horror is a peculiar genre. if it’s purely intended to scare, then some of the heavier books on this list would have racked up a body count, terrifying readers to death of over 700 pages or more. And what is scary? what might surprise one reader is ridiculous to another. Ghosts, serial killers, large throbbing monsters, loss of self-control, plagues, impossible physics, and a creepy clown all feature on our countdown, with entries spanning from the 19th century to recent years. an (obvious) author makes five (!) appearances, and could easily have qualified for a few more; another has written just one novel during his decades-long career. we narrowed our focus to prose novels, so don’t ask about the blood books or uzumaki. And while we look at the diversity of our featured authors, the inclusion of women, authors of color, and queer creators came naturally as we brought together the best of the best. we are prepared for you to question our choices, we only ask that you leave the chainsaw at home before doing so. Without further ado, we present our picks for the best horror novels of all time.
50. summer is over and we’re not saved yet by joey comeau (2014)
joey comeau’s first horror outing, one damn thing after another, is perhaps creepier and more disturbing than this summer camp slasher. but summer is over and we’re not saved yet gets the thumbs up for importing the genre of film into prose while layering subtle and clever commentary on our teenage bloodlust. Eleven-year-old Martin is used to entrails (his mother does special effects makeup for horror movies), but she would like to keep him inside his body. a maniac employed at his bible camp has other intentions. The title of Comeau’s earlier novel would have worked just as well here: the gory murders are one gory thing after another, piling on as a reminder that we’ve created a prolific genre around watching children get killed in ingenious ways. —steve foxe
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49. the woman in black by susan hill (1983)
one of the biggest tonal outliers on this list, susan hill’s the woman in black is crafted like a traditional gothic novel, and could probably fool readers into thinking hill is a few hundred years older than she really is. Published in 1983, The Woman in Black is best known today for inspiring one of the longest-running plays in London’s West End (and a Daniel Radcliffe film). Structured in the classic British form of a story told around a fireplace, Hill’s brief ’80s anachronism is chilling thanks to the ominous titular figure of her, who stalks a house in the misty moors and predicts the children’s deaths. The Woman in Black may not feel like a quintessential ’80s horror novel, but it’s an excellent reminder that, even at the height of its imitation boom period, the genre He refused to be typecast. —steve foxe
48. night things by michael talbot (1988)
Like Michael Mcdowell, higher up on this list, Michael Talbot was an openly gay horror author who died at a young age and whose most popular works went out of print during the 1990s. Talbot’s Publishing Legacy moved into metaphysical nonfiction in the last decade of his life, but his early horror work, which includes the vampiric touchstone A Delicate Dependency and the chilling haunted house Night Things, have thankfully returned to accessibility in recent years. However, Night Things is not simply about a ghost haunting the halls of an old mansion: the lake house at the center of the novel is a labyrinthine creation that taunts the family of the protagonist lauren montgomery with hidden rooms, doors that open to nowhere and a macabre secret hidden in its center. brand z fans Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Jack Cady’s Well, the 1980s scribe, will appreciate navigating this labyrinth. —steve foxe
47. the exorcism of my best friend by grady hendrix (2016)
grady hendrix is building a brand: clever on the outside, surprisingly scary on the inside. horrorstör, his 2014 horror trailer, dropped readers into a haunted fake ikea filled with instruments of torture beyond what real-life stores already stock. her follow-up, the exorcism of my best friend, redials the metafactor; Aside from the yearbook-style packaging, this tale of ’80s girlfriends facing demonic intrusion could easily have been a paperback original during the heyday of horror, and that’s a compliment. abby and gretchen are best friends for life on the eve of the bush’s first presidency…until gretchen gets lost in the woods and comes back different. Abby, already an outcast at her swanky private school, faces as much pressure as pea soup in her quest to cleanse the soul of her best friend. —steve foxe
46. ring by koji suzuki (1991)
gore verbinki’s 2002 american adaptation of koji suzuki’s 1991 novel ring completely reshaped american horror cinema, ushering in a wave of j-horror imports, remakes and imitations and helping to create the image of a ghostly Japanese woman. with straight black hair ubiquitous throughout the world. While the general strokes are the same, Verbinksi’s take (and director Hiroshi Takahashi’s Japanese adaptation before it) leans more supernaturally than Suzuki’s. In the original novel and its sequels, the cursed videotape and Sadako’s Well become something of a medical thriller, as psychic powers and the smallpox virus intertwine. Readers expecting the continual jump scares of lurid abstract video footage may be disappointed, but Suzuki’s novel is a fascinating landmark in Japanese horror fiction. —steve foxe
45. a head full of ghosts by paul tremblay (2015)
