Horror Aficionados discussion

It may still be hot and sunny outside now but cooler weather is just around the corner. Autumn begins next month and we are inching closer to the best time of the year. Let's start scaring ourselves silly in preparation.

The theme for September is very simple: RURAL HORROR
This would be any horror set on farms or in very small towns or isolated houses.
I know you can suggest something so scary that we'll all be ready to head for safety in the big city and bright lights and we'll be thankful for the comfort of pumpkin spice everything.

As always, authors may not nominate their own work. Books with more than one nomination (+1) are more likely to make it onto the final poll, so feel free to second a book you'd like to read.
Have fun!

Group Read Nomination Rules: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Previous Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Harvest Home. Thomas Tryon

After Dark by Manly Wade Wellman

Silver John. Appalachia. It doesn’t get any better.

My nominations:
The Totem by David Morrell
Winter Moon by Dean Koontz

I second the House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Julie wrote: "Harvest Home. Thomas Tryon"

+1

Dark Across The Bay

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Stephanie wrote: "My nominations:
The Totem by David Morrell
Winter Moon by Dean Koontz"

The Totem gets my vote!

I’ll nominate Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale and Other Stories by Charles Brockden Brown. The nom is for the main novel, Wieland.

Wake the bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne would be perfect as well as The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest chilling novel that “will give you nightmares. The good kind, of course” (BuzzFeed) from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Plot Summary:
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

Jenna wrote: "Wake the bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne would be perfect as well as The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon"

The Winter People is not eligible, as it was a group read in Jan. 2019. The link to the list of previous group reads can be found at the top. :)

The House Across the Lake - Riley Sager

Clowns in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare. I think this may be considered a YA read though, if that matters.

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

+1 Dark Across the Bay

Also vote for house across the lake by Riley sager

How about Those Across the River by Christopher Beuhlman?

Smithy

It's about a fictional experiment to teach a chimpanzee sign language conducted in the 70's in a run-down and isolated mansion in Rhode Island.
Apparently there is a second storyline in which the experiment is evaluated fifty years later.

By Their Cold Fingers
Set in 1408 in an isolated, cold town on Greenland, apparently, some scary stuff goes down. It comes out on Aug 15th (I found an advanced e-copy through BookSirens but I also saw it on Hidden Gems!)

Rikki wrote: "Clowns in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare. I think this may be considered a YA read though, if that matters."

It's a great book (and it's going to be made into a movie!) but it was read in Sept 2020.
Please feel free to nominate another book.

+1 My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Fishface wrote: "How about Those Across the River by Christopher Beuhlman?"

This was read in June 2019. A little too soon for a re-read.
Please feel free to nominate another book.

I nominate:

The Narrows
Unspeakable Things
The Ancestor

+1 Dark Across the Bay
+1 The House Across the Lake

I nominate Tyler Christensen’s As Dead Things Do

I nominate The Totem by David Morrell also.

Kimberly wrote: " Dark Across The Bay"

+1 to Dark Across The Bay

I've wanted to read this forever now!

Jim Kowalik wrote: "My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in thi..."

This is a great choice, if it hasn’t already been selected for something previously. I feel like it has, but if it hasn’t...

I will nominate:

Before the Harvest by Kimberly A. Bettes

The Farm by Christopher Motz

Ancient Enemy by Mark Lukens

+1 The House Across the Lake
+1 Dark Across the Bay

What We Harvest by Ann Fraistat

I’m nominating the following, but found myself having to cross off so many of my initial suggestions after checking against the books the group has already read!

The Gulp by Alan Baxter
Burden Falls by Kat Ellis
The Shadows by Alex North

+1 Winter Moon by Dean Koontz
+1 Dark Across the Bay by Ania Ahlborn

+1 Harvest Home
+1 My Heart is a Chainsaw

HARVEST HOME and CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD were previous group reads so they are not eligible. Feel free to nominate something else.

I've read several of the books above, & they were fantastic!
I wan to nominate The Burning Girls. It takes place in a small community it the English countryside. Does that count as Rural? It's 333 pages. The audiobook is 10 hours. I have it on hold from the library through the Libby app.

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

+1 for My Heart is a Chainsaw
+1 for Off Season
+1 for The Narrows
Lots of good choices here already - love this theme!

The Ravenous Dead by: Darcy Coates

I second The Totem by David Morell

+1 for The Burning Girls

+1 The Burning Girls

-Thomas Tryon’s The Other
-King’s Needful Things!

-Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (is a short story, so maybe doesn’t qualify); also Henry James’ Turn of the Screw (so much creepier than any of the films adapted around it except for the original black and white film The Innocents

Does The dark by James Herbert fit? I don't really know the plot.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
IT by Stephen King

Summer of Night, Dan Simmons

Julie wrote: "Summer of Night, Dan Simmons"

Hi Julie, we read this in August 2018, you can hit Control F on a pc to get the search function up if you want to check if your nomination was read already.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

+1 Harvest Home
+1 Off Season

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill.

Check out this book on Goodreads: Sundial https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

I'll nominate Dead Crow By David Haynes

+1 The House Across the Lake