Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

by Grady Hendrix

Robin Cook and his novels: Fever, Outbreak, Mutation, Shock, Seizure…terse nouns splashed across paperback racks. And just when you thought you had Cook pegged, he adds an adjective: Fatal Cure, Acceptable Risk, Mortal Fear, Harmful Intent.

Coma (1977),

The Minotaur Factor, The Theta Syndrome, The Orpheus Process, and The Compton Effect.

(Slime).

Daniel Gower’s The Orpheus Process (1992),

Fatal Beauty.

Robert Lory’s Horrorscope series, whose fifth volume, Claws of the Crab, was never published in America.

The Scourge (1980)

Brain Watch (1985),

Psychic Spawn (1987):

Mind War (1980),

Whitley Streiber (Wolfen, The Hunger, The Night Church)

(Communion, 1987; Majestic, 1989),

Wetanson and Hoobler’s The Hunters (1978)

Earth Has Been Found (1979),

Brotherkind (1987)

The Children’s Ward (1985) by Patricia Wallace and Allison’s Baby (1988) by Mike Stone

Allison’s Baby

Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, John Saul, Dean Koontz, and John Farris bounced

Stephen Gresham, author of The Shadow Man (1986),

(The Unborn 1980).

(The Hacker 1989).

Little Brother (1983),

PIN (1981)

Night Howl (1986),

Teacher’s Pet (1986),

Brainchild (1981),

Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novels (The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian)

Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Charlotte Riddell

Vernon Lee (real name Violet Paget)

Three of Daphne du Maurier’s stories became Hitchcock films (Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Birds),

Gothic horror was domestic horror in which affairs of the heart were as important as affairs of the flesh. Its subject matter was families, marriage, houses, children, insanity, and secrets.

Michael McDowell, another Southern author who made his name writing paperback originals,

“We all have primal fears of being helpless, trapped in a situation beyond our control,” she said, talking about her disease;

Jane Gaskell’s 1964 novel The Shiny Narrow Grin,

Fred Saberhagen, who made the once-monstrous Dracula the hero of his novels. In John Shirley’s Dracula in Love (1979)

Nightblood (1990),

There were Nazi vampires (Darkness on the Ice), rock star vampires named Timmy (Vampire Junction), splatterpunk vampires working out of Times Square strip joints (Live Girls), 19th-century riverboat gambler vampires (Fevre Dream),

Michael McDowell was an Alabama native whom Stephen King once called “the finest writer of paperback originals in America,” and his Blackwater

McDowell started his career with The Amulet (1979),

McDowell’s six-book Blackwater series was published one title per month between January and June 1983,

McDowell’s equally accomplished The Elementals (1981)

Elizabeth Engstrom

Black Ambrosia (1986)

When Darkness Loves Us (1985),

Beauty Is,

What makes Engstrom’s stories so memorable is that she speaks from the point of view of her monsters but never becomes their cheerleader, as Rice does. Instead, she captures the voices of women on the margins, pushed aside, hungry for the lives they’ve been denied, beating on the glass to get in. It’s their voices that linger.

(Soulmate, 1974),

(Snowman, 1978),

Frank Spiering’s Berserker (1981),