In this bram stoker award-winning story, author paul tremblay (whose follow-up, disappearance at devil’s rock, is downright chilling if a little unnerving by the end) manages to examine both the subgenre of possession and breaks new ground with its tired tropes. Fourteen-year-old Marjorie Barrett begins to show signs of schizophrenia, or maybe it’s just teenage rebellion…or maybe it’s something more. Before long, Marjorie’s out-of-work father agrees to let a reality crew film an attempt to exorcise his daughter’s demons. Cutting between the events of the show and an interview with Marjorie’s younger sister, filmed 15 years after the show’s conclusion, Tremblay walks a fine line between confirming and denying what forces are really at play inside Marjorie’s head, maintaining readers guessing long after the last page is turned. —steve foxe
44. the game of doom by clive barker (1985)
the damnation game proved that books of blood wunderkind clive barker could sustain his brand of fear beyond the length of a short story. Barker’s most compelling skill, the ability to combine lust and disgust, desire and disgust, is on full display. In this depraved gallery of a novel, with graphic depictions of incest and cannibalism, a head-on bodyguard tries to interfere in a Faustian pact to save the relatively innocent daughter of a wealthy degenerate. After the early years of his career, Barker more often immersed himself in dark fantasy than straight horror. the damnation game, published between barker’s first collection of short stories and the fatefully successful novel the hellbound heart (which you may know from its film adaptation, hellraiser), remains the purest long-form expression of man’s penchant for plunging into the darkest corners of the human imagination. —steve foxe
43. audition of ryu murakami (1997)
ryu murakami’s audition is dwarfed in popularity by takeshi miike’s film adaptation of the same name, and it could be argued that miike’s version is the superior telling of the story. Yet there is something unforgettable about Murakami’s original prose; Forceful to the point of over-explanation, Murakami lays bare the psychology behind the plot and forces the reader to confront his own role in the voyeurism of violence and manipulation. There’s also an intimacy present in the novel that the film keeps at a distance, to the point where you actually care about widower Aoyama during the shocking and infamous climax. piercing and in miso soup are equally disturbing stories from this master of the Japanese thriller. —steve foxe
42. the silver devil by victor lavalle (2012)
victor lavalle cites shirley jackson as an influence, and that lineage is easy to identify in this piece of literature that is as much about institutional failings as it is about the bison-headed demon that roams the halls of a mental institution. pepper, the novel’s protagonist, can’t remember the crime he (supposedly) committed, but he knows that he was only supposed to stay in new hyde hospital for a few days at most. Lavalle draws out Pepper’s fear and helplessness from his fellow inmates, sticking to Jackson’s level of uneasiness rather than attempting outright terror. in the end, the reality of the titular devil is almost secondary to the horror that has been revealed. —steve foxe
41. bird box by josh malerman (2015)
With your eyes closed and your imagination unfettered, you can imagine creatures whose monstrosity knows no bounds. detroit-based author josh malerman manifests an apocalypse of the darkened in bird box, in which unknown entities begin to appear across the world and just one glance at their grotesque brings people to suicide. In the book’s unforgettable introduction, our protagonist travels down a river with a black cloth knotted around her eyes, guiding two equally blind four-year-olds, rowing their way to an uncertain sanctuary while any sound they hear could very well be one of these. monsters. splashing closer and closer to the bow of the ship. —jeff milo
40. holocausts by robert marasco (1973)
stephen king’s ’70s and ’80s classics are still so famous today that it’s easy to forget how many standout genres disappeared when shelf horror fell out of favor in the early ’90s. burnt offerings are one of those victims of our short-term memory, and even their 1976 film version (starring Karen Black and Bette Davis!) is largely unknown to modern fans. The Rolfe family rents a vacation home on the other end of Long Island to get away from their Queens apartment during the summer months. the only unusual stipulation about the home is that the elderly mother of the property owners must stay on the top floor of the house, confined to her apartment and fed three times a day. If that sounds an alarm for you, congratulations: you’re smarter than the Rolfe family. As with King’s The Shining, which followed in 1977, Holocausts turns a sprawling home into an oppressive, malevolent force to be reckoned with. —steve foxe
39. john dies at the end by david wong (2007)
a rollercoaster ride of weird stuff, sprung from a hallucinogenic (and possibly demonic) drug known as soy sauce and written in an invigorating, punchy style of rapid-fire sentences, often broken down into seven words or less, and punctuated with a Racy diction detailing psychedelic imagery and delivered with sustained breathlessness. wong (also known as cracked.com’s humorist jason pargin), something of a punk-rock, video game-style ripple in and out of the weird tale tradition, charismatically weaves together a modern, highly evocative narrative of barbed monstrosities that any 17-year-old could laugh at…think of it as the more horrifying cousin of ready player one. —jeff milo
38. saving the dark by christopher conlon (2014)
christopher conlon’s all too possible savaging the dark shares a premise with alissa nutting’s controversial tampa, but the differences in execution are what make this novel be truly terrifying and maddening. more of a black comedy. Conlon’s narrator, Mona Straw, slowly unravels as she goes on an adventure…with her 11-year-old student. While Tampa featured an admitted predator from page one, Conlon takes it upon himself to build a believable case for how Mona justifies her taboo actions, even when his in control of the situation, and the her sanity, they escape her. hold. Of all the novels on this list, Wild in the Dark may be one of the scariest, if only for its plausibility. —steve foxe
