I’m a writer, editor, and publisher. As a child in the 1970s, I first discovered a taste for adventure stories in the pages of Marvel comics. This lead to a wider interest in fiction, particularly sci-fi, horror, and adventure tales. I believe one of the basic tenets to becoming a good writer is to read…a lot. I gravitate toward well-known but also lesser-known stories. My main criteria: is the writing engaging, does it inspire me to keep reading? As a writer, I ask myself these same questions about my work. The titles in this list are among the benchmarks I aim for when writing and editing.
One of the first Ellison books I ever read and the one that haunts me the most.
Deathbird Stories lives up to its title and delivers a tour de force of fantasy and horror that only Ellison could have written. The nineteen stories in this collection are, in a sense, about gods. Not the gods we know and may worship but new ones. “A New Testament of deities for the computerized age of confrontation and relevance,” as notes Ellison in his introduction.
You’ll likely want to read every story in this collection several times, though to the casual reader looking for a taste, I recommend “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” an unflinchingly honest assessment of human behavior and depravity—and based in part on actual events.
I’ve seldom been so gutted by a short story, and it hits me every time I re-read it.
Masterpieces of myth and terror about modern gods from technology to drugs to materialism-"fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling" (The New York Times).
As Earth approaches Armageddon, a man embarks on a quest to confront God in the Hugo Award-winning novelette, "The Deathbird."
In New York City, a brutal act of violence summons a malevolent spirit and a growing congregation of desensitized worshippers in "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs," an Edgar Award winner influenced by the real-life murder of Queens resident Kitty Genovese in 1964.
In "Paingod," the deity tasked with inflicting pain and suffering on every living being…
Clive Barker’s 2007 novel is the sort of book that, as soon as you read the first page, you know you’ve found something special.
The narrator is a demon named Jakabok Botch who desperately wants you, the reader, to burn the book you’re reading. Throughout these pleas we learn about Jakabok’s history, beginning with his childhood in Hell, how he was pulled into the human world in the fourteenth century, and his many exploits since.
What really elevates this book from good to great is the first-person narrative. Barker does an exquisite job in giving a wholly original voice to his demon. Barker has described the novel as, “a different kind of scare, very brutal and very intimate,” and he isn’t exaggerating.
Mister B. Goneis a quick read, especially by Barker standards, but one that’s well worth your time and will have you reflecting upon long after you’ve finished it.
The long-awaited return of the great master of horror. Mister B. Gone is Barker's shockingly bone-chilling discovery of a never-before-published demonic 'memoir' penned in the year 1438, when it was printed - one copy only - and then buried until now by an assistant who worked for the inventor of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg.
This bone-chilling novel, in which a medieval devil speaks directly to his reader-his tone murderous one moment, seductive the next-is a never-before-published memoir allegedly penned in the year 1438.
The demon has embedded himself in the very words of this tale of terror, turning the…
During his lifetime, Westlake published over one hundred books. He wrote under several pseudonyms, the most well known of which was Richard Stark. Between 1962 and 2008, Stark penned twenty-four novels starring Parker, a smart, slick thief who pulled heists for big bucks.
In Slayground, we find Parker trapped inside an amusement park in the dead of winter following a botched armored car robbery. He needs to hide the stolen loot, make good his escape, and return later to pick it up. Problem is, he’s been spotted by crooked cops. Parker is soon hunted by members of a local mob who’ve figured out he’s carrying a lot of cash. Parker realizes his only chance for survival is to go on the offensive.
Unfortunately for the mob, it’s something he does better than anyone else. Stark writes Parker stories with a minimalist approach, and it’s extremely effective. There are honestly no bad Parker novels, but Slayground is particularly entertaining and was the basis of the 1983 film of the same name. But trust me, the book’s a heck of a lot better.
By the time Richard Stark sat down to write "Deadly Edge" in 1971, he'd been chronicling the adventures of his antihero, Parker, for nearly a decade. But it turns out he was just warming up: the next three "Parker" novels would see Stark crank everything up a notch - tightening the writing, heightening the violence, and, most of all, hardening the deadly heister at the books' heart. "Deadly Edge" kicks things off by bidding a brutal adieu to the 1960s: Parker robs a rock concert, but the heist goes sour, and he finds himself - and his woman, Claire -…
Published a year after his infamous novel Psycho, Bloch’s The Dead Beat is an offbeat short novel about a piano player named Larry Fox.
Larry’s a bad seed with a criminal record who worms his way into a suburban American family’s house after they discover him unconscious in the back of their car and learn that he’d been attacked. Larry keeps a lot of secrets and has a lot of big dreams, most of them around seducing teenage girls and extorting his former crime partner.
The story has some sections that read as dated, which isn’t surprising for a title published in 1960, but Bloch’s undeniably crisp writing and play on words will keep you turning the page. I’m not much of a night owl these days but I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to finish this one.
The ending is satisfying, and you may find yourself thinking about this one later on and wondering how Larry’s life might have turned out if he’d made a few different choices.
A novel that should be on every reader’s bookshelf, Bester’s The Stars My Destination is a dense and thought-provoking read that I found impossible to put down and frequently re-read.
The story is set during a war in the future in an era where personal teleportation (known as jaunting) is commonplace. The plot centers around Gully Foyle, a flawed anti-hero who finds himself marooned in space aboard his merchant ship, Nomad, after it’s attacked. After waiting to be rescued for six months, Foyle signals a passing ship, the Vorga, but his SOS is ignored. He immediately becomes consumed with the desire for revenge.
During the period that follows, Foyle undergoes countless experiences and also educates himself, emerging in a refined alter-ego role, but his quest for revenge upon the Vorga captain remains.
Considered a precursor to the cyberpunk movement,The Stars My Destination is regarded by many leading sci-fi authors to be among the finest sci-fi novels ever written.
Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class, is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship. When another space vessel, the Vorga, ignores his distress flares and sails by, Gully Foyle becomes a man obsessed with revenge. He endures 170 days alone in deep space before finding refuge on the Sargasso Asteroid and then returning to Earth to track down the crew and owners of the Vorga. But, as he works out his murderous grudge, Gully Foyle also uncovers a secret of momentous proportions...
In 1986, Otis Oppenheimer and a dozen fellow CIA agents are handpicked by Ronald Reagan and assigned to his secret pet project: The Glass Onion Initiative. The GO team's task seems simple. Spread across the globe, Otis and his squad are plunged into a search for a mythical onion sculpted in glass that offers its owner a window into the future. Reagan and Pentagon officials know that a superpower with the ability to see tomorrow will give them a unique political advantage in the dawning new century and beyond.
Two decades into the search, Reagan is dead but his dream lives on. The long search is nearly over. Centuries without a master, the glass onion now longs to share its many secrets. But can such power be contained?
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
