Spawns of Horror: Horror Books Written by the Children of Horror Legends

When it comes to horror legends, they don’t come much more legendary than Stephen King. And when it comes to the children of authors who made good, they don’t come much bigger than Joe Hill—King’s son, who carved out a place for himself in the genre with a series of celebrated short stories and novels that have been adapted to film, without relying on his father’s name. Full Throttle is Hill’s third collection of short stories, including two that he co-wrote with King. It also includes a story that was adapted to the Shudder series Creepshow, and one that was turned into a Netflix original movie, In the Tall Grass.

Related: From 20th Century Ghosts to NOS4A2: Where to Start with Award-Winning Horror Author Joe Hill

King’s other son, Owen, has also taken up the proverbial quill. His 2013 debut novel is about a filmmaker trying to come to terms with the failure of his debut feature, as well as his rocky relationship with his actor father. Also maybe a satyr? He also co-wrote the 2018 novel Sleeping Beauties with his father, in which the women of the world are afflicted with a strange “sleeping sickness” that wraps them in gauzy cocoons when they fall asleep. Left to their own primal devices, the men of the world divide into warring factions.

Related: 12 Scariest Stephen King Books

Joe R. Lansdale’s daughter Kasey is a country singer who published her first fiction collaboration with her legendary father all the way back in 1998, when she was just ten years old. That story, also written in collaboration with her brother Keith, was recently adapted to an episode of the Shudder TV series Creepshow. Since then, Casey and her father have co-written a number of stories about a duo of tough paranormal investigators that have been collected in Terror is Our Business: Dana Roberts’ Casebook of Horrors.

Richard Matheson is the very definition of a legendary horror writer, author of such classics as I Am Legend and Hell House, as well as countless screenplays. His son, Richard Christian Matheson, took up the mantle early on, penning quite a few short stories that have become classics in their own right—many of them collected in this volume. He's also written numerous teleplays for series as varied as Masters of Horror, Knight Rider, and Three’s Company, not to mention penning the screenplay for Three O’Clock High, among many others.

Related: Richard Matheson: Where to Begin with the Legendary Sci-Fi Horror Author

The son of Anne Rice, Christopher spent years resisting the horror label, calling the books that he wrote “thrillers” instead. It wasn’t until his 2013 novel The Heavens Rise that he fully embraced writing supernatural horror. That and his follow-up, The Vines, both channel supernatural terror set in a familiar New Orleans backdrop, but to very different ends than in his mother’s romantic vampire tales. Rice later collaborated with his mother on 2017’s Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra.

Related: AMC Sinks Its Teeth Into the Rights to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles & Mayfair Witches Trilogy

Richard F. Searight was a pulp horror author and contemporary and correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft. He may be best known to fans of Lovecraft’s Mythos as the creator of The Eltdown Shards, fictional fragments of pottery mentioned in several Mythos stories including Lovecraft’s own The Shadow Out of Time. Searight’s son, Franklyn, took up his father’s mantle, writing a number of Mythos stories of his own, many of which are contained in this sadly out-of-print collection that can still be picked up aftermarket for those who have an inclination.

Related: 11 Books for Fans of H.P. Lovecraft

Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s daughter Katie became the youngest-ever winner of an Eisner Award when, at just seven years old, she collaborated with her father on the story “The Magician and the Snake.” While the younger Mignola has thus far written no other stories—comic book, horror, or otherwise—turning her energies instead to studying veterinary medicine, that’s quite an accomplishment for a seven-year-old, and “The Magician and the Snake,” which was collected in this volume of oddities, remains a favorite among Mignola’s stories.

Related: 9 Horror Short Story Collections to Keep You up at Night

“Michael Slade” is actually the pen name of author Jay Clarke, who has written more than a dozen novels in his award-winning Special X series, beginning as far back as 1984. Combining the elements of police procedural and psychological and supernatural horror, Ghoul, the second novel written under the Slade pseudonym, has been named as one of the Horror Writers Association’s best horror books. Most of the Slade novels are actually collaborations between Clarke and other authors, and since 2001, he and his daughter, Rebecca Clarke, have been sharing the pseudonym. Bed of Nails is their third novel together, drawing on elements of the real story of Jack the Ripper, threads from previous Special X novels, and H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.