which particular part of a book disturbed or offended you the most?

Hey I'm new here. My debut novel is released on the 29/1/10 and is available to pre order on amazon if you wanna take a look. Its called 'Playground' and is a dark urban tale of evil teenagers in London.

Anyway. The most disturbing thing I read in a book was in Stephen King's It when the character Patric Hocksetter offers Henry Bowers a blowjob. I mean, they're like twelve years old and Henry - evil as he may be, is still too naive to realise that Patric is trying to give him a handjob.

Another noteable mention is in The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier (an old werewolf book which is still the best damn lycanthrope literature I've got through) when the main guy starts to go down on this woman while she's on her ... monthly.

Be interested to hear what freaked you guys ou

[Doc Faustus]

Menstruation? Infantile gay sexuality? Feh. Try some Bizarro. Sabre's Call by Troy Chambers makes everything you describe look like The Backyardigans. A seven year old is sodomized by the Marquis De Sade and several other characters and that's about the most tasteful part. Apeshit by Carlton Mellick features a character who's an abortion fetishist. My book Murderland 2: Life During Wartime contains a human pinata and a dead alien baby is dismembered and flushed down a toilet. But for actually disturbing, I would give it up for my publisher Matthew Revert's book A Million Versions of Right. The stories in here are obscene and some of the most chilling stuff I've encountered in my life. The Great Headphone Wank might sound like a funny, dirty title but it's actually quite terrifying. For classic horror, I would say Ray Bradbury's story The Small Assassin, which always leaves me trembling each time I read it and Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow. Pleased to meet you, Dean. Hope you stick around. I'd like to see other authors hanging out here discussing the genre and enriching the community.

Wow. I guess my examples were pretty tame compared to yours! thanks for replying all the same. I bought that book 'The Girl Nextdoor' cos i heard it was a mad read based onb a real event. Meant to be pretty fucked up.

[Doc Faustus]

I imagine it is. Because things like Sabre's Call and Apeshit establish that you're in a world where anything can happen and often will, an environment that thrives on sexual dysfunction. But, The Girl Next Door is in our world. If you watch a porn movie, you expect to see two women having sex with a cable guy, but if you walked into your house and two women you didn't know were having sex with a cable guy, you'd be surprised and perhaps frightened. Probably frightened. The Girl Next Door has two things going for it that realist horror benefits from: familiarity and our assumptions about how our world works and what happens in it.