10 Writers From Other Genres Who Tried Their...

Writers switch genres occassionally. Anne Rice did erotica as A.N. Roquelaure. J.K. Rowling is switching to crime fiction. Maybe it's a marketing device. Perhaps writing a bit of trifle in another genre is refreshing? You writer-types will have to weigh in on that question, but here are 10 good horror stories written by authors who don't write horror.

1.Truman Capote - "Miriam" is Capote's only foray into horror fiction. This story about a seemingly innocent child who show up at the doorstop of a kindly neighbor asking for help, is very creepy. The child uses treachery and cruelty to reduce the woman to complete servitude.

2. John Lennon - "No Flies on Frank" is a short story about the fate of a rotting corpse. A man kills his wife and is eaten away with guilt. He must get rid of the body but how and where? He finally delivers it to his mother-in-law.

3. Evelyn Waugh - "The Man Who Liked Dickens" tells the tale of a man who becomes seriously ill on a jungle trip but is nursed back to health by an illiterate hermit who loves the work of Charles Dickens. The hermit forces his guest to read to him...up until the surprise ending.

4. Patricia Highsmith - Although Highsmith's work such as The Talented Mr.Ripley contains seeds of psychological treachery, the short story "The Snail-Watcher" is true horror about a henpecked husband who takes up snail breeding as a hobby. The hobby soon takes over his life. Gory things happen.

5. Jim Thompson - Most of Thompsons work, like The Grifters, is crime drama. But he veers into true horror in Savage Night. A tubercular hit-man is sent to kill a witness in a mob trial. He can trust no one, yet he develops a soft spot for a housekeeper with a deformed leg. Plans go completely awry and the hit-man and the housekeeper flee to an isolated cabin in the Canadian wilderness. What happens in the last two chapters is unadultered horror.

6. Edith Wharton - In addition to her novels, Wharton also wrote supernatural tales. The Ghost-Feeler is Wharton's collection of ghost and supernatural stories such as "The Triumph of the Night" and "Afterwards."

7. Cormac McCarthy - McCarthy doesn't write horror, but Child of God, the story of an evil child who reeks havoc and terror on those around him is just plain chilling. Does a horror novel need murder, madness and necrophilia to be scary? No, but it helps.

8. Raymond Chandler - Chandler took a break from Philip Marlowe to write a collection of short horror stories. Some of them can be found in The Lucifer Society, including "The Bronze Door". The rest of Chandler's short horror is unpublished.

9. Robert Graves - The British poet writes about an organically-minded couple who fall under the spell of master composer Dr. Steinpilz and his secret method in "Earth to Earth."

10. Doris Lessing - 2007 Nobel Prize winner Lessing wrote a shocker about a middle-class English family who are burdened with an abnormal child...a very abnormal child. The Fifth Child was written in 1988, and a sequel Ben in the World was written in 2000.