The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill

Read my review of this novel over at Hellnotes.

http://hellnotes.com/the-house-of-small-shadows-book-review

Wilbanks' List of Horror

Folks have asked me about my own list of twenty horror fiction books so, with little ado, here it is. First, allow me to say it wasn't easy and I could have gone many different ways in its creation, but in the end I went for a general balance of what I've enjoyed over the years.

Complete Works – Edgar Allan Poe

The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells (1896)

Dracula – Bram Stoker (1897)

Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

The Werewolf of Paris – Guy Endore  (1933)

I Am Legend – Richard Matheson (1954)

The Exorcist – William Peter Blatty (1971)

Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice (1976)

Night Shift – Stephen King (1978)

Red Dragon – Thomas Harris (1981)

Pet Sematary – Stephen King (1983)

The Books of Blood – Clive Barker (1984/1985)

The Dark Descent – ed. by David G. Hartwell  (1987)

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (1987)

Lightning – Dean Koontz (1988)

Ancient Images – Ramsey Campbell (1989)

Black Angel – Graham Masterton (1991)

The Nightmare Factory – Thomas Ligotti (1996)

A Lower Deep – Tom Piccirilli (2001)

A Winter Haunting – Dan Simmons (2002)

Freeman's List of Horror

What better introduction to author Bob Freeman and his list of twenty top horror books than to quote the credentials on his Twitter bio?: Author, Artist, Paranormal Adventurer, Psychonaut, Amateur Cartographer, Dungeon Master, & Rune Caster. He also created the art for Randy Chandler's BAD JUJU from our own Acid Grave Press; read it if you haven't; it's a doozy.

Now here's Bob's fine list. Enjoy!

The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
The Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood
The Great God Pan and Other Weird Stories - Arthur Machen
The Complete John Thunstone - Manly Wade Wellman
Hellblazer (DC/Vertigo)
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Shadowland - Peter Straub

Spectre - Robert Weverka
The Stand - Stephen King
Ghost Story - Peter Straub
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
The Witching Hour - Anne Rice
The Devil Rides Out - Dennis Wheatley
Love is the Law - Nick Mamatas
LeHorn's Hollow - Brian Keene
Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist
Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz

https://authorbobfreeman.wordpress.com/

Meikle's List of Horror

Popular genre author William Meikle kindly allowed me to post a list he compiled recently of his top twenty horror books. He also mentioned that the list would be completely different were I to ask him at a later date. Well, I think it’s a fine list and I would have picked several of these books for a list of my own; I guess that’s why Willie and I get along so well. Enjoy!

The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
Our Lady of Darkness - Fritz Leiber
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
The Shining - Stephen King

Ghost Story - Peter Straub
The Doll Who Ate His Mother - Ramsey Campbell
Psycho - Robert Bloch
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
The Girl Next Door - Jack Ketchum
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Siddons

And now I’m off to track down a copy of The House Next Door!

http://www.williammeikle.com/

Mark and Dave Chat: Dead Earth Rumblings

I thought Dead Earth readers would like to hear how Mark and I started working together on the books, so we took some time to have a chat via email, and it went like this:

DTW: I had the idea to create a world with plenty of room for imaginative and fantastic invention, sort of a horror Star Wars thing that could go in any direction we wished and be revisited in an endless cycle. But at the time (early '00s) I figured it was just too much fun for one writer to handle and I wanted someone else to share the excitement. My first choice for a writing partner was Mark Justice. And fortunately, you were interested.

MJ: What I remember is getting an email from you asking if I wanted to write a novel together. I knew you from message boards and had a sense that we shared some similar tastes in fiction. I think I asked you what you had in mind and you said, “Mutants and zombies.” I was in.

DTW: Yeah, I had read your stuff for The Damned Nation antho and you had commented on my tales at Horrorfind so I knew we could probably pull it off. Mutants, zombies, aliens: everything comic book and pulp fiction fans like ourselves could want in a series of novels. Did we bash out the concept first or the characters? I remember wanting the necro priests to have flowing red robes and Aztec-like helmets.

MJ: I *think* the concept came first, but barely. Both seemed to develop at the same time. I remember that we started on a novel with the invasion in full swing but you felt we should start at the beginning. So we tabled the novel and wrote the novella “Dead Earth: The Green Dawn.”

***

Mark Justice

Dead Earth: The Green Dawn

Dead Earth: The Vengeance Road

Dead Earth: Sanctuary

"Lights Out" - A Very Creepy Two Minutes

A couple book reviews.

Here are a couple of book reviews that you may want to read. One is an urban fantasy novel that I reviewed--please note that "Late in the novel..." should read "Later...". It's a typo, dang it. And the other is a review of Dead Earth: The Green Dawn at The Bookie Monster. Just click the links below.

CALIFORNIA BONES by Greg van Eekhout

DEAD EARTH: THE GREEN DAWN