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This year Edgar Allan Poe turned 200.  What better way to celebrate the author who truly started the Horror and Detective genres than by reading his tales and poems. 

These two collection are the top of The Eerie Coterie's List for Poe books.  The first is a brand new collection of some of his most famous tales and poems of the macabre, where the latter is the definitive collection of his entire work.  It is hefty so you may want to look into the Vintage Trade edition for your pocket and keep the larger volume at home to peruse.

Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe (1809-2009) and Happy Halloween to all.

Being an ardent Jane Austen enthusiast, I was nonplussed when the news hit the Internet about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, combining Jane Austen's classic novel with bone-crunching zombie mayhem! What? Did two genre's ever seem more incompatible? Even though it did not appeal to my genteel sensibilities, I was intrigued and thought it worth a look. The co-author Seth Grahame-Smith had taken about 85% of Austen's original text and interwoven a zombie subplot. I have to admit that the first line had me smiling. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." What follows is quite a surprise. He has changed feisty Elizabeth Bennet and the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy into ninja warriors, ready to spar in the ball room as well as the battlefield against the sorry stricken who they delicately call unmentionables. It appears that anyone who is not a ninja warrior is a target for zombie destruction, so if there is a character from the original plot ripe for reproach, then it is sure to happen. Brains and gore abound, so the delicately minded take heed. If you enjoy a good ribald parody, the play between the original text and the new storyline is hysterical. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is sure to please those who live  to make sport for their neighbors, and laugh at them in their turn! Read my complete review at my literary blog Austenprose.

Cheers, Laurel Ann, Austenprose

This book is not for the faint of heart.  It grabs you from page one and takes you into the dark journey of a young man who has lost his parents and is taken in by Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, a monstromologist. 

Will Henry is trying to decide if he was blessed or cursed when the doctor took him in as an apprentice monster hunter.  When a strange visitor arrives at the doctor's home in the middle of the night bearing a horrible specimen, Will Henry's life will never be the same. 

The visitor has brought them a corpse of a young woman entwined with the body of an Anthropophagi.  This monster, thought to be extinct in this part of the world, eats through a gaping maw in its belly  filled with thousands of teeth.   The horror of this discovery can only be topped by the knowledge that where there are one of these monsters, there are many more and time is running out to stop them before they kill again.

This book is written in the spirt of H. P. Lovecraft.  The descriptive scenes kept me turning the pages as the gothic story developed into a full on adventure.  This book will appeal to anyone who loves a good horror novel, adventure or has a love for mythology.  It is dark, but oh so worth the read.  Learning this was a series was a wonderful surprise, and I will be counting the days till the next book comes out. 

Contestants on a reality tv show are challenged to live and survive on a deserted and secluded island.......but they are not alone. Good characters and continuous action, and reaction make this a great and fun book to read. Will they survive, and if they do, will anyone believe their story?? Brian Keene does a fantastic job of telling this story, but leaving you guessing....what, and who will be next?

A desolate, creepy house with many a tale to tell.  A group of "so called" experts in different fields of study try to interpret the fundamentals of parapsychology - a modern Ghost Hunters sort of group.  Yet inside the haunted Hell House is something entirely prepared for their intrusion.  This book was made into a very good movie of the same name and it continues to sell out and has become a cult classic.  Give this book a try by the author of I am Legend.  It also makes a great Halloween gift.

I know I speak about Stephen King a lot, but let me say this: He is one of this world's leading bestselling authors. I make no mention of him being a Horror writer, because he is so much more than that. His fiction is above and beyond anything you could term "bump in the night." As usual his stories circle around people and life's struggles - even the mundane, repetitious ways we handle our lives, and he does it just right. For this article I felt it was more important to make my Coterie readers understand that to pick up a King book because it is a Horror novel would be wrong. Yeah, sure I love Horror; I mean look at this blog for example. Underneath the strangeness of horror is the familiarity of the everyday. When you pick up a Stephen King novel you experience something closer to literary fiction. Hearts in Atlantis is just that kind of book. Firmly placed in the '60s this collection of novellas and short stories looks at life during that time in a realistic light. Vietnam, Baby Boomers, the idea that maybe they got it wrong is all part of the integral thread that runs through all five tales. Connecting characters and themes present in many of King's other novels, including The Dark Tower books, fill in this massive testament to something that really happened. I am not going to tell you the plot points of each story; this book you need to read for yourself. It has classic trademark King moments, I won't say it doesn't, but unlike his other stuff you won't care or look out for those moments. You will become engaged to these tales like a junkie. You'll care about the characters, and cry when you need to. (Or at least I hope you will.) This book was even a well received selection of a regular Literary Book Club I hosted many years ago. Everyone talked about it for many hours. Like all good literature it constantly challenges you to think outside the box, to wonder about things you are not familiar with and to take something back with you. I know this sounds way preachier than I normally get, but I am passionate about this book and what it does for fiction. Hell, the book made me cry many times. If you would like to know more before you pick it up and read it click the Post title and it will take you to Wikipedia - but I warn you: SPOILER ALERT!! Just keep in mind, "There are other world's than these."*

