Babel Clash

M.J. — Thanks for those insights into The Hypnotist, one of my top recommended reads of 2010.

I’m writing this close to midnight on Halloween night — my favorite evening of the year. Somewhere between my early love of Edgar Allan Poe and classic tales of horror like The Monkey’s Paw and The Bottle Imp as well as the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I came to horror fiction very young and have stuck with it since.

And there’s something about Halloween — and the October launch into autumn that lasts through early December — that makes me want to sit by a fire and read ghost stories.

I wrote my short novel Isis from those early loves, and my enduring desire to live — only imaginatively — in the 19th century, when Isis is set. But as with all stories, Isis came from personal experience, filtered through gothic convention. I had to imagine the world of a girl at the very end of the 19th century — a girl from a wealthy family, one who became increasingly isolated on her grandfather’s majestic estate in Cornwall.

I was able to draw from mythology and Cornish legend, as well, to flesh out Isis/Iris’ imagination in the story, and bring her to life — at least for a short time.

Thank you, M.J.,  for the question about Isis.

And now for my top 20 horror novels/stories of all time, recommended to any who love a great tale of terror.  I could easily make a list of hundreds of stories and perhaps a hundred or more novels that I think are among the greats, but this is a good place to start for those looking for both classics as well as some modern masters:

1. Any collection by Edgar Allan Poe

2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

3.’Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

4. Any collection by H.P. Lovecraft

5. Ghost Story by Peter Straub

6. When Darkness Loves Us by Elizabeth Engstrom

7. The Other by Thomas Tryon

8. Dracula by Bram Stoker

9. The Monk by Matthew Lewis

10. Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

11. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

12. A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson

13. The Shining by Stephen King

14. Any collection by Algernon Blackwood

15. The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

16. The Influence by Ramsey Campbell

17. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

18. Any collection by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

19. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson

20. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
I may pull together a list of gothics next time up at bat, but what books would you add to this horror literature list?  I know there are many more. What are your favorites?

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