37. cardigan by daphne du maurier (1938)
rebecca didn’t coin the term “gaslighting,” but it is one of the most chilling examples of bullying in literature. a naive young woman falls in love with a handsome older widower and agrees to become his bride after only a brief courtship. when he arrives at his impressive estate, he finds himself at the mercy of a housekeeper who remains fiercely loyal to the widower’s late wife, and doesn’t hesitate to make that clear to the protagonist, or to undermine the protagonist’s confidence and sense of security. possible. rebecca has sold over 3,000,000 copies in her lifetime, and her whiplash twists in the third act make it easy to see what attracted alfred hitchcock to adapt her into an award-winning movie. academy award in 1940. —steve foxe
36. geek love by katherine dunn (1989)
It’s funny to embrace the concept of a “freak show” without falling into ableism and other offensive tropes. tod browning’s seminal 1932 film freaks revealed the ugliness in its traditionally attractive cast members, and katherine dunn’s geek love populates its 360 pages with an ensemble as wide and eclectic of characters that of course some are doomed to be reprehensible, regardless of their atrophied limbs or psychic predilections. Told over two time periods, geek love follows a family of intentionally bred “monsters” (the parents of the family use various drugs and chemicals to produce different birth defects) as they grapple with incest telekinetic, flourishing cults and mutual consent. amputation. It sounds like a splatterpunk nightmare, but Dunn’s novel earned her a nomination as a national book award finalist for the beating heart beneath its bizarre exterior. —steve foxe
35. heart-shaped box by joe hill (2007)
An over-the-top rock star buys a haunted outfit online. It sounds like the setting for a bad joke, not the plot of one of the biggest horror debut novels of the century, but Joe Hill revs up his premise and never gives up. while horns is fast and hard-hitting and nos4a2 is sprawling and darkly fantastical, heart-shaped box is like a long motorcycle ride straight into the despair. judas coyne, the protagonist of hill’s rob-halford-meets-glenn-danzig, confronts both a sinister spirit and the intersection of his own myth and humanity, along with his two loyal bloodhounds and the latest in a series of female groupies named after their states of origin. Eleven years and several major Hill works later, it’s clear this chilling debut was no fluke. —steve foxe
34. world war z by max brooks (2006)
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Zombie fiction had never approached the cultural impact and artistic significance of zombie cinema, until world war z came along. No one had thought to take the idea of a zombie apocalypse and really dive into the guts of everything else besides the violence, and that’s what makes Max Brooks’ book so amazing. if you don’t know, it’s not a true “novel” but is presented as a journalistic report in a series of dozens of interviews with people from all over the world on how they survived the zombie crisis. The audience gets to see exactly how it all happened, and Brooks’ gift is to make it all seem so reasonable, because he considers all possible eventualities. shows us how the infection could realistically spread around the world thanks to human trafficking. it shows us how modern armies could be defeated through poor planning and mass defections. it shows us what society could be like after 90 percent of humanity has been killed and a difficult period of reconstruction has begun. Ignore the existence of the horrendous movie adaptation with Brad Pitt and just read the book, because World War Z is easily the best piece of zombie fiction ever written. —jim vorel
33. the other by thomas tryon (1971)
in his excellent collection of genre-story-slash-oddity paperbacks from hell, novelist grady hendrix makes it clear that thomas tyron’s other was a sensation, becoming an almost instant bestseller and helping, along with the exorcist and rosemary’s baby, kick off the boom period of the paperback horror from the 70s and 80s. the story of two 13-year-old twin boys, one kind and unassuming, the other increasingly sinister, hit the perfect sweet spot of hometown horror that can’t look the other way to attract audiences massive, just like the movie the bad seed did decades earlier. The Other hasn’t quite maintained the pop culture staying power of its more famous contemporaries, but it’s still a must-read for fans of the genre. —steve foxe
32. little star by john ajvide lindqvist (2011)
it’s hard not to feel a little bad for swedish author john ajvide lindqvist. Despite two stellar film adaptations of his vampire novel Let the Right One In, comparisons to Stephen King take up more space on the covers of his American books than his own name. With shades of carrie, little star does little to dissuade that similarity. Two young people, one extraordinary and the other suffocating under her own feelings of mediocrity, connect online and form a friendship that will have dire consequences. Lindqvist takes the modern fears that drive teen anxiety (less wardrobe, more internet comment section) and extends them to their most disturbing logical conclusion. Despite a hint of the supernatural, it’s very ordinary youth violence that will stick with you long after you’ve finished Little Star. —steve foxe
31. the shining girls by lauren beukes (2013)
While horror has always flourished on the small-press scene, Lauren Beaukes is also helping to forge a continuing legacy for the genre at major publishers. the shining girls is a serial killer novel like no other, when harper curtis discovers a house in depression era chicago that opens its doors to another time and comes with a list of murders from “shining girls” destined to die at his hand. Kirby is the last name on the list and the only one to survive Harper’s first assassination attempt. As in her exceptional sequel, Broken Monsters, South African novelist Beukes weaves in a diverse cast of characters and enough sci-fi to complicate her premise without distracting from the horror at hand. —steve foxe
