Tag Archive | Little Girls
January 11, 2016  

Top 10 Horror Reads of 2015

Howdy there, Hunter’s Hellions! I figured I had to call you all something. I think Hellions fits.

Looking back, I managed to read over 80 books last year. Any time I can get in over 75 books, I’m happy. I’m envious of folks who can speed read books yet still retain everything. I’m no tortoise, but I’m no hare, either.

Coming up with a top 10 horror books list was no easy task because I read so many damn good books. I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting a clunker from a mile off, so if I sit down to read a book, it’s usually good.

Now, some of these books didn’t come out in 2015. All that matters is that I read them in 2015. I’m hoping this can help you discover some titles you might have missed over the past couple of years. So, without further ado, here are my 10 favorite horror reads of last year (in no particular order, because I was fracturing my brain trying to do it), plus some honorable mentions…

10. THE HAUNTED by Bentley Little

the hauntedLittle has always been one of my favorite authors. He takes all of the everyday insanity we’ve surrounded ourselves with in America and injects it with pure evil. The Haunted is one of the best he’s written in years.

The Perry family’s new house is perfect-except for the weird behavior of the neighbors, and that odd smell coming from a dark corner in the basement. Pity no one warned the family about the house. Now it’s too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising.

9. VIDEO NIGHT by Adam Cesare

video nightOh man, this book reminded me of all the great horror flicks of the 80s. Adam is one of the best new writers out there, and Video Night is a great place to start!

Who knows more about fighting a monster invasion than a group of teenage horror fans?
Billy Rile is smart, adept at Nintendo and has a killer Hi-Fi setup. Life is good. But he has no idea that an alien life form has infected his town, a creature that overtakes and transforms its host.

 

 

8. DARKNESS RISING  by Brian Moreland

darkness risingHands down the best novella of 2015. Brian Moreland always kicks ass…and I mean always. This is now my favorite of his books. Tender yet terrifying.

t’s all fun and games until…Marty Weaver, an emotionally scarred poet, has been bullied his entire life. When he drives out to the lake to tell an old friend that he’s fallen in love with a girl named Jennifer, Marty encounters three sadistic killers who have some twisted games in store for him. But Marty has dark secrets of his own buried deep inside him.

7. LITTLE GIRLS by Ron Malfi

Little GirlsThis is classic horror in the vein of Peter Straub and Stephen King at their best. This is sure to go down as a classic. I know it’s one I’ll read again and again. I was extra proud to be his Kensington Publishing brother in 2015.

When Laurie was a little girl, she was forbidden to enter the room at the top of the stairs. It was one of many rules imposed by her cold, distant father. Now, in a final act of desperation, her father has exorcised his demons. But when Laurie returns to claim the estate with her husband and ten-year-old daughter, it’s as if the past refuses to die.

6. THE BORDER by Robert McCammon

the borderThe master returns to the genre that he defined! It doesn’t get any better than that. I’ve long said McCammon is the best who ever scribbled a tale of terror. The man hasn’t lost a step.

World Fantasy award-winning, bestselling author Robert McCammon makes a triumphant return to the epic horror and apocalyptic tone reminiscent of his books Swan Song and Stinger in this gripping new novel, The Border, a saga of an Earth devastated by a war between two marauding alien civilizations.

But it is not just the living ships of the monstrous Gorgons or the motion-blurred shock troops of the armored Cyphers that endanger the holdouts in the human bastion of Panther Ridge. The world itself has turned against the handful of survivors, as one by one they succumb to despair and suicide or, even worse, are transformed by otherworldly pollution into hideous Gray Men, cannibalistic mutants driven by insatiable hunger.

5. MR. MERCEDES & FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King

mr mercedesI got up to Maine a week after King was signing copies of Finders Keepers. My timing sucks. The first 2 books of his trilogy are as different from one another as they are engaging. I can’t wait for book 3 to come out!

In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.

In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.

4. PRISONER 489 by Joe R Lansdale

Cover designLansdale should be a household name. Every book he writes is gold. Prisoner 489 is a terrific novella that centers around one of my favorite horror tropes. I won’t spoil it for you. Get the book, now!

On an island with a prison for the most evil and powerful criminals in the world, a new prisoner is strapped to the electric chair for execution. After multiple surges of electricity and nearly knocking out power to the entire island, the prisoner is finally dead. The staff buries him in the prison graveyard with a simple marker baring three numbers: 489.

