The Undead Rat’s Favorite Horror Novels
What titles do I read and love? Here are a list of some of my favorites.
(This list is alphabetical by title.)
 Angel  |
AngelAuthor: Kilworth, Garry D. |
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From the Undead Rat: The passages of loss and grief are touching, giving the reader a real sense of the character’s psychological pain. Then the investigation is afoot once more. When the evidence begins to point to a supernatural cause, Peters and Spitz reluctantly follow until they meet up with the Angel — torching Demons, heedless of human life, for the cause of Good. This is a wonderful glimpse at a mind set totally alien from ours. A little blasphemous, and very thought provoking, this book is an excellent read. |
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 Blood Magic  |
Blood Magic (The Ballad of Kirin Widowmaker #1)Author: Cook, Matthew |
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Ohio Connection: Although he loves Chicago, Matthew Cook lives and works in Columbus, Ohio with his family.
With the power of her blood magic — a dark sorcery even she does not understand — Kirin avenges her twin sister’s murder. Alone, except for the grotesque but loyal creatures she can create from souls and dead flesh, she fights to survive. When the inhuman Mor crawl up from their underground world to wage war, Kirin serves as scout and archer — and finds comfort in the arms of Jazen Tor, a sergeant in the Imperial Army. But it is beautiful, gentle Lia Cho, who can call lightning from the sky, who teaches Kirin about herself. Even with Lia as an ally, Kirin must still confront the hatred of her own kind and, together, they must face the seemingly invincible Mor. |
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 City of Masks  |
City of Masks (A Cree Black Novel #1)Author: Hecht, Daniel |
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Cree Black didn’t believe in ghosts until she encountered her dead husband. Now she not only sees ghosts, she feels, hears, and even talks to them. Seeking answers to life’s mysteries as well as to riddles from her past, she’s putting her newfound abilities to use. Based out of Seattle, Cree and her partner are detectives of the spirit, scientific ghost busters who study ghosts as they try to exorcise them from people’s lives. But the ghost in their latest client’s life has Cree fearing for her own. The 150-year-old Beauforte House, in New Orleans’s Garden District, has more than a few secrets. Once the home of one of the city’s most influential families, the house has long stood empty, until Lila Beauforte resumes residence and begins to see some of those secrets literally come to life. Tormented by an insidious and violent presence, Lila finds herself trapped in a life increasingly filled with forgotten childhood terrors. Using an unconventional take on psychology and a powerful natural empathy with Lila, Cree finds herself navigating the dangerous worlds of spirit and memory as they clash in a terrorizing tale of murder and mistaken identity. |
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 City Infernal  |
City Infernal (The City Infernal Series #1)Author: Lee, Edward |
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Welcome to the Mephistopolis Hell is a city. It stretches, literally, without end — a labyrinth of smoke and waking nightmare. Just as endlessly, sewer grates belch flame from the sulphur fires that have raged beneath the streets for millennia. Clock towers spire in every district, by public law, but their faces have no hands; time is not measured here in seconds or hours but in atrocity and despair. In the center of this morass of stone and smoke and butchery and horror stands the 666-floor Mephisto Building, where Gargoyles prowl the wind-blown ledges and from whose highest garrets the innocent are hung from gibbets and left to rot for eons. The lone occupant of the very top floor looks down upon his dominion and smiles a smile that is brighter than a thousand suns. Here, yes, everyone is dead yet everyone lives forever. Welcome to the Mephistopolis. Welcome to the city of Hell. Welcome. Edward Lee offers a very new look at the very old concept of Hell. An occult fluke grants lonely Goth girl Cassie the harrowing ability to enter Hell as a living person. But to her surprise, the Abyss is not the barren fire-and-brimstone landscape she expects. It’s a ghastly metropolis fueled by pure evil, where sorcery replaces science and sheer horror reigns over a population of fallen angels, demons, crossbreeds, and the human damned. |
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 The Crow  |
The CrowAuthor: O’Barr, J. |
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The best selling alternative graphic novel of all time! The Crow is a supernatural force driven by equal parts love and revenge. Writer and artist James O’Barr created The Crow — a supernatural force driven by equal parts love and revenge — in the early 1980s as a response to a personal tragedy. |
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 Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of Life  |
Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of LifeAuthor: Braunbeck, Gary A. |
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Nominated for the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction Ohio Connection: Gary A. Braunbeck was born in Newark, Ohio and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio This provocative book is on one level a series of re-worked critical essays on music, film and books and on another level a biography of one of the best authors spinning horror stories. Gary is the author of over 200 short stories of which the 2003 Stoker Award winner “Duty” can be found in here. From Gary A. Braunbeck: |
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 Ghost Story  |
Ghost StoryAuthor: Straub, Peter |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past and get away with murder. Peter Straub’s classic bestseller is a work of superb horror that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares. |
