HAPPY NOW
Thankfully HAPPY NOW, Charles Higson’s equally English-centric follow-up, is a far better book overall, equal to best work of authors like Iain Banks and Patricia Highsmith.
The Garden at 19
This relic of early twentieth century horror was, upon its 2002 reissue by Midnight House, sold as a neglected masterpiece. Well, I definitely wouldn’t say that, but will concede it’s a powerful piece of work worthy of Arthur Machen.
EUROPE AFTER THE RAIN
Here’s something I know will scare off quite a few of my readers: an overtly experimental novel about a post-apocalyptic England.
DIRTY WEEKEND
What we have here is essentially a feminist minded DEATH WISH, although this novel presents itself as something far deeper
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
Grayson Perry is a renowned British artist and notorious cross dresser with a penchant for the gross and pornographic. I’m assuming this humorous and frankly obscene graphic novel is at least partially autobiographical.
ANYHOW STORIES
This remains one of the great curiosities of the Victorian era, a children’s book of considerable richness, bizarre, and not a little darkness. You’ll find few books of any sort with as strong a grasp of otherworldly apprehension as these “Anyhow Stories,” not all of which are explicitly horrific.
CREATURE
An example of something that’s all too common in horror fiction: a paperback novel whose contents diverge quite radically from the packaging. That packaging portends a trashy horror fest a la Stephen King at his most lurid, and indeed the first half of the book delivers just that, with a naive English traveler finding himself stuck in a rural Austrian village. Eventually he enters a foreboding castle and discovers…something.
THE COUNT OF ELEVEN
England’s Ramsey Campbell is one of the finest horror scribes on the scene, and THE COUNT OF ELEVEN one of his best-ever novels
THE BRAHAN SEER
An assured and compelling fictional account of “Scotland’s Nostradamus”
THE BECKONING FAIR ONE
This is the most famous tale written by the late Oliver Onions, and widely considered one of the classic English language ghost stories.