ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

Horor mi je malo mračna teritorija, pun intended, pa bih voleo da mi neko ko malo bolje i više prati taj žanr pomogne u odabiru nekoliko romana kojima bih osvežio poznavanje tog segmenta fantastike. Pre svega me zanimaju naslovi objavljeni posle dvehiljadite. Naravno, obraćam se pre svega Gulu ali i Melkoru i drugim pasioniranim čitaocima na ovom forumu.

Fala vi.

ja ti ne mogu pomoći onoliko koliko bi ti možda želeo iz dva glavna razloga - ja manje pratim mejnstrim koji bi tebe, slutim, više zanimao, i manje pratim romane a daleko više antologije i zbirke priča jer smatram da se tamo dešavaju najzanimljivije i najkvalitetnije stvari u hororu, a zaista dobri (tj. odlični) horor romani su prava retkost u tom žanru i inače, za celih ovih 250-ak godina od OTRANTSKOG ZAMKA, a kamoli u zadnjih 10-ak godina.

osim toga, zbog ličnog i profesionalnog usmerenja ka klasicima horora, nisam stigao da ispratim naj-najnoviju produkciju onoliko detaljno koliko bih i sam voleo, i mnoge od tih novijih knjiga mi još čuče jedva taknute na policama.

ipak, gledaću da sočinim nekakvu listu, čim stignem...

Zahvaljujem. Relativno nije teško informisati se o klasicima, pa ni o pričama - pošto tu ima nekoliko odličnih antologija. Romani su sasvim druga stvar, buduću da u savremenoj hiperprodukciji duša dušu gnjavi i drveće se ne vidi od šume.

Zapravo je najbolji horor koji sam pročitao još od vremena kada sam bio strastveni čitač Kinga i Barkera, pa posle nešto malo Makamona - strip. Locke & Key mi je ponovo otvorio diznu za tu sortu fantastike, pa bih voleo da vidim šta sam to propustio za proteklih desetak godina.

Није баш овај миленијум, али Метисон је фино штиво. Нема Харвија да предложи Џејмса Херберта. 

molio bih bar ovu temu, ako je ikako moguće, poštedeti rasplinjavanja (vapijem ja u pustinji sagite...) 

Quote from: Джон Рейнольдс on 04-03-2013, 18:10:41
Није баш овај миленијум, али Метисон је фино штиво. Нема Харвија да предложи Џејмса Херберта. 

Ma lako ću se ja snaći sa klasicima horora - ako je Metison klasik horora. Nisam baš siguran. Muku mučim sa romanima objavljenim nakon što su vampiri i zombiji prestali da budu horor a postali tinejdž literatura. Slutim da su najbolji romani prošli potpuno nezapaženo. Ono što je najviše hajpovano poslednjih godina - "Soj" Giljerma del Tora, "Prolaz" Džastina Kronina i Twelve Džaspera Kenta jednostavno mi nije u poptunosti zadovoljilo potrebu za dobrim hororom, nekako se graničivši sa neuverljivošću.

Pošto vidim da od Sagite po običaju nema vajde, otišao sam da se pomolim u hramu Guglovom i Gugl je odgovorio. Evo prvih pet, po izboru interneta:

The 25 Best Horror Novels Of The New Millennium

1. House Of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)



Put it this way: You've never read anything remotely like Mark Z. Danielewksi's House Of Leaves. Essentially two books in one, the eccentric and mad genius author's 2000 debut takes the age-old haunted house setup, rips it apart, and then pieces it back together as a kind of Frankenstein's monster of a novel. And the final product is both invigorating and mind-blowing enough to make reading another novel the same way again impossible once page 709 is done.

Splicing the two narratives within one another, Danielewski pulls off some amazing literary gymnastics. On one front, House Of Leaves is a lengthy description of a documentary called "The Navidson Report," about a home whose interiors constantly change in dimensions, cry out in agony, and drive residents to homicide; on the book's other side, Johnny Truant, a sex-crazed, good-for-nothing tattoo artist, reads said description and frequently goes off on morbid and drug-infused tangents.

