(Part 2) Best british & irish horror books according to redditors

Ghosts for Christmas and Chillers for Christmas, two collections of great Xmas-themed horror stories edited by Richard Dalby.

My perennial favorite around Holloween is Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes". I wouldn't classify it as a thriller necessarily, but it's truly a classic work of dark fiction and I find myself going back and giving it another read through every few years around this time to get in the Halloween mood.

Also, I highly recommend this collection of horror short stories by Algernon Blackwood. Ideally you should read "The Willow" to a group around a campfire if you really want to get freaked out.

Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul by Maria Corelli might interest you - it was originally published in 1897. Also published in 1897 was Richard Marsh's horror novel The Beetle.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lot No. 249 has ancient Egyptian elements (as does his story "The Mummy", of course). Maybe also The Perfume of Egypt and Other Weird Stories by theosophist C.W. Leadbeater. The late 19th century was a very popular time for Egyptology and novels/stories revolving around the subject.

Yep, Blackwood was special, I was lucky enough to get a pristine second hand copy of his tales of terror and darkness.

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Terror-Darkness-Algernon-Blackwood/dp/0600303470

I put this link here for a rare and voluminous book, that is now out of print and going for a song get it immediately.

I remember this story so vividly as well! In fact I think first he pulls his reflection out of the water and then it's like he's always had a twin brother. Anyway the last sentence stuck with me: "He was leaving a world where he had never been born." Thankfully that produced a Google hit - the story's called 'The Spring' and it's by Peter Dickinson. You can't get all of it for free online but there are excerpts available here.

I could have sworn it was in an anthology called 'Danger! Danger!' but I can't find that online.

Edit: it's in a book called 'Beware Beware', here

Hey, I have a big finish question and they seems like a good place to ask it. I recently found out about Doctor Who Meets Scratchman and I'm heartbroken we never saw Vincent Price vs the Fourth Dcotor but anyway, I saw that it seemed unlikely Big Finish could get the rights so normally I'd assume it would never happen except evidently a book is coming out in January so I wondered if Big Finish had any plans to try to adapt it now?

Thank you!

You can find my new book available from Amazon and all good bookshops here in the UK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Dark-Jonathan-Whitelaw/dp/1912666464/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/261-5110982-3570009?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1912666464&pd_rd_r=a8b8422c-ab31-43bd-8516-9953fff643b4&pd_rd_w=isFbR&pd_rd_wg=xx57X&pf_rd_p=2b420a2f-6593-478e-8b5f-cb43865ff16f&pf_rd_r=ECMPF2R3P3MWMVJVF7YQ&psc=1&refRID=ECMPF2R3P3MWMVJVF7YQ

House of Small Shadows? https://www.amazon.com/House-Small-Shadows-Adam-Nevill/dp/1250068819

Do you know the approximate pub date of the book?

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/The-Books-blood-Clive-Barker/dp/0880297395/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

Here's a few things to look at:

Afraid by Jack Kilborn (This would be my top pick).

The Beast House or No Sanctuary by Richard Laymon (he can be pretty pulpy but has a very twisted imagination and does terrible, terrible things to his characters).

Cabal by Clive Barker. The Hellbound Heart and Books of Blood are also good.

I'll come back and edit if I think of more!

Check out the "Tomes of the Dead" series. It essentially drops zombies into various historical settings. I've only read Viking Dead, but it was pretty entertaining. Rather like a novelization of a black metal album cover.

Might be a long shot, but could it be Furnace, by Muriel Gray?