30. the girl next door by jack ketchum (1989)
The twisted horror story under the nose of ketchum received more attention in 2007, when a limited-run feature film brought the story back into the horror conversation. Based on the Sylvia Likens murder case in Indiana, the novel follows Ruth, a single mother, alcoholic, and next-door neighbor who takes in two nieces after her parents are killed in a car accident. ruth’s rapidly deteriorating state creates a hellish environment for both the nieces and her own children, and the girl next door will make you think twice, thrice, heck, probably forever, before to give your children to someone. —tyler kane
29. at the mountains of madness by h.p. lovecraft (1936)
h.p. lovecraft was not actually a “novelist”, per se, in the sense that he never wrote a single piece of fiction long enough to be unambiguously “a novel”, but certain stories such as “the case of charles dexter ward”, “The Shadow Out of Time” and especially the novel On the Mountains of Madness are hard to categorize like anything else. Madness in particular has captured the imagination of audiences steadily since it was first published in 1936, and its bitterly cold, icy horrors can be felt reverberating through the ages and into modern AMC TV series like the first season of The Horror. .like all of lovecraft’s best work, it offers his trepidation of a slowly revealed reality that our feeble human society is utterly insignificant, existing only at the whim of unimaginable forces that perhaps just haven’t bothered. or in noticing us yet. And when those forces wake up to the annoyance of the human incursion? well, when that happens, “madness” could be our species’ only respite. —jim vorel
28. the ceremonies of t.e.d. klein (1984)
Earlier this year, paste published a list of overlooked ’80s horror novels. stephen king found the author on twitter to recommend one more: t.e.d. Klein’s the ceremonies, which King described as “the moby-dick of ’80s horror.” Reader: You were not wrong. Klein has published only one novel in his career, but it is a sizable novel, set at the intersection of the bizarre fictional tradition of Arthur Machen and Clarke Ashton Smith and the zeitgeist of 1980s psychics and impending annihilation. global. If you think you’ve read the best the genre has to offer, take King’s advice and seek out this criminally neglected tome. —steve foxe
27. interview with the vampire by anne rice (1976)
surprisingly, embarrassingly, we debated whether or not to include anne rice’s interview with the vampire on this list. Is the novel truly horror or is it a gothic romance? what an absurd delineation! Written in the wake of the death of her young daughter, Rice’s first installment in The Vampire Chronicles is a psychosexual marvel and a turning point in vampire fiction. Rice’s vampires are tortured souls who have lived too long, trapped in bodies that refuse to age. It is not simply the requirement of blood or the avoidance of sunlight that pains the rice immortals, but the accumulated weight of existence and the limbo of an unchanged “life”. a direct line can be drawn from interview and the famous film adaptation of it to the rise of 90s goth culture and the romanticization of vampires to twilight, but not hold that. against rice. While there is a vampire novel higher up on our list, Interview is potentially the most important work in the subgenre since Stoker. —steve foxe
26. a choir of sick children by tom piccirilli (2003)
the title phrase “a choir of sick children” is used four or five times throughout the late tom piccirilli’s haunting southern gothic, first in reference to the eccentric musicality of the protagonist thomas’s three brothers (joined at the head ) speaking in unison. Thomas, the heir to the most prosperous family line in the kingdom to come, enjoys an equal mix of fear and respect in the city, from the witch grannies in the swamps to the compulsively naked preacher’s son and the sheriff nursing a powerful Napoleon complex. if that sounds comical, it’s because there’s a perverted sense of gallows humor that marks the novel’s scenes of shocking and grotesque violence. like the great michael mcdowell and karen russell, piccirilli draws the southern setting from him for the full range of the region’s messy, complicated magic. —steve foxe
25. something bad is coming this way by ray bradbury (1962)
If this list included collections of short stories, Ray Bradbury’s October Country would be a serious contender for the top spot. something wicked is coming this way doesn’t rank quite as high, but it still embodies what makes bradbury so influential in the world of dark fantasy. it’s hard to imagine neil gaiman or stephen king having their current careers if bradbury hadn’t paved the way with his deeply human, quietly terrifying and somewhat wicked brand of horror, like so many of king and gaiman’s best . beloved works, it also deals with that particular childhood fear of growing old and moving away from youthful innocence. A traveling carnival brings tempting treats and sinister scares, and readers young and old will find this a timeless fall classic. —steve foxe
24. the terror of dan simmons (2007)
From song of kali and carrion comfort to a host of sci-fi classics, dan simmons is no stranger to lengthy literary outings. The last decade or so found the author making leaps and bounds with immersive historical horror fiction, the best of which is the story of the failed search for HMS Terror from the Northwest Passage. while most of the horrors that await the ship’s crew are all too real (shrinking rations, scurvy, bitter cold), there is an unearthly presence looming that draws the survivors away from civilization and any hope of survival. bailing out. Don’t stop reading this in favor of the AMC TV series: Simmons is a long-time master of the genre, finding new ways to reinvent itself every decade. —steve foxe