Got all of that? Frankly, our heads hurt just trying to streamline House Of Leaves's "plot." We haven't mentioned how Danielewski translates the house's altering size by presenting the novel's text upside-down, sideways, and, at times, in one-word-per-page increments. You'll need a hard drink once the book is finished, but you'll also have just experienced sheer brilliance.

2. Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk (2005)



Who needs a small army of writers to assemble an anthology of short, dark fiction when you've got Chuck Palahniuk and his endless imagination? Especially when he's clever enough to frame Haunted's 23 mini-stories with a wraparound narrative that classifies this gorgeously demented triumph as a firmly rooted novel.

Inspired by Palahniuk's own real-life writers' group meetings, Haunted, at its nucleus, is the account of several aspiring storytellers' trip to a weekend retreat, where they're encouraged to avoid outside distractions and complete original prose. But then they decide to stop eating and cease using electronic devices. And then comes the escalating madness, which seeps into the short stories that get progressively weirder. And people start dying. The reader, however, will never stop grinning with perverse excitement.

3. Under The Dome, by Stephen King (2009)



Just how much did Stephen King love the idea behind Under The Dome before finally completing it? Try this on for size: He first started writing the 1,088-page opus way back in 1976, then abandoned it for over 30 years before once again paying the story mind. Even after 2007's The Simpsons Movie curiously jacked the yet-to-be-finished novel's central concept. Unsurprisingly, King's take on the material is far more impactful than Homer's antics.

Set in the quiet, well-meaning town of Chester's Mill, Maine, Under The Dome shows what happens when a massive, all-encompassing, and invisible barrier covers the town's perimeters and blocks it from the rest of society. Similarly allegorical to King's The Mist, the long-awaited and violent meditation on humanity's fragile morals doesn't take long before characters turn on one another, and, multiple times, gruesomely decrease Chester's Mill's population. Under The Dome is horrifying in the mankind-is-inherently-bad sense.

4. Drood, by Dan Simmons (2009)



The name Dan Simmons on a book's spine guarantees three things: The paperback or hardcover in question is going to be thoroughly researched, exhaustively detailed, and uncompromisingly horrific. And in terms of his research skills, Simmons' revisionist history chiller Drood is an English major's wet dream.

Based around intensive studies into the lives of Charles Dickens and his fellow writer/pal Wilkie Collins, Drood imagines a scenario that led to the creation of Dickens' final, unpublished book The Mystery Of Edwin Drood. Here, after surviving the infamous train wreck that almost killed him, Dickens meets an enigmatic, ghoulish figured, Edwin Drood, who becomes the Great Expectations scribe's obsession.

Corpses start piling up as Dickens and Collins investigate the mysterious Drood, and, in a haze of opium and other hallucinogenic drugs, Collins begins to suspect that their person-of-interest is a figment of his buddy's imagination, and that Dickens is the murderer, not Drood. Employing the tactic of an "unreliable narrator" (in this case, Collins) to brilliant degrees, Simmons remixes a fiction icon's life into a nightmarish, trippy, and immersive psychological ride.

5. A Dark Matter, by Peter Straub (2010)



Just as experienced as good buddy Stephen King but nowhere near as universally recognized, Peter Straub has been penning some of the best novels and short stories in the horror since the early 1970s; for his all-around greatest work, check out his 1979 monster of a novel, Ghost Story, an undisputed classic in the literary genre.

Straub is still churning out great work today, and his top page-turner in recent years is 2010's A Dark Matter. And it's a devastating knockout. Structured much like Akira Kurosawa's terrifically complicated film Rashomon, A Dark Matter provides the individual, conflicting accounts of four longtime friends' run-in with an occultist wanderer back during their high school days.

The most impressive thing about A Dark Matter is that Straub is basically telling the same story five times, yet he manages to make each version interesting, and unsettling in its own right. And, fortunately, he finds a way to bring them all together in one hell of a payoff.

Kako ti Ghoul nije preporučio Tomasa Ligotija?

Ne znam kako nije. Pitaj njega.

