Fans pick 99 books like The Willows

I strongly recommend this book as not only does it weave spooky images of ghostly events in one’s psyche, but couples it with fascinating phenomena such as telepathic communication and willpower. Furthermore, I was fascinated by the complex personality of the main protagonist, who allows himself to become victim of evil forces leading to a gradual descent into madness.

It also emphasises that social isolation in a remote place can have a detrimental impact on oneself and those close to you. I found the fight for survival in this tale riveting.

Spending the summer in a cabin in the woods? Then The Ceremonies is a darn fine choice. The first time I read it was on a camping trip, and I was captivated by the way Klein describes the empty, lonely wilderness surrounding the Poroth Farm (the main location of the tale).

The protagonist of the book is an English professor who’s writing a book on the Gothics, and through the course of the book name drops a ton of classic horror novels and stories from the early 20th century. This book is not only a tremendous cosmic/folk horror novel, but sort of a treatise on classic gothic literature.

Not only is The Ceremonies a truly unsettling horror novel in its own right, but it could inspire a whole new reading list for you!

No writer creates a compelling sense of dread better than H.P. Lovecraft. His stories instantly immerse you in whatever world he’s conjuring, and I think his writing reached its peak in this book.

His narrator descends into a creepy world of “others” whom he senses want to harm him (in his personal life, Lovecraft was notoriously disdainful of “others”). I was willingly dragged along with Lovecraft’s desperate narrator as he raced through town, hotel rooms, and ultimately into a terrifying gathering of the townspeople.

Nearly a century after its publication, I consider it to be one of the most timeless and striking pieces of horror ever created. 

Taking a long road trip? Then a collection of great short stories is what you’re looking for.

A collection to read in chunks, while you’re switching off driving duties, or stopping for a quiet meal at a roadside diner. They Hide is a book full of a variety of contemporary scares. Each story in the book stands alone and would be a great choice for filling in quiet moments on your long trip.

The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood features the author’s scariest tales, including “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. Blackwood piles detail after detail atop one another until the reader nearly suffocates from the gloom and terror they create! He also squeezes much fear from isolated places like Canada and the Danube River.

I spent so many summer afternoons as a teenager reading Barbara Michaels’ novels.

She is another writer who managed to set in stone my love and fascination for tales gothic and truly inspired and informed my own writing.

This one with a copyright of 1973 has it all. Isolated, rural setting with a historic stone cottage, creepy, almost folk horror-esque townspeople, a twisted villain, and a supernatural edge.

But it also has something that Michael’s specialized in: dialogue that captures relationships in a very approachable and identifiable way despite the vintage year.

Witch captures her mastery of the gothic and ticks all the boxes of a great read in the genre.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is the first title on my list that is merely a short story. That said, what Harlan Ellison’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi tale lacks in length, it makes up in complexity. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the story follows the horrific ordeal of five humans artificially kept alive by AM (Allied Master computer), a programme responsible for the near-extinction of humanity. AM derives its pleasure and purpose from endlessly torturing the last living humans, rendering them immortal and unable to commit suicide. This unique supervillain became my inspiration for the Neon God – a corrupt, mind games-obsessed A.I. announced in my Neon Science-Fiction novel. Ellison’s story, however, conjures up images of desolation and despair I’ve yet to encounter in a work of science fiction.

When I’m wearing my uber-nerd hat, I enjoy Doctorow’s stories that are filled with cyber chat.

This story wonders what would happen if the world’s population was drastically reduced to a small collection of nerds. Would they be able to survive, or would they be unfit for life on Earth? Could they learn to farm, repair the planet’s aging infrastructure, and become administrators of a new and budding world? I’m rooting for the nerds here because I know they have the necessary skills.

This is a good book to understand the pervasive existence of “rents” in the economy. From the literal rents that homeowners in popular areas can charge, to the rents that accrue to copyright or patent holders, to the rents earned by firms using regulation to block competition, the authors document all the places in our economy where this restricts innovation. It is ultimately a book asking “what is fair?”.

Young was an English agriculturalist who took time out from farming to analyse life and developments in the countryside. He toured Britain, then Ireland, and finally France. Here, he lucked in. He wandered the fields, lanes, and city streets of France as the Revolution was brewing and then erupting. Although not an aristo himself, he frequented nobility and royalty, and was amazed at the blissful indifference of the idle rich about what was going on around them. He saw the extreme poverty of the peasants, who were being worked and starved to death by their absentee landlords. He witnessed the actual events of the Revolution and had to talk himself out of getting lynched as a potential aristo spy. It’s a book to browse rather than consume whole, and contains whole pages about crop yields and diseases, but at times it is the most measured first-hand view of the Revolution… show more.