This is smart person’s horror. CLOWNS AT MIDNIGHT is the first-ever horror novel by Australia’s Terry Dowling, a short story scribe and veteran editor. His intelligence and voluminous knowledge of the genre are evident in this highly provocative account. The book is never self conscious or obscure, but getting through it takes a fair amount of thought and patience.
On occasion kid lit has virtues other types of fiction don’t, as is the case with CLOCKWORK, which appeals mostly because of its ingeniously constructed multi-pronged narrative that flows like–yes–clockwork
A rare foray into graphic novel scripting by novelist James Herbert, and the fourth part of Herbert’s Rats saga (which commenced with the novels THE RATS, LAIR and DOMAIN). In truth this book is pretty slight, coming off as a so-so short story presented as a 64-page comic. Yet I do recommend it. Why? Because the illustrator is the immensely talented Ian Miller, who was quite inspired here.
Here we have a wonderful Christmas themed zombie mash by the incomparable Joe Lansdale
A 1970s page turner about wayward kids that at times recalls the queasy air of similarly themed anti-classics like LET’S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS’ and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
The third novel by the woefully underrated Ken Greenhall, who as usual delivered a strikingly unique and intelligent tale. The subject is one that preoccupied Greenhall’s fiction: love, which is viewed not as a pleasant diversion nor an all-conquering panacea, but as a complex and oft-destructive entity whose effects are far-reaching.
No other Cormac McCarthy novel better exemplifies his more anti-social tendencies than CHILD OF GOD.
I’ll be sure and watch my language when describing CHASING HAIRY. It was used as evidence, after all, in its author Michael Fleisher’s famous lawsuit against Harlan Ellison, who according to Fleisher libelously described him as (among other things) “twisted,” “derange-o” and “bugfuck” in a 1979 Comics Journal interview, in which Ellison further alleged (wrongly) that a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer called this novel “the product of a sick mind.”
Implausible? Let’s see. Set in early 1960s Canada, CHANGELINGS is about a twin brother and sister who were sexually abused as children and as a result have developed multiple personalities.
The late Rex Miller was one of America’s finest writers of horror/suspense fiction, and turned out several unforgettable novels. CHAINGANG, alas, is not among them.