150 EXQUISITE HORROR BOOKS BY ALESSANDRO MANZETTI

4/2/2022

Don’t know what to read next?

Alessandro Manzetti will happily sort you out…

In 150 Exquisite Horror Books: Essential Guide to the Best 150 Books of Contemporary Horror Fiction Alessandro Manzetti provides 150 short reviews of novels published between 1986 and 2020. These are all personal choices he loves and recommends. According to the author this specific date range allows him to feature the Splatterpunk movement, Extreme Horror, whilst also covering the renewal in the genre from kicked-off around the mid-eighties. Each novel is presented with its own page and a 100-to-200-word review with cover graphics. With such a short word count each piece lacks the level of detail you might find on any similar horror website review, but nevertheless provide nice engaging summaries which also indicate which type of reader might like the book. Released by Crystal Lake Publishing, this directory is inexpensive and represents excellent value for money, being very easy to dip in and out of, with more academic examples such as The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror incredibly expensive in comparison.

Considering Manzetti recommends all the books I am surprised he felt the need to include a rating system, surely he believes them all to be great? The relevant Good Reads rating is also included (which is totally pointless) who genuinely gives a monkey what that website says? Ratings can lead to unjust comparisons and if all 150 books rated are awesome the score should be entirely redundant. The lowest rating is 82 and the highest is 96 for Toni Morrison’s slave drama Beloved. I found it surprising that Manzetti even included this book, then bizarrely decided to rate it above the giants of genre, Robert McCammon, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell and countless others. I am not disputing the quality of Beloved, but it is a highly distinguished mainstream modern classic, and scoring it above the very finest horror writers sends a mixed or negative message, particularly to newbie readers who might look at the exalted 96 score and decide that anybody can write horror. Ultimately Toni Morrison sits slightly uncomfortably at the top of a tree which celebrates horror fiction and her novel really needed no promotion in a horror genre guide. Of course, if there was no rating system in place she would have been less noticeable.

The beauty of ‘best of’ lists is that they are eternally open to debate and whilst I agree with many of Alessandro Manzetti’s selections, there are plenty I would not personally recommend. I also felt there were too many short story collections featured, so many in fact they could have merited being in a separate section and I got bored reading about them as they are difficult to review in 100-200 words. For the sake of argument, throughout this article, I will provide you with a few of my own ‘mini’ lists inspired by Manzetti’s 150 and you are very welcome to disagree with my own tips.

Ten of the 150 where Tony agrees with Manzetti (stone cold classics)
Alma Katsu – The Hunger
John A Lindqvist – Let the Right One In
Jonathan Maberry – Dead of Night
Jonathan Maberry - Ink
Josh Malerman – Bird Box
Robert McCammon – Boy’s Life
Robert McCammon – Swan Song
Dan Simmons – The Terror
Paul Tremblay – A Headful of Ghosts
Kristopher Triana – Gone to see the River Man

Thankfully I found myself agreeing with Manzetti on many of his selections, particularly those which were very well known, including the ten I have singled out above. Any newbie horror reader which picks up this guide is not going to go very far wrong with these novels and longer-term fans will undoubtedly have come across them, even if they have not read them. There are also a few authors, Poppy Z Brite for example, which Manzetti features three times, the maximum number a single author can be listed in his book.

Ten of the 150 which Tony believes are overrated (or failed to finish)
Mark Z Danielewski – House of Leaves (joint second highest scored with 95)
Silvia Moreno Garcia – Mexican Gothic
Sara Gran – Come Closer
Grady Hendrix – The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires
Gabino Iglesias – Coyote Songs
Stephen Graham Jones – The Only Good Indians
Chad Lutzke – The White Pale
Ahmed Saadawi – Frankenstein in Bagdad
Tim Waggoner – The Mouth of the Dark
Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger

Another reviewer would undoubtedly feature another ten disagreements, however, this list does host some of the most overhyped novels of the last few years, in particular House of Leaves (totally polarising), Mexican Gothic, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and The Only Good Indians being four examples which I am forever shaking my head about. The Little Stranger is in the same boat as Morrison’s Beloved and I would argue that the mainstream media and literary world has given that book more than enough attention and plaudits. Thankfully the list where we disagreed was mercifully short and I am well aware that these books are loved by many.

Ten of the 150 Tony has not read, but intends to after being sold by Manzetti’s reviews
Tom Piccirilli – A Choir of Ill Will
Gary A Braunbeck – Coffin County
Gary A Braunbeck – In Silent Graves
Owl Goingback – Crota
Samantha Schweblin – Fever Dream
Elizabeth Hand – Generation Loss
Rick Hautala – Night Stone
Wesley Southard – One for the Road
Daryl Gregory – Pandemonium
Nicola Lombardi – The Tank

I am delighted to note that the above list of ten I had not read (but now want to) could have been considerably longer and it goes to show the depth of quality in the world or horror and that even the prolific readers cannot track everything. Extreme Horror and Splatterpunk are not my areas of expertise and I found reviews of the likes of Edward Lee very useful, as these were authors I did not know too much about and came across as solid starting points for exploration. I also appreciated the fact that on many occasions Manzetti did not choose the most obvious example, with Kathe Koja The Cipher would be the natural selection, but instead another is highlighted. Authors such as Graham Masterton and Ramsey Campbell quite rightly made more than one appearance, and even though I have read a lot of books by both authors, again I was pleased to find that the selections were alternatives I had not read or the most glaringly obvious.

The 150 reviews are beefed up with lots of additional mini top ten interludes by the likes of Ellen Datlow, Ramsey Campbell, John Skipp, Owl Goingback, Eric J Guignard, Brian Evenson and many others. A couple of longer essay contributions are provided by Stephen Jones and Lisa Morton giving readers lots of further opinions to dig their teeth into.

One could argue that 150 Exquisite Horror Books does not do anything Ginger Nuts of Horror or any of the other best horror websites does, however, it does conveniently bring together lots of resources and ideas into a single well-presented resource. No matter how well read you are this is a very handy book to have sitting on your kindle for whenever you’re caught short or have the appetite to try something new.

Tony Jones

150 Exquisite Horror Books: Essential Guide to the Best 150 Books of Contemporary Horror Fiction

A guide to some of the best horror and supernatural books, as recommended by several of the biggest names in the industry.

Compiled and edited by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author Alessandro Manzetti, this is a guide to the best 150 books of modern horror, weird, and dark fantasy fiction (single author novels, novellas, and collections of short stories) published between 1986 and 2020.

This captivating book includes publication details, reading notes and ratings for each work, as well as top-ten lists contributed by well-known writers, editors, critics, and essayists,