{"id":20909,"date":"2018-09-06T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=20909"},"modified":"2018-09-01T09:44:54","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T13:44:54","slug":"the-50-best-horror-novels-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=20909","title":{"rendered":"The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Steve Foxe and the Paste Staff recently posted their choices for The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n

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22. The Silence of the Lambs<\/a> by Thomas Harris (1988)
\n<\/strong>It\u2019s a little odd getting around The Silence of the Lambs\u2019 third-person present tense: \u201cStarling looks down the corridor,\u201d etc., but once you get used to it, it\u2019s a device that ends up perfectly suiting the novel. The narrator\u2019s impartial voice floats above the proceedings, never siding with one character or settling exclusively onto their perspective\u2014at times, the third-person narration gives us glimpses into the minds of Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill. What the novel also does particularly well is make us probe into the motivations and ambition of Starling, going beyond her desire to simply help people and catch a killer. Opposed at nearly every turn by the institutional roadblocks erected in the path of female FBI trainees, the reader can sense the desperation of Starling and her borderline selfish desire to stand out and prove herself to her entirely male superiors. You can also sense this is part of the reason that Lecter takes an interest in her, finding her ambitions an interesting character trait that he can use to wrap Starling around his finger. This is actually one of the cases where it\u2019s helpful to have seen the film in advance, because you can read Lecter\u2019s dialogue and imagine it being delivered by Sir Anthony Hopkins. That\u2019s a damn good combination to make for a compelling reading experience.\u00a0 \u2014Jim Vorel<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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19. The Stand<\/a> by Stephen King (1978)
\n<\/strong>Stephen King\u2019s magnum opus nearly didn\u2019t make this countdown, fitting, as it does, more neatly into post-apocalyptic fiction or fantasy. At over 800 pages (more, if you\u2019re reading the uncut edition), The Stand includes as much horror as any of King\u2019s other novels, spurred by a viral outbreak that kills off 99.4% of the population. World-ending scenarios were on everyone\u2019s minds in the \u201870s and \u201880s, as global tensions escalated and means of mass destruction proliferated. King isn\u2019t content to simply explore a post-pandemic wasteland, though; The Stand is his most epic standoff between good and evil, the latter concept embodied by Randall Flagg, a recurring antagonist of King\u2019s who becomes essential to the sprawling Dark Tower saga. Knowledge of that series isn\u2019t necessary to undertake The Stand\u2014just a month or so of dedicated reading time, and a hearty resistance to nightmares.\u00a0 \u2014Steve Foxe<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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8. The Shining<\/a> by Stephen King (1977)
\n<\/strong>For most modern readers, legendary director Stanley Kubrick\u2019s stay at the Overlook Hotel looms large over Stephen King\u2019s original novel. Nearly all of the moments lodged in the public consciousness\u2014everything you\u2019ve seen parodied on The Simpsons\u2014are only in the film: the elevator of blood, the ghoulish twin girls, the typewriter, \u201cHere\u2019s Johnny!\u201d Pushing past these iconic bits of pop culture reveals one of King\u2019s greatest accomplishments, a hauntingly compelling look at a troubled man\u2019s descent into madness. King\u2019s novel is more sympathetic toward Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic writer (sound familiar?) trying to improve his family\u2019s life by taking a job as caretaker of a remote off-season resort with a barely concealed violent history. The house wants Danny, Jack\u2019s gifted young son, and puts the Torrance family through hell to get to him. King infamously hates Kubrick\u2019s adaptation, and while it\u2019s hard to debate the film\u2019s quality or place in the horror movie pantheon, the novel is the more nuanced and, arguably, scarier version of the story, topiary monsters and all.\u00a0 \u2014Steve Foxe<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Foxe and the Paste Staff recently posted their choices for The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time.\u00a0 Here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[61,52,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-books","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20912,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20909\/revisions\/20912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}