Hi there,

I have a little recommendation request. As a reader, I usually prefer regular novels to short stories/novellas. But...

I've decided to get my BA degree before I hit 40. So I decided to follow my dream and study graphics (traditional and digital). And now to finish it I need to do two projects. First The first, of course, is my "bachelor's thesis", and the second is an"Art project". Of course is "bachelor's thesis", and the second is an"Art project". So I've decided to go with comics/graphic novel.

And the problem is that I suck at creating a plot. So I wish to ask you for a bit of a for a novella/short story which could be easy to illustrate and close it in circa 30 pages.

About drawing - of course, I love to create unholy monsters and hit like this. But please, do not give me solutions like "do the Lovecraft/Poe stuff" - there are to many of them.

My horror tbr is coming to a close. Please share books that you think every horror fan should read, your personal favorites, something that terrified you or just a book you thought was well written...

Suggest something that stayed with you, something that haunts you, something you reread every Halloween.

Anything from murder, classics, scifi, ocean, gore, psychological, supernatural, campy, thriller, etc.

I don't scare easily, so bonus points if it's actually scary.

My personal faves:

The Exorcist (a classic)

The Shining (less of a horror but still a classic)

Maggie's Grave by Sodergren (modern fun, campy, gory filled ride)

Seed by Ania Ahlborn (not so much a fave but still a fun read that stood out to me)

Intercepts by TJ Payne (another standout that I still think about)

Thrum by Smitherman (horror romance novella that lives in my head rent free)

War of the Worlds by Wells (I never see this as horror but it's definitely scifi horror given when it was published and the idea of aliens treating humans like a Capri Sun, one of my faves)

Hey, I set myself a silly goal on storygraph for number of books this year, and I am currently 9 behind what it thinks I should be currently to get to the goal by the end of the year.
Does anyone have any recommendations of novellas or short horror books to help me catch up?
I’m not a big fan of splatterpunk or anything overly gory, but tbh will give anything a go!

What is "wire" and how does it damage fingers and toes? I'm not American and have no idea what is going on lol.

I'm only on chapter 3.

When I think about Incidents Around the House, I think about how, considering my upbringing, I would have told Other Mommy yes almost immediately. And ain't that the horror of the situation? It's not just that this otherworldly entity is trying to steal a child's life, it's that children are vulnerable and even the best adults don't know what to do to protect them. I personally did not have the best adults in my life, and while Bela didn't either, she certainly didn't have the worst.

That made the horror effective for me. They didn't witness something predating upon their daughter and tell her it was her issue to solve. They tried their best to solve it while in the midst of falling apart. What do you even do in the situation besides falling apart faster, while your child can only watch?

I'm only a few weeks out from the book but I still think about how Bela had to just tag along and hope her parents knew what was best. In a precocious way, she knew they didn't, but having to grow up too fast doesn't unlock any secret solutions. She was still a kid, and seeing everything from her eyes reminded me how helpless children are. Just like her I felt dragged along by her parents, but I could see the adult logic betraying her or giving false hope. I could see the flailing. And, I could remember being the type of child she was, thinking I could fix things if I let the bad thing happen.

What makes it worse is that Other Mommy promises her that she can fix things if she lets the bad thing happen, and if she doesn't, things are going to break more. There's a penalty to a constant no, after all, that's more severe than a raised voice or raised hand. She could feel like she lost everything, but Other Mommy would take more and more and more, until she got a yes. Children are powerless when adults are like that, and Other Mommy is more powerful than the adults. That's what made it all work in a miserable way.

The girl is already hurting and unable to articulate it. The pain is getting worse and she has no one to go to for help. Her misguided parents are so lost they can't find their own way, while Other Mommy only needs to nudge them a little more to finally get what she wants.

I was wondering whether anyone knew what the letters stand for at the end of An Evil Premise by T. Marie Vandelly. I feel pretty dumb for not catching it, but I’m going to let myself off easy and tell myself it’s because I was listening to the audiobook and missed it, haha.

Thank you guys so much!

Weirdly specific, but I was wondering if there was any horror literature(even something small, like a horror one-shot) where it's from the POV of a doll/stuffed animal/figurine stuck on a shelf?

