson especially). And I'm really looking forward to reading the Tiptree and Marc Laidlaw stories- the former because I keep hesitating before buying Her Smoke Rose Up Forever and the latter because he seems really well-regarded yet all of his books are out of print and I've only experienced his work writing for Valve games.

BTW, if you liked the excerpt from The Other Side, it's finally back in print as a Kindle ebook.

Awesome, I loved that bit. Will check out.

I just got a library card. Recommend some pop fiction creepitude - something that goes with late nights and chilly autumn weather. I've read loads of crime fiction and non-fiction, some creepy sci-fi, I like seventies pop lit a lot. What is good creep-reading, and not TOO "literary"?? I'm not trying to pass an English lit test here...

Thanks in advance!

For example, I am def going to check out "Devil's Midnight". If someone has it. I like Satan and witches!

First off - Ray Bradbury, The October Country. I always pull it out when the air gets like this.

Picked up the October Country! Amazing how unnerving the stories are without actually having a lot of horror on the surface. Like the one about the hypochondriac who "realizes" he has a skeleton inside his body, how he loses his mind obsessing about skeletons as separate entities living inside us. He stops eating food with calcium to try and starve his :O

The cover art is amazing! Anyway I started it a few weeks ago but read infrequently cause it gets under your skin so well.

The Scythe is the one that gets me.

Some horror discussed and linked on Rolling Science Fiction Fantasy & Speculative Fiction: for instance, try this vintage Richard Matheson---you have to click to magnify, but works fine---then brace yerself:

http://magicmonkeyboy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/drink-my-red-blood-by-richard-matheson.html

That was great!

I love October Country! I'm starting to read some of Caitlin Kiernan's early short stories in Tales of Pain and Wonder mostly because I want to see how she deals with gender and body horror--the earliest stories still feel like they're trying too hard to be unsettling, but I like her oblique plotting, and I've heard good things about her recent novel The Drowning Girl.

"The Emissary" really gave me the creeps as a kid. Still does tbh.

I just finished the novel I was reading so there's still time for me to read a couple October Country pieces within the month of October, as is my practice.

"The Emissary" really gave me the creeps as a kid. Still does tbh.

i read this one for the first time as a college student sitting alone in a near-deserted library and it still terrified me.

enjoying this. almost done. anyone read anything by steve tem? or his wife? or the both of them together? she died this year. rest in peace, melanie tem. also, i hate to think this way, but deadfall hotel would make a super t.v. series if done right. i don't ever really read horror/weird fiction anymore. glad i read this though. would read more by him. this book is a mix of every kinda thing. horror/supernatural/weird/fairy tale.

http://horrornovelreviews.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/deadfallhotel.jpg

I liked Tem's novel Excavation, though I remember thinking it felt like the work of a short story writer going long. Good writing, realistic rural setting, sustained slow-building creepiness.

Also suitable for this thread: I don't know how I missed William Sloane's The Edge of Running Water (1939) for so long. It's exactly the sort of mad scientist story you'd expect to have been made into a Karloff movie, but the book is quite a bit weirder and more dreadful than I expected. Slick rather than pulpy prose keeps you wondering if the story will turn toward mystery or SF or horror. It's set in Maine and some scenes are Stephen King avant la lettre.

Deadfall is kinda broken up into novellas based on the seasons at the hotel. but there is a common thread/characters.

this may be old news, but a bunch of Michael McDowell's novels are now available on Amazon thanks to Valancourt Books. I'd recommend The Elementals, which is sort of like Solaris reimagined as a southern gothic family drama: a Victorian beach house is haunted by the dead relatives of a wealthy Alabama clan, but it's unclear if the apparitions are sentient or if they're sand gollums assembled by a non-human entity to torment the family with memories of their oppressive former matriarch. he has a knack for dysfunctional family dynamics (using the supernatural to awaken and complicate old jealousies/feuds) though he occasionally veers into soap opera melodramatics. I'm making my way through his 6-volume Blackwater series now.

he churned out close to 30 novels in the '80s, but a lot of them are regarded as hackwork and will probably never be reprinted; he was quoted as saying, "I would be perfectly willing if a publisher came up to me and said, 'I need a novel about underwater Nazi cheerleaders and it has to be 309 pages long and I need fourteen chapters and a prologue.'" he's best know today for writing the original screenplay for Beetlejuice, which started off as some dark twisted Clive Barker shit until Tim Burton turned it into a comedy.

how Lovecraftian is that Steve Rasnic Tem novel? I'm vaguely aware of him as a 'new weird' writer along the lines of Laird Barron, but maybe I have the wrong impression.

Valancourt do have a very interesting catalogue - a mix of gothic, gay, horror and mid-20th-century neglected literary novels

Started / the woman in black / , going well so far. Review was correct in saying that it could pass as having been written a hundred years ago

“Burnt Offerings” comes close to being a masterpiece and just might be.

