Here are 35 books that Year One fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve always loved both horror and comedy. So imagine my delight discovering the two could be blended together into a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Movies such as Ghostbusters, Army of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China are perfect examples. In each, you have a potentially terrifying situation, coupled with characters who are too full of themselves to play the victim – yet not quite competent enough to be the hero either. It’s inspired me to spend countless hours behind my computer crafting my own horrific worlds, coupled with characters who simply refuse to take it seriously. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
There should be no doubt for anyone who follows me that I love any tale that involves an underdog loser forced to either save the world or die trying. Even better if it involves rampaging tentacle beasts and other Lovecraftian horrors. Throw in a talking cockroach with a serious attitude problem, and you have a perfect recipe for that succulent dish known as horror/comedy. Definitely, a must-read for anyone who enjoys a good laugh in between their screams.
One loser, one talking cockroach, and one karate-chopping bombshell are all that stand between YOU and hell on earth.
Lloyd Wallace is the most clueless crossing guard the intersection of hell and earth has ever seen. So clueless, that he doesn't even realize the beer cave in the corner store where he works is the gateway to hell. The gate needs a hero, but Lloyd's a zero, a loser with a capital L. He's ten thousand dollars in debt and lives with his parents. He's been fired from every job he's ever had. He was the first thing his ex-girlfriend…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve always loved both horror and comedy. So imagine my delight discovering the two could be blended together into a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Movies such as Ghostbusters, Army of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China are perfect examples. In each, you have a potentially terrifying situation, coupled with characters who are too full of themselves to play the victim – yet not quite competent enough to be the hero either. It’s inspired me to spend countless hours behind my computer crafting my own horrific worlds, coupled with characters who simply refuse to take it seriously. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
If you enjoy horror colored with off-color laughs, but you’re not in the mood for a long series, then you can truly do no better than Jeff Strand. He is without question the master of standalone horror/comedy stories, and this 100% shows in Clowns Vs. Spiders. It’s a novel designed to play upon many people’s worst fears, while somehow keeping their eyes glued to the story. You’ll hate yourself a little bit more with every page you read, but damn, Jeff makes self-loathing more fun than it has any right to be.
Jaunty the Clown just wants to entertain families with lighthearted slapstick antics, but people think of clowns as terrifying, nightmarish creatures who hide in closets or under beds. When Jaunty, along with his fellow performers Guffaw, Wagon, Reginald The Pleasant Clown, and Bluehead are fired from the circus, they're told that the world just doesn't like clowns anymore.
Still, clowns have to eat. And since these clowns don't eat children, to make ends meet they're eventually forced to take a job in a popular haunted attraction, the Mountain of Terror. Instead of charming entertainers, they're now scary clowns. A zombie…
I’ve always loved both horror and comedy. So imagine my delight discovering the two could be blended together into a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Movies such as Ghostbusters, Army of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China are perfect examples. In each, you have a potentially terrifying situation, coupled with characters who are too full of themselves to play the victim – yet not quite competent enough to be the hero either. It’s inspired me to spend countless hours behind my computer crafting my own horrific worlds, coupled with characters who simply refuse to take it seriously. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
If there is one thing in this world I love as much as a good scream, it’s playing D&D with my friends. Well, Critical Failures is like what it would be having those same jackasses alongside me as I got sucked into the game world – and subsequently discovered I sucked there as much as in real life. I like to think I’d be either Aragorn or Legolas if thrust into a fantasy world, when the reality is I’d probably end up more like their drunk cousins who their families never talk about or invite over for the holidays. Well, Caverns and Creatures is 100% the series for those who feel the same way. Strap on your sword, pull out your spellbook, and prepare to roll a natural 1 as you set out on the journey of a lifetime...or five minutes considering the ineptitude of this adventuring party.
What if you and your friends got to live the game for real? What if you and your friends were assholes? After relentlessly mocking their strange new Game Master, Tim and his friends find themselves trapped in the bodies of their fantasy game characters, in a world where the swords, the magic, and the gastrointestinal issues are all too real. They learn hard lessons about tolerance and teamwork, and a new meaning for the term “dump stat”. Ha ha. Just kidding. They don't learn shit. Never before have comedy and fantasy come together so much like a train wreck, in…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Scary books and movies hooked me early in life and never let go. I’m fascinated by the themes that are explored in all of the various sub-genres of horror. I’m intrigued by the lore that’s created, and I’m impressed with the imagination of so many horror creators. Horror remains and always will be one of the most popular genres of storytelling.