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 The Haunting of Hill House  |
The Haunting of Hill HouseAuthor: Jackson, Shirley |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. From the Editors of Amazon.com: Eleanor Vance has always been a loner — shy, vulnerable, and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her dying mother. “She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words.” Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusual invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by “supernatural manifestations.” He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor’s childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague’s bizarre study — along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant, and Luke, a well-to-do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House — a notorious estate in New England. Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles, and rooms within rooms — a place “without kindness, never meant to be lived in. . . . “ Although Eleanor’s initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural — she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone — neither Theo nor Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emotional torment Eleanor endures. Intense, literary, and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James’s classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. |
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 The House Next Door  |
The House Next DoorAuthor: Siddons, Anne Rivers |
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It is a sad day for Colquitt and Walter Kennedy when construction begins on an elegant new home on the formerly empty lot next door. It signals the end of an era of blessed tranquility, of sipping drinks on the porch in the quiet of a warm southern afternoon. But Colquitt and Walter are losing more than a view. With a new house come new neighbors with their secrets and fears and frailties that will not be contained within four strong walls, reaching out instead to wreak havoc with other lives and relationships. For there’s something about the house next door that seems to bring out the worst in those who live there. And soon, nothing in the Kennedys’ once-idyllic neighborhood will ever be the same again. |
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 The Hunger  |
The Hunger (The Vampire Series #1)Author: Strieber, Whitley |
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Eternal youth is a wonderful thing for the few who have it, but for Miriam Blaylock, it is a curse, an existence marred by death and sorrow. Because for the everlasting Miriam, everyone she loves withers and dies. Now, haunted by signs of her adoring husband’s imminent demise, Miriam sets out in serach of a new partner, one who can quench her thirst for love and withstand the test of time. She finds it in the beautiful Sarah Roberts, a brilliant young scientist who may hold the secret to immortality. But one thing stands between the intoxicating Miriam Blaylock and the object of her desire: Dr. Tom Haver . . . and he’s about to realize that love and death go hand in hand. |
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 In Silent Graves  |
In Silent GravesAuthor: Braunbeck, Gary A. |
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Ohio Connection: Gary A. Braunbeck was born in Newark, Ohio and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio A slightly revised mass market paperback version of the difficult-to-get Stoker Award nominated novel: The Indifference of Heaven. Robert Londrigan seems to have it all. He is a newscaster with a rising career. He has a beautiful wife, Denise, and a new baby on the way. But in just a few short hours Robert’s world is turned upside down. Now his family is gone. But the torment only gets worse when his daughter’s body is stolen from the morgue by a strange, disfigured man. . . . Robert is about to begin a journey into a world of nightmare, an unimaginable world of mystery, horror and revelation. He will learn, from both the living and the dead, secrets about this world and things beyond this world. Though his journey will be grotesque, terrifying and heartbreaking, he will not be allowed to stop. But can he survive with his mind intact? Can he survive at all? |
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 Mr. Hands  |
Mr. HandsBonus Novella: Kiss of the Mudman |
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Ohio Connection: Gary A. Braunbeck was born in Newark, Ohio and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio This book also contains the author preferred version of Kiss of the Mudman, winner of the 2005 IHG Award Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in Long Fiction. The doll is odd, carved out of wood, with long arms and huge hands. Little Sarah named it Mr. Hands and loved the doll until the day she was murdered. Now her mother, Lucy, discovers something amazing about Sarah’s doll — it allows her to control another Mr. Hands. This Mr. Hands is a living, terrifying being with horrendous power. At Lucy’s command he will do whatever she tells him — even kill. This is Lucy’s chance to see justice is done. She decides who will live and who will suffer a horrible death, and Mr. Hands carries out the sentences without mercy. But once Mr. Hands is unleashed, will anyone be able to stop him? |
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 Necropolis  |
NecropolisAuthor: Waggoner, Tim |
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Ohio Connection: Tim Waggoner lives in the Dayton area. Centuries ago, when Earth’s Darkfolk — vampires, werewolves, witches and other creatures — were threatened by humanity, they departed our planet’s dimension and journeyed to a shadowy realm, where they built the great city of Necropolis. Matthew Adrion is a Cleveland cop who came through a portal to Necropolis on a case, died, and was resurrected as a zombie. Unable to return home, he works as a private investigator on the very mean streets of this shadowy, dark city. |
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 Odd Thomas  |