23. american psycho by bret easton ellis (1991)
It’s hard to minimize the horrors that lurk within Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. Ellis received hate mail, death threats, and became the subject of immense criticism after serial killer Paul Bernardo was found with a copy of the book. And it’s understandable why the book was a bit of a shock in the ’90s. Ellis’s twisted satire on upper-class life played out much like less than zero, another people’s story hyper-rich looking aimlessly for something in a world where everything was given to them. In the case of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie finds murder as his escape. he tortures a homeless man. break a dog’s legs at one point, he gets his hands on a chainsaw. To some, it might seem like senseless violence for nothing, but the whole story is a deep dive into Ellis’s own alienation and madness in the late ’80s and years after, it’s also a pretty good satire that looks towards the one on one side. hundred. —tyler kane
22. the silence of the lambs by thomas harris (1988)
It’s a bit strange to get around the third-person present tense of the silence of the lambs: “starling looks down the hall” etc., but once you get used to it, it’s a device that ends up fitting perfectly with the novel. the narrator’s impartial voice floats over the proceedings, never siding with a character or focusing exclusively on her perspective; At times, third-person narration gives us a glimpse into the minds of Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, and Buffalo Bill. What the novel also does particularly well is have us investigate Starling’s motivations and ambition, going beyond his desire to simply help people and catch a killer. Opposed at almost every turn by the institutional obstacles erected in the path of the FBI trainees, the reader can sense Starling’s desperation and her almost selfish desire to stand out and prove himself to his all-male superiors. You can also sense that this is part of the reason Lecter takes an interest in her, finding her ambitions an interesting character trait that he can use to wrap Starling around his finger. This is actually one of the cases where it’s helpful to have seen the movie early, because you can read Lecter’s dialogue and imagine it being introduced by Sir Anthony Hopkins. that’s a very good combination for a compelling reading experience. —jim vorel
21. pet graveyard by stephen king (1983)
by the time pet sematary was published in 1983, a mythology had developed around it. rumors among the king’s fans suggested that the book was too terrifying to publish, the kind of death-saturated manuscript you had to read with rubber gloves. there was some truth in this. When his daughter’s cat died on the busy truck route in front of his house, King wondered: what if he buried the cat and three days later came back altered? what if they also killed a child and then came back changed (and not for the better)? In the novel, Dr. Louis Creed takes a job in the infirmary at the University of Maine and moves his wife, daughter, and two-year-old son Gage into a house along a busy interstate highway. the road soon consumes his daughter’s cat and then his son. but the permanence of death is a hard lesson for a father to learn, and when the creed interferes with the natural order, fate punishes him tenfold. King once wrote that horror writers are afraid to open the door wide and show the face of the monster. in pet sematary king swings it wide. beyond? the dark and dim form of oz, the great and terrible, awaits. —gay william
20. hell house by richard matheson (1971)
richard matheson is perhaps best known for an earlier work, the sci-fi/horror i am legend, which has been repeatedly butchered on film under various names. Hell House gets the nod on this list because it’s a purer distillation of matheson’s approach to horror and an exemplary use of the haunted house, a theme that occupies at least 10% of this list. ready. Investigators who enter Matheson’s “Most Haunted House in the World” find themselves subject not only to supernatural perversions, but also attacks on their own sanity. on the final page, any title other than the house from hell will feel appropriate. —steve foxe
19. stephen king’s stand (1978)
Stephen King’s magnum opus almost didn’t make this countdown, fitting, as it does, more perfectly into post-apocalyptic fiction or fantasy. At over 800 pages (more, if you’re reading the uncut edition), the stand packs as much horror as any of king’s other novels, fueled by a viral outbreak that kills 99.4% of the population. Doomsday scenarios were on everyone’s mind in the 1970s and 1980s, as global tensions rose and means of mass destruction proliferated. However, King isn’t content to simply explore a post-pandemic wasteland; the stand is his most epic showdown between good and evil, the latter concept embodied by randall flagg, a recurring king antagonist who becomes essential to the sprawling dark tower. knowledge of that series is not necessary to undertake the stand: just a month or so of time spent reading and a strong resistance to nightmares. —steve foxe
18. swan song by robert r. mccammond (1987)
