Catherine Storr – Marianne Dreams
A really creepy children’s book that has that same sort of feel that Machen's 'White People' has. It's about a girl whose suffering from an illness and is drawing these pictures, and all her fears are collected into these child-like drawings that come to life. So you’ve got this skewed vision of a child whose suffering a kind of fever dream. This taps into a few others on the list, that what frightens you as a child is often what frightens you as an adult still. When you revisit them that doesn't ever go away. There's something about connecting with what frightens you in childhood that is more primal than anything else you'll experience, because it's all part of a reality that isn't quite reality but is real to you at the time. It's a very frightening book for a child but, y'know, it does have a happy ending!