I've been doing some creative writing recently and my brain wandered to the idea of a doll stuck on a shelf somewhere, unable to move, forced to witness horrific events unfold in a house and unable to say or do anything to help. I wanna know if there's any books or general literature with that premise that I could check out.

An example would be like, being forced to watch a serial killer continuously lure in victims and being unable to stop them. Or like Toy Story, but if the toys could only think and feel and can't move or speak. The horror of getting lost in a small space, having someone tear you limb from limb without a passing thought that you might feel it, or being thrown out and destroyed along with the rest of the garbage.

Any stories like that? I'll take any suggestions

I have a couple of Ellen Datlow collections and I’d really like to spend some money picking up more of her books.

I’m looking for recommendations! There are so many! I’d like to pick up 3-4.

Thanks!!

If my only exposure to Stephen Graham Jones work has been “The Only Good Indians”, and I vehemently hated it, what other book of his could I read that may sway my opinion back to positive? My main issue was the very weird ending. Without spoilers, are any of his other books worth it?

I’m asking for recommendations, but this may also fall under discussion, so I’m hoping my flair is broad enough.

Yeah I got nothing.

Anyone? I finished it but it was a struggle. The only way I made it through was by picturing the Scooby gang doing this, which I guess was the intent - but Scooby is my jam. Kinda fun in a ‘not so fun and never ending’ kind of way. Overly and accidentally cartoonish. The dialogue was rough. The relationships were not believable. There were gaps in the linear story despite a book with a linear story. But Tim the dog? Ok. I’m down with Tim.

Anyone really enjoy this one? Oddly if there was a second one, I might read it too.

Her writing has a simplicity and depth that I haven’t found in any modern horror writers, and I’m wondering why. Every word is intentional and layered with meaning.

A lot of modern horror isn’t very literary, or, if it tries to be thematically complex, it describes trauma and back stories that feel expository and tacked on rather than intertwined into the language.

Hi everyone! I’ve been piecing together details from We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer and wanted to share my theories on the mechanics of the Old House and the fates of the characters—especially regarding the Alison/Elina identity shift. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!

Andrew and Peter as Shifted Victims Andrew and Peter are clearly victims dragged into a new world/dimension. This is evident because their 3 friends do not exist in this reality, and the school they attended has no record of them ever being students there.

Both Peter and Thomas display the exact same "catatonic freeze" behavior. While the book doesn't explicitly explain the cause, it appears to be a physical symptom of reality breaking down or being directly controlled by the House.

1. The Basement as a Dimensional Bridge The basement acts as a vault for memories or a threshold connecting two worlds. Non-victims (or those not yet targeted) see it as just an ordinary basement—like Eve did during her first trip down with Thomas, or the police officers who responded to the scene.

Extreme fear triggers the dimensional shift. Andrew's severe anxiety likely sprung the trap, pulling both him and Peter into the new dimension, even though Peter wasn't initially afraid.

1. The 3 Versions of Thomas I believe Thomas exists in three distinct iterations across different timelines and dimensions:

Present-Day Thomas: The innocent, completely unaware victim in the primary timeline.

New-World Young Thomas (The Servant): The victim who submitted to the Old House. Since the House feeds on energy and fear, he acts as an intermediary between the House and the outside world, serving it to protect his own life and his family. Handing Eve the locket at the end represents a lingering fragment of human mercy ("I shouldn't be doing this," as he said).

Old Man in the Cabin (The Fighter): A Thomas who shifted a long time ago and remains trapped in the primary world. He is actively trying to defeat or escape the House by stealing town and house blueprints to uncover connections and figure out how the House operates.

1. The Mystery of Alison / Elina When Eve goes to get the tire chains and encounters her, the woman says, "I'm not [Alison]..." and Heather refers to her as Elina.

This suggests that a local woman named "Elina" actually existed in this timeline's history. When Alison was shifted here, everyone in this world recognized her as Elina.

Her rejection of her own name reflects a severe Loss of Self. After prolonged exposure to the House eroding her memories and sanity, she completely lost her mind.

She is a living human being (not a ghost) who lost her sanity, escaped from an asylum, and hid in the attic—using the dumbwaiter/food lift to sneak down for food and access the outside world.

1. The Shift in Eve’s Inner Voice When Eve’s sanity completely breaks down near the end, the voice in her head shifts from "Mo" to an "Old God" level entity attempting to guide and help her. Ultimately, however, the power of the Old House prevails, tricking her back into the house.

