13 Horror Books That Put Authors in the Hot Seat
Write what you know, they say.
Well, these horror authors did just that.
They put writers, just like themselves, into horror stories and haunt them and taunt them and twist their lives into nightmares that only horror authors could imagine.
In the following stories, novelists, journalists, and other types of authors find their sanity on the line. One author even makes himself his own protagonist.
Visit haunted houses, theme parks, and isolated places. Read about a cursed desk, conspiracies, serial killers, strange creatures, stalkers, and weird children. Accompany writers crossing paths with the occult and playing lethal games in the hopes of a big payout. Watch a pen name go wild, and a fan who goes to extreme lengths to keep her favorite character alive.
So, settle in and read about writers who learn that the worst things are not always confined to the imagination.
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Table of Contents
Kill Creek – Scott Thomas
Haunted house author horror
At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests.
When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror.
What begins as a simple publicity stunt becomes a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.
“No house is born bad. Most are thought of fondly, even lovingly. In the beginning, the house on Kill Creek was no exception.”
The Dark Game - Jonathan Janz
Psychological author horror
Ten writers are selected for a summer-long writing retreat with the most celebrated and reclusive author in the world. Their host is the legendary Roderick Wells. Handsome, enigmatic, and fiendishly talented, Wells promises to teach his pupils about writing, about magic, about the untapped potential that each of them possesses. Most of all, he plans to teach them about the darkness in their hearts.
The writers think they are signing up for a chance at riches and literary prestige. But they are really entering the twisted imagination of a deranged genius, a lethal contest pitting them against one another in a struggle for their sanity and their lives. They have entered into Roderick Wells’s most brilliant and horrible creation: The Dark Game.
“No sign of a house. Or a path, for that matter. Was this whole event a practical joke?”
Gothic – Philip Fracassi
Supernatural author horror
On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks, a famous, but struggling, horror writer, receives an antique desk from his partner in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Perhaps inspire him to write another best-selling novel and prove his best years aren’t behind him.
A continent away, a mysterious woman makes inquiries with her sources around the world, seeking the whereabouts of a certain artifact her family has been hunting for centuries. With the help of a New York City private detective, she finally finds what she’s been looking for.
As Tyson begins to use his new desk, he begins acting strange. Violent. His writing more disturbing than anything he’s done before. But publishers are paying top dollar, convinced his new work will be a hit, and Tyson will do whatever it takes to protect his newfound success.
Even if it means the destruction of the ones he loves.
Even if it means his own sanity.
“The one thing in her favor is the knowledge that the relic needs a host, someone it can control….”
Scream Ride – D.I. Russell
Theme park author horror
Comic book writer Carl Campbell is riding high. Fans can’t get enough of his books and movies featuring twisted creatures and undead killers. Adventure Point Theme Park aims to capitalize on his popularity with several rides. Carl moves his family into a nearby beach house on the West Australian coast, to oversee development and design a brand new creation for the almost completed ghost house.
But the scares appear to be sneaking out from Carl’s pages. A familiar figure watches the beach house. Grisly murders surround the family. Park workers report strange noises and bizarre accidents.
As darkness falls on the stunning beaches, and the lights of Adventure Point blink into life, it won’t just be the riders screaming in terror.
“Never approach the blank page lightly. The paper is a window to the mind, a cage of the imagination.”
Gilchrist – Christian Galacar
Psychological author horror
Two years after losing their infant son to a tragic accident, Peter Martell, a novelist with a peculiar knack for finding lost things, and his wife, Sylvia, are devastated to learn they may no longer be able to have children.
In need of a fresh start, and compelled by strange dreams, the couple decide to rent a lake house in the idyllic town of Gilchrist, Massachusetts, a place where bad things might just happen for a reason.
As bizarre events begin to unfold around them – a chance encounter with a gifted six-year-old boy, a series of violent deaths, and repeated sightings of a strange creature with a terrifying nature – Peter and Sylvia find themselves drawn into the chaos and soon discover that coming to Gilchrist may not have been their decision at all.
“He felt the blood drain out of his face as his skin chilled and broke out in gooseflesh.”
Within these Walls – Ania Ahlborn
Supernatural author horror
With his marriage on the rocks and his life in shambles, washed-up true-crime writer Lucas Graham is desperate for a comeback, one more shot at the bestselling success he once enjoyed.
His chance comes when he’s promised exclusive access to death row inmate Jeffrey Halcomb, the notorious cult leader and mass murderer who’s ready to break his silence after thirty years, and who contacted Lucas personally from his maximum-security cell.
