reading list

Richard’s Incomplete Reading List of Dark Fiction: Horror, fantasy, science fiction, Southern gothic, neo-noir, and literary fiction.

Adams, Richard – Watership Down
Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale
Baer, Will Christopher – Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful, and Hell’s Half Acre
Banks, Iain – The Wasp Factory
Barron, Laird – The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and The Croning
Barker, Clive – Weaveworld and Books of Blood
Bell, Matt – Cataclysm Baby and In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods
Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Dandelion Wine
Card, Orson Scott – Ender’s Game
Crane, Antonia – Spent (non-fiction)
Danielewski, Mark Z. – House of Leaves
Datlow, Ellen (editor) – Best Horror of the Year (annual) as well as The Doll Collection, Monstrous,
Davidson, Craig – The Fighter, Rust & Bone, and Sarah Court
Dick, Philip K. – Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Cain, Chelsea – Heartsick, Sweetheart, Evil at Heart
Card, Orson Scott – Ender’s Game
Clevenger, Craig – The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria
Cronin, Justin – The Passage
Dunn, Katherine – Geek Love
Drake, Monica – Clown Girl
Ellis, Bret Easton – American Psycho
Erickson, Steve – Tours of the Black Clock, Our Ecstatic Days and The Sea Came in at Midnight
Evenson, Brian – The Warren, Windeye, Immobility, and The Open Curtain
Flynn, Gillian – Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl
Gay, William – I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down
Gaiman, Neil – Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods and Anansi Boys
Gaitskill, Mary – Bad Behavior
Golding, William – Lord of the Flies
Gran, Sara – Come Closer
Gray, Amelia – AM/PM, Museum of the Weird, THREATS, and Gutshot
Guran, Paula (editor) – The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (annual)
Hall, Tina May – The Physics of Imaginary Objects
Harris, Thomas – The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal
Heinlein, Robert A. – Stranger in a Strange Land, Red Planet, The Puppet Masters, and Friday
Homes, A.M. – The End of Alice
Huxley, Aldous – Brave New World
Irby, Samantha – Meaty (non-fiction)
Hunter, Lindsay – Daddy’s, Don’t Kiss Me, and Ugly Girls
Jemc, Jac – The Grip of It, My Only Wife, and A Different Bed Every Time
Johnson, Denis – Jesus’ Son
Jones, Holly Goddard – Girl Trouble
Jones, Stephen Graham – Mongrels, All The Beautiful Sinners, Ledfeather, After the People Lights Have Gone Off, The Ones That Got Away, and Bleed
Into Me
Kelly, Michael (editor) – Year’s Best Weird Fiction (annual)
Kesey, Ken – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ketchum, Jack – The Girl Next Door, Off Season, Offspring, Red, The Lost and Peaceable Kingdom
King, Stephen – It, The Stand, Salem’s Lot, The Long Walk, Pet Sematary, The Dead Zone, Night Shift, Needful Things, Different Seasons, The Shining,
On Writing (non-fiction) and The Dark Tower series
Koontz, Dean – Whispers, Phantoms, and Watchers
Lehane, Dennis – Mystic River and Shutter Island
Long, Jeff – The Descent
Llewellyn, Livia - Furnace
Maass, Donald – Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling (non-fiction)
Malerman, Josh – Bird Box
Matheson, Richard – I Am Legend and Hell House
McCammon, Robert R. – Swan Song
McCarthy, Cormac – The Road, Blood Meridian, and Outer Dark
Mieville, China – Perdido Street Station and King Rat
Miller, Mary – Big World
Minor, Kyle – In the Devil’s Territory and Praying Drunk
Morrison, Toni – Beloved and The Bluest Eye
Murakami, Haruki – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
O’Brien, Tim – The Things They Carried
O’Connor, Flannery – The Complete Stories
Orwell, George – 1984 and Animal Farm
Palahniuk, Chuck – Survivor, Choke, Diary, Lullaby, Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Rant
Percy, Benjamin – Refresh, Refresh, The Wilding, Red Moon, The Dead Lands and Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction (non-fiction)
Phillips, Jayne Anne – Black Tickets
Pollock, Donald Ray – Knockemstiff
Rash, Ron – Chemistry and Other Stories
Rice, Anne – Interview With the Vampire
Richard, Mark – The Ice at the Bottom of the World
Sebold, Alice – The Lovely Bones
Steinbeck, John – Of Mice and Men
Straub, Peter – Ghost Story and Floating Dragon
Strayed, Cheryl – Wild (non-fiction)
Thomas, Richard (author) – Transubstantiate, Staring Into the Abyss, Disintegration, Breaker, The Soul Standard (with Nik Korpon, Axel Taiari, and
Caleb Ross), and Tribulations
Thomas, Richard (editor) – The New Black (Dark House Press), Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press, with Chuck Palahniuk and Dennis Widmyer,
Exigencies (Dark House Press), and The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press).
Thomas, Richard (publisher) – Scratch by Steve Himmer, Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters, and Vile Men by Rebecca Jones-Howe
Thompson, Jim – Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me
Tremblay, Paul – A Head Full of Ghosts, and In the Mean Time
VanderMeer, Jeff – The Southern Reach Trilogy (especially Annihilation) and Wonderbook (non-fiction) with Ann VanderMeer
Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse-Five
Yuknavitch, Lidia – The Chronology of Water (non-fiction)
Welsh, Irvine – Trainspotting
Wilson, F. Paul – The Repairman Jack series

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, MY TOP TEN SHORT STORIES:

Bradbury, Ray – “The Veldt”
Gay, William – “The Paperhanger”
Johnson, Denis – “Emergency”
Jones, Stephen Graham – “Father, Son, Holy Rabbit”
King, Stephen – “Harvey’s Dream”
Oates, Joyce Carol – “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”
O’Brien, Tim – “The Things They Carried”
Saunders, George – “Puppy”
Simpson, Mona – “Lawns”
Vonnegut, Kurt – “Harrison Bergeron”