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A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from a master of suspense

I read this story years ago and it has stayed with me since then. The titular seasonal visitors happen to be the Allisons from New York, who lease a particular isolated country cottage each year. On this occasion, rather than heading back home, they choose to extend their vacation for a month longer – a decision that to alarm all the locals in the surrounding community. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that not a soul has lingered at the lake past the holiday. Even so, the Allisons are determined to not leave, and that’s when things start to grow more bizarre. The man who delivers the kerosene won’t sell for them. No one will deliver groceries to their home, and at the time the family try to go to the village, the automobile won’t start. A storm gathers, the power of their radio diminish, and with the arrival of dusk, “the two old people huddled together in their summer cottage and expected”. What are they waiting for? What might the residents know? Whenever I revisit this author’s disturbing and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the best horror comes from what’s left undisclosed.

An Acclaimed Writer

Ringing the Changes by a noted author

In this concise narrative a couple journey to a typical beach community where church bells toll continuously, a perpetual pealing that is irritating and puzzling. The opening extremely terrifying episode occurs after dark, when they decide to go for a stroll and they can’t find the ocean. There’s sand, there’s the smell of putrid marine life and salt, waves crash, but the water appears spectral, or a different entity and worse. It is simply profoundly ominous and every time I go to the coast after dark I recall this story which spoiled the sea at night to my mind – favorably.

The newlyweds – the wife is youthful, he’s not – head back to the inn and learn the cause of the ringing, through an extended episode of confinement, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden meets grim ballet pandemonium. It’s a chilling meditation regarding craving and decline, a pair of individuals aging together as a couple, the connection and brutality and gentleness of marriage.

Not only the most terrifying, but likely a top example of concise narratives in existence, and a personal favourite. I encountered it en español, in the initial publication of this author’s works to appear locally in 2011.

Catriona Ward

A Dark Novel by an esteemed writer

I read this book near the water in France a few years ago. Although it was sunny I experienced a chill over me. I also experienced the thrill of excitement. I was composing my latest book, and I had hit a block. I was uncertain whether there existed any good way to write various frightening aspects the story includes. Experiencing this novel, I realized that it was possible.

Published in 1995, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a criminal, the protagonist, based on a notorious figure, the criminal who slaughtered and cut apart multiple victims in a city over a decade. As is well-known, this person was fixated with producing a submissive individual that would remain with him and made many grisly attempts to do so.

The actions the book depicts are terrible, but equally frightening is its emotional authenticity. The protagonist’s terrible, fragmented world is directly described using minimal words, details omitted. The reader is immersed caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness thoughts and actions that appal. The strangeness of his mind resembles a physical shock – or getting lost on a barren alien world. Going into this story is not just reading and more like a physical journey. You are consumed entirely.

An Accomplished Author

A Haunting Novel from Helen Oyeyemi

In my early years, I was a somnambulist and eventually began experiencing nightmares. At one point, the fear included a dream where I was confined in a box and, as I roused, I found that I had ripped the slat off the window, trying to get out. That building was falling apart; when it rained heavily the downstairs hall flooded, maggots fell from the ceiling on to my parents’ bed, and on one occasion a big rodent ascended the window coverings in my sister’s room.

Once a companion gave me Helen Oyeyemi’s novel, I was no longer living in my childhood residence, but the narrative of the house located on the coastline felt familiar to me, longing at that time. This is a story concerning a ghostly clamorous, sentimental building and a girl who ingests calcium from the cliffs. I loved the book so much and went back frequently to its pages, each time discovering {something