>Publishers Weekly:
Gray gives meaning to the term "full-throttle horror" in her jet-propelled tale of an 18-wheeler's race with a demon. A likable trucker who believes that "the best cure for any kind of unhappiness was perpetual motion," Josh Spiller is fleeing commitment to his pregnant girlfriend when he accidentally runs down a child in rural Furnace, Va. Although cleared of responsibility, Josh can't shake the conviction that the child was deliberately pushed in front of his rig, and that the pious townsfolk are covering up a murder. Back on the road, Josh senses something indescribable pursuing him. It could just be his guilt, but a hitchhiker persuades him that a more sinister game is afoot. In a nod to M.R. James's classic "Casting the Runes," Josh discovers that he has been given a scrap inscribed with an invocation to a fire elemental, and that to save his life he must pass it "willingly but unknowingly" back to whoever gave it to him--within the next five days. The pace never flags once Josh burns rubber back to Furnace, even when the story detours through dead-end subplots about the fate of Josh's unborn child and Furnace's dark history of ritual sacrifice. Although the plot doesn't manage the same consistency that Gray brought to the many layers of her debut, Trickster, it abounds with unpredictable twists and ends with a suspenseful climax that both fulfills its eerie potential and does justice to its intelligently drawn characters. (Oct.) FYI: This is the second riff on M.R. James's story to appear this season. James Hynes's Publish and Perish pays homage to James with a novella called "Casting the Runes."

Favourite book I've read recently is The Red Men. Near future Sci Fi set in the east end of London. The first chapter was recently made in to an excellent short film which gives you a decent idea of what the books got to say.

I think The Waking That Kills by Stephen Gregory just might scratch the itch for you.

I read it a while back and can say it's definitely a book with a strangely unsettling environment. It's about a teacher who is paid to tutor a boy at his home. You slowly learn more about this boy and his mother along with the teacher.

Here's the Amazon link.

Not technically stories but there's this

https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Invictus-Sourcebook-Ancient-roleplaying/dp/1568823053

And this, which are actual stories set in this time period, accompanies it

https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Cthulhu-Invictus-Stories-Battling-ebook/dp/B016R3G2RS/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495350990&sr=1-2&keywords=cthulhu+invictus

And then this guy, which I've heard is quite good.

https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Campaigns-Ancient-Rome-Osprey/dp/1472816005/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495350936&sr=1-5&keywords=cthulhu+war

This is how the book, The Rats by James Herbert, started. Great horror book, guaranteed to make you leery of rats.

Bit late, but seems we have similar taste, so here are some things I really love:

House of Leaves - not a straightforward read, but it's worth sticking with it; the labyrinthine structure of the narrative mirrors that of the house, and is an overwhelming presence, a character in its own right. The story itself is ambiguous, fragmented, ultimately unresolved, and stubbornly avoids any traditional narrative satisfaction, an exercise in open-ended uncertainty, so if you crave narrative closure, this probably isn't for you. But if you can tolerate the ambiguity, it's a book you can get thoroughly lost in.

Good Omens - since you're a Pratchett fan, you've probably read this collaboration with Neil Gaiman. If you haven't, you're in for a real treat - one of his best.

Anything by Phil Rickman. The Merrily Watkins books are essentially supernatural detective stories, based on the traditional folklore of the borderlands between England and Wales, with a little exorcism on the side. My favourites are his early books, especially The Man in the Moss and December.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury classic evoking the fears and freedoms of childhood. Wonderfully and weirdly atmospheric. If you like it, you should also read Dandelion Wine - not genre, but in Dandelion Wine he perfects his evocation of childhood, and personally, I think it's his best book. The realities of life, death and mortality, along with its wonder and mystery, seen with the clarity of childhood. And none of the usual rose-tinted 'innocence'.

All the greats have been mentioned, but there are two that are modern, but along with being two of my absolute favorites, I feel they also greatly capture the Gothic Horror feeling. Lord of the Dead by Tom Holland, and Jonathon Barrett, Gentleman Vampire by P.N. Elrod

Others have mentioned some of my favorites already; these are some others (too many to list, though, really):

Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You My Lad, by MR James.

Ringing the Changes, Robert Aickman.

Kiss Me Again, Stranger, Daphne Du Maurier

The Summer People, Shirley Jackson