anybody read anything by Mo Hayder.

I just ordered a book by Fred Vargas. I think I can handle her but this will be the first book by her I have read.

I read "birdman" and "the treatment".  they are quite violent and scary. I like them, though.  I think she is similar to val mcdermid. ? like her too.

I have fred vargas on tbr. haven't read any yet.

I think one of the most gruesome books I have ever read was Out by Natsuo Kirino. It is set in Japan and the social and cultural stuff was very interesting but the murder parts were pretty hard to take.

I'm looking for "a book that scares" for the 2015 reading challenge.  I've covered all the other challenges but am stumped on this one.  I'm not easily scared by fiction so at a loss for ideas on this challenge.  I'd prefer a book that is scary but not too keen on blood and gore.   Any suggestions?  

At this stage I'm thinking I'll read something by Ann Coulter as anything she could write that gets any form of legitimacy is about as scary as I can think of.  

lol, rjvagabond  ;)

i thing "salem's lot" by stephen king was really scary without being gory, if i remember correctly.

the author's above (don't know about vargas) are pretty violent

Fred Vargas should be fine.  I read The Chalk Circle Man this summer and enjoyed it.  I didn't find it scary, just intriguing.  The cover was a little creepy, though! I haven't read anything by Mo Hayder.

I have read every single thing Mo Hayder has written and can tell you the woman is brilliant! Her books are suspenseful/scary, characters are fully developed, and she's one of the few authors that causes me to go into a locked room where I will not be disturbed in order to read her newest offering from cover to cover at one sitting. I'm completely enamored of her recurring character, Jack Caffery. She has a continuing series with Jack and you really need to read those in order. However, she has some stand alone novels that you may want to start with.

Stand alones are

Pig Island

The Devil of Nanking (aka Tokyo)

Hanging Hill.

All three are great; Pig Island is probably the most disturbing of the three, if I'm remembering correctly.

Now, if you want to try the Jack Caffery books, I highly recommend them, you'd want to start with Birdman, then The Treatment. These are the set-up books that allow you to get to know Jack. Birdman is honestly the most difficult of all of her books for a lot of people, but it's extremely important to understanding Jack. After that it's Ritual, Skin, Gone, Poppet, and Wolf.

Yeah, I'm a complete Mo Hayder fangirl. :-)

I was just going to suggest the same as Angelika:  Joe Hill - 'Heart-shaped Box'

I'll be honest, I'm a bit of a scaredy cat.  I can actually do a bit of gore, in the context of crime/forensics.  But, the good old scary stuff?  nuh-uh.  

So, I got about 1/3rd of the way through this one, and gave it away.  When my mom finished, she gave it back to me, and I promptly found a willing recipient at work to take it off my hands.  Yep - I didn't even want it in the house.  

I will say that dear old Mom still says that Salem's Lot is the scariest book she's ever read.  I can't speak to that one, as I haven't read it yet.  I figured if I can't handle Heart-Shaped Box, I wouldn't bet on having any luck with this one either. 

Yes.  My name is Amy, and I'm a big ol' wimp.

Sandy, thanks for those recs.  I am going to try a couple.

I've stopped reading Joe Hill.  For me, he just isn't all that good a writer.  I do understand that is merely one person's opinion, though.  He has a fan following.  I did see Heart-shaped Box to the end, but esp. disliked Horns and NOS4A2, finishing neither.

Count me in as another Mo Hayder fan---but especially the Jack Caffrey books. And Flea. I wish she would concentrate more on those....Pig Island was creepy, but very few books really scare me, in the usual sense of the word.

The only one I recall that did was reading one of Anne Rice's early Witch books-----at night, alone, in a New Orleans garden apartment, during a huge thunderstorm. Yes. I was scared. Absolutely.

Bonnie, I hope you like them. Let us know which ones you end up reading.

Betty P., I LOVE Flea! I'm hoping that Hayder will focus more attention on her in the next installment.

"The Devil Came to St. Louis".....by Troy Taylor.  Scared the crap out of me, it is supposedly the true story of how The Exorcist came to be.