6. Horns, by Joe Hill (2010)



We've all been there: After a night filled with more alcoholic beverages than one's brain can handle, you wake up with a beastly hangover and no recollection of what happened before bedtime. But how would you react if that killer headache was compounded by a pair of pointy horns sticking out of your temples? You'd probably never sip on Hennessy ever again.

For Ig Parrish, the protagonist in Joe Hill's heartfelt and devilish character study Horns, his new built-in head accessories turn him into the world's greatest listener: Everyone, in the presence of Ig's horns, tells him their most fiendish desires, such as who they want to kill, and, in some cases, who they've already murdered. Which leads Ig on a chase to once and for all identify the person who left his girlfriend's corpse lying in the woods.

Ig, as wonderfully written by Hill, is a flawed yet effectively sympathetic character, going to hell and back—almost literally—but never once leaving readers cheering for an unhappy ending.

7. The Grin Of The Dark, by Ramsey Campbell (2007)



Admit it, at one point or another in your lifetime, you've been scared of clowns. Or at least left in a state of unease by the sight of a creepy man wearing makeup and constantly smiling. That's the universal fear that Liverpool, England, native Ramsey Campbell exploits beautifully in The Grin Of The Dark, a purposefully disconcerting descent into madness that's written with Campbell's signature brand of dense, attention-requiring prose.

The Grin Of The Dark puts you into the increasingly fractured mind of shamed movie critic Simon Lester, who hopes to fix his dishonored name by writing a definitive biography on mysterious silent film star Tubby Thackeray. Acted out in a clown get-up, Thackeray's performances, the recordings of which have disappeared over time, reportedly drove audiences crazy, literally.

And, predictably, but not lamely, Lester goes loopy himself while trying to unravel the tubby one's secrets. Campbell is at his scary best whenever Thackeray's performances are described, and he's funny as hell when depicting the psychologically warped manners in which Lester's paranoia gets assaulted.

8. World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War, by Max Brooks (2006)



The ambition in Max Brooks' seminal World War Z is something to behold. Presented as a series of Q&A's and as-told-to passages, the author's defining work tells the gory and gut-wrenching ins and outs of a zombie takeover through the words of survivors, everyone from military men to politicians to average Joes.

Not all of the fictional accounts are slam-dunks, though; some of the many soldier-based anecdotes, for instance, become repetitive. But Brooks, who wisely writes the entire book in an unwaveringly serious tone, is too intelligent to let World War Z ever lose its allegorical force.

9. The Passage, by Justin Cronin (2010)



When it comes to vampire fiction, all of the talk as of late, of course, has involved Stephanie Meyer's hack-tastic Twlight series and Charlaine Harris' trashy, fun, but oftentimes silly Sookie Stackhouse novels (the source material for HBO's True Blood). And by that, we mean that's what teenyboppers and cool-chasing readers are discussing.

Smart and self-challenging bibliophiles, however, should pledge their vamp allegiance to Justin Cronin's massive, 800-page roller coaster novel The Passage. The book's villains are technically infected with a virus, but Cronin doesn't hesitate to identify his hairless, bug-like creatures that glow in the dark as, yes, vampires. Showing their destruction over a 90-year span, The Passage explores the monsters' singular force in extremely thorough detail.

Cronin, an extraordinary storyteller, knows that a great horror novel requires more than just cool villains, though, setting the book's heart on the shoulders of a father and his young daughter, the latter being humanity's only hope for survival. Needless to say, expectations are Eiffel-Tower-high for Cronin's sequel, The Twelve, due to heat up bookstores in October.

10. The Lost, by Jack Ketchum (2001)



There's a reason why Stephen King refers to Jack Ketchum as "the scariest guy in America." Through his naturalistic, supernatural-and-fantasy-free novels, Ketchum earns his frights without any gimmicks, bells, or whistles. He simply peels back mankind's psyche and yanks out the most animalistic impulses.

