Yes yes yes!

I used to love his books, always looked out for them in the library.

Haven't tried them as an adult so don't know how they stack up. It's hard to judge: I read hundreds of Enid Blyton books as a kid but she's unreadable as an adult. Diana Wynne Jones holds up though. I re-read "The Homeward Bounders" which was one of my favourite books as a child, couldn't believe how bleak the ending was.

Huh. I re-read all of the Diana Wynne Jones I could find as an adult too. So much better than JK Rowling!

And yeah, haven't read any Fisk since I was a kid. I do remember that "Grinny" scared the shit out of me.

Yep, "Grinny" was pretty terrifying, not least when they psychologically torture her into leaving.

"A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair" was pretty grim too, post-apocalyptic SF with the dead being restored to life.

"Monster Maker" had some pretty scary moments.

Most of them weren't so evil though. I liked "Robot Revolt" and "Trillions" a lot.

Looking back, it's amazing how much darkness the children's authors of the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties were able to get away with, I think because parents weren't really expected to take an interest, just hand out books with the appropriate covers.

I think these days the books are more open about sex, but they're not as scary and they're less willing to have tough endings.

[SPOILERS for The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones follow]

This is a parallel universe novel where the child protagonist encounters mysterious beings and is inexorably compelled to walk between parallel universes in search of home. He gradually encounters other world-walkers, and by the end they defeat the beings and return home.

EXCEPT that so much time has passed all his family have died. And it turns out that to keep the multiverse together he still has to keep walking between worlds forever. And the last line of the book is "You wouldn't believe how lonely you get".

I just can't imagine any modern childrens or young adult author ending a book like that today.

TheophileEscargot: I was a wee one in the Nineties and once I got my own library card--shit got real.

Of course, my mother got upset when I found the religion section and started reading about Wicca (which I've been into since I was 7 and she continues to deny this fact) but didn't realize when I'd moved into Mercedes Lackey and Christopher Pike which had a lot of death and sex than she likely would have approved of. (Then again, anything without fluffy happy endings is something she disapproves of.)

[SPOILERY]
My fav ML series (Last Herald-Mage) has a gay protagonist and 1 (maybe 2, depending on how you view the situation) suicides plus another attempted suicide. And then another ML series has another suicide attempt.

From what I've read of the new Vampire Diaries books (which are absolutely godawful, although the original books weren't really well-written to begin with)--they deal with some dark things, but tend to be resolved in a handwavey 'yay we did good' way which I find really irritating.
[/SPOILERY]

I'd never heard of this guy, but man, I wish Hollywood was raiding HIS books for movie ideas instead of some of the dreck they keep going back to.