Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Top 5 Thrilling Reads


Halloween is just around the corner and it's the perfect time to grab a spooky book to cuddle up with on a cool Fall evening.

Here are a few of my favorite scary books. These have all given me goosebumps and inspired a or two.

Top 5 Thrilling Reads:.

5. The Shining

The Overlook Hotel is more than just a home-away-from-home for the Torrance family. For Jack, Wendy, and their young son, Danny, it is a place where past horrors come to life. And where those gifted with the shining do battle with the darkest evils. Stephen King's classic thriller is one of the most powerfully imagined novels of our time.




4. Interview With the Vampire

In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris.


3. Odd Thomas

Odd Thomas, who narrates, is odd indeed: only 20, he works contentedly as a fry cook in a small fictional California town, despite a talent for writing. The reason for his lack of ambition? A much rarer talent: Odd sees and converses with ghosts, the lingering dead who have yet to pass on, a secret he has kept from nearly everyone but his girlfriend, an eccentric author friend and the local police chief, whom he occasionally helps solve terrible crimes. Odd also has the ability to see bodachs, malevolent spirits that feast on pain and whose presence signifies a likelihood of imminent violence.



2. Anything by Edgar Allan Poe

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.




1. The Ruins

Four American friends on vacation in CancĂșn, Mexico—Jeff, Amy, Eric and Stacy—meet a German tourist, Mathias, who persuades them to join his hunt for his younger brother, Henrich, last seen headed off with a new girlfriend toward some ruins. The four soon regret their impulsive decision after they find themselves lost in the jungle and freaked out by signs that they're headed for danger. Smith builds suspense through the slow accretion of telling details, until a deadly menace starts taking its toll, leaving the survivors increasingly at each other's throats.



Those are my top favorite thrilling reads. What are yours?


posted by The Bookworm.

2 comments:

LesleyW said...

I haven't read any scary books for a long time.

But when I was reading horror my favourite was The Stand by Stephen King.

Of the urban fantasy I read at the moment, a couple have scary scenes.

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane has a scene where Chess is being chased but you don't know whether it's for real or in her head. You can feel the paranoia coming off the page.

And I think in Once Bitten, Twice Shy by Jennifer Rardin. (The first in the Jaz Parks series, I'm pretty sure it's in this book). There is one of the more realistic vampire attacks I have read. You just know that from the moment the vamps get in the house none of the people are getting out alive.

The Bookworm said...

thanks lesley, those sound like scary reads, especially Unholy Ghosts

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