On the surface, The Lost, easily the author's grandest achievement, is a coming-of-age story about New Jersey youth gone wild. But that's not taking into account the book's central figure, teenage Ray Pye, who's a burgeoning Hannibal Lecter without the taste for human flesh. The Lost watches the evil Ray slowly decimate the lives of everyone around him, culminating in a finale that's intensely appalling, gruesome, and, best of all, totally off the rails.

horns će ove godine objaviti dereta.

Quote from: Alexdelarge on 07-03-2013, 14:48:30
horns će ove godine objaviti dereta.

To će biti veoma lepo. Naročito pošto verujem da će biti u tvrdom povezu.

Quote from: Nightflier on 07-03-2013, 13:11:12
Pošto vidim da od Sagite po običaju nema vajde, otišao sam da se pomolim u hramu Guglovom i Gugl je odgovorio. Evo prvih pet, po izboru interneta

lepo sam ti ja reko gore, TEBI konkretno, sa time što ti čitaš i što tražiš, od veće će pomoći biti gugl nego gul.

trećinu ovih naslova što ti je gugl dao ja ne bih ni motkom pipnuo, a najmanje trećinu onoga što bih ti ja preporučio TI ne bi ni dočitao...

Pa dobro. Možda ne bi bilo zgoreg da ti daš svojih 25, makar samo za upoređivanje, kada ja završim sa kopiranjem onoga što sam našao,

Da, ova lista je bas... populisticka Procitao sam Kinga i sina, WWZ, visokoobdareno prelistao jos neke stvari i meni, po nekom mom unutrasnjem merilu koje ne znam da definisem, nista od toga nije horor. Od ovovekovnih romana jedino sto sam citao sto bi moglo da se ubaci u tu dark horror fantasy policu bio bi Tim Lebbon. Nisam ni neki ljubitelj horora i ne osecam se previse pozvano da pricam o njemu, ali mislim, na osnovu relativno suzenog uzorka, da se horor 21. veka trenutno krije u kratkoj, tj. kracoj prozi.

Da, da, sklon sam da se saglasim sa tim. No, čini mi se zgodnim da vidimo šta to braća Ameri smatraju vrhunskim hororom.

Quote from: Melkor on 07-03-2013, 17:30:32
da se horor 21. veka trenutno krije u kratkoj, tj. kracoj prozi.

da, to i ja kažem najtfrajeru, al on zapeo romani pa romani!

većina najodličnijih novijih romana koje sam čito zapravo potiču baš od autora pre svega (ili barem podjednako) istaknutih po kratkim pričama i novelama.
to važi i za goreprozvanog ligotija - koji ima samo jedan roman, i brdo (odličnih) priča i poneku novelicu...

Jao, Gule, odavno mi niko nije rekao da sam frajer. *trep, trep*

Razumem ja vas dvojicu - ali romani su seksi, za razliku od priča i novela. Romani privlače pažnju i čitaoce. Uz sve poštovanje prema tome da je teže napisati dobru priču nego osrednji roman, romani nekako grabe spotlajt i ne puštaju ga tako lako. Ma koliko to zvučalo suludo, čini mi se da se većina čitalaca lakše opredeljuje da se upusti u čitanje romana nepoznatih autora, nego priča.

Možda je problem u meni, pošto nisam rastao uz "Sirijus" i "Alef", pa mi jedini dodir sa kratkom pričom bio SF u "Zabavniku", ali nekako mi se čini da je danas prisutnija pojava da neki pisac čitaoce kupi romanom, pa da onda oni od njega traže kratke priče i novele. Makar je takav slučaj bio sa mnom. U načelu, jedine kratke forme koje čitam neposredno su u vezi sa romanima na koje se naslanjaju.

