Simon Clark - One Of The Best Horror Novelists Working Today

[Psychocandy]

I've mentioned this guy numerous times in various threads so I thought I would start a thread so that horror novel loving schmoes who perhaps haven't heard of him can at least give his books ago. Currently he his my favorite writer working in the horror field (i'm somethin of an expert when it comes to the horror genre) and every book of his i've read has provided absolute joy (horrific joy) from the first page to the very last. His books are the kind that you just don't want to end. Here's a list of his novels and a short synopsis. They are all worth reading.



When Chris and Ruth Stainforth move to a pleasant coastal village to start a new life with their six-year-old son, David, it seems like a dream come true. Or so they think.

But they have no way of knowing that the village was once a sacred site for the old religion. And that the old God is not dead – just waiting.

Already its Power stirs, changing supernaturally what it touches. It ought to herald the dawn of an age of miracles. But when the Power arouses the sleeping horror-cargo of a ship that sank thirty years ago, the magic is tainted. And Chris, Ruth and David find themselves right in the path of a living-dead nightmare made all too murderously real...



It's Saturday. Going shopping? For a meal? To the movies? Everything nice and normal, right?

By Sunday, civilization is in ruins. Adults have become murderously insane – literally. They're infected with a crazed, uncontrollable urge to kill the young.

Including their own children.

This is the way the world ends...

Blood Crazy is the post-apocalyptic hypershocker by one of the most potent forces in modern horror fiction.



Video scriptwriter Richard Young is looking forward to a week at home with his wife and their little daughter. He thinks it's going to be a pleasant time of barbecues and lazy summer days. It isn't.

It's going to be hell.

Because the stranger who arrives at their home, begging to be driven to the nearest police station, is being hunted. Hunted by something that cannot be seen, cannot be heard – yet which has the power to move across the land crushing flat everything in its path. Stalking – and killing – remorselessly.

Within minutes, Richard Young, his family and the stranger (who is not the innocent victim he seems) are being pursued relentlessly by a malignant occult force that pounds and pulps its victims like the Hammer of God itself...



Beneath your feet the ground is heating up. And it's going to get hotter. Hotter than Hell...

WARM
Rick Kennedy feels good. Tonight there's going to be the party of the summer. The brother he hasn't seen for years has just flown in, and this is the night Rick plans to do something about Kate Robinson – the beautiful girl he just can't get out of his mind. In the pleasant village of Fairburn the evening air is warm...

WARMER
And this is the night Rick encounters the mysterious stranger in the wood.

HOT
Soon he wakes to find 30,000 refugees choking the streets. People are running for their lives. Only there's nowhere to run.

HOTTER
The ground heats up inexorably. Roads melt. Cities erupt into flame. Lakes boil. Pockets of natural gas explode like nuclear bombs and geysers of scalding water flood through whole communities.

BURNING
Survivors search desperately for refuge in a landscape burning forever beneath their feet. But they have yet to confront the Grey men – and the demons inside themselves. Because their blood itself is beginning to boil – with savagery, hunger and lust...



'Maximilian saw heads dart down at the throats, then the heads twisted from side to side like dogs gnawing at a bone. When he next saw the youths, their throats were torn; blood pumped vibrantly, squirting in crimson jets as high as his shoulders. Then the heads came down again. And this time they looked like so many pigs jostling for food at the trough. And the sound of hungry mouths eagerly feeding was loud to his ears...'

WELCOME TO LEPPINGTON

Not far from the coastal town of Whitby is Leppington, nestling in the purple hills of the North Yorkshire Moors. Quiet, unassuming, a forgotten backwater – yet beneath Leppington's streets terrifying creatures stir. They are driven by ancient passion that has become obsession. They are united in their burning hunger. They share an unending craving. They are Nosferatu. And they have the power to drain your will to resist. To drain it so utterly that you will cheerfully, gladly, eagerly surrender yourself to their sharp, brutal teeth.

AND IN LEPPINGTON DEATH ISN'T ALWAYS FOREVER...



The past is a different country. They do things differently there.

In a summer meadow, time has begun to run backwards.

Along with the soil, grasses and insects that lie within its boundaries, more than fifty accidental time travellers are transported into the past – men and women who were innocently visiting an ancient amphitheatre that lies at the heart of this mysterious site.

Now TV director Sam Baker finds himself on the strangest journey of his life. Forces beyond comprehension drive him, at first, back a few moments. Then days. Then years...

He and his fellow travellers must learn to survive in a world that is becoming increasingly alien. 'Seventies skinheads are a menace. Fashion's a nightmare. Credit cards won't buy a meal in the 'forties. Driving a modern-day car along Victorian roads packed with horse-drawn vehicles is the mother and father of all white-knuckle rides.