Odd Thomas (An Odd Thomas Thriller #1)Author: Koontz, Dean |
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The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why. But they do try to communicate, with a short order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it’s a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd’s otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo’s sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it’s different. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world’s worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd’s deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15. Today is August 14. In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. |
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 Phantoms  |
PhantomsAuthor: Koontz, Dean |
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CLOSER . . . AND CLOSER . . . AND CLOSER . . . |
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 The Shining  |
The ShiningAuthor: King, Stephen |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: A family checks in so the father can write, and terror lurks behind every door. Their son, who has psychic powers but does not know he has them and does not know how to use them, struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane. |
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 V for Vendetta  |
V for VendettaAuthor: Moore, Alan |
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From the Editors of Barnes and Noble: It is 1998 (which was the future back then!) and a Fascist government has taken over the U.K. The only blot on its particular landscape is a lone terrorist who is systematically killing all the government personnel associated with a now destroyed secret concentration camp. Codename V is out for vengeance . . . and an awful lot more. V feels slightly dated like all past premonitions do. The original series was black and white and that added to the grittiness of the feel while the coloring here in the graphic novel sometimes blurs David Lloyd’s fine drawing. But these are small concerns. Skillfully plotted, V is an essential read for all those who love comics and the freedom, as a medium, they allow a writer as skilled as Moore. |
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 The Void  |
The VoidAuthor: Jacobs, Teri A. |
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Ohio Connection: Teri A. Jacobs lives in the Cincinnati area. Ohio author Teri A. Jacobs scores big with a truly unique book in the field of horror literature. The netherworld of ancient Central and South America, Xibalba, contains shadowy demons and soul devouring gods and heroes. The Dark Man, a human who calls himself Coatl, walks between the worlds of Earth and Xibalba to haunt the dreams of his victims and steal their souls for the masters of Xibalba to torture and devour. But the prize soul belongs to Leslie Starr — unknowingly harboring a mysterious force that could destroy the depraved gods of Xibalba or release them upon the Earth — who knows there’s something lurking in her head, but has no idea what it is or how to use it. |
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 We Have Always Lived in the Castle  |
We Have Always Lived in the CastleAuthor: Jackson, Shirley |
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From the Editors of Amazon.com: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. “What place would be better for us than this?” she asks, of the neat, secluded realm she shares with her uncle and with her beloved older sister, Constance. “Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people.” Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, ritually revisiting them. She has made “a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us” against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers. Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives — cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters’ careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat’s treasures, talking privately to Constance about “normal lives” and “boy friends.” Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible secret, the convergence of the villagers upon the house, and a spectacular unleashing of collective spite. The sisters are propelled further into seclusion and solipsism, abandoning “time and the orderly pattern of our old days” in favor of an ever-narrowing circuit of ritual and shadow. They have themselves become talismans, to be alternately demonized and propitiated, darkly, with gifts. Jackson’s novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more — like some of her other fictions — as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normality itself. “Poor strangers,” says Merricat contentedly at last, studying trespassers from the darkness behind the barricaded Blackwood windows. “They have so much to be afraid of.” |
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 Wolfen  |
WolfenAuthor: Strieber, Whitley |
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This book was featured in an essay in Horror: 100 Best Books. Only two people have grasped the full horror of the Wolfen — one man and one woman, both cops, locked in a strange passion of love, hate, and sheer terror. |
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Summary:
Title List:
1. Angel by Garry D. Kilworth
2. Blood Magic by Matthew Cook
3. City of Masks by Daniel Hecht
4. The Crow by J.(James) O’Barr
5. Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of Life by Gary A. Braunbeck
6. Ghost Story by Peter Straub
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
8. The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
9. The Hunger by Whitley Strieber
10. In Silent Graves by Gary A. Braunbeck
11. Mr. Hands by Gary A. Braunbeck
12. Necropolis by Tim Waggoner
13. Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
14. Phantoms by Dean Koontz
15. The Shining by Stephen King
16. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
17. The Void by Teri A. Jacobs
18. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
19. Wolfen by Whitley Strieber
