Here are 100 books that Abarat fans have personally recommended once you finish the Abarat series.
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I've been a student of horror since my mother first sat me down in front of the TV to watch the old monster movies with her. It's a genre for the outsiders, the underdogs, which I've certainly felt at several points throughout my life. Good horror is both an escape and a vessel to affect change in the world. Many people in my life believe horror is just boobs and blood, so I feel like it's my job to educate them. This is why I started hosting my horror movie nights, which later developed into my first cookbook. Horror is a major part of my life and I hope it gets the appreciation it deserves.
It is a beautifully gruesome story about love, desire, and greed. Though I found it to be absolutely frightening, I also found it strangely comforting.
As a young gay man in the early 00s, as the AIDS epidemic was slowing down a bit, Barker's depiction of sexuality and openness was quite refreshing. I can only imagine what it must have been like reading this story for the first time as a gay man in the 1980s.
The classic tale of supernatural obsession from the critically acclaimed master of darkness—and the inspiration for the cult classic film Hellraiser
From his scores of short stories, bestselling novels, and major motion pictures, no one comes close to the vivid imagination and unique terrors provided by Clive Barker. The Hellbound Heart is one of Barker’s best—a nerve-shattering novella about the human heart and all the great terrors and ecstasies within its endless domain. It is about greed and love, desire and death, life and captivity, bells and blood. It is one of the most frightening stories you are likely to…
My PhD work focused on horror fiction and film, and I spent ten years teaching about horror (I even included two of my recommended books in courses). The academic stuff is more a symptom than a cause of my passion for the scary. I’ve been a horror freak forever, becoming interested in vampires by age four, reading Stephen King and writing stories to frighten classmates by age nine, and putting a poster of Freddy Krueger on my wall at age ten. Extremes of fiction take me away from extremes of real life, which are much harder to handle.
This book originally consisted of six short collections of novellas and stories, but they’ve since been gathered into a two-volume set, so I’m hoping I can count them as one. They go together, and I think they’re nearly all excellent.
When I was a kid, these stories helped build a bridge for me, from the likes of Stephen King (whom I still adore) to new imaginative worlds of horror that include all kinds of transgressive imagery.
I love how Barker combines the fantastic with the visceral, blurs lines between the monstrous and the human, and makes desire dark, dirty, and wonderful. I also love these stories for all they taught me and helping usher in modern extreme/hardcore horror.
Rediscover the true meaning of fear in this collection of horror stories from Clive Barker, New York Times bestselling author and creator of the Hellraiser series.
Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.
In this tour de force collection of brilliantly disturbing tales, Clive Barker combines the extraordinary with the ordinary, bringing to life our darkest nightmares with stories that both seduce and devour. As beautiful as they are terrible, the pages of this volume are stained with unsettling imagery, macabre humor, and visceral dread. Here then are the…
To understand why I write macabre stories, you could ask my therapist if I had one. I’ve had this bent since my mother read me Dr. Seuss’ What Was I Scared Of? (A title that inspired the title of my TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?) Blame it on her. My reading was dominated by the short stories I mentioned and magazines like Eerie and Creepy. I also consumed a steady diet of Twilight Zone and Saturday matinee horror movies. Why? I believe it’s because these stories offer imaginative conflicts that are far removed from reality yet told through the perspective of common experience. And they’re always wrapped in a compelling mystery.
Like Stephen King, Clive Barker has an impressive list of horror-themed novels for all tastes, ranging from fantasy to deeply disturbing and graphic horror tales like Books of Blood. This book skews more toward fantasy but still has its share of scares and disturbing imagery.
A young boy is sent on a whimsical and horrifying imaginative adventure. It’s like a modern-day Grimm fairy tale, right up my alley.
As well as being a novelist, I am also a script editor for film and TV. I specialise in thriller narratives and big themes in screenwriting, so it's no accident I am drawn to them in fiction too. Dystopian worlds offer such a rich backdrop for the BIG questions and observations. By putting new societies and threats under the microscope in stories, it can hold a mirror up to what's going on in real life. I think of dystopian novels as being akin to the canaries in the coal mine: they are not only cathartic, they sound the warning bell on where we are going as a society ourselves.
Barker's theory of parallel worlds in this book totally captivated me. The story world is so layered and nuanced—and nightmarish! Themes of God, gender, sex, and death weave together effortlessly.
I love it so much that I read this book at least once a year! What I liked most was the journey of the dual protagonists, Gentle and Jude, not to mention that killer twist at the end.
