Best Horror Books of All Time
It (Released: January 1986)
Author(s): Stephen King
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.07 (832 Ratings, 78 Reviews)
Pages: 1168
Welcome to Derry, Maine ... It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ... They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.
Genre(s): Horror, Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, Science fiction, Suspense, Classics, Thriller, Friendship, Horror stories
The Stand (Released: January 1978)
Author(s): Stephen King
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.15 (841 Ratings, 67 Reviews)
Pages: 1553
Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by virus and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting and eerily plausible as when it was first published. Soon to be a television series. 'THE STAND is a masterpiece' (Guardian). Set in a virus-decimated US, King's thrilling American fantasy epic, is a Classic. First come the days of the virus. Then come the dreams. Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms. When a man crashes his car into a petrol station, he brings with him the foul corpses of his wife and daughter. He dies and it doesn't take long for the virus which killed him to spread across America and the world.
Genre(s): Classics, Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, Science fiction, Suspense, General, Thriller, Dystopian, Good and evil
Misery (Released: January 1987)
Author(s): Stephen King
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.10 (676 Ratings, 65 Reviews)
Pages: 370
Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident. The former nurse takes care of him in her remote house, but becomes irate when she discovers that the author has killed Misery off in his latest book. Annie keeps Sheldon prisoner while forcing him to write a book that brings Misery back to life. [Source][1] [1]: https://stephenking.com/library/novel/misery.html
Genre(s): Suspense, Fiction, Horror, Motion picture plays, Literature & Fiction, Crime Fiction, Classics, Readers, Fans (Persons), German
House of Leaves (Released: January 1999)
Author(s): Mark Z. Danielewski
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.10 (404 Ratings, 76 Reviews)
Pages: 709
House of Leaves is an epistolary fiction and metafiction novel focusing on a fictional documentary film titled the Navidson Record, presented as a story within a story discussed in a handwritten monograph recovered by the primary narrator, Johnny Truant. The narrative makes heavy use of multiperspectivity as Truant's footnotes chronicle his efforts to transcribe the manuscript, which itself reveals the Navidson Record's supposed narrative through transcriptions and analysis depicting a story of a family who discovers a larger-on-the-inside labyrinth in their house.
Genre(s): Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Science fiction, Classics, Ergodic Literature, Documentary films, Suspense
The Yellow Wallpaper (Released: January 1892)
Author(s): Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.04 (277 Ratings, 38 Reviews)
Pages: 27
The Yellow Wallpaper (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. The entries display a spiral into psychosis as the writer tried to solve the mystery of the yellow wallpaper.
Genre(s): Classics, Gothic Horror, Horror, Academic, Literary Fiction
The Library at Mount Char (Released: January 2015)
Author(s): Scott Hawkins
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.05 (275 Ratings, 67 Reviews)
Pages: 390
After she and a dozen other children found them being raised by "Father," a cruel man with mysterious powers, Carolyn and her "siblings" begin to think he might be God; so when he dies, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which they believe holds the power to all Creation.
Genre(s): Fantasy, Fiction, Science fiction, Dystopian, Magic, Horror, Ability
Ring Shout (Released: January 2020)
Author(s): P. Djèlí Clark
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.02 (242 Ratings, 53 Reviews)
Pages: 176
IN AMERICA, DEMONS WEAR WHITE HOODS. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
Genre(s): Horror, LGBTQ, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Science fiction
The Exorcist (Released: May 1971)
Author(s): William Peter Blatty
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.08 (213 Ratings, 25 Reviews)
Pages: 320
The Exorcist is a 1971 horror novel by American writer William Peter Blatty. The book details the demonic possession of eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil, the daughter of a famous actress, and the two priests who attempt to exorcise the demon. Published by Harper & Row, the novel was the basis of a highly successful film adaptation released two years later, whose screenplay was also written and produced by Blatty, and part of The Exorcist franchise. The novel was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University. As a result, the novel takes place in Washington, D.C., near the campus of Georgetown University. In September 2011, the novel was reprinted by Harper Collins to celebrate its fortieth anniversary, with slight revisions made by Blatty as well as interior title artwork by Jeremy Caniglia.
Genre(s): Fiction, Horror, Classics, Fantasy
Lovecraft Country (Released: January 2016)
Author(s): Matt Ruff
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.00 (200 Ratings, 28 Reviews)
Pages: 329
Soon to be a New HBO® Series from J.J. Abrams (Executive Producer of Westworld), Misha Green (Creator of Underground) and Jordan Peele (Director of Get Out) The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy. Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours. At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction. A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.
Genre(s): Fiction, Science fiction, African Americans, Magic, Fantasy, Supernatural, Adventure, Historical Fiction
A Short Stay in Hell (Released: January 2011)
Author(s): Steven L. Peck
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.11 (121 Ratings, 24 Reviews)
Pages: 104
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.
Genre(s): Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Science fiction, Dystopian, Philosophy