Best Horror Books You Have Read

[DragonGiri]

Hey, looking for some good horror books to read. I have read a lot of Stephen King, and I love a good horror so tell me your favorite!

 

[Nihilistic_Impact]

I really enjoy Arthur Machen's short stories, especially The White People and the Great God Pan.

Robert Chamber's King in Yellow is also entertaining.

Honestly I like a lot of weird fiction, so for a single book I would recommend The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

 

[vexxxacious]

Robert Chamber's King in Yellow fantastically existential at times, so I can second it. The whole lore around The Yellow King as a mythical creation and symbol of the decadent movement, fantastic.

Not quite horror, but in the same frame, China Miéville's Perdido Street Station and that whole universe is good.

Clive Barker's The Hills, The Cities is uniquely existential to me, I'm always trying to figure out what it means.

 

[DragonGiri]

Robert Chamber's King in Yellow fantastically existential at times, so I can second it. The whole lore around The Yellow King as a mythical creation and symbol of the decadent movement, fantastic.

Not quite horror, but in the same frame, China Miéville's Perdido Street Station and that whole universe is good.

Clive Barker's The Hills, The Cities is uniquely existential to me, I'm always trying to figure out what it means.

Clive Barker as in the make up artist Clive Barker?

 

[yokai]

i think Clive Barker is best known for Hellraiser, but he's written a bunch of stuff, in lots of different formats. i like his short story collections, the Books of Blood.
the Hills, the Cities feels like it shouldn't work as a story--- the premise is absolutely insane--- but it does. is in the first Book of Blood; would recommend!

i also really like Mariana Enriquez. an Argentinian author, she's got a couple short story anthologies translated into English: Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in the Fire. Kids Who Come Back, from the former, creeped me right tf out. -nods-

finally, Brian Evenson's Songs for the Unravelling of the World and the Glassy Burning Floor of Hell are interesting reads, as is 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (who is one of Stephen King's sons). more short stories, but that's just how i like to eat muh horror; a li'l nibble at a time.
...i'm pretty sure all the authors i've mentioned also have novels, if that's more your thing....

 

[vexxxacious]

Clive Barker as in the make up artist Clive Barker?

Hellraiser playwright Clive Barker, he also has short stories. Only one I can recommend from experience out of all his works.

 

[Azure-Yuki]

If you've never dipped your toe into Lovecraft, he has quite a few great works and you can usually find his work in collections.

Stories of note:

The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
At the Mountains of Madness
Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Color From Outer Space
Shadow Out of Time

And many others I cannot recall at the moment, but those are the biggies.