The story of three people on an epic journey through five Dominions to the border of the greatest mystery of all - the First Dominion. On the other side, if they dare to venture, lies the Holy City of the Unbeheld, where their highest hopes or deepest fears will be realized.
I wasn’t a fan of reading when I was young. I was a lazy reader. Subjects and genres were always chosen for me during education, until I hunted for my own. I used to write a lot more than reading in early high school. I wrote a horror journal, submitted to my English teacher every week. He told me that my writing was good but advised me that reading the genre could help develop my ideas. Funny, a young teenager couldn’t work that out? So, off I went to the local bookstore and bought my first horror novel. I devoured it within a week. I've been a reader and writer of horror ever since.
A book I’d wanted to read for a long time, but it wasn’t until later in life I was able to get it. When I was just on the early stages of my writing career, my now longtime friend, Marty, said he had a spare copy of Cabal laying around and offered to send it to me. Marty was my writing mentor at the time as he’d been writing horror for many years previous, and his work is inspiring. So, knowing I was getting a book in the mail from my mentor, to whom I hadn’t met in person yet, was very exciting. The book itself was a tired secondhand copy (which I was told it was) yet this gave it more special meaning. Even the cover was a little torn and it was a pocket edition. So, I sat back with this little book, which I still have as…
A fabulous journey through the mind of the master of dark imaginative fiction, Clive Barker.
The nightmare had begun....
Boone knew that there was no place on this earth for him now; no happiness here, not even with Lori. He would let Hell claim him, let Death take him there.
But Death itself seemed to shrink from Boone. No wonder, if he had indeed been the monster who had shattered, violated and shredded so many others' lives.
And Decker had shown him the proof - the hellish photographs where the last victims were forever stilled, splayed in the last obscene…
I was talking to some scientifically minded people online when I came across quantum physics. When I read that there’s something scientists call the Quantum Realm, I knew I had to write a book. I took the information a German scientist who specialized in quantum theory gave me and created a science fantasy world. I have a masters in English and a bachelor's in communication. Two of the most important questions a fiction author can ask are What if? and Why not? Instead of having a regular guy fall into a magic world, I had the magician’s apprentice fall into a world of science just to see what he’d do.
The elves in this small English town have to blend in with their human neighbors. And a good job of it they do, too. I like the tenacity of Rosie Foxx. Her brother insists that she marry a human, and going along to get along seems the best course of action. But her elven heritage will not be denied. In a way, she is like the positrons in queen of the Quantum Realm—outcasts as they are, they think it better to be transformed into something they are not. this is very human.
Winner of the 2009 Romantic Times Award for BEST FANTASY NOVEL
“Even the most jaded fantasy reader will quickly fall under the spell of her characters and the warm, intimate voice Warrington uses to tell their stories. Highly recommended.” —Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Rosie Fox is a daughter of Aetherials, an ancient race from the Spiral—the innermost realm of the Otherworld—who live secretly among us. Yet she and her kind are bereft of their origins, because on Earth, in a beautiful village named Cloudcroft, the Great Gates between worlds stand sealed.
On the back of my ragged edition of The Fellowship of the Ring is a picture of JRR Tolkien smoking a pipe. Even at a young age, I thought, “That’s what I want!” No, not the pipe. Though it would be cool to have it sans tobacco. I wanted to have my picture on the back of a book that was filled with fantasy characters, adventure, good, evil, magic, and elves. Since that time I have been writing books and chasing after my own characters and epic tales. So I’m thankful for that first inspiration.
When I was around ten years old, I read everything I could get my hands on. This book fell into my mental lap and, though it was intended for an older audience, the puns and wit taught me how funny a fantastical world could be. I mean it has everything: a chameleon (who is actually three people), ghosts, zombies, witch battles, and more puns than you can shake a wand at. The protagonist, Bink, is born without an obvious magical talent, which is illegal in Xanth so he is exiled to Mundania where he is captured by an outcast wizard who wants to use him to invade Xanth. Written in the late 1970s, the book is a little dated but still immensely entertaining and the first of many Xanth books. It’s truly a cornucopia of wordplay.
BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY • Discover the magical beginning of Piers Anthony’s enthralling Xanth series
Xanth was the enchanted land where magic ruled—where every citizen had a special spell only he could cast. It was a land of centaurs and dragons and basilisks.
