The most recommended horror books

Jackson’s Gothic horror flows like black chiffon over a yawing window. That’s how I felt reading about Hill House. I loved the way the house sneaks up with its psychological weights swinging and jarring. Eleanor possesses a dark ambiance. She desperately needed to belong to something or someone, and I couldn’t let go of that.

Her emotions and fears were right there with me. But it was the romantic underbelly that got me: Eleanor’s romance with Hill House. The statuesque gardens, the light, and shadows, all tempted her into its sinister realm. As it tempted me. I felt deeply for Eleanor, wanting to belong to something extraordinary to replace her dull life. Shirley Jackson is quoted as saying, “I delight in what I fear.” This book proves it.

Noir can sometimes be hard to identify, but most readers are familiar with the tropes: the put-upon private investigator, the case that he can’t walk away from, the hunt for leads, the twists and double-crosses. With Hammers on Bone, we get all the aesthetics of a hardboiled detective story but also: Lovecraftian monsters. Noir stories lay bare individual and collective moral failings, and in adding eldritch horrors, the book further externalizes those ills, showing how monstrous humans can be.

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw is a novella that melds the hardboiled detective novel with Lovecraftian monsters. Our private dick, John Persons, is hired by a ten-year-old kid to off his abusive stepfather. From this classic noir setup, to the character voice and dialect, to the shady characters, to the twists and reversals, this book really keys into the strengths of the genre, and amplifies them even further with… show more.

This book, about a young recluse losing grip on reality, unable to discern truth from her own memory, had me hooked. I found the writing vicious and fierce, the imagery haunting, and the overall focus on memory and trauma as horrors that can both shape and betray us distressing in the very best of ways. Memory and one’s sense of self are important to my own work, and as such, this book managed to tap into some personal unease.

That it’s also so sharply written (and wonderfully f*cked-up) is the icing on an already delicious narrative cake. Recommended for those who like their horror to mess with their sense of reality—personal and not. My favorite read of 2023.

A precursor to Dracula, and largely forgotten today in the mainstream, the globe-hopping adventures of Varney bring to mind many spy adventure tales.

In this novel, one of the original “penny dreadfuls” the episodic