robert r. McCammon was one of the most successful and prolific horror authors of the 1980s and early 1990s, before a publishing dispute caused him to stop writing for a decade. swan song, which tied with stephen king’s misery for a bram stoker award for best novel, is a 960-page masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction that feels like a Little too familiar in 2018. At the beginning of the novel, several countries have already annihilated in nuclear fire, and the United States and Russia are locked in an increasingly tense standoff. As the bombs begin to fall, McCammon follows several motley gangs of survivors, including “Swan,” a young woman who may have the restorative powers needed to bring humanity out of nuclear winter. Though not as widely read as King’s The Stand, Swan Song is one of the best examples of apocalyptic fiction (even if it hits a little too close to home today). —steve foxe
17. ghost story by peter straub (1979)
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stephen king declared the ghost story to be the best of its kind in 1981 with the non-fiction horror review, danse macabre, which, as we have established , it is high praise indeed. Peter Straub’s best-known piece is not as simple as its title suggests. Sure, we’ve all heard ghost stories, but this is a multi-layered tale of paranormal revenge, told from the point of view of four older men who kill time trading ghost tales, under-promises, and over-delivery. Although it took Straub years to get to supernatural tales, Ghost Story will be remembered as his first critical success, not to mention his most beloved work. —tyler kane
16. Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002)
In an episode of louie, the now-disgraced comedian refuses to carry his daughter’s heavy backpack, explaining, “I would never accept your burden. Fighting is how you get stronger.” Neil Gaiman was probably thinking similar thoughts when he wrote Coraline, an insidious middle-grade masterpiece with the power to unsettle any generation.The titular Coraline, a plucky young woman bored with her hyper-domestic parents, takes on the incarnation modern alice, crossing the looking glass into a far less hospitable wonderland.this surreal reflection harbors a terrible queen, the other mother, who invents a shallow world where all wishes of the young coraline are granted.does she take her down? he may have to sew buttons over his eyes before he sacrifices his soul. this novel dives into much darker and less whimsical depths than henry selick’s marvelous film adaptation. gaiman perfectly crafts a a reality that is the antithesis of maternal love: cold, isolated, parasitic and aimless. it’s a grand ornate adventure that wears its horror on its sleeve. Even better? coraline arms parents with an anecdotal warhead for when their kids take them for granted. —Sean Edgar
15. scavenging comfort by dan simmons (1989)
Tales of possession are terrifying for a specific reason. With some of our most famous horror stories, the ones that follow masked, knife-wielding madmen, houses that consume humans, telekinetic teenagers spurned, the victim, even in death, retains control of his or her own mind. The same can’t be said for the dead in dan simmons’ 1989 classic carrion comfort, a super thick read that begins in the concentration camps of the 1940s and travels through the decades with three old men. vampire mind. no, carrion comfort is a different kind of mindfuck: its antagonists don’t just possess. they use the human mind to feed themselves, prolonging their own lives at the expense of others. The 700+ page epic is a beast to overcome, but it’s a fresh take on two different tried-and-true horror tales. —tyler kane
14. broken monsters by lauren beukes (2014)
With 2011’s The Shiny Girls and 2014’s Broken Monsters, South African novelist Lauren Beukes has established herself as a master of the horror-thriller genre. It’s hard to choose between the two novels, but the detroit setting of the broken monsters, the fringe artist’s serial killer (fans of hannibal and true detective will feel like they’re at house) and the inexplicable life of another world. the threat barely surpasses the shiny girls‘s impressive time-travel continuity. In both outings, Beukes masterfully rotates perspectives, slowly filling in a complete picture of the atrocities the men will commit when pushed by a malevolent force. Where the shiny girls focused more on a resilient survivor, broken monsters spreads its narrative love a little more evenly, finding a handful of heroes struggling to make a living in the America’s most iconic places. capitalist failure. However, Beukes rejects easy “blighted porn,” refusing to reduce Detroit to a grimy fund for elaborate murders. With its impeccably researched setting and unflinching look at evils known and unknown, Broken Monsters is the best work of a young horror writer to watch. —steve foxe
13. the elementals by michael mcdowell (1981)
michael mcdowell’s recently recovered horror classic doesn’t feature explicitly queer characters, but its saga of the mccray and savage families, and the gritty spirit that haunts their victorian beach houses, is pure self-aware southern gothic through of his unique gay voice. . He possesses enough camp to nod Dorothy’s friends and enough chills to excite any fear addict. Mcdowell is best remembered as the screenwriter behind Beetlejuice, and was celebrated by the likes of Stephen King before his early death from an AIDS-related illness in 1999. With its sun-bleached set, the elementals is suffocating reading for horror fans and a powerful reminder of the generation of talent lost to the AIDS epidemic. —steve foxe
12. bram stoker’s dracula (1897)
the story of dracula is possibly the most ingrained horror story in american culture, and if you let the right one in, true blood and twilight i> i> series are an indication, the classic vampire tale is still alive and well in the realm of pop culture. Stoker did not invent the vampire in fiction, that was John Polidori in 1819, with the vampire. but stoker’s dracula shaped vampire history into the tales we know today, combining blood, horror, and romance in one elegant, red velvet-covered package. Stoker’s Dracula was a critical success, but it would be decades, and Stoker’s own death, before he roamed the culture as we recognize it today. —tyler kane
