My Favorite Books to Give: Adult Paranormal

And my December series on the best books to give marches on.

I originally started this post with “I don’t read a lot of horror…” and then began listing the exceptions. As I moved rapidly through that list, I actually realized that I do, in fact, read a lot of horror. However, I must clarify that my initial assertion against the genre should actually be “I don’t read a lot of books that scare me.”

This one is an exception.

My first exposure to F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep was in high school. I randomly stumbled on the direct-to-VHS movie version of this book, which is rich with now-famous faces (including Jurgen Prachnow, Scott Glenn, and a fairly young Ian McKellan) as well as an awesomely bad soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. My lifelong love of bad horror movies meant that this rather awful film had be at the first weird synthesizer note.

A few years later, I came across the novel at a yard sale and instantly purchased it. I was immediately drawn into the story of a garrison of German soldiers staying at a remote keep in Romania during World War II. The keep is something of a mystery, as its walls are lined with nickel crosses and the structure appears as if it was built to keep something in instead of out.

In this keep, the soldiers learn to fear the dark as they are murdered by an unseen force one by one. The Reich sends in back up in the form of the SS, and a Jewish history professor with a special knowledge of the keep.

Beyond a simple scare, this book has a rich story full of moral questions, and lessons on how life is so seldom black and white.

A to Z Challenge: My Favorite Storytellers-- F

My first cheat! There are too many last names starting with A, B, C, M, and S, so I am cheating a bit and featuring a few A to Zers based on first name.

First up:

F. Paul Wilson

During my teen years, I went through a horror kick, reading a lot of Stephen King, trying out Dean Koontz, and discovering an amazing, under-appreciated writer called F. Paul Wilson.

I got to F. Paul Wilson through a weird chain of events. My Dad loves this wonderful actor named Scott Glenn (dude has purple eyes-- for sure). Scott Glenn is also under-appreciated, and therefore not in enough movies, so at some random moment my Dad stumbled on this movie called The Keep and rented it because Scott Glenn was in it. The movie was the definition of bad B movies, but being a lover of bad horror movies, I of course adored it.

Flash forward two years, I am trolling the book table at a flea market while on vacation in Maine and I discover the The Keep was actually based on a book by some guy called F. Paul Wilson. So I bought it, read it, and LOVED it!

I am far outside of my horror book phase, but I still periodically pick up The Keep and re-read it. The book is about Nazi soldiers taking over a medieval keep that has an odd construction. The soon realize that the keep was not built to keep something out, but rather to keep something in. And they are trapped inside.

It's a really fun read-- I highly recommend.

Any other horror writers I should know about?