 Kad vidim na gomili sve te naslove, rekla bih da su u najboljem slučaju 'laka' proza, a u onom ozbiljnijem bogami i nešto gore od toga. Njaveće razočarenje mi je tu bio Straub, pošto je makar za klasu bolji pisac od svih ostalih koje sam overila, ali flešbek vizura mi nije prijala ni najmanje, jer što je sam događaj postajao kompleksniji i grandiozniji, to sam nalazila manje sklada sa stvarnim vremenom romana, sve dok mi cela ta konstrukcija nije postala totalno neuverljiva i totalno nedostojna Straubovog mađik tača. Prvi njegov roman koji sam batalila, a nadam se iskreno i jedini, jer Straubu sam stvarno naklonjena.  Pa onda i Simonsov Drood, eto, gadna stvar kad me najpouzdanija imena iznevere, ne znam zašto ali meni je to bilo totalno nezanimljivo štivo, ostavilo me hladnom kao led, pa sam onda i ja ostavila njega, iako sam svesna da ga mnogi hvale. The Passage je ostavio prilično dobar utisak, bez obzira što mu je iz svake rečenice provirivao vešt i uglačan šund, ipak mi je to bilo zanimljivo čitanje, čak sam bila i ozbiljno namerena na nastavke, ali nastavak ispao skrz mrka kapa. I kad se sve to zbroji i oduzme, Horns mi tu još i prednjači, mada me intimno silno smeta Hillov svetonazor koji ne da proviruje, nego je in-your-face blatantna svrha & smisao romana, a pride meni ni iracionalna fantastika nije forte, pa ako mi je roman i pored svega toga ostao u sećanju kao pozitivan utisak, onda... onda valjda stvarno prednjači. Ali ruku na srce, nije to meni roman za tvrde korice, daleko bilo, to je meni roman za meko džepno izdanje i za čitanje u busu.

11. The Rising, by Brian Keene (2003)




As much as we love George A. Romero's original Dead trilogy, as well as AMC's The Walking Dead and Robert Kirkman's comic book source material, zombie fiction tends to bore. Blame it on the surplus of cookie-cutter short stories and novels, written by lazy authors who've watched the same Romero flicks, in addition to 28 Days Later, and simply regurgitate scenes and story beats.

One rare exception is Brian Keene's fast-paced novel The Rising, a fresh take on the flesh-eating and mobile cadaver subgenre that allows the ghouls to operate machinery and strategize amongst each other. Even worse for the still-breathing humans in Keene's universe are the reanimated birds and animals also hungry for human flesh. That's something you won't see Rick Grimes contending with, at least.

12. Lisey's Story, by Stephen King (2006)



The iconic Stephen King pumps out so many novels and short stories that it's nearly impossible to read everything he's ever written. So, if you ask us, the best way to sample the fiction legend's greatest works is to rely upon critics' and like-minded fans' recommendations—such as this urging to pick up King's Lisey's Story, which showcases the author's gift for balancing tenderness and grotesqueries.

Shamelessly a love saga, Lisey's Story takes its title character's grief over her husband's death and uses the internal pain to fuel an investigation into murder and her late spouse's never-exposed childhood demons. And, in typical King fashion, it's a harrowing journey.

13. Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005)



The man behind such sordid and intimate novels as Less Than Zero and American Psycho, author Bret Easton Ellis is no stranger to first-person narratives. But with 2005's format-skewering Lunar Park, he outdid himself in ways very few writers could ably execute.

As Lunar Park opens, it's a candid memoir about Ellis' real battles with mainstream popularity and damaging narcotics; slowly, though, the book's tell-all nature morphs into an exercise in meta fiction once he (fictionally) marries an actress-ex, starts a family, and encounters evil spirits while working on his latest future best-seller, the nicely titled Teenage Pussy. Lampooning one's self has never been so disquieting.

14. Ghost Road Blues, by Jonathan Maberry (2006)



It's enough to make us want to stay out of the historically witchy, and similarly storied, Salem, Massachusetts, forever. In Jonathan Maberry's action-packed, supernatural freakout Ghost Road Blues, the setting of Pine Deep has become a tourist trap thanks to an old serial killer, called the Reaper, whose legacy attracts thrill-seekers like pigs to feces. And, in a rather clever plot turn, Maberry lets swarms of visitors enter Pine Deep before he unleashes a gang of malicious spirits to finish the Reaper's handiwork. Let's just say, they're not exactly operating cameras while out-of-towners pose for flicks.

15. Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk (2002)



Even when the one-of-a-kind Chuck Palahniuk isn't working in the horror fiction genre, his novels are always seeped in darkness, and also the sickest humor imaginable. So when he decided to jump headfirst into the world of literary scares with Lullaby, the results were practically guaranteed to disturb beyond belief.