Still need to read that. The paperback cover (for movie tie-in?) used to give me the heebie jeebies as a kid. I wasn’t even familiar with the title phrase at the time, which added to it.

Actually don’t think they had movie tie-ins per se at the time, when the book was written beforehand. There were novelizations of course, but that’s different.

It starts kind of pedestrian but then gets good.

I just bought the movie sight unseen the other day. I'm guessing it isn't quite as classic.

I don't know how it compares to the book, but it's a very decent 70s horror flick ... good cast, good score, lots of atmosphere, some scary set-pieces

Book is undoubtedly a source for king’s shining

I think he's acknowledged that, yeah

Anyone read the Ceremonies by Klein?

Yes... about 20 years ago. My recall of it is hazy but it’s on my reread list

Just two weeks ago!

I read it relatively recently too. Felt like all sizzle and no steak to me. Plus the villain is lame

The villain is a centuries-old charred treehugger with one eye. Not lame at all.

He's a little old man who runs around giggling a lot

That's the sidekick.

Familiar perhaps. But he has a lot more screentime

I see it's discussed way upthread, but it's new to me:

I'm working my way through the VanderMeer-edited The Weird anthology, and so far it's the best-curated collection of this kind I've seen. I like the way it's limited to the 20th and 21st centuries, with all the texts presented in chronological order, and I especially like the way stories by the canonical English-language writers sit side-by-side with equally strong works in translation (many of them newly translated for this book). About a quarter of the way through, my biggest discovery has been the Belgian writer Jean Ray, represented by two quite different but equally unnerving stories. I've already downloaded some more of his work for future reading.

I'm glad I've got The Weird on my iPad -- handling the dead-tree edition would be a strength workout.

Wow - 110 stories, you’re not kidding

my gf got me the dead-tree anthology and i always feel terrible for not reading more in it but it's not exactly a book i can toss in the bag for an idle moment.

xxp description of The Weird also applies to the VanderMeers' massive Big Book of Science Fiction, which suggests to BB reader me that you should brace yourself for recurring bouts of inconsistency, esp. when DO YOU SEE social commentary trumps art & entertainment value. But keep on keepin' on.

I’m only a horror dilettante but find myself drawn to it more and more. Including the last two books I’ve read — “Hell House” by Richard Matheson and “The Loney” by Andrew Michael Hurley. I read Hell House because I like Matheson and it has this rep as the ultimate haunted house story — found it sort of gaudily entertaining, but very over the top AND plagued by sexist depictions of women in general and women’s sexuality in particular. Memorable setting, but ludicrous plot.

The Loney is good — gothy folk-horror set in a grim little British seaside in the ‘70s. Hurley’s a good writer and he finds a thousand different ways to say gray/rainy/murky. I liked how little was spelled out even as it becomes more and more apparent what’s going on. Has anyone read either of Hurley’s other books?

I enjoyed that Matheson novel but the ultimate haunted house story is probably Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House

Which I haven’t read and obviously should. I read that Matheson wrote Hell Housepartly as a response to the Jackson book, which he thought was too atmospheric and not spooky scary enough. I have a feeling I will probably like Jackson’s approach more.

Jackson's book is quieter and more disturbing. I had fun reading Hell House, but it still bothers me to think about Hill House.

Matheson deserves more love than he gets, for his screenplay work as well as his fiction.

Hill House is magnificent. Still think the best haunted house book is House of Leaves but I know it's not for everyone.

Bit of an adjunct but this is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mexs39y0Imw

Has anyone read either of Hurley’s other books?

I read Devil's Day, very evocative prose but too much of a tendency to lapse into melodrama. Although I guess that goes with the territory in gothic fiction. It's not often I say this kind of thing and I hate to sound like a literary critic obsessed with 'proper' books, but I thought The Loney would have been more effective without the swerve into the supernatural. It was uncanny enough anyway!

I recently seen someone say it's impossible to sell certain kinds of historical fiction, so authors end up adding in fantasy elements to sell them to the fantasy market. Even Robert E Howard did this I think (also partly in fear of historical fans who might catch him out if the accuracy wasn't impeccable). I wonder how much horror does this? I've definitely read a few horror short stories where it feels like an overt supernatural element was tacked on.

xp

I can see that. I had read about it as "a folk-horror book," so I guess I was prepped for some kind of spooky action. As it was, I thought it was nicely suggestive about the whole thing — and interestingly conflicted about which forces were or weren't fully malevolent.

For anyone who's interested, here's a list of various online short story publications with at least a partial focus on horror:

Nightmare - http://www.nightmare-magazine.com
The Dark - http://thedarkmagazine.com
The Deadlands - https://thedeadlands.com/
Gamut - https://houseofgamut.com/
Apex - http://www.apex-magazine.com/
Seize The Press - https://www.seizethepress.com
Cosmic Horror Monthly - https://cosmichorrormonthly.com
Skull and Laurel - https://tenebrouspress.com/
Ergot - https://www.ergot.press
The Drabblecast - http://www.drabblecast.org
Weird Horror - https://undertowpublications.com
Pseudopod - http://pseudopod.org
Tales to Terrify - https://talestoterrify.com/

I've definitely read a few horror short stories where it feels like an overt supernatural element was tacked on.

