The best books for staying awake at night

Phantoms is an exceptional book. When two sisters discover that their hometown of Snowfield, CA is deserted, the reader is instantly pulled into the mystery. Koontz’s powerful description of finding homes deserted without warning, with dinner still on the table in some cases, is uncanny and unsettling. A masterful storyteller, Koontz adds special touches to increase a sense of the supernatural – voices coming from drain pipes, streetlights shattering, and even random bursts of music being heard over loudspeakers by the handful of survivors. The terror reaches a cosmic scale when Dr. Timothy Flyte recognizes the source of the supernatural events as humanity’s “ancient enemy” – a cunning being of massive size that has been feeding on mankind for centuries. I highly recommend this book if you need to stay awake all night!

I’ve always feared carnivals and clowns. If you share this same fear, few books will be more terrifying than Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. In the book, a mysterious ringmaster “Mr. Dark” brings his dark carnival to the small town of Green Town, Illinois. They arrive by train in the middle of one October night and unhappy clowns and other carnival workers set up the circus tents silently. Even the circus animals are quiet. The spookiness grows as the townspeople learn that Mr. Dark can grant their every desire. The only cost is their souls! Much like the many cautionary tales about getting three wishes from a genie in a bottle, Something Wicked This Way Comes reminds the reader that some wishes are better left unfulfilled. 

If you like your scary stories mixed with a dash of science fiction, Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers is highly recommended. Set in fictional Haven, ME, the book revolves around the discovery of a spaceship buried in the woods. As Bobbi Anderson, a local writer, uncovers the ship, both she and the rest of the townspeople are physically and mentally transformed by it. Not all of the changes are welcome – Bobbi loses interest in food and starts losing hair and teeth, but in turn becomes part of a shared consciousness that makes her capable of the most amazing inventions, including a telepathic typewriter. Only Jim Gardner is immune due to a steel plate in his head, and it is up to him to stop the hypnotic spell of The Tommyknockers.

If you want a nonstop adrenaline rush to keep you up, you won’t find a better book than Intensity. This book also includes one of the strongest protagonists you’re likely to encounter in popular fiction, Chyna Shepherd. In the book, a serial killer named Edgler Vess kills the entire family of one of Chyna’s friends while she is visiting for the weekend. Instead of escaping, Chyna finds the courage to pursue the killer, and the two begin a relentless cat-and-mouse game that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Koontz has also created one of his creepiest villains ever with the invention of Edgler Vess, a killer since childhood that craves above all an intensity of the senses in all that he experiences. 

If you’re awake at night due to paranoia, then The Servants of Twilight comes highly recommended. The book creates an atmosphere of paranoia much like the movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In the book single mother Christine Scavello tries to save her son from cult members of “The Twilight,” a cult led by the evil and delusional Grace Spivey. Grace accuses Joey of being the antichrist after bumping into him at a local mall. Christine enlists the help of Private Detective Charlie Harrison to protect her and Joey from the cult. However, Grace’s followers are everywhere. Even police officers follow Grace’s orders to destroy the young boy, forcing Charlie, Christine, and Joey to run for their lives against a seemingly unbeatable foe.