For Bink of North Village, however, Xanth was no fairy tale. He alone had no magic. And unless he got some—and got some fast!—he would be exiled. Forever. But the Good Magician Humfrey was convinced that Bink did indeed have magic. In fact, both Beauregard the genie and the magic wall chart insisted…
When I was very small, bedtime was the high point of the day; for that was when my parents read to me. My father favored adventure tales with knights and heroes, while my mother shared her own beloved Oz books with me. To this day, there is nothing so satisfying as finding a new story in which to be immersed. Although I enjoy reading many types of books, my first love remains fantasy; especially those stories with appealing characters and a defined world built from the author’s imagination. I hope these recommendations provide you with a gateway to discover new and enchanting reading experiences of your own.
As a fan of fantasy books about quests, I was familiar with Terry Brooks’ Shannara series.
Since I enjoyed his writing and his characters, I picked up this one on the assumption that it would be similar. Instead, I encountered a story about Ben Holiday, who purchased a magic kingdom from a fancy gift catalog and traveled to a new world where he became the ruler.
The characters appealed; especially Abernathy, the court scribe turned into a soft-coated, wheaten terrier by the wizard, Questor Thews.
Although a mature man, Ben’s trials upon obtaining the throne and adjusting to the magic of his new home support the theme of a hero’s coming-of-age story. With a few wrinkles and twists of magic, and a humorous overtone, I recommend this book as a nice change of pace from more serious fantasy tales.
Here in his first non-Shannara novel, Terry Brooks has written a gripping story of mystery, magic, and adventure—sure to delight fantasy readers everywhere.
Landover was a genuine magic kingdom, with fairy folk and wizardry, just as the advertisement has promised. But after he purchased it, Ben Holiday learned that there were a few details the ad had failed to mention.
The kingdom was in ruin. The Barons refused to recognize a king, and the peasants were without hope. A dragon was laying waste the countryside, while an evil witch plotted to destroy everything.
Science fantasy uniquely combines elements of science fiction (advanced technology, futuristic settings) with those of fantasy (magic, mythological creatures, and supernatural elements). This fusion creates rich and versatile storytelling that often comes with a deep sense of mystery beyond what science fiction or fantasy achieves on their own.
This blend also requires greater “buy-in” from the reader to believe in the world we’re being presented. As readers, we often accept dwarves in fantasy with little to no explanation. We do the same with spaceships in science fiction. But dwarves in spaceships require truly creative storytelling to achieve a much higher buy-in threshold. The author who can pull this off has my attention.
The only Young Adult book on this list but firmly deserving of its place, this book is the perfect example of how to successfully blend science fiction and fantasy.
Colfer takes a traditional fantasy fairy society and gives them advanced weaponry, surveillance gadgets, and time-stopping devices. It works incredibly well, and through convincing world-building I was immediately bought into the idea of fantasy creatures with sci-fi technology.
A standout feature of the novel is the characters, whose backstories, motivations, and behaviours all help to build this science fantasy world. We get an elf “LEPRecon” officer with access to bionic wings, a centaur who heads the technology department of the “Lower Elements Police,” and a dwarven thief who sells stolen human property on the black market. They were all enormously fun to read.
Twelve-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl has discovered a world below ground of armed and dangerous--and extremely high-tech--fairies. He kidnaps one of them, Holly Short, and holds her for ransom in an effort to restore his family's fortune. But he may have underestimated the fairies' powers. Is he about to trigger a cross-species war?
Disney's “Artemis Fowl” is directed by Kenneth Branagh and stars Ferdia Shaw, Lara McDonnell, Tamara Smart, Nonzo Anozie, with Josh Gad, and Judi Dench.
I have loved horror since my early teens, when I first discovered The Rats and Lair and other horror stories by James Herbert. The thing I like about horror, in particular, is that there are no holds barred, no censorship, as to what can be written. I grew up on movies like The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Jaws, Alien, The Thing, etc., but horror writing takes you deeper and gives a more visceral experience than anything any film can do.
I discovered Clive Barker's collection of short stories which gave me an introduction to one of the world's best horror writers and film directors. There are so many varied stories within the Books of Blood that it's difficult to highlight some over others.
The Midnight Meat Train was astounding in its detail of visceral butchery, whilst In the Hills, the Cities is fantastic in its imagery of something impossible, which Barker relates with such skill to make you believe the events within are entirely feasible. The Hellbound Heart lets you into a world of new villains and was made into one of my favorite horror films, Hellraiser. I was also lucky to meet and interview Clive, who inspired me to continue writing, saying, "Keep going; you will get better."
