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Rue Morgue's "50 Essential Alternative Horror Books"

This list of novels, novellas & short story collections was published in Issue #61 (October 2006) of Rue Morgue magazine.

These are books that connoisseurs of horror might have overlooked. The aim of the list is to "avoid the mainstream titles to bring you what [they] feel is a diverse sampling of the best in alternative horror fiction."

If you want to read the write-ups for each book, you can buy back issues of the magazine here: http://www.rue-morgue.com/countrysel.php

The list is chronological, by order of publication.
1. The Monk (Penguin Classics)
by Matthew Lewis
  
2. Tales of Hoffmann (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Theodor Hoffman
  
3. Maldoror
by Comte de Lautreamont
  
4. In a Glass Darkly (Oxford World's Classics)
by Sheridan Le Fanu
  
5. The Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen
  
6. The Damned (La-Bas) (Penguin Classics)
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
  
7. The King In Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
  
8. Kwaidan: Stories And Studies Of Strange Things (Classics of Japanese Literature)
by Lafcadio Hearn
  
9. The House on the Borderland
by William Hope Hodgson
  
10. The Trial
by Franz Kafka
  
11. The Plague
by Albert Camus
  
12. Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination
by Edogawa Rampo
  
13.
?
 Nine Horrors and a Dream
by Joseph Payne Brennan
  
14.
?
 A Scent of a New-Mown Hay
by John Blackburn
  
15.
?
 The Owl Service
by Alan Garner
  
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock
by Joan Lindsay
  
17. The Green Man
by Kingsley Amis
  
18.
?
 Zothique
by Clark Ashton Smith
  
19.
?
 Blackbriar
by William Sleator
  
20.
?
 All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By
by John Farris
  
21. The Bloody Chamber
by Angela Carter
  
22.
?
 San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories
by Tom Reamy
  
23. The Totem
by David Morrell
  
24.
?
 The Nameless
by Ramsey Campbell
  
25. Voice of Our Shadow (Fantasy Masterworks)
by Jonathan Carroll
  
26. The Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks
  
27.
?
 Dark Gods
by T.E.D. Klein
  
28. Song of Kali
by Dan Simmons
  
29.
?
 Why Not You and I
by Karl Edward Wagner
  
30.
?
 Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories  
31.
?
 By Bizarre Hands
by Joe R. Lansdale
  
32.
?
 Songs of a Dead Dreamer
by Thomas Ligotti
  
33. Vampires
by John Steakley
  
34.
?
 Wilding
by Melanie Tem
  
35.
?
 Skin
by Kathe Koja
  
36.
?
 Throat Sprockets
by Tim Lucas
  
37. The Matrix
by Jonathan Aycliffe
  
38. The Bloody Red Baron
by Kim Newman
  
39.
?
 The Elementals
by Michael McDowell
  
40. Black Butterflies
by John Shirley
  
41. Cows
by Matthew Stokoe
  
42.
?
 Pontypool Changes Everything: A Novel
by Tony Burgess
  
43.
?
 The Collected Strange Stories (2 vols.)
by Robert Aickman
  
44. The Descent
by Jeff Long
  
45. A Life in the Cinema
by Mick Garris
  
46. House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition
by Mark Z. Danielewski
  
47. Under the Skin: A Novel
by Michel Faber
  
48. Straw Men
by Michael Marshall
  
49. A Choir of Ill Children
by Tom Piccirilli
  
50.
?
 The Fear Report
by Elizabeth Massie
  
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Created by The Subjected Reader on Mar 16, 2007.