What are some hidden gem horror genre books?

"The Other Side" by Alfred Kubin
"The Melancholy of Resistance" by László Krasznahorkai

Be warned, they're both lit. No genre fiction

>>9703741
Look for William Hope Hodgson.

>>9703799
This

The House On The Borderland" was mindfuck that I expect, it managed to give me the creeps

"The Nightland " was an awesome cosmic horror adventure.

>>9703818
didn't expect*

>>9703741
Been on a cosmic horror / weird fiction kick for a few months. Here's some story reccomendations from my favorite horror authors:
- "The Death of Halpin Frayser" by Ambrose Bierce
- "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers

- "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood
- "The White People" by Arthur Machen
- "Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard
- "The Dark Eidolon" by Clark Ashton Smith

As for books, maybe try TED Klein's The Ceremonies? I haven't found that novels are a good fit for horror. As >>9703818 says, Hodgson is good, but his novels are incredibly episodic/disjointed (do recommend House on the Borderland -- Night Land is something I wouldn't suggest offhandedly -- Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' and Ghost Pirates are fun and spooky but not as cosmic, philosophical, or literary as his others).

Check out Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" for further classic recommendations and discussion. I'm way less clear on more recent stuff.

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>>9703870
>Check out Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
There's also some anthologies based on the stories mentioned from his essay.

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>>9703892

>>9703754
>Be warned, they're both lit.No genre fiction
What does that even mean?

>>9703870
The Ceremonies is a great pick for horror to read in the summer months. Also if you're an Arthur Machen fan, obviously.

>>9703741
This guy collects them, plus it's the comfiest video on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYsL7BUO6c4

>>9703741
Read Thomas Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco. If you like it, go back and read all his collections in chronological order.

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Anybody know if this is any good?

>>9703947
Everything Re-Animator is unironically good.

The story, the movies, the comics. It's all fun.

>>9703959
pulpboy detected

>>9703939
Nice

>>9703947
Do they need Kanye's permission for a character?

Check out Laird Barron, starting with Old Virginia, available along with some other stories in authorized free versions here:

http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Laird_Barron.html

I'm surprised there's no love for LB on this board.

There's a great anthology edited by Current 93's front man David Tibet called The Moons At You Door. Guy seems to be quite well read in horror.

>>9703947
The original Re-Animator is unironically one of the better necromancer stories out there. That it doesn't take itself 100% seriously (tfw no well-spoken headless Canadian husbando) is part of the fun.

>>9703939
He made me add a bunch of stuff to my amazon basket, the bastard.

>>9705940
This is great, but I think it's better if you're already a little bit more knowledgeable when it comes to horror. It has classic stuff like MR James and Machen, but there are a lot of obscure and second-tier authors that might bog someone down who isn't already a fan of supernatural fiction.

Carmilla.

She predates Stoker's Dracula by 26 years but few acknowledge her existence, let alone influence.

The novella's fate of foreveraloning in the dark seems worse than the titular character's.

>>9705940
It's because if David Tibet that I discovered Thomas Ligotti

You might have heard of "Lovecraft", but maybe not, he's pretty obscure and only known by horror geeks like me. I like him despite his style, the tentacles and eldritch madness is really aesthetic. It's a shame about his racism though

>>9703754
>The Melancholy of Resistance
isn't that some sort of weird mindfuck book with anti communist metaphors?

>>9703754
Possible to find them in free epubs ?

>>9706112
True. It's not something to break your champagne on fir horror, but if you've read some populsr stuff like Lovecraft or Ligotti, then it's a great collection for broader exposure

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Michael McDowell's Blackwater series https://www.goodreads.com/series/52619-blackwater

>>9703741
Robert Aickmann is the absolute GOAT

I have only read absolute classics like Dunsany, Hodgson, Machen, Blackwood, James, Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith and I worry that more contemporary weird horror will disappoint. Can anyone assuage my worries or point me to the absolute best of more recent stuff?

>>9707618
where's a good place to start with Aickman that'll convince me he's the goat?

>>9707735
Just get whichever collection of short stories you can find most easily. My favorite individual stories are probably The School Friend and The Same Dog, but I haven't read all of his work.

Necroscope by Brian Lumley

>>9707766
okay I ordered Cold Hand in Mine and Wine Dark Sea

>>9707803
Haven't read WDS but an old hardcover of Cold Hand in Mine was my intro to Aickman. Lots of great and mysterious stories.

>>9703741
The Northern Caves.

>>9707840
great, looking forward to him
thanks!

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There are some great finds on the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, and his write-ups are topnotch.

He tipped me to a couple of books I really dug, including The Search for Joseph Tully by William Hallahan, a super-comfy, great read.

>Creating an inescapable mood of wintry dread hanging over a soon-to-be-demolished historical apartment building in a disused part of Brooklyn, author William H. Hallahan skillfully brings together two disparate stories in a frigid climax of suggestive '70s horror.

>There are lots of people looking forlornly out of windows onto landscapes of frozen fields and streets and rundown cities trapped in snowy desolation, while the apartment building slowly empties out beneath swirling winds and high clouds moving out towards the black waters of the North Atlantic. Everywhere there is palpable cold and frost and snow and slush, and all the while terrors whisper across generations, mysterious terrors of vengeance and lost souls unmoored from justice and eternal rest, which only man can render unto man, no matter what.

PS: Tully inspired me to dig into Hallahan's oeuvre a bit. The Ross Forgery is a terrific, offbeat crime novel (it goes into deep, fascinating detail on the subject of forging antique typeset documents); Dead of Winter was kind of a meh crime novel, with a decent premise but labored and rather contrived in the execution.

