31 Days of Horror: Day 3-- What's Your Favorite Horror Story?

For Day 3 of 31 Days of Horror, I am piggy backing on the popular Monday Discussion feature over on RA for All.  Today, I asked readers to share their favorite scary books.

I will reprint the post below.  You can feel free to comment on either blog, but I would love to be able to compare the titles I get from the horror blog regular readers to the more general librarian readers over on RA for All.

Please note, this is favorite books only today.  There will be time for movies and TV later. Here it is.

Monday Discussion: What's Your Favorite "Horror" Story?

It is officially the haunting season as October has begun.  Over on my horror blog, I am running "31 Days of Horror, " with a new horror related post each day.  The focus is on how to help horror readers from the public library perspective.  Click here to follow the series.

Today, I thought I would get the RA for All readers into the discussion too.  Even if you do not like horror yourself, it is hard to ignore it during the month of October.  Also, horror means something different to each person.  What scares each of us is different, and our personal tolerance for terror in our leisure reading will vary.

If you are anxious about horror and/or helping horror readers, start here with an article I wrote for NoveList about the appeal of horror.

But for today's Monday Discussion, I want to talk about your favorite "horror."  I put "horror" in quotes here because I do not care if it would be technically classified horror, I just want to know your opinion on the tales you find the most scary.

I will start, but with a disclaimer.  Sometimes, I feel too close to it all to even start listing my favorites.  With all of the work I do surrounding the genre, my favorites are vast, but at the end of each chapter of my new book, I do give Becky's Picks of the 3 titles I most enjoy for each subgenre.

You'll have to order the book for the specific suggestions.  But today I will offer up my personal favorite living horror authors: Joe Hill, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, and Dan Simmons.  Although these writers all have a different style, one thing they each excel at is the interesting and complex characters they create.  Each is also profiled at length in Chapter 3 of my new book, but if you have access to NoveList, I have written the author statement for each.  So, you could go an see those right now.

So  for today's Monday Discussion, let me know what your favorite horror books or stories are.  If you like a particular author, please share it.  I want to keep my opinions out of the discussion as much as possible and let you all have a chance.

For more on my specific opinions all month, turn to 31 Days of Horror.  Also, for now let's limit the discussion to books and/or audiobooks.  I will ask about favorite movies and TV shows next week.  We do have an entire month to fill, so let's pace ourselves here.

Click here for the Monday Discussion archive.