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Are You Ready to be Scared? Pick Up a Horror Novel
Novels designed to horrify, terrorize, or otherwise unsettle the reader fall under the horror fiction novel category. Often these novels feature evil personified as a spirit or supernatural being. There are times where the being that is feared is really not evil, just misunderstood. An example of this would be a creature from another planet that comes in peace. Many books have been labeled as horror fiction since the 1960s, especially when they include a gruesome or morbid theme. The umbrella category of speculative fiction encompasses the genres of horror fiction, science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, supernatural fiction, and magic realism. This distinction is helpful since many of these genres often overlap. There have been tales of characters caught in incredibly horrific situations since the beginning of fictional writing. Examples through time include Beowulf, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. Much of the violence in early horror novels was alluded to rather than described as the authors used mood and setting to create the sense of fear. Two of the great masters of this genre are Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. M.R. Jones who wrote classic English ghost stories is also an excellent horror writer. He avoids shock effects much like Poe and Lovecraft. Modern day horror authors have begun to include graphic violence in an attempt to shock their audiences and convey the horror of the situation. Some modern horror novels are full of glorified violence but utterly lacking in true literary merit. Two modern day horror authors who are able to artfully craft stories that shock and fear their audiences without the use of excessive violence are Dean
Koontz and Stephen King
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