On this retro-journey lurks hidden danger. Sam Baker and his companions aren't the only castaways in time. There are those who watch the world of yesteryear with envious eyes and plan their attack on the unsuspecting, undefended citizens of nearby Casterton. A town that for Sam Baker will become his Alamo.

The Fall is Simon Clark's most ambitious novel yet. Surreal, fast-moving, exhilarating, horrifying, it will take you on a strange, strange journey where your only future is the past.

[Psychocandy]

Amelia Thomas heads for the sun-soaked Greek island of Voros not only to escape her cold, dreary home town, but also to piece her life back together after a failed romance and a mysterious accident which has left her feeling an outsider to the rest of the world.

Voros should be an idyllic, peaceful place. Here there are no roads, no towns, only the Judas tree which grows in astonishing profusion, blossoming each spring into a vivid pink that lends the island an otherworldly air.

But the island is not what it appears. Nor are the people who live there. Something unexpected haunts Voros. A something that Amelia cannot see, but a something which has the power to shape events, to invade lives and to make people do strange, sometimes frightening things.

That dark power is about to reach out to Amelia and take her on a strange and ghostly journey of self-discovery. A journey where danger lurks...

In the classic tradition of The Haunting of Hill House, Rebecca and The Shining, Simon Clark has written a truly thrilling modern ghost story which will continue to haunt the reader long after the final page.



John Newton is a successful writer of true-life crime stories, specializing in unsolved murders from the past. He has a happy family life with his schoolteacher wife and two children. And he has a nice new home in the rural countryside. Life is good for John Newton.
Until the letters start arriving...
Dark, mysterious letters. Deadly letters with demands.
And then everything changes...
Until John Newton is faced with a seemingly insurmountable dilemma: he can choose between the survival of his daughter... or the rest of his family – not both.

Darkness Demands is one of the New Year's creepiest and most shocking horror novels. And it is available only from Cemetery Dance Publications.

The Cemetery Dance edition is available in two states: limited edition hardback (1,000 copies) and Traycased Lettered Edition (52 copies, leather bound with satin ribbon page marker and additional full-color artwork). All copies signed by the author.



At the end of The Day of the Triffids, the hero, Bill Masen, his wife and baby son join a new colony on the Isle of Wight. Temporarily safe in its island fortress, this tiny community begins its work to eradicate the triffid menace and lay the foundations of a new civilisation. Throughout the world similar colonies struggle for survival, while the implacable triffid plant continues its march, seemingly intent on wiping out humankind.

The Night of the Triffids takes up the story twenty-five years later. David Masen, the grown-up son of Bill, is a pilot who eventually manages to reach New York where a very different colony has been set up, a colony whose members seem to be immune to the triffid sting and where David comes face to face with an old enemy from his father's past...

2001 is the 50th anniversary of the first publication of John Wyndham's classic novel, which is fittingly celebrated by the publication of The Night of the Triffids, and a new edition of the Penguin Press original.



Lazarus Deep is a lake that sits like a blot of darkness in the valley.

Eighteen-year-old Dylan Adams is on the verge of leaving his hometown for a life in the city, but his plans are dramatically changed when his old school friend Luke Spencer goes missing. A search finds nothing. All anyone knows is that he was last seen at Lazarus Deep. Then, in the dead of the night, Dylan's old friend comes calling. But he's not the same boy that everyone once knew.

Once more David Leppington, Bernice Mochardi and Electra Charnwood are drawn together to face the vampiric creatures that are Nosferatu: the undead. The desolate North Yorkshire Moors have held their secret for more than a thousand years. Now it is the turn of Lazarus Deep.

This is no beauty spot, and bathing is strictly prohibited.



An ocean of humanity runs from a devastating force that no one can even see – they pour northwards over the Mexican border. A mighty nation falls...

Sullivan town remains one of the last enclaves of civilization. Greg Valdiva, a stranger to the community, has lost his city home, and his mother and sister both died on the gruelling journey here.

Beyond the township's ramparts, humanity is undergoing a strange and terrifying transformation. Fearing contamination, Sullivan isolates itself, allowing no one in or out, under the threat of death.

When Greg Valdiva helps hungry refugees, he is forced to flee. He joins a band of teenagers and discovers the Earth has been overwhelmed by a new species of human being. He and his friends are on the run; theirs is a ceaseless struggle for survival.

Soon Greg will learn about the twenty-first century curse that has befallen humanity. And that this is the start of a war like no other, as humankind plunges towards the abyss of total extinction.

Is this the end? Or does humankind have a saviour?