I read this as a teenager, just as I was diving into the horror genre. I already knew at this point that I wanted to be a storyteller. What struck me while reading It was the jumping back and forth between time periods.
I had never read a book structured that way, and it seemed that every chapter ended on a cliffhanger, forcing me to keep reading. There aren’t many books that I would say I had a hard time putting down (I get bored easily), but It was certainly one of them!
This tie-in edition will be available from 16 July
TIE IN TO A NEW MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, IT: CHAPTER 2, ADAPTED FROM KING'S TERRIFYING CLASSIC
27 years later, the Losers Club have grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back...
Derry, Maine was just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live.
It was a group of children who saw- and felt- what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes…
I have been writing for more than 40 years, and while I don’t normally write gothic literature, it is a genre that has fascinated me since my early youth. While I have written a couple of gothic or horror short stories, I tend to write other types of literature. However, I was pulled into this novel by something I saw on the TV news, and so I put away the novel I was originally working on and set to work on this one instead. The setting and the characters immediately pulled me in. I hope that it’s mystery and unusual characters will do the same for you.
I love this book so much, I have read it at least three times. It is a classic gothic novel with an eerie setting and interesting characters, including those with psychosis that add to the mystery of he novel.
While the film version is undoubtedly a classic, the novel is by far better.
30
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
I've had many professions over the years: theatrical stage technician, stage manager, scenic artist, teacher, writer, driver, husband, and father. I've always had a love for horror and fantasy stretching from the classic Gothic to the incredible worlds of Tolkien, Pratchett, and many more. I never set out to write, but I love the escapism and freedom that both reading and writing allows. I was a military child and having followed my father across Europe, I settled in the beautiful cathedral city of Lincoln, UK, which itself has its horror, hauntings, and history. Fantasy writing seemed to be the next stage of my development, combining macabre with the fascinating task of creating a fantastical world.
This is a terrific take on the ‘what if…’ scenario that Dracula survived. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, twisting and turning through the streets of Paris and London setting the scene for another blood fest of vampiric terror. Dacre has certainly captured some of his ancestor’s penchant for horror and this book takes you on a mysterious trip through the minds of its fascinating yet disturbing characters.
The official sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, written by his direct descendent and endorsed by the Stoker family.
The story begins in 1912, twenty-five years after the events described in the original novel. Dr. Jack Seward, now a disgraced morphine addict, hunts vampires across Europe with the help of a mysterious benefactor. Meanwhile, Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school to pursue a career in stage at London's famous Lyceum Theatre.
The production of Dracula at the Lyceum, directed and produced by Bram Stoker, has recently lost its star. Luckily, Quincey knows how…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a comic book writer, novelist, and vampire aficionado. I always want to learn the truth of a matter. I’ve moved in and out of the gothic subculture for years and spent time with members of the vampire subculture. I’ve found that most people’s understanding of vampires (and really, everything) is influenced by fiction. Even if you point out that their beliefs are only as accurate as a movie, they will still argue for them. As much as I love a good vampire movie, I want to shatter illusions and explore the myths and folklore that reflect our human experience in all of its horror and glory.
Whereas Barber expounds upon the anthropological origins of the vampire myth, McClelland focuses on the practices, principles, and logistics of killing the dead. The most familiar form comes in the unearthing and mutilation of bodies. McClelland explains the whys and wherefores of that practice, but he also gives their killers more than their due, explaining the role of vampire slayers as shamans, village elders, and quasi-religious figures during Europe’s transition from its pagan roots to modern Christianity. He demonstrates that vampires fell into an uneasy space between a fading system of peasant folklore and the organized religious rituals and beliefs that ultimately took their place. There are no vampires in the Bible, so where was the church during the vampire hysteria of the 1800s and how did they regard these mythical creatures? McClelland answers that and more. He also includes an overview of our modern conception of vampire slayers from…
In contemporary Western popular culture, the vampire has evolved into one of the most recognizable symbols of evil. Yet, less has been said - and even less has been understood - about its nemesis, the vampire slayer. ""Slayers and Their Vampires"" is the first work to explore how the vampire slayer began, and it goes further to ask why the true history of the vampire slayer has been so long ignored. Author Bruce McClelland describes how the literary and screen dramas obscured the darker nature of the slayer, whose persecution of a corpse is accepted as heroic rather than corrupt.…
I saw Francis Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, but studied the novel only after I created a photo story,The Ultimate Dracula(Munich, 2012). Next to the images, my book presented the true location Stoker had in mind for his fictitious Castle Dracula (No, notBram Castle), and the historical person he referred to while speaking about Count Dracula (No, notVlad the Impaler). The next steps were discovering the true locations of Carfax and the Scholomance, unraveling the backgrounds of the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, and unearthing the first US serialization. I simply love to solve riddles. By now, I am organizing international Draculaconferences.