With nothing left to lose, Lucas leaves New York to live and work from the scene of the crime: a split-level farmhouse on a beach in Washington State whose foundation is steeped in the blood of Halcomb’s diviners: runaways who were drawn to his message of family, unity, and unconditional love.
Lucas sets out to capture the real story of the departed faithful. Except that he’s not alone. For Jeffrey Halcomb promised his devout eternal life, and within these walls, they’re far from dead.
“It’s time to tell my story, the real story of what happened…”
The Last Days of Jack Sparks – Jason Arnopp
Psychological author horror
It was no secret that journalist Jack Sparks had been researching the occult for his new book. No stranger to controversy, he’d already triggered a furious Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism he witnessed.
Then there was that video: forty seconds of chilling footage that Jack repeatedly claimed was not of his making, yet was posted from his own YouTube account.
Nobody knew what happened to Jack in the days that followed – until now.
“So your new book’s going to be about the supernatural. Which you don’t believe in. At all.”
Under a Watchful Eye – Adam Nevill
Psychological author horror
Seb Logan is being watched. He just doesn’t know by whom.
When the sudden appearance of a dark figure shatters his idyllic coastal life, he soon realizes that the murky past he thought he’d left behind has far from forgotten him. What’s more unsettling is the strange atmosphere that engulfs him at every sighting, plunging his mind into a terrifying paranoia.
Imprisoned by despair, Seb fears his stalker is not working alone, but rather is involved in a wider conspiracy that threatens everything he has worked for. For there are doors in this world that open into unknown places. Places used by the worst kind of people to achieve their own ends.
Once his investigation leads him to stray across the line and into mortal danger, he risks becoming another fatality in a long line of victims.
“You will always belong to him…”
Lunar Park – Bret Easton Ellis
Psychological author horror
Bret Ellis, the narrator of Lunar Park, is the bestselling writer whose first novel Less Than Zero catapulted him to international stardom while he was still in college. In the years that followed he found himself adrift in a world of wealth, drugs, and fame, as well as dealing with the unexpected death of his abusive father.
After a decade of decadence a chance for salvation arrives; the chance to reconnect with an actress he was once involved with, and their son. But almost immediately his new life is threatened by a freak sequence of events and a bizarre series of murders that all seem to connect to Ellis’s past. His attempts to save his new world from his own demons makes Lunar Park Ellis’s most suspenseful novel.
“You do an awfully good impression of yourself.”
You – Caroline Kepnes
Psychological author horror
When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight, the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way, even if it means murder.
“…you wanted to know my name as much as I wanted to know yours or you wouldn’t have read my name tag.”
Lost Boy, Lost Girl – Peter Straub
Supernatural author horror
A week after the death of his mother, fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill vanishes.
His uncle, novelist Timothy Underhill, searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help unravel this horrible dual mystery.
He soon learns that a murderer is on the loose, and that shortly before his mother’s death, Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge.
No mere empty building, the house whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain.
“How on earth, he wondered, had Nancy died?”
Misery – Stephen King
Psychological author horror
Bestselling novelist Paul Sheldon has finally met his number one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader. She is Paul’s nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.
Annie wants Paul to write a book just for her that brings Misery back to life. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an axe. And if they don’t work, she can get really nasty.
“He remembered darkness: solid darkness had come before the haze.”
The Dark Half – Stephen King
Psychological author horror
After thirteen years of international bestseller stardom with his works of violent crime fiction, author George Stark is officially declared dead.
A national magazine reveals that he’s been killed by the man who created him: the once well-regarded but now obscure writer Thad Beaumont. Thad’s even gone so far as to stage a mock burial of his wildly successful pseudonym, complete with tombstone and the epitaph “Not a Very Nice Guy.”
On the surface, it seems that Thad can finally concentrate on his own novels, there’s a certain unease at the prospect of leaving George Stark behind.
But that’s nothing compared to the horror about to descend upon Thad’s new life. There are the vicious, out-of-control nightmares, for starters. And how can he explain the fact that everyone connected to George Stark’s untimely demise is now meeting a brutal end of their own in a pattern of homicidal savagery? And why does each blood-soaked crime scene have Thad’s fingerprints all over it?
Thad Beaumont may have once believed that George Stark was running out of things to say, but he’s going to find out just how wrong he is.
“He didn’t know if he had it in him to be a great writer or not, but he was going to be some kind of writer no matter what.”
Published: 11 April 2024
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