11. the rosemary baby by ira levin (1967)
we owe a great debt to ira levin and rosemary’s baby. Arriving in 1967, rosemary’s baby is often cited as the first big spark that ignited the rise of horror, spawning most of the other titles on this list. If you’ve seen Roman Polanski’s movie, then you know the story well: a young couple moves into a new apartment building, and the friendly neighbors are more than one might guess. rosemary is having a baby, you see, and everyone is very excited about the new arrival. Polanski’s adaptation doesn’t stray far from Levin’s source material, but it’s worth returning to the novel that arguably started it all. —steve foxe
10. the turn of the screw by henry james (1898)
Two unsullied children are possessed by their former caretakers? Or is the current children’s room just going crazy? Henry James posed this question in his 1898 novel, The Turn of the Screw, and like a literary Mona Lisa smile, any attempt to dig the truth out of it has just sparked more debate. this story within a story within a story conveys the discovery of an anonymous manuscript about a poor woman hired to babysit two strange teenagers. One of the children, young Miles, has been expelled from his school for reasons unexplained except that it is “an injury to others.” And then the governess learns that the woman she replaced, Miss Jessel, ran amok with a farmer, Peter Quint, before the pair disposed of their respective mortal bodies. what’s scarier than demons preying on the innocent? sexual shenanigans between classes. Produced at the end of the Victorian era, some of these themes are much more transparent than the supposed ghosts that embody them: passionate sex is bad news, especially if you are being seduced by a lower-level blue-collar worker in his literal and metaphorical corral. in fact, the turn of the screw inadvertently announces its most sensual points of conflict. everything else here suffocates the reader in a progressive and ambiguous tension. Whether rural ghosts corrupted the innocent or not, we’re ultimately left with (117-year-old spoiler alert) a confused woman holding the lifeless body of a young child. —Sean Edgar
9. ‘salem’s lot by stephen king (1975)
carrie was off to an explosive start, but stephen king’s second published novel better predicted what to expect from the horror genre’s foremost author. lauded on its release as “peyton place meets dracula“, a reference that only half makes sense to most modern readers, ‘salem’s lot brought the myth of vampires into the backyards of semi-rural Americans, and found the king in his most ruthless form; the characters you grow to love will have creepy endings. Amusingly, the novel also features the first of King’s many leading writers. King sold ‘Salem’s lot for an outstanding sum by today’s standards, let alone 1975, and never gave up after that. this year’s the outsider even touches on some of the same themes, to chilling effect. —steve foxe
8. the shining by stephen king (1977)
For most modern readers, legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s stay at the Mirador Hotel looms large in Stephen King’s original novel. almost every moment lodged in the public consciousness, everything you’ve seen parodied in the simpsons, is only in the movie: the blood elevator, the ghoulish twins, the typewriter, “here’s johnny!” Overcoming these iconic bits of pop culture reveals one of King’s greatest achievements, a hauntingly compelling look at a troubled man’s descent into madness. King’s novel is more sympathetic to Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic writer (sound familiar?) trying to improve his family’s life by taking a job as a caretaker at a remote off-season resort with a barely concealed violent history. The house wants Danny, Jack’s young and talented son, and puts the Torrance family through hell to get to him. king infamously hates kubrick’s adaptation, and while it’s hard to debate the film’s quality or place in the pantheon of horror movies, the novel is the most nuanced and possibly scariest version of the story, topiary monsters, and all. —steve foxe
7. nos4a2 by joe hill (2013)
Not to be outdone by his beloved father, heart-shaped box and horns author joe hill unleashed all the holiday terror in his third novel, along with A warm embrace of the nostalgia-tinged magic so often employed by Stephen King. in nos4a2, both victoria mcqueen and charlie manx can escape time and space when they travel in the right vehicle: vic can find lost things on his rickety bike and manx can travel to christmasland on his wraith vintage rolls royce Beyond the jolly name and the glitz of the amusement park, Manx’ Christmasland is the last place the good boys and girls want to end up, and Vic is the only kid to escape a ride on the specter. Like Santa himself, Manx never forgets a child, and when Vic is too old for his likes, Vic’s son will. nos4a2 represented a turning point for hill, as his own career became established enough for him to relax about his parentage, resulting in a novel that blends the best of hill’s distinctive style with the influence of his father, and the most quintessentially terrifying version of Christmas in modern memory. —steve foxe
6. house of leaves by mark z. Danielewski (2000)
the story within a story in the house of leaves would have been disturbing enough: a family moves into a house and slowly discovers that the inside is somehow bigger than the outside . but mark z. Danielewski’s ambitions are much, much higher. house of leaves is told in countless ways, including layers of footnotes, color-blocked word sections, fake interviews with real celebrities, and passages that require you to transcribe the first letter of each sentence to reveal another. chapter. hidden inside. The rising terror of the Navidson family is embedded in the story of a young tattoo artist who loses his grip on reality. “Lovecraftian” has become shorthand for tentacles and elder gods, but Danielewski’s debut novel nails a different component of the genre’s grandfather’s legacy: true madness. the labyrinthine structure of this tome (more than 700 pages) constantly questions the sanity not only of the protagonists, but also of the person turning the pages. house of leaves isn’t a david foster wallace-level challenge for readers, but it does require an investment and entanglement that some may be too scared to allow, lest they might start hearing a growling on the walls, too. —steve foxe
5. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818)
frankenstein is not just an iconic horror novel; it is a complete change in perspective of what horror is and can be. Hanging out with her friends in Switzerland’s Villa Diodati, a teenage Mary Shelley conceived a fatally ambitious scientist committed to creating a new life. Victor Frankenstein achieves his goal, synthesizing a heavy and grotesque humanoid. this book puts the word monster under the strictest of scrutiny: the protagonist abandons his unconventional son, leaving him to blindly stumble across the world in search of his surrogate “father.” who is the real villain the miracle of science that walks and talks feels, loves and suffers the abominable reactions of an indifferent humanity. we, the readers, have something new to fear: ourselves. we are horror we create our own monsters. and, like the Promethean referred to in the secondary title, we burn in the flames we light. the legacy of frankenstein can be felt centuries later. just watch a deformed, abandoned boy pushed to the bottom of a lake evolve into a vengeful teenage dismembering machine, and Friday the 13th takes on a whole new flavor after reading this terrifying trailblazer. —sean edgar
4. the exorcist by william peter blatty (1971)
william peter blatty is better known today for the academy award-winning screenplay he adapted from his own novel than for the original text itself. Unlike The Shining, the film never strays too far from the source material, but that shouldn’t stop horror fans from picking up the novel. blatty’s text has the time and space to better establish all of his key players, specifically father damien karras, overlaying fear long before the pea soup starts to fly. in a film full of cinematic magic, it is still possible to close your eyes or look away. In the novel, Blatty asks the reader to imagine truly horrible things, and the depths of the human imagination will always be a scarier place than a movie editing room. —steve foxe
3. let him in by john ajvide lindqvist (2004)
If fiction has taught us anything in recent years, it’s that the vampire genre can be tired and ironically toothless. But Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist breathed new life into the eternally hyped story with his first novel, Let The Right One In, which tells the story of a bullied elementary school student named Oskar and the new friend and neighbor of his, eli. Eli is bright, deathly pale, not to mention he’s dirty and smelly. he only comes out at night, but more than anything, he is a pillar of support for the reclusive oskar. There may be blood, gore, kiss songs, and acid solutions that give this story its horrifying side, but at its core, Lindqvist wrote a moving story of love and acceptance in the confusing phase that is (sometimes eternal) puberty. —tyler kane
2. that by stephen king (1986)
Of all the king books revolving around brave children, these might be the bravest, the most iconic, and possibly the most annoying. the protagonists are a collection of fairly broad stereotypes (geek, fat kid, sick kid, “the girl”, etc.), painted in an all-encompassing pastiche of 1950s American life, but in the end that’s really the point. King remains and has always been obsessed with the turbulent years of early adolescence. The titular “it,” on the other hand, is probably King’s most iconic and enduring monster, an interdimensional being of sheer malevolence and alien-mindedness that appears much simpler on the surface. an evil clown who kills children? that could at least be treated in an accessible way for adults. fighting real evil is a much more complicated proposition, one that relies on a perfect blend of mysticism and childlike faith needed to overcome its greatest weapons: fear and entropy, and the ability to make an entire town forget about atrocities. who commits and allows. the ending of it is occasionally cited as its weak point, but it’s a big fat novel that’s much more about a journey, both in the ’50s and ’80s, and the horrible visions suffered through it. along the way. —jim vorel
1. the curse of hill house by shirley jackson (1959)
“no living organism can continue to exist sensibly for long under conditions of absolute reality; some suppose that even larks and grasshoppers dream. the house on the hill, not roped, stood against the hills, keeping the darkness within; it had remained so for eighty years and could remain so for eighty more.” These are the legendary opening words of The Haunting of Hill House, our pick for the best and best-written horror novel of all time. Shirley Jackson’s chilling haunted house story follows Eleanor Vance, a young woman with a bit of a sensibility for the paranormal. she along with dr. John Montague, a paranormal investigator, a young artist named Theodora, and Hill House heir Luke Sanderson, Eleanor surveys the cold, labyrinthine mansion. the rooms seem to change, the architecture makes no sense, and even without the ghosts, and oh, there are likely to be ghosts, it’s a haunting visit. but the heart of the mansion is not necessarily the terror accumulated within its walls. What’s more troubling is its ultimate effect on young Eleanor, whose ever-declining state of mind comes to a dead end behind the gates of Hill House in one of the most perfect conclusions in all of horror fiction. —tyler kane & steve foxe
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