Paperbacks From Hell: A History of Horror Fiction From the '70s and '80s by Grady Hendrix with Will Errickson

Oh, horror fans, is this the read for you! I normally steer clear of non fiction, but this was definitely an exception that I had to make.

One summer a few years back, Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson came together for a Tor.com series called "Summer of Sleaze." The two horror aficionados covered some of the schlockiest installments in horror history, beginning with a book about Nazi leprechauns (which turns out not to be leprechauns at all). And oh, I did love each and every post.

It wasn't all schlock, though. They took time out to focus on Thomas Tryon and James Herbert, Graham Masterton, and even Michael McDowell. For sixteen weeks (and then two subsequent series later on) they teased my TBR with posts about a bevy of horror delights that my itchy hands were (mostly) dying to find.

And that's a bit of the origin story behind Paperbacks From Hell!


Paperbacks From Hell is focused on the paperback (in particular) popularity of the horror genre that hit in the wake of the likes of Rosemary's Baby, The Other, and The Exorcist. (Levin, Tryon, and Blatty, if you're unfamiliar.), tracing the trends in both titles and cover illustrations that ruled over the course of roughly two decades.

Books about possession, devil worshipping, evil children, killer creatures and more captured the readers' imaginations! Hendrix touches on everything from the gory and grotesque to the literary classics that have survived the test of time. Many of the houses have died, some of the authors have too, but the shelves of used bookstores nationwide are still full to the brim with these gems. I should know, I've browsed enough of them to build my own small collection.

Let me be clear, I was not able to delve into the heyday horror fiction until the 90s due to age limitations. Mom but the kibosh on anything beyond the YA category until the summer I hit the age of fourteen and put my foot down - it was time to allow for adult horror reading!

So I missed out on a lot of the titles Hendrix is focusing on here, at least when they originally released.

But not all. Because there are some shining genre examples that have defied the inevitable death of most backlist, still read and released today! And Hendrix does take a breath to hit on the teen horror market of the day as well - Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine in particular, the gateway drugs for many of the horror fans of my own generation. And oh, what a glorious gateway it was for me! I can still recall my first Stine and Pike purchases (Haunted at a school book fair and The Chain Letter on a trip to Mandeville to visit a friend). I trolled the bookstore YA shelves for any and every creepy looking title I could find, all the while gazing longingly at the shiny Stephen King and Dean Koontz titles that beckoned from the forbidden adult section. And I'm always heartened to hear that I wasn't alone - lots of readers of my generation share almost the same story!

Horror is and probably always will be my go to when it comes to books and movies. I like to blame it on the fact that my parents admit to having taken me to the drive in with them to see Return of the Living Dead when I was a baby (in other words, way too young for it to have mattered, especially since I no doubt slept through it and probably couldn't see the screen). I can certainly trace it back to the first ghost story my parents bought me to try and encourage me to read back in second grade. And I can definitely trace it back to my discovery of R.L. Stine's Fear Street hiding out on a Scholastic book fair shelf in third grade. And while I may have missed many of the titles Hendrix talks about when they originally released, I'm making up for it now!