* Jake Chambers, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
Stephen King

http://eerie-coterie.blogspot.com

With less than a week away before its official release I wanted to give The Eerie Coterie readers a quick review of the new Dean Koontz novel - Breathless.  Over his long career Koontz has been genre-bending every novel; mixes of sci-fi, romance, adventure and suspense - with touches of humor.  In this latest thriller he does it again, but on a wider scale.  It reads like one of his thrill rides (Velocity, Intensity, The Good Guy) and yet is full of the literary surprises that came with is more robust tales (From the Corner of His Eye, One Door Away From Heaven).  Of course it features a canine character which is as much a trademark for Koontz as transvestites and bears are for John Irving.  Without giving more away than the jacket description, I believe his fans will devour this tale like all his others, and new readers to his work will fall in live with his writing style and his sense of humanity and humor.  I can't wait to see its release!!

The Eerie Coterie is a website devoted to Dean Koontz and The Nobody of The Coterie hopes you will visit us and take a look around.  The site will celebrate its 1 year anniversary and welcomes new readers.  The website is http://eerie-coterie.blogspot.com/

The Nobody

With Halloween only 10 days away you may want to curl up in the safety of your bed with a book.  Don't have time for anything too long - try a few short pieces by the King of Horror.  Just After Sunset, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Nightmares and Dreamscapes and Everything's Eventual  are his collections, but for The Eerie Coterie our two top choices are:

Skeleton Crew

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

These two books are full of the scariest and the strangest tales around.  My personal favorite in Skeleton Crew  is "The Raft" , "The Mist" and "The Reach" and in Nightmares and Dreamscapes there is "Chattery Teeth", "It Grows on You" and "Rainy Season".  That last one has to do with frogs falling from the sky.  HINT: Think "The Lottery".

Happy Halloween!

When you sit down with a brand new thriller, what is it you are most looking for?  Action, excitement, suspense, thrills and chills, fast paced storytelling?  Well, one author has been writing books like that for years and his latest is a jaunty thrill ride.  Dean Koontz set the standard for literate, runaway thrillers with intensity back in the '90s and then again over the last few years with roller coaster tales like: Velocity, The Husband and The Good Guy.  In May he released Relentless ( originally titled THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WOODS), another pageturner that causes your fingers to blister.  Not so much on the Horror side like many of his other tales, this book follows a novelist who meets the critic of all critics who wrote a bad review of his latest book.  From then on out it is non-stop, blockbuster movie writing.  As the title suggests, you will not be able to take it.  Relentless is a great read and will leave you wanting more from this gifted writer.  If you have never tried a Koontz book before, there is no better book to introduce you to his web of terror.  The Eerie Coterie give this a 4 Scythe Rating - Throat Slashed!

This strange little tale is a wonderful, creepy and adventurous way to spend a summer's day.  I found this book to be just perfect for anyone who loves horror, thriller or fantasy tales. It is totally original with a truly nifty main character.  To tell anymore would give away to much.  Just try it out and see. Hopefully this author will stick around and give us more in the future.   

A person can't go five feet without running into something vampire-related these days. From Twilight to True Blood, it seems as though the genre is covered. Well, that is where The Strain by Del Toro and Hogan comes in. The story is laid out for the reader slowly, as it all takes place in just a few days, but it reads quickly and I found myself nervously anticipating what would happen next. This is not for the faint at heart as some of the descriptions are quite gory and disgusting. Even though this is the first in what will be a short series, The Strain reads well on its own, but I would recommend reading it with an open mind as some things are not how they often are (without saying too much and ruining anything) in other vampire stories.