Saturday Christian Fiction Carnival!

My Friend Amy, who brought us Book Blogger Appreciation Week has a new carnival in the works, the Saturday Carnival of Christian Fiction.

Each week she will post a blogging prompt, which participating bloggers will answer on their own blogs. Then they head back to the original post and sign Mister Linky! This way we can all come to know each other more closely.

Whether or not you celebrate Halloween, there's something about the shorter days and chilly air that makes one want to curl up with a scary book. The horror market for Christian fiction is growing in creativity and testing all sorts of boundaries. The suspense market is also very rich with many talented authors. So my question(s) for you is...what's the best Christian fiction horror or suspense novel that you've read? What book would you recommend to someone who wanted to try out these genres? What's a book in these genres you want to read but haven't yet?

Oh man, the suspense genre in Christian fiction has evolved (yeah I know a word that Christians don't like using but it fits here! lol) in the past few years. Before it was tame, predictable, and very cookie cutter characters, perhaps the reason why the general public turned a blind eye to it. It used to be only women writing in that genre and it was more on the lines of romantic suspense. And I'm going to be brutally honest right now. I love Dee Henderson and Terri Blackstock's books, don't get me wrong. But they're rather tame. I'm not too much on romance all the time and while I loved these books it was more romance than suspense. For the average woman who is used to reading Sandra Brown, Catherine Coulter, or Nora Roberts these are good alternatives. But I much prefer something grittier and edge of your seat. The best one I've read recently has been Steven James Patrick Bowers series, The Pawn and The Rook. Wow, talk about edgy, scared out of your wits, wow this is totally awesome suspense. My recent review of the book tells all.

For someone who hasn't read this genre yet, it would have to depend on what other types of books they read. If it's mostly romance I would try to ease them in with the Henderson, Blackstock, Gilbert Morris' Dani Ross series, etc. If they're ready for the harder stuff, the authors I'm about to mention are all great.

There's a lot of I haven't in the genre, but only because they're sitting in my TBR list and I haven't gotten to them yet. Brandilyn Collins, Ted Dekker, Robert Liparulo, James Scott Bell, Brandt Dodson, TL Hines, John Aubrey Anderson. You will notice most of these are male writers. And I can almost guarantee you, the typical Christian fiction reader (which is normally a middle age woman) will have not heard of these, nor is going to pick these up. These authors can appeal to men which is great because they're not girly, they're gritty. Try anyone of these authors and be prepared to stay up all night with the lights on.