[Psychocandy]

Out of the above books I would especially recommend Blood Crazy, King Blood and Stranger. I love apocalyptic horror and these are three of the finest I have found.

[SubMethod]

I ordered a used copy of Blood Crazy off amazon a few weeks ago and still hasn't made it to me. I'm starting to get pissed.

[EoghainFOKeeffe]

I've read three Simon Clark books and two of them are two of the best horror books I've ever read. They are BLOOD CRAZY and DARKNESS DEMANDS. There were both incredibly exciting and very well-written.

I didn't like NAILED BY THE HEART much, though. That was his first book and he seemed to spend more time describing the sky than developing the characters or plot. In fact, I've forgotten almost everything about NAILED except for the clouds.

So if you've read NAILED and think you don't like Clark - give him another try. I was glad I did!

[Psychocandy]

I enjoyed Nailed By The Heart. I actually read it after reading Blood Crazy and being aware of it being his first book I reeled in my expectations. If you liked Blood Crazy then you really ought to read King Blood as soon as you can. It's almost the equal of Blood Crazy. I've actually read somewhere that he intends to return to the world of Blood Crazy some day for a sequel. My fingers are crossed for that.

[Psychocandy]

Simon Clark has a new novel out. The odd thing is that it came out in paperback last month and is due in a hardback edition in August. Seems a little topsy turvy back-to-front. Anyway...here's the press release from Simon's official website, Nailed By the Heart.



In This Skin

Before writing In This Skin Simon took a closer look at the body beautiful.
There’s more to us than meets the eye.
Much, much more…
You. YES, YOU! I know something about you…. a something you might not even know yourself. You have at least thirty -- count them! -- thirty identifiable mutations. To be candid, I’ve got at least thirty mutant variations within my anatomy too. Everyone has. Some of us can boast more.

Of course, most are invisible to the human eye. Only specialists using the latest imaging equipment can identify these biological oddities. What’s even more reassuring is that we go through life unaware of them, they are completely harmless, and they only register as that statistic of thirty mutations per person. Though there can be more spectacular variations in the human form. I went to school with a boy who had five fingers. Five fingers, you might point out, isn’t unusual. It’s only when we examine our hands that we tend to remember we possess four fingers and one thumb. This boy had five fingers, that’s five digits with two joints per digit. He’d also show off the oval scars near his wrists where surgeons removed his thumbs in infancy. The boy was thrilled with his mutation. We were thrilled to marvel over that bonus fifth finger where a single-jointed thumb should be.

Nature incessantly fiddles with life. We know we have the remnants of gills in our necks. That hair is the mutant survivor of reptile hide; put a hair under a microscope, you see scales. Mutation is evolution. On the whole, a good thing.

However, before writing In This Skin certain thoughts had been playing on my imagination. This notion of mutation. Sometimes it seems hit and miss to me. You only have to check out the old Ripley books for pictures of nature’s gaffs, such as four-legged chickens, men covered in fur, two-headed fish. I’d also being reading HP Lovecraft’s stories of cosmic horror. Where people were transported to fabulous worlds, or weird creatures from some other realm come slithering into our neighborhoods. An just to throw in a wild card, I’d come across a nightmarish-cum-visionary work of the nineteenth century philosopher John Henry Newman entitled The Dream of Gerontius. It describes an imaginary descent into Purgatory, that limbo state between this world and heaven. Perhaps this is one of the best descriptions of being marooned in some primal void you’ll find:

And I drop out the universal frame,
Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss
That utter nothingness of which I came…

These unrelated ideas fused, and like most writers I had that ‘What if’ moment. As I walked the dog (he probably packs thirty hidden mutations, too) I thought: ‘What if there was a parallel world to this one that had the power to trigger spontaneous mutations on our bodies? What might we look like? What affect would it have on our minds? Rather than a supernatural event could this be yet another natural process? Is Purgatory a race memory of some hidden place adjacent to our own? By chance we could find ourselves in this strange world where spectacular changes are wrought on our anatomy, then we’re returned home where the mutation will -- perhaps -- benefit our species.’ After all, nature does this with her thirty-mutations per person technique. Many of those mutations are triggered by radiation falling from distant stars, so that adds the cosmic link.

Those ‘what if’ questions fired my imagination. So I hurried home, switched on the computer, then typed these words: ‘Robyn first met Ellery before they were born. It’s not possible to know how or why… or in what kind of world it was, this place where nascent minds originate. They were there, just as we are here now.’ That became the opening of In This Skin, a novel that would have me in its grip for months to come. It took me to places inside my head I’ve never been before. Now I hope you will join me on that journey, too.