MalevolentDark.com Top 10 Extreme Horror Fiction of 2019
Make sure to check out Lionel’s Top 10 Extreme Horror Fiction lists for 2018 and 2017
1. Lakehouse Infernal by Christine Morgan
In his introduction, two-time Splatterpunk Award-winning author Edward Lee describes this hardcore tourism horror novel: “Think Spring Break, only instead of a beach house, it’s a lakehouse, but the lakehouse is in … hell; that’s right, a chunk of Hell that’s been upheaved and pushed up into our pretty little world – sunny Florida, no less! … If you like the gross-out thing like I do, this story’s a veritable Whitman’s Sampler. Morgan gets it, she knows the market, and she’s not writing Little Bo Peep; she’s writing a gross-out party about a lake full of sewage from Hell!”
2. One for the Road by Wesley Southard
A heavy metal band wakes up in an abandoned settlement in the middle of the desert with no idea of how they got there. Every time they try to leave town, though, it transforms into a different hellish nightmare. One for the Road is a novella “of surreal horror sure to please fans of Silent Hill, Jacob’s Ladder, and Lost Highway.”
3. Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories by Bryan Smith
A collection of 17 stories by the two-time Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Kill for Satan!, Depraved, and 68 Kill.
4. And Hell Followed compiled by Jarod Barbee and Patrick C. Harrison III
Death’s Head Press publishes an anthology of 16 tales that re-imagine the biblical apocalypse. Features stories by Wrath James White, Jeff Strand, The Sisters of Slaughter, Sam West, Wile E. Young, Christine Morgan, and more.
5. Carnivorous Lunar Activities by Max Booth III
Fangoria presents “the ultimate werewolf bromance” described as “a toxic cocktail of An American Werewolf in London, Old School, and Bubba Ho-Tep that dives deep into the well of childhood nostalgia” and “blood-soaked horror … to bring readers a slice of Southern fried horror that proudly wears its heart ― not to mention a few other internal organs ― on its sleeve.”
6. Reception by Kenzie Jennings
A bridesmaid is attending her sister’s wedding at an isolated resort when the reception takes a vicious turn and becomes a fight for survival against the groom’s cannibalistic family.
7. Toxic Love by Kristopher Triana
A crime-scene cleaner deals with his beautiful new co-worker who may be insane. “A darkly comic and erotic nightmare … of perversion, gore, necrophilia and even some mobsters” with “characters who will move you just as deeply as they’ll repulse you.” By the two-time Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Full Brutal and The Night Stockers (with Ryan Harding).
8. White Trash Gothic Part Two by Edward Lee
The Bighead is back in the sequel to the Splatterpunk Award-winning novel White Trash Gothic as the main character continues to look for explanations to the mysteries of his past and the hidden history of the town of Luntville. It’s a search that will take him down a dark path of occultism, necromancy, and degenerate redneck sex.
9. Various States of Decay by Matt Hayward
A collection of 20 tales of terror by the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of What Do Monsters Fear? Includes the Irish Short Story of the Year nominee “Intercepting Aisle Nine” and features a foreword by Kelli Owen, author of Teeth.
10. How Much To..? by Matt Shaw
Book 1 in the 7-book series The Game pits a group of strangers against one another in a test to see how far they will go for money. By the seven-time Splatterpunk Award-nominated author of A Roll of the Dice.
The Malevolent Dark Top 10 Extreme Horror Fiction of 2019 list is curated and compiled by Senior Contributor Lionel Ray Green.