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Frankenstein Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the reader. Although a good deal of it is about the supernatural, any fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, suspenseful or frightening theme may be termed "horror"; conversely, many stories of the supernatural are not horror.

The horror novel has many antecedents, although the most obvious well-spring is the gothic novel form of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and, less obviously, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein. Neither of the foregoing qualify in themselves as horror novels in that their ultimate intention is more one of mood than of shock (and Ms Shelley's is also fundamentally a philosophical novel), that sudden unquantifiable moment when one's flesh writhes. Very few writers are capable of bringing this off, and many modern practitioners of the genre have resorted to progressively greater extremes of violence in order to achieve some sort of effect. Early exponents of the horror form number such luminaries as H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, who were considered to be masters of the art.

Nevertheless, contemporary writers such as Clive Barker in The Books of Blood and Stephen King in his more considered work, such as Misery, are capable of bringing this off without grand guignol which characterises much of the current mainstream of this genre.


It takes guts to write a novel that combines an ancient secret brotherhood, the Swiss Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, a papal conclave, mysterious ambigrams, a plot against the Vatican, a mad scientist in a wheelchair, particles of antimatter, jets that can travel 15,000 miles per hour, crafty assassins, a beautiful Italian physicist, and a Harvard professor of religious iconology. Read More. Angels and Demons

Austin, Texas, 1885. Manhattan, 1906. Twenty-year-old ghosts haunt Will Porter, a.k.a. famous writer O. Henry, who may have changed names and cities but hasn't outrun the memory of a series of murders that cast a chilling shadow over a sunny and bustling town. Read More. Twist at the End by Steven Saylor


Mystic River by Dennis Lehane Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Read More.


Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Four Blind Mice by James Patterson
Violets Are Blue by James Patterson
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
A Place of Hiding: Elizabeth George
The Grave Maurice by Martha Grimes
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs
Twist at the End by Steven Saylor
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Afterlife by Gary Soto


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