After the body is buried, a violent storm rocks the islands and a staff member goes missing. The crew rushes into the storm, searching for their lost comrade. They find that the burial site of prisoner 489 has been unearthed, and the body that was inside has gone missing.

3. LORDS OF TWILIGHT by Greg Gifune

Lords of TwilightYou all know I’m a sucker for anything that deals with aliens. In fact, another alien book is part of the honorable mention crew. This is one of the most terrifying ones I’ve read in a while. Loved it.

Strange things are happening in the small, isolated town of Edgar, Maine. Mysterious lights dot the night skies. A local farmer is found dead at the summit of a hill with no evidence as to how his body got there. Livestock is disappearing, only to be discovered later, dead and mutilated with precision-like wounds. And despite the coming of an enormous winter storm, odd men identifying themselves simply as ‘federal agents’ have converged on Edgar in government vehicles as if in anticipation of some greater event.

2. JAGGER by Kristopher Rufty

jaggerCujo on meth. That’s the best way I can describe this. Once again, Rufty populates his novel with sketchy characters doing terrible things. I couldn’t put it down.

Other than the trailer park left to her by her deceased daddy, Amy’s favorite treasure is Jagger, her 180-pound bull mastiff. One day while she is away, Clayton, her best friend’s scumbag boyfriend sneaks into her yard and takes the dog. His prize fighting pit bull was killed during its last match, costing a lot of bad people a lot of money. To make up for his dog’s losses, and to save his own life, Clayton enlists the help of a medical student dropout to turn Jagger into a killing machine by pumping him full of experimental drugs and muscle enhancers. Now Jagger is a monster, a beast that can’t feel pain, with an unquenchable thirst for blood. He quickly breaks out of his pen and starts making his way home, tearing apart anyone in his path on his way to the one he feels has betrayed him the most—Amy.

 

  1. THE HUNGER SERIES by Jason Brant

brantI ate this trilogy up like they were White Castle and I was fresh off a 2 day bender. This is a post apocalypse world bursting with beasties that would make the walkers in The Walking Dead shit themselves, if they had working colons. I highly recommend them. The books, not the shitting zombies.

Day One: A series of terrorist attacks spread a cloud of noxious gas over highly populated areas.

Day Two: Higher brain function erodes in those exposed to the gas. Their bodies begin to distort, faces distending, skin sallowing, teeth elongating.

Day Three: The infected disappear into the shadows, fleeing the harsh daylight which has begun to sear their flesh.

Day Four: The world is DEVOURED.

And now for the honorable mentions. All of them could easily have made my top 10. It was that close! Get these books as fast as you can.

Q ISLAND by Russell James (apocalyptic goodness!)

THE PENDLE CURSE by Catherine Caendish (witches & time travel – yes!)

BLOOD AND RAIN by Glenn Rolfe (restored my faith in werewolf tales)

BEHIND THE DARKNESS by Robert Dunn (aliens done right – scary)

GOBLINS by David Bernstein (cryptids – what more can I say?)

OK, there you have it, my top 10 (really 15) horror tales for 2015. I could had added so many more, but I have to get out of the house.

Have you read any of the books I listed? What would make your top 10? What do you think I should be reading in 2016?

Keep flying the horror flag, my Hellions!

 

 

 

 

August 4, 2015  

An Interview With Ron Malfi About His Latest Horror Masterpiece, LITTLE GIRLS

I know it’s only August, but I’m locking in my vote for best horror novel of the year – Ron Malfi‘s haunting tale, LITTLE GIRLS. I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (that number increases when I’m not frothing at the mouth) that if they read one scary book in 2015, this is the one.

The fact that Ron and I are authorly blood brothers, sharing two publishers, should actually work against this. I know the dude. He’s a Tasmanian Devil of nuttiness and talent. Sometimes, the more you know someone, the harder it is to be sucked into their story, separating the man or woman from the tale of terror. Not so with Little Girls. From the first chapter, I knew I was walking wondrous paths carved out by writers like Peter Straub and Stephen King. It’s that good.

You can follow his blog tour by visiting Hook of a Book publicity. Erin has put together a hell of a tour.

