Best Horror Novel?

Straubs Ghost story is a modern classic, Kings Pet Sematary, Salems lott, and dan simmons Summer of night.

The novel written by Joyce Carol Oates in the first voice, the narrator being a psycho killer Detroit-style was the most horrifying novel I ever read. It's a small step from childhood madness to adult psycho-ism. This kid's obviously so insane as to be criminal. We suspend kids for playing with toy guns... but when a child writes a demented account of his home life and his wish-fulfillments, we simply call him insane and send him to the psychotherapist who tells him that society is to blame.

christopher fowler for me, you have a choice of a dozen or so , some of them fit more into the horror genre than others i'd recommend "spanky", psychoville and soho black....

Two by Steven King: 'IT' and 'The Stand'. For me, both of these books are complete modern classics. I read them both when they were first published and I was a lot younger then. They blew me away on all fronts. I've read both about 7 to 8 times since.

Haven't read that one mark, but my own nominations would probably be James Herbert's 'Shrine' or Stephen Laws' 'Macabre'.

Dubliners by James Joyce. For me, everyday life is a much greater horror than anything a genre specialist could dream up.

I really like Ticktock by Dean Koontz. One of the first horror novels I ever read and it had quite an impact! Also the Rats books by Herbert - I remember one scene about a woman gliding along the sewers with her eyes open looking blissful whilst one of the giant rats was chewing her neck and another had it's head in her intestines...aaah, now my nightmares will come back! I think I first read it when I was about ten, and it scared me s***less.

If I am right "I Am Legend" was filmed as "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston in the lead role, in the early 70s.

I rather like House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski - there are parts of it that are quite indulgent, but parts of it that absolutely scared the hell out of me, to the point where I actually had to stop reading it before 9 o'clock at night, so that I had a few hours to get it out of my head before going to sleep. Also, loads of really good digressions that were damn interesting.

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. It is good. Better than the film. And not cliched.

The ending - the very last chapter - of Hannibal is a huge disappointment after the rest of the book which is excellent. Not sure if it can properly be called a horror novel though.

More of a thriller - and the ending is one of the worst I've ever read. I had the feeling the Fed-ex guy was standing over him with an envelope held open for the manuscript, saying loudly "Type faster Thomas, I've got to get this to the publishers right now". But the line about 'sure, you could drink a martini made from children's tears' was just gorgeous.

Well he had taken ten years to write so maybe the fed ex guy was getting really brassed off having to stand around waiting. It is well written though as you say.

What I did like was all the digs at Hopkins - he painstakingly describes Lecter again and again in a way that makes it quite plain that he's nothing like that ham-actor tosser who snaffled an Oscar for all of 17 minutes screen time. Oooh! My favourite gran story. We were watching Silence of the Lambs on tv - we get to the bit where he escapes and bites off the guards face and my gran says, with full intent "Oh, I thought he was a nice man" Despite being locked in a cage, despite wearing a full face mask, despite being called "Hannibal the Cannibal", despite saying openly that he ate someone...