2. The House Next Door by Will Macmillan JonesI bought this from the author at BristolCon. It's a traditional cursed/possessed object horror story. A downtrodden young woman impulsively spends money she can't afford on an antique unicorn statue. Within hours it has killed her abusive mother and more nastiness soon follows. Fortunately, she ( Read more... )

60. Dead Bad Things by Gary McMahonI picked up an early novel of his about a decade ago, and enjoyed it but never followed up. I found this one lying on the freebie table at BristolCon and nabbed it ( Read more... )

17. Night Music: Nocturnes 2 by John Connolly

My favourite John Connolly book is Nocturnes, his first volume of short stories. It's the first book of his I ever read and I was impressed not only by the individual stories in it, but the variety of voice that he employs ( Read more... )

3. The Secrets of Drearcliffe Grange School by Kim NewmanKim Newman takes on the boarding school story, with spooky and nefarious stuff going on, in a slightly alternate world where there are people with Unusual abilities who are useful to the government but socially frowned upon ( Read more... )

26. Revival by Stephen King

Billed as King's return to straight-up horror ( Read more... )

Apologies for the delay; LJ code is now breaking work's IE - I can read posts but not comments and I can't post - and turning on the computer at home is something I rarely do.

18. NO5 4R2 by Joe HillThis one's about a girl with a none too happy home background who uses her bike to ride over a bridge that no longer exists to find missing things. ( Read more... )

64. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

This is the sequel to The Shining.

Some years ago on a signing tour, King was asked "whatever happened to the kid from The Shining?" and he got thinking.

It's nowhere near as scary as The Shining (which scared the crap out of me when I was about 14), but it's probably a better book (see the bit about being 14 - I ( Read more... )

64. Spectre by Stephen LawsStraight-up horror, set in Newcastle in the 80s. 10 years after leaving college, a group of friends are being bumped off in horrific ways, and when each one dies, they disappear from the group photo. There's some quite scary and suspenseful stuff in there. I had immense fun reading this, to the point where I wished my ( Read more... )

(imdb here)

This is one of the best supernatural thrillers I've ever seen. It's probably better than The Skeleton Key and is close to being as good as the original Omen. It's set in the Louisiana swamp. There's quasi-Biblical weird stuff going on, a spooky massive plantation house, a seriously creepy shack in the swamp near the ruined town in ( Read more... )

Well, that was an excellent weekend. Never having been to a con before, I wasn't sure what to expect, and was afraid there may have been a lot of sitting (or worse, standing) around waiting for the sessions with Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker. That was not the case.

Really long. ( It's )