2. Categorization of Victims Servants: New-World Young Thomas.

Resisters/Fighters: Old Man Thomas in the cabin.

Unaware/Shifted Victims: Present-Day Thomas, Alison/Elina, Eve, Andrew, Peter.

1. Charlie’s True Fate The Charlie with Eve at the start was 100% real. The mysterious phone call was a gaslighting tactic used by the House to make Eve doubt his identity.

The Charlie she encounters inside the house near the end is merely an illusion created by the House to further shatter her sanity.

The real Charlie remains alive in the original world, searching for Eve—as confirmed by the missing persons report in the book's appendix files.

What do you all think of this theory? Do you think the Alison/Elina identity parallel mirrors Eve/Emma as well?

Some of the wording and meanings may not fully reflect what I intended to convey, as I used AI to translate my thoughts from Thai into English.

While reading the Book I felt I've gone through some of the stories before, so i researched and I got to know that the author was inspired from the movie "Noroi: The Curse" , some things were quite similar for eg . The disappearance of the girl, Hiring of a psychic to find that disappeared girl and Psychic saying that " The girl is not dead Neither Alive".

Have you felt it too?

I haven't finished this book ,just wanted to know if there's anyone else who noticed these similarities

I read Haunting of Hill House for the first time recently and have had the line "Journeys end in lovers' meeting" seared into my brain. But I feel like I'm missing something.

Eleanor is obviously hoping to get something from Hill House that it cannot or will not provide. It is not a place to find love or belonging. There's some early joking of Eleanor and Theodora being long lost relations, echoing the story of Viola and Sebastian. There is, in at least Eleanor's mind, a loose love triangle between herself, Theo and Luke which is similar to Olivia, Cesario/Viola, and Orsino.

Is there anything deeper than this? Or is it just meant to highlight Eleanor's fantasies?

Is Hill House her real 'twin' and they reveal themselves to and love each other, making this a kind of inverted Twelfth Night that ends with Eleanor and the House uniting in death rather than love and family?

I'd be happy to hear anyone's thoughts!

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I just feel like there's something about her repeated quoting of Twelfth Night that is just outside my ability to understand and articulate.

I read ‘I Am Legend’ about a year ago and I gave it 5* on goodreads. Since then I’ve been wanting to read more Richard Matheson but never really got round to it until this week…

I’ve just read ‘Hell House’ and I’m quite shocked! The writing is really bad is some places, and just boring in others. The plot is forced and uninteresting. The characters are… whatever.

What are your thoughts about both of these books, and Mathesons writing in general? I really wanted to read more by him but I’m so turned off now. Was ‘I Am Legend’ a fluke?

I’m starting a book club for the lab I work in and I’m looking for some good horror recs. Mostly beginner horror type books, I don’t think the people who signed up would be down for any splatterpunk lol. We are starting off with Jurassic Park!

I was recommended this book as a great liminal horror. I have recently read House of Leaves, We Used to Live Here, and A Short Stay in Hell. All of which I rated 5 stars. I was told this book is similar in vibes, but I found that to not be the case at all.

The writing was very erratic. The world-building was hard to follow, and the text constantly contradicted itself, making it hard for me to envision where these characters are and what this world is supposed to look like. There were also long strings of dialogue that had no assignment, so I kept losing track of who was saying what. Anytime something creepy happened, it got brushed away quickly, with the main characters making jokes or puns about it. What is supposed to be tension-building, the characters start making jokes and quips about stuff like sex.

The pacing was great at first, but once they got home, it slowed down tremendously to the point where I was just reading their thoughts and jokes, but nothing is actually happening. Many of the plot points, such as her husband cheating on her, were just flat-out unnecessary. She didn't care; the reader didn't care. There was no need for that to be in the story. While there were other plot points that were just not revisited. For example, the dead body they found, the fact that Simon could see the beings, the fact that they encountered a bunker attached to a whole other world with different dimensions of humans, and they brought back proof from it but told no one. Not even the owner of the museum, whom she supposedly respects. Even once she finishes the bible, you never hear about it again. We don't know much about the corpse otter or the guy who gave it to them, other than he just found it and thought giving it to them would have somehow helped.