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>>9707610
Good taste m8

>>9703942
Definitely read the stories:
>The Red Tower
>The Clown Puppet
>Sideshow
>The Town Manager
Scariest/most unnerving in that book, and unlike any other horror I've read, not sure if you can really even call them horror.

Many of the other stories just seemed like a series of random, vaguely spooky things happening. Like the titular story. Not sure what the "soft black stars" were supposed to be, or the small clawed man in the alley, or the man in the business suit with the paper bag.

>>9708095
Got him in epub or mobi? thanks for the blog

>>9705643
I praised him several times here but he's a failing writer, the more he writes the worse it gets. Right now he's basically unreadable, like a poor man's Jack Ketchum. He started as a nice addendum from Ligotti but then veered into some kind of half baked hard boiled fiction which is completely awful.

>>9703939
Really good taste in editions. Since getting Kindle I only buy books whose physical form I like.

>>9709126
>>9703942
It could be claimed that Ligotti is the best genre fiction horror writer of the day (truly great writers like Pynchon and McCarthy have far more diabolical sequences) but he's a bit of a one trick pony. When reading him I quickly start feeling like I'm drinking a syrup that starts numbing the tongue. And his writeup on nihilism was laughably bad, sounded like someone who could go and talk to Joe Rogan about this cool new edgy thing.

>>9706667
I believe there was a Dedalus/Creation Press collection posted here but I do not have a link.

Since I mentioned Ketchum - anybody know anything close to a good slasher novel? Less known of course.

I don't know if I'd call it a hidden gem but The Terror by Dan Simmons is great.

>>9709271
>Got him in epub or mobi?
No, old paperback.

I just want to reiterate that everyone in here needs to read Arthur Machen.

>>9711891
Agreed

>>9711891
>>9711976
I read The Great God Pan. I liked it, but I don't get why people call it one of the greatest horror stories.

I did read it on a sunny day, though. I should have read it at night or while it's gloomy.

Anyway, what are some of his other stories that are considered really good?

>>9712568
Read The White People!

One of my favorites ever. To me, what Machen is about is like when you're wandering out in nature in the late afternoon, and you decide to keep going, even further away from civilization, and the sun is starting to go down, and the further you get out the stranger the plants start to seem, and the odder the animal sounds, and you start to feel this strange fear and wonder and ecstasy. He is about that weird quality to nature and the kind of faerie ecstasy that it inspires, which is as much a terror as it is a wonder, but still intensely pleasurable to experience.

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Phyl-Undhu by Tricky Nicky the meme man is surprisingly decent

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fucking John Langan

>>9712568
>>9713545
Yes, read The White People
much better than Pan

>>9713561
I want hard copies of his recent abstract horror stuff

>>9706141
This. Sheridan Le Fanu (pronounce Lefnew, like a patrician) is a boss; his 2 anthologies are well worth a look; Madame Crowl's Ghost and In a Glass Darkly are excellent.
>>9707628
Ligotti. The best of the best.

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>>9713545
Good description. There's really a feeling of the mystical in Machen's work that is unmatched in other authors. I don't even consider most of his work to really inspire feelings of horror, more like wonder. I picked up one of those Tartarus Press editions of his work recently. It's a lot of really short (3-4 page) fiction, but really good stuff.

I don't think Karl Edward Wagner was mentioned here yet. His story "Sticks" inspired the stick bundles in True Detective. His stuff is out of print and somewhat difficult to get unfortunately, but if you're on the hunt for more contemporary horror (1980's at least), seek it out.

>>9703870
God I hate CAS. His work is so boring and uninteresting; mother of toads and the beast of whatever were horrible, horrible books

>>9709271
Ligotti wrote about pessimism and anti-natalism, not nihilism. If you read Conspiracy, you should know that.

Also, how can you call the guy who write The Chymist, Alice's Last Adventure, Essays in Supernatural Horror and My Work Is Not Yet Done a one trick pony? Four extremely different stories all churned out by the same guy.

>>9703870
The Willows was a good read, and can see why Lovecraft liked the story so much. Currently reading the Wendigo to see if it has the same feel to it.

>>9711891
>>9711976
White People is hot shit though.

>>9703754

Was Bradbury's Something Wicked and influence on Melancholy of Resistance? I bought it some weeks ago to take on holiday next week but I can't help but feel like it was an influence on it in someway.

I recommend Arthur Machen.

>>9713973
Ligotti may work within the horror genre, yes, but the quality of his writing, both in terms of prose and formal structure, are far and away above the genre and belong to a much more literary stratum of the written word.

To label him a one trick pony in this regard is both unfair and misleading.

>>9714011
I'm agreeing with you anon. Ligotti is an extremely talented writer, unlike many genre writers. He actually reminds me a lot of Vladimir Nabakarov

>>9714142
I'm pretty sure he's acknowledged Nabokov as an influence on his earlier stories.

>>9703870
>Algernon Blackwood
i`ve seen that name before, it is an Alias? didn´t lovecraft had a character named like that?

Gustav Meyrink - Golem
Roland Topor - The Tenant
Simon Strantzas
Reggie Oliver
Peter Daniel Wolfkind, if available in your language

>>9716984
The quote at the beginning of Call of Cthulhu is from Algernon Blackwood, not sure what work its from though.

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>>9717635
>Topor
a man after my own heart
>yes, presuming on your gender

>>9718404
Seconding this

>>9703905
you know what it means, you pedantic prick.