Horror Aficionados discussion

Recommendations on a good, really scary book.

Thanks Scott. I've never read Barker before.

You are in for a treat then. Try The Books of Blood as well.

Great ones Scott :)

I think Stephen King's It was a great one. I'll have to go through my list and dig up some more.

Try Pet Sematary. Very scary!

I couldn't finish It because it scared me so much, but I'm planning on going back and starting again.

HA! Cujo is the one that scared me so bad I couldn't finish. Gonna have to give it another go, though. I was just a kid when I attempted it the first time.

Gatorman...I totally agree...'Pet Sematary" is the scariest and creepiest book I've ever read to date!!!
I always suggest this title, too, whenever the 'scariest book' topic ever comes up.

Great suggestions so far!

For King, I'd like to add The Shining.

Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan is a great one.
Horns and Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill are great, too.

One story that really gave me the creeps recently was The Colour Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft.

You can't go wrong with any of the books mentioned... and almost everything by HP Lovecraft is scary, as well as some of the weirder Robert E. Howard stories in The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard: Wings in the Night and such...

Armand Rosamilia
Highway To Hell

That damn vampire book I can't remember the title of is really scary!

Cold in July scared the heck out of me, especially the opening scenes. I second Pet Sematary too.

Tressa wrote: "That damn vampire book I can't remember the title of is really scary!"

What's the story like? I've read a lot of vampire books. Maybe I can help...

Kristy, go here and read what little plot I posted. After all, it's a vampire novel, lol.
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...

I can't remember if it takes place in America back in the early 1900s or in another country. I remember there's a country family of a man, a big blonde woman, and a son, who's I guess about 10. For some reason a coffin with a vampire finds its way to their town, and everyone stays clear of if except for the woman who leaves the house in the middle of the night to try to open the coffin. She eventually succeeds and of course becomes a vamp.

I remember the father, son, and some other people in the town try to hunt down the vampire and his followers. There is a big underground scene near the end where people who have been turned are kind of cocooned down there. The title is always on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember the cover at all. It's very well written and spooky as hell.

Sounds really familiar. Do you remember how long the book was/

About the same length as a regular PBK. I hope you can remember it. It's driving me batty. I even looked through lists of vampire novels and the titles/descriptions didn't ring a bell. It has a one or two word title. I think it's by a fairly well known author.

I'm going to look through my books when I get home, Hopefully I can find it.

Thanks, Kristy. The cover might have a person hanging like a bat (or else I'm just batty) and looking up. That's how I remember the cover but I could be way off.

There needs to be created a search engine where you type in what you remember of a book's plot and it will pump out some suggestions.

Our library used to have a great reader's advisory database called NoveList where you could check a bunch of plot phrases and it would spit out a list. We found many books for patrons who only knew the vaguest of the plots.

Don't think it would help with a vampire book. Hell, most of them would have the same plot keywords!

I know deep down in the recesses of my heart (yes, I do have one and it's NOT black and charred) that I or someone will find this book one day. Maybe I should offer a reward.

Jason wrote: "There needs to be created a search engine where you type in what you remember of a book's plot and it will pump out some suggestions."

genius idea...until then, there is always us :)

Tressa wrote: "Our library used to have a great reader's advisory database called NoveList where you could check a bunch of plot phrases and it would spit out a list. We found many books for patrons who only knew..."


You couldn't be more right, Tressa. I tried to so a search on a google with some of the plot points mentioned and all I got were YA vampire book lists and a few other lists with classics and a few set in Scandinavia in them.

Bandit wrote: "Jason wrote: "There needs to be created a search engine where you type in what you remember of a book's plot and it will pump out some suggestions."

genius idea...until then, there is always us :)"

Thanks, Bandit. If I were a computer programmer, I'd so hop on that.

I think I owned it at one time, but got rid of it. Or maybe I checked it out? I'm going to comb back through my history of checkouts.

if I were a computer programmer, I'd invent the next best thing technologically speaking, cash in on that and open my own bookstore...my bookstore's website would have the search engine Jason's talking about :)

http://www.vampirelibrary.com/all-books/

That is a massive *bloody list.

*Pun intended

I know. I'm combing through it right now with my eyeballs burning.

The ghost stories of M.R. JAMES always send a shiver down my spine.

Literally has me up at night.

I recently bought an anthology of M.R. James, Craig. Can't wait to dive into it.

AllReaders
http://www.allreaders.com

AllReaders.com is a collection of book reviews contributed by "scholars" who essentially add metadata information about the book to enhance the review, and make it easy to find titles based on a wide range of criteria
How precise? Depending on the category, you have up to a dozen options to narrow plot, main character, main adversary, setting, structural options and theme. Like Patrick O'Brian? Select a "water adventure" set in the 18th century with an eccentric/mental doctor who's fighting for freedom, etc... and you've just scratched the surface of available options, yet you've already narrowed the search to find close matches to the Aubrey/Maturin series.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/...

Thanks, Dana. Maybe I can find that vampire book through this route.

I'm coming up with nothing...

Some of the stories in Fritz Leiber's NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS, particularly "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" and "Smoke Ghost" should do nicely. Same goes for Leiber's novel CONJURE WIFE.

I mentioned this one in the short story thread, but in case you've missed it there -- Kealan Patrick Burke's short story "Empathy" is one of the creepiest things I've read in a long time. 99 cents in the Kindle store -- if you're one of those folks who won't buy a solo short story, make an exception this time.

E. F. Benson's short story "Caterpillars" always did it for me too.

Bests to all,

--tr