I don't think I've encountered this, but it sounds like an interesting switch from the "explained supernatural" endings of Radcliffe, old dark house mysteries, Scooby Doo, etc.

Haven't read xxxpost Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, though I liked the movie. and expect the novel might be better, not just because they often are, with the suthor's voice and more room for detail etc, but also because I have read her We Have Always Lived Lived in the Castle, the edition with Jonathan Lethem's afterword, to which I enjoyed comparing mu own cold-read impressions (there should be more afterwords ). Awesome book, and short enough to have the tightness and impact of first-rate short stories, with room enough for more headsnaps. It's their house and they live there.

Yeah We Have Always Lived in the Castle is great, one of my favorite unreliable-narrator stories.

Then there's this.from Rolling Speculative---the first comment is mine:

Also Richard Matheson, who wrote a lot of the best Twilight Zones, Speilberg's Duel, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which Chris Carter credited with inspiring him to create The X-Files, also novels like The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend, which could be an ancestor of Breaking Bad, with the one Normal terrorizing a world of vampires, although in his mind, of course, he's Making Good. Also lots of short stories---Ward Fowler scared the crap out of me by posting this 'un on the old Rolling sf etc. thread:

http://magicmonkeyboy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/drink-my-red-blood-by-richard-matheson.html

my fave matheson short story, which deeply affected horror-obsessed-young-me when i read it as a boy. the whole treatment of vampirism seems very similar to the vibe that george a romero was going for w/ his movie martin, and i know romero admitted that matheson was the primary inspiration behind NOTLD. you can see why stephen king is such a big matheson fan, too - that 'naturalistic'/everyday treatment of the supernatural. again, this story reminds me v much of parts of the tobe hooper tv movie of salem's lot - vampirism as teenage yearning/disaffection

― Ward Fowler, Sunday, September 9, 2012

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740011/capitalism-a-horror-story-by-jon-greenaway/

It’s theory not a horror novel itself but this is good and there are good recs in there.

Just read a Matheson short story collection a few months ago, dude was fucked up

Thx treeship, that looks like a good read.

I picked up a Robert Aickman short story collection from the local bookshop a few weeks ago. It had one of those staff recommendation blurbs and a cover description that made it seem up my street, but I ended up feeling a bit bored with it and ultimately missold, like yeah the stories are a bit 'weird' but they are slow and often vague and don't impart enough creepiness or dread or unease for me.

The most unsettled I felt was when I went to shelve the book and saw that I already own another Aickman collection that I have absolutely no memory of purchasing, which is super unusual for me because With almost all of my other books I remember why or where or when I got them, but the circumstances of this one are a total mystery to me. A bookmark a couple stories in suggests past me didn't really get on with him either.

I recently read my first Daphne Du Maurier, Don't Look Now, AKA Not After Midnight: long stories, but didn't seem too slow or vague, def got creepiness, dread, unease.

Re-titled Don't Look Now, at least for US, after the movie came out.

Aickman rules. 'Swords' is one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read.

The Aickman anecdote about not realising you already had an Aickman collection is quite Aickman-esque, one of his lesser tales maybe.

What the fuck, I also bought an Aickman collection this week (but I knew I already had one.) Which has "The Swords" in it. Fucking amazing and awful.

there is a new stephen king story collection with previously unpublished stories including a post-pandemic cujo-related novella!

also this:

"Paying tribute to author Cormac McCarthy upon his death in June 2023, King previewed The Dreamers, a story he had written while reading McCarthy's 2022 book The Passenger. He described The Dreamers as "very much under the influence of McCarthy's prose" and "very much in McCarthy's style". In August 2023, King noted The Dreamers as a rare example of one of his stories that he himself was scared by, describing it as "so creepy" that he "couldn't think about it at night". The Dreamers was published in 2024 as part of King's collection You Like It Darker. The story was dedicated to McCarthy, and to the fantasy author Evangeline Walton."

i haven't read king in decades though...

i have a nice first edition of this and i still haven't read it.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81j72EuMubL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

aickman had a good look.

https://blogs.bl.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef02a30d444d9a200b-pi

The Aickman anecdote about not realising you already had an Aickman collection is quite Aickman-esque, one of his lesser tales maybe.

And one of the more concise and clear ones, yes.

Neither of my collections have Swords. I feel left out!

I really enjoyed 3 of the 4 Aickman stories I've read but never felt compelled to bump him up the to-be-read pile, just someone I hope to read more of eventually. His body of work has a sparkling reputation for consistency, being able to keep exploring the same obsessions with novelty and freshness (or so I hear)

New Laird Barron is good. Thematically / stylistically closer to Swift To The Chase and with some recurring characters so YMMV if you strongly preferred the first two collections. Still a cut above everyone else in his field.