And the man didn't disappoint. Lullaby, a twisty, wildly structured tale of magic and murder, follows a newspaper reporter, a real estate agent, and a Wiccan as they travel across country tracking down copies of a children's poem that kills anyone who hears it. Naturally, none of the characters are one-dimensional. Streator, the journalist, first uses the "culling song" to flat-line several innocent victims; meanwhile, Helen Boyle, the house-seller, specializes in showing demonically inhabited houses.

By the time you reach Lullaby's rug-pulling, totally bonkers ending (the norm for a Palahniuk novel), the author's knack for alternating between hilarity and creepiness enhances what's already been a fascinating, richly layered narrative. One that could only from a man as warped and gifted as Palahniuk.

16. Dark Harvest, by Norman Partridge (2006)



Every Halloween, bookstores should prominently feature Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest at the front of their locations, to bring attention to one of the best novels centered around the spooky holiday. Thankfully, neither Disney or ABC Family has picked up on the plot's kid-centric angle, because the magic of Dark Harvest is how Partridge throws all kinds of grown-up, scar-you-for-life dangers at his youthful characters.

Things kick off with October Boy, an inanimate, human-sized prop with a pumpkin head that the kids in Anytown, U.S.A. must retrieve in order to be granted passage out of their homeland. Rightfully so, the mission isn't as easy as grab-and-run. Partridge conveys his tale of a boy's maturation into adulthood through a gothic filter—it's Stand By Me by way of Neil Gaiman.

17. Let The Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist (2004)



Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist is one fortunate guy: Unlike most writers, whose novels have been sullied by inept filmmakers, Lindqvist's excellent vampire story Let The Right One In is the direct inspiration for two outstanding movies, Sweden's same-named 2008 version and America's Let Me In (2010).

Give most of the credit to Lindqvist himself, whose original novel is so tightly rendered and emotionally potent that you'd have to be lobotomized to screw a book-to-film incarnation up. For those who've never seen either flick, Let The Right One is about a bullied grade school kid, Oskar, who finds a friend in the new girl (or, in Lindqvist's book, a little he-she), Eli, who also happens to be an undying blood-drinker. The bond they form gives birth to a beautiful love story, while Eli's nasty extracurricular activities provide the unflinching horror.

18. The Ruins, by Scott Smith (2006)



Give director Carter Smith some kudos: When he adapted Scott Smith's (no relation) novel The Ruins in 2008, the guy did a commendable and impressive job—working with a Scott-written script, no less. Yet we're sure even Carter himself would acknowledge that the 2006 paperback version is the superior of the two editions.

Right down to its downright grim ending (which was foolishly altered for the movie), The Ruins does a masterful job of blending the uncertainties of being vacationers in a foreign, hostile land with the ecological terror brought about by unstoppable and lethal plant life.


19. Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn (2006)



Previously an entertainment critic for Entertainment Weekly, first-time novelist Gillian Flynn blindsided horror readers in 2006 with the uncompromising serial killer book Sharp Objects. Hopefully it's not based on too much personal experience, because if it is we feel for homegirl.

Flynn's protagonist is Camille Parker, a newspaper reporter who once lived in an asylum, due to her obsession with self-cutting. She gets assigned a story that's happening back in her hometown, where a young girl has gone missing and a killer is on the loose. And, as the bait-and-switch ending of Sharp Objects makes abundantly clear, Camille's reality goes from unstable to painfully undesirable.

20. A Choir Of Ill Children, by Tom Piccirilli (2003)



Imagination and daring are vast in Tom Piccirilli's A Choir Of Ill Children, a unique Southern Gothic tale told through the eyes of alternately lovable and reprehensible oddities. The main character, Thomas, is a descendant of supernatural forces that have long governed the swamplands of Kingdom Come county, and when's not taking care of his conjoined triplet siblings (who share one brain and speak in sing-song), Thomas is avoiding fatal reprimanding from a crew of elderly witches who call Kingdom Come's shots. With Piccirilli's penchant for insightful analysis and rich character development, A Choir Of Ill Children is a freak show with tremendous heart.

21. Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill (2007)



You can't blame Joseph Hillstrom King for using the shortened pen name Joe Hill—the son of Stephen King, he's determined to earn respect and acclaim without any accusations of nepotism. With his 2007 debut novel Heart-Shaped Box, Uncle Stevie's little boy proved that he's not only inherited storytelling genes from his pops, but he's also a much different kind of writer.

There's a certain elegance to Hill's writing, a sparseness that makes lean sentences read poetically. It's a unique gift that lends Heart-Shaped Box's supernatural plot tons of emotional resonance. We follow, and easily care for, washed-up rocker Jude Coyne as he orders a dead guy's suit online, believing the ad's promise that the owner's ghost still resides in it, and fights for his life once the malevolent spirit shows the seller's honesty and starts causing death.

One of the new millennium's strongest horror fiction debuts, Heart-Shaped Box signaled in '07 that a magnificent new voice had emerged, a truth that only heightened with the 2010 release of Hill's follow-up, Horns. But more on that one later.

22. The Terror, by Dan Simmons (2007)



Dan Simmons writes horror fiction for the biggest of history buffs. In what's become a routine practice for the Hugo Award-winning author, The Terror finds Simmons combining actual researched facts with his own sick, monster-loving imagination. Here, the narrative is centered upon the lost expedition of British Navy officer Captain Sir John Franklin, a nearly 130-man mission that perished in frosty conditions.

As Simmons imagines it, though, Franklin and his crew, along with cannibalism, get preyed upon by a bloodthirsty demon lifted from Eskimo mythology, known as the Tuunbaq. To The Terror's benefit, the scariest parts don't even come from the inhuman antagonist—it's the brutally shocking ways in which Franklin's men turn on one another that gives this 784-page epic its unnerving potency.

23. The Walking, by Bentley Little (2000)



Just when you think you've read and seen every kind of zombie story, there's a fresh spin on the living dead like Bentley Little's The Walking that reignites your teetering passion for stumbling corpses. Instead of launching off with hordes of zombies, Little enters the Z-world through a single flesh-eating walker, lead character Miles Huerdeen's undead father. Using his background as a private investigator, Miles begins looking into the existence of more zombies in other families, tracing the origins of pulse-less troublemakers back to the Old West.

24. The Missing, by Sarah Langan (2007)



Comparisons to Stephen King's sprawling vampire yarn Salem's Lot are never bad, so when Sarah Langan's 2007 novel, The Missing, made its way into book shops and garnered such lofty parallels, horror fans took notice.

Those who gave The Missing a chance were greeted by a distressing examination of one town's (Corpus Christi, Maine) upheaval thanks to an unseen force awakened by a precocious kid. This turns the townsfolk, many of whom Langan develops quite well, into flesh-eaters more enigmatic than your everyday zombies. Don't let primitive gender stereotypes fool you, either—The Missing brings the gore in abundance.

25. John Dies At The End, by David Wong (2007)



Recently, and admirably, adapted by legendary horror filmmaker Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), John Dies At The End is one of those books that, no disrespect to Mr. Coscarelli, should remain on the page. David Wong's freakishly inventive monsters, alternate universes, and perverted humor can't truly be served by special effects.

At first, Wong (the pen name for online humorist Jason Pargin) published various short stories about the absurd exploits of main characters David and John, two college dropouts turned overmatched paranormal hunters. Riding mentally high on a brain-scrambling drug called "Soy Sauce," the guys do battle with giant meat monsters (yes, uncooked hamburgers and other frozen beef), penis doorknobs, talking dogs, and demonic wiggers.

Though it may not be the scariest book on this list, John Dies At The End is certainly the funniest, not to mention one of the most creative.

Eto, videli smo šta je najbolje od horora u novom milenijumu prema kolektivnoj inteligenciji zapadne hemisfere. Ja ništa od ovoga nisam (do)čitao, ali makar znam šta mi je za stavljanje na listu.