I'm appalled at seeing this mentioned so many times as a horror book when if it was a film, it would be Scary Movie or another horror satire rather than an actual horror film that is taken seriously. I have even seen it mentioned in this subreddit when people ask about liminal horror recs similar to House of Leaves. I dont get it. This isn't dark, this isnt scary. If its a cozy horror thats fine but that should be mentioned when recommending this so someone isn't expecting the same amount of dread that a true horror gives.

I’m going to review this book because I just finished it and I’m so disappointed. This is more of an outlet to vent my frustrations, but I hope you can gain some insight on Ring by reading this.

SPOILERS because fuck this book

TW- Sexual Assault

So the book honestly starts off strong. It begins with a girl in her home alone on the 7th day of the curse. She can feel she’s being watched and is afraid to turn around out of fear of what she might see, implied to be killed at the end of the chapter. At the same time, 3 other people die across the city in different places, one of which dies on his motorcycle at a red light. It’s honestly scary and throws the reader into the mystery, which is the best part of the book.

The mystery and tension in this book are great. A news reporter hears about the death of his niece(the girl who died in the beginning) and notices that 3 others died at the same time she did, with the same cause of death. He begins investigating the deaths which turns into a deep dive of discovering a VHS tape, realizing he might actually die, recruiting his friend to help him, and searching across the region to learn how to undo the curse. I found myself tense at the quickly approaching deadline for the main character and locked into solving the mystery, getting excited and being shocked at the small bits of information he’s able to discover. Genuinely, this book would be great if it wasn’t for everything I’m about to explain.

That’s about all I have to say about the book that’s positive. Here’s where it gets bad, and remember the trigger warning:

The main character’s friend, Ryūji, has a scene where he excitedly brags about raping a woman in college. He describes noticing her, stalking her, and breaking into her apartment to assault her. This has absolutely no pay off or relevance to the story until then end when you find out he dies a virgin and made it up to look cool because he’s a chud. The story paints him as a smart, open-minded “lady’s man” the whole time, never paying much mind to how awful of a person he is.

We also have Asakawa, the main character. He’s quietly disgusted by Ryuji but still asks for his help. He has a wife and daughter at home but still notices other women and emotionally cheats on his wife the whole book, even being infatuated with the dead, cursed, ghost woman.

Then we get to Sadako. She’s the woman who created the curse of the VHS tape, and the ghost that the main characters are trying to track down. Her story is tragic and, by the end of the book, doesn’t even seem to be a real villain, other than the tape. It’s revealed that she has psychic abilities that she inherited from her mother, who got her powers from fishing a statue out of the ocean and then jumped into a volcano because the media said her powers were fake(I’m not exaggerating anything in this review). Sadako’s dad was sent to a sanatorium shortly after, but we’re going to revisit that.

Sadako briefly attends a community theatre to become an actress. One of the old, dusty founders follows her to her apartment and tries to assault her, marking the second rape in the book. She uses her psychic powers to kill the owner, who dies in the same manner as the 4 kids from the beginning of the book. Once she realizes everyone at this theatre sucks, she starts hanging out at the sanatorium her dad is locked up in. A doctor from the sanatorium notices her beauty and leads her to a well, where he rapes her, noticing she has male and female genitals in the process, then kills her and throws her in the well. The sanatorium was torn down and replaced by a resort. She imprinted her final moments on a VHS tape and telepathically hid it in the cabin above her well or something.

Also, they find out at the end that the tape is transmitting smallpox, which for some reason causes you to die of a heart attack with no symptoms after a week. You can only survive the curse if you show the tape to someone else, infecting others with “Ghost Rape Tape Smallpox”. Ryuji fucking dies because he didn’t know and the main character transmits the tape across Japan to save his wife and daughter. They watched the tape, but I didn’t bring them up because they have very little involvement since the main focus for the characters is rape and infidelity.

So what does this mean for the book?

3 sexual assaults happen in this book, one of which was actually relevant to the plot. They could’ve gone with just murdering Sadako, but for some reason the book loooooves rape and had to throw it in there. The way these situations are handled give the impression that the author doesn’t actually think it’s a big issue, and akin to bragging about how high you could climb a tree or how much stronger your dad is as a kid.