So, as a special treat for me and you, I wrestled Ron to the ground long enough to ask him a few questions about his book, process and future plans. Pick up Little Girls right after reading the interview and you can thank me later. And if you see Ron at a con, don’t be alarmed when he shouts at you to buy a book or move on. 🙂

First, Little Girls was wonderful. As I was reading it, I was constantly reminded of books like Ghost Story, The Haunting of Hill House and Bag o Bones. What were your inspirations when it came time to sit down and write the book. Did you grow up next door to a demented girl?
You’re on the right track. Foremost in my mind was Straub’s novel JULIA, plus some of the other more paced, atmospheric horror books from around that time–Blatty’s THE EXORCIST, Levin’s ROSEMARY’S BABY, books like that. I’ve always loved the feel of those novels, they come across so natural and domestic and simple yet with this pulsing vein of pure horror running through them. Alas, I did not grow up next to a demented girl when I was younger, but the house around which the story is centered is based loosely on one in my current neighborhood, a spectacular brick structure set off one of the main roads and veiled behind trees, complete with the belvedere on the roof, just like in the novel.
Little Girls
What’s the elevator pitch for Little Girls? 
Young girl next door befriends Laurie’s daughter, and the girl is the spitting image of a child who used to torment Laurie when she was younger…a girl who died tragically.
In this day and age, it’s all about being loud and fast and grabbing the reader by the throat, which makes what you’ve done with Little Girls and The Floating Staircase so admirable. What we call quiet horror today was just called damn good story telling not so long ago. Do you find it more difficult to craft a tale and build tension in a ‘quiet horror’ novel? Were there moments when you were tempted to throw in a little madness? 
Each story lives in its own world. I’m not against a more frenetic pace, to spill copious amounts of blood across the page–my novels SNOW and THE NARROWS have some pretty nasty little scenes–but other stories just don’t insist on that style, that treatment. LITTLE GIRLS is perhaps the “quietest” novel I’ve written to date, and I think, given the subject matter and the tone I was going for, it needed to be. For the most part, reader reviews of the novel have been very good, but there are always a handful of readers who will bemoan the slower pace of the novel, or perhaps not understand what I wanted to do with it. I’ll be the first to admit it–if you’re looking for blood and guts, over-the-top supernatural horror, scenes that will make you squirm and jump in your seat, this is not the book for you. You are not my audience for this book, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m going for the long-term chilling effect, not the jump scare, in other words. Yet ironically, I think this is the darkest novel I’ve ever written, and the revelations at the end of the book, at least to me, are more gut-wrenching than anything gory or supernatural. It’s a quiet novel but it’s a terrible novel in its revelations, something that, in the hands of the right reader, will leave you with more than just a slight sense of discomfort.
When Ron Malfi sits down to write, what do we see in his corner of the house? Is there cigar smoke trailing to the ceiling, whiskey on ice, Madonna playing quietly in the background, dancing elves on the shelves? 
Ha!  You know, my process has changed over the years, particularly after I’ve had kids. Used to be I’d wear my lucky “writing shirt,” sip Dewar’s scotch on ice, and listen to Springsteen on the CD player. I’d write like that for hours, coming up for air only when I was hungry or had to use the bathroom. Now, I lean more toward mugs of coffee instead of scotch, Dave Brubeck or Elmo Hope on the CD player instead of Springsteen (or maybe no music at all, depending on my mood). The walls of my writing office is lined, floor to ceiling, with books, so it’s fairly inspirational to glance up and look around and find yourself surrounded by countless brilliant authors.
How many publishers are you currently working with and what’s coming next? I ask because you and I share a couple and it would be nice to see if we could hit them all before we hang up our laptops.  
At the moment, I’m under contract with Kensington for three books, the first of which is LITTLE GIRLS. Those are my only contractual obligations at this point. I’d had my eyes on Kensington for quite a while, and when I finished LITTLE GIRLS, I knew it would be a good book for them. They’ve got a strong horror and thriller line–as you know, having published a couple of books with them yourself–and I wanted to test out my work with them. I discussed this with my agent and she put me through to an editor there, who read the book and loved it. As for other current publishers, I work with Cemetery Dance, who publishes my limited hardcover editions–DECEMBER PARK was just released from CD in a stunning leather-bound edition and they’ll be releasing the limited edition of LITTLE GIRLS, too. I work with a handful of foreign publishers for the translations, too. I’ve published several novellas with DarkFuse, and will probably continue to do so in the future. I’m not under any specific contract with them, and will send Shane (the publisher) novellas from time to time, whenever I feel I’ve written something worthy of publication. There’s less pressure to produce that way, which means the stuff that I’m getting published through DarkFuse is, at least in my eyes, of high quality. As for what’s coming next, 2016 will see the publication of my novel THE NIGHT PARADE. It’s an end-of-the-world novel, which is something I never actively set out to write or ever thought I would, but at its heart, it’s really about the relationship between a father and his young daughter, who are on the run from the government for mysterious reasons. I’m very excited about it.