Horror Reviews
What makes a good folk horror story? It is not just the tension and gruesome moments, but the feeling. You need to get the tone right. A visitor to a new place that is familiar in some ways, but alien in others. You can experience some of this unease yourself just by travelling to somewhere...
A person brings a piece of themselves with them when they read a book. Your background, beliefs and current situation can all inform the story. There are books where it does not really matter who you are, but some books will hit home harder for those who feel a connection. A Better World by...
The horror genre has taught me how to deal with events that happened in my childhood. If you and a bunch of friends accidently run over a homeless person or set fire to a witch, the best thing is just to admit it without delay and take your lumps. You see, no matter how many years pass, they...
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
I love to read books; they transport me to unfamiliar places. I will go there even if these unfamiliar places are dangerous like the Hollyhock Asylum found in Chris Panatier’s The Redemption of Morgan Bright. A story can transport you, as can characters, but sometimes the structure of a...
The Festive Period evolves over time and where you celebrate it has a major impact. Even in my lifetime we have gone from lording a jolly red man called Father Christmas to worshipping a strange soda drinking fellow on the side of a big van called Santa. He will always be the big FC in my house....
I have always felt that the idea of travelling space is horrific enough without the thought of added monsters or manipulations of the mind. The only thing between you and the vast vacuum of space is a few inches of steel. When you arrive on a new planet, things are not much safer. The air may be...
Editing a collection of short stories must be a task. Whittling down all the possibilities to just a few that represent a vision. The key is to make the subject matter attainable; stories about monsters in pubs or griffons on an aeroplane. Taking on all Asian Ghost Short Stories is an...
What happens when the world ends? Do we as a species rally together to save the day at the last possible moment, or do we fiddle whilst Rome burns? If recent history has shown us nothing else, the rich will party, and the poor will die. Nothing new there then. Stephanie Feldman does not see the...
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
I read a lot of spooky and downright horrific books in the run up to Halloween this year, but the horror books that work well stick in the mind all year round. The Pale House Devil by Richard Kadrey is not your typical horror novel, nor is it your typical comedy book, or buddy story. This is a...
It is important to choose the place of Higher Education that suits you. You may want to go to one of the old Universities of learning, taking with you high grades and a love of academia. You may want to go somewhere more relaxed or vocational. Where do you go if you are interested in creative...
The stories that the Brontë sisters wrote have an extreme gothic appeal and you only need to visit their old home in Haworth to know what inspired them. There did not seem much else to do than walk the moors and avoid dying. Whilst the town may be picturesque now, full of cobbled...
Listen to your kids. It can be hard sometimes as they can speak absolute nonsense, but they also speak the truth, and they may need you to listen. Perhaps they wake at night and tell you that things are not right in the house, you can dismiss this as childish fantasies, but their fears...
Horror - also known as Horror fantasy - is a genre of literature that is intended to induce fear, terror or horror in it's readers.
Horror can be be fantastic, supernatural or simply fictional in nature and is considered to be a genre that has existed in some form for hundreds of years. As with any genre there is always some ambiguity as to what constitutes horror and there does seem to be a modern predilection for a greater degree of dark fantasy and speculative fiction rather than the classic definition of Horror, however there are still some authors producing some top rate novels within the genre.
Here you can see reviews of the latest new horror books along with some of the best classics of the genre.
Book of the month