Leslie Klinger’s annotated version of Draculais one of the most recent editions, and it surely is the most entertaining one, suitable for readers who are no Draculaexperts (yet). Some of his comments build on the (purely fictional) assumption that the Count himself had his hand in editing Stoker’s text. In a single instance, when it comes to the historical Dracula family, Klinger drops the ball, but he makes a unique contribution to Dracula Studies by comparing Dracula’s final text with that of Stoker’s typescript, found in a barn in Pennsylvania in the 1980s. His attention to geographical details greatly inspired my own research into this matter. The book comes with a number of illustrations and helpful appendixes.
In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker's contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact. Traveling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Klinger's notes illuminate every aspect of this haunting narrative (including a detailed examination of the original typescript of Dracula, with its shockingly different ending, previously unavailable to scholars). Klinger investigates the many subtexts of the original narrative-from masochistic,…
I am a comic book writer, novelist, and vampire aficionado. I always want to learn the truth of a matter. I’ve moved in and out of the gothic subculture for years and spent time with members of the vampire subculture. I’ve found that most people’s understanding of vampires (and really, everything) is influenced by fiction. Even if you point out that their beliefs are only as accurate as a movie, they will still argue for them. As much as I love a good vampire movie, I want to shatter illusions and explore the myths and folklore that reflect our human experience in all of its horror and glory.
This book has engendered controversy for almost forcefully bridging the gap between the 15th Century Wallachian Prince Vlad III or Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. Stoker had already constructed his character, called “Count Wampyr,” before he learned of his future namesake. However, he quite clearly establishes a connection between the two through an explanation provided by Abraham Van Helsing. The Dracula of the eponymous novel is a heavily fictionalized version of the real-life figure, but so are most similarly positioned characters in literature, film, and television. Florescu and McNally provide a cursory overview of Slavic and Balkan vampire folklore, a biographical sketch of Vlad the Impaler, and illuminate the process by which Stoker adapted this violent, cunning, and sometimes brilliant nationalist and military tactician into a fictional monster.
The true story behind the legend of Dracula - a biography of Prince Vlad of Transylvania, better known as Vlad the Impaler. This revised edition now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m a lifelong reader, and over the years I’ve probably gotten to know thousands of characters. I don’t like it when they die, but their deaths can be so moving if done well. It really frustrates me when a beloved character dies and it doesn’t amount to anything. I’ve gotten attached to these people–they shouldn’t just die without impacting anything! But I love it when a death results in a plot twist or meaningful consequences for the remaining characters.
When I was a kid, a favorite uncle gave me a later book in this series, and I was immediately entranced by the combination of humor and fantasy–I love both genres, and I’d never seen them done together before. This is the first book in that much-loved and reread series.
It starts when Garkin, an irascible old wizard, summons a demon to impress his mouthy apprentice. Garkin then gets killed, which releases the demon and launches the mouthy apprentice, Skeeve, into a series of outlandish adventures. It’s a dark start to a light book, full of trope reversals and puns. I loved it as a kid and as an adult.
Skeeve is a magician’s apprentice (and a wanna-be thief) until an assassin’s bolt kills his master, Garkin. Along with Aahz, the green-scaled, purple-tongued demon and master magician summoned by Garkin, he sets out on a quest to get even. The road to vengeance is bound to prove rocky, however, because Skeeve can barely light a candle with his beginning magic, and Aahz has lost his own considerable magical abilities as a consequence of Garkin’s summoning spell. Before they can confront the power-mad wizard who ordered Garkin’s assassination, they must survive a trip to a weird alternate dimension, encounters with Impish…