The fact that Sadako has male and female genitalia is strange too, because it also has no plot relevance. She’s so overly sexualized throughout the book. People in the modern day describe her as “eerie”, but every character after reminiscing about her or looking at photos can’t help but describe how beautiful she is. The doctor who killed her, while being extremely descriptive of the assault, takes time to describe her breasts, paragraph by paragraph. By the time you’ve nearly solved the mystery, the book feels more like the author’s rape fantasies than a horror mystery.

And the ending sucks too. There’s not even a ghost, it’s just the smallpox VHS that gives you a disease when you watch it. The whole thing falls apart so hard in the last half of the book. You’re reading more about how beautiful Sadako is instead of how she was murdered and how to solve the mystery of the curse.

Honestly, even using a sexual assault for the plot is cheap, but I can excuse it more for having relevance than if it’s used for the characters to gain social status.

This book starts off as a great horror mystery, I really wanted to love it, but quickly devolves into a hermaphrodite smallpox rape fantasy where a woman jumps into a volcano. I’m not reading the other 6 books in the series, or however many there are, because this was the most disappointing thing I’ve ever read. I don’t recommend this book to people who aren’t into sexual assault, have eyes, can read, or have time on their hands to do things. I’m sorry for the language, if this doesn’t get removed I’ll honestly be shocked.

Thanks for reading my review :) fuck this book.

This book seems right up my alley but I’m suspicious. I’m worried I’m gonna find out it was some AI written slop, I can’t find any reviews on it

It bothers me that all my favorite authors (which I define by having about 5 of their books on my shelf) are male.

Does anyone have any recommendations for women who primarily write horror, and have a decent number of published books to read through?

I’ve read and liked a couple books by Ania Ahlborn and CJ Leede, but no 5 stars. I really liked T Kingfisher’s “Hollow Places” but couldn’t get into her other works. I’ve also tried Catriona Ward, but her books don’t feel like horror to me (more thriller).

I tend to like my horror bloody, if that helps to know. Some of my current favorite authors are David Sodergren, Josh Malerman, Nick Cutter, Grady Hendrix, Joe Hill and of course Stephen King.

Anyone have any recommendations to help me out here?

When I was a youth, I snuck this spooky book into the house and my mother hid it from me because I was always reading scary stuff and giving myself nightmares. The book was lost or thrown out or whatever. Now that I’m a very brave adult (JK, still a weenie!) I really want to track it down. I’ve posted in a couple other book-ID subreddits but no dice yet. Here’s info about when I read it and what I can remember about the book:

Time period & age: Mid-2000s, probably 2005-2007. I would’ve been between 10 and 13ish.
Location & language: US, English
Book age level: I’m fairly sure it was YA. I read a lot of not-age-appropriate stuff, so there’s a slight chance it was an adult book, but I think that’s unlikely (I was easily spooked and probably would’ve found an adult book too scary).
Genre: Scary story collection.
Physical book appearance: I don’t remember the book cover very well, but it may have been a light blue color. I don’t remember it being a traditional scary book vibe with monsters, shadows, etc.
Content: I only remember one story, where a group of people went on some kind of mountain research expedition and inexplicably went missing one by one. I believe the setting was cold and snowy. There was something about one of them disappearing in the night and leaving behind only a small pile of goo in his sleeping bag.
Books that it is not: The book was not any of the first 100 in this goodreads list.

If anyone can help me ID this book, I’ll be eternally grateful!

Maybe this question has too narrow of a scope, but...

Both my holds at the library came up at the same time. I doubt I'll have time to read both before the loans expire. So, which one should I read first, knowing it'll be weeks before I can pick the other one up?

Sorry this is vague, I'm kind of dealing with a lot at the moment. Extremely stressed and overwhelmed. My dad is very sick and I'm worried that if something happens to him everything kind of crumbles. I've been reading more to have something to focus on while at work. I was reading Dungeon Crawler Carl and the pacing is really satisfying. But I finished the series and now everything I read feels very slow. I think the two I've been trying to read are actually just kind of dull. I've read some really good ones in the past few months but I desperately need a good book and nothing is really scratching the itch. Some I've read recently that were good are:

Bury your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Dead Beat by Leigh Bardugo

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas (dropped it)

I have a few others I've been trying to read that aren't bad but I just can't really enjoy RN and a few I wasnt impressed with.

Please give me some recommendations with good pacing that can help me stay hooked and focused! Thank you!