Category: Book Reviews

The Real Best Stories of H. P. Lovecraft 

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So: you wish to explore the squamous and eldritch pleasures of the real best stories of H. P. Lovecraft? Fear not. For in reading that most terrible and forbidden volume Necronomicon, I have discovered and unearthed the ten of his greatest. Lovecraft is, in many ways, the father of American horror as we know it. He’s also hella wordy and deliberately archaic in style. His work can be sublime (see this list) or utter dreck (The Dream Quest of Uknown Kadath – there’s five hours I’m never getting back). 

Well. The moon is gibbous. The dark is stygian. Let’s explore the antediluvian libraries of Lovecraft’s cyclopean works. 

Honourable Mention: The Whisperer in Darkness 

A cautionary tale about the dangers of long-distance friendships. Also why you should never trust people who insist on writing letters instead of just talking to you. Our protagonist gets roped into a conspiracy about alien fungi from Yuggoth and doesn’t realize he’s in trouble until the reader is practically screaming it at him. It’s a bit of a slow-burn and hasn’t made my top ten. But something really stuck with me about The Whisper in Darkness. Think brains. Think space. Think no bodies. 

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2024: A Year of Writing

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2024 has been a funny old year for my writing. In fact, it’s been a year of so much upheaval and change that, looking back from the tail-end, I can’t believe it’s all happened in the space of twelve months. I look at my reading list and can’t believe I read The Goldfinch and books by Merisha Pessl and Katherine Min so recently. They feel like they belong to another chapter in my life. As does so much of my writing. Let me walk you through my 2024.

New Digs 2024

The Lady K and I made the decision to relocate early in 2024 and things moved at record speed – we moved from Brighton to Salisbury in April. I love Salisbury. I grew up on Salisbury Plain and I’m thrilled to be back. But there was a complication. We moved in April and the academic year finishes in July. I chose to teach at my Sussex-based school until the academic year was done. There were a few reasons. I didn’t want to have the extra pressure of joining a new school in the final term and I didn’t want extra change at a time of so much upheaval. Mostly, I really enjoyed my school and wanted to finish up properly with a class I’d really bonded with. Of course, for twelve weeks, I’d be living and working two hours apart.

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The Best Children’s Horror Books: Ten Chilling Reads for Young Readers

Liam Smith 1 Comment

Being both a teacher and a horrorhead, I was thrilled when my Year 5 class asked if I could recommend any children’s horror books to them. Well, these books from my personal collection offer just the right amount of creepiness to keep kids engaged. Let’s take a look at ten of the best horror books for children. Prepare to capture imaginations, send chills down spines and maybe even keep your kids up a little later than usual.

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Saltburn and the Gothic Tradition

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Okay, so Saltburn might not be as hot on everyone’s lips as it was when it dropped on Amazon just before Christmas, but I only just got to watching it because nobody told me it was a gothic film. A gothic film? If I’d known that, it would have earned an immediate Go-Straight-to-the-Top-of-my-Watchlist ticket without passing go. Unconvinced? Do the neon club scenes of the first five minutes have no place in the gothic canon? The almost-contemporary mid-00s setting? Ah, but what about the references to Shelley and Byron? What about that bloody scene on the garden bench, or that, ahem, penetrating scene on the fresh grave?

Let’s take a scalpel to Saltburn and see what tropes of the gothic tradition we can lay out on the slab.

Saltburn

In naming itself after an ancestral home, Saltburn joins itself with some familiar titles in the gothic tradition: Northanger Abbey, Gormenghast, Rawblood, Crimson Peak… It’s a kissing cousin to even more – The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udulpho, The Fall of the House of Usher – and joins Manderley and Bly Manor as the seat of a rich family and a corporeal symbol of their legacy. Like the aforementioned piles, naming the house makes Saltburn is a character in its own right: a warren of wealth standing above and untouched by the seductions and Machiavellian plots within it. It stands like a stone in a blood and tear-stained river.

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The 50 Best Horror Novels Ever

Liam Smith 1 Comment

Back in 2019, I assembled a list of the best horror novels ever. This was no mere copy-and-paste job from another website. I trawled all manner of sites and surveys, harvesting the names of those novels which kept on appearing. There were 42 novels on my conglomerate list and, three years later, I have read every one of them.

42 is such an awkward number, though (unless you’re a Douglas Adams fan). Wouldn’t it be great if there had been 50 novels that had kept appearing? 50 must-read horror novels. The 50 best horror novels ever. Well, having read the whole original list, and more besides, I feel qualified to fill in the gaps. Here are the real 50 best horror novels ever – 42 recommended by online horror communities and 8 of my personal recommendations.

Grab your cushions and steel your nerves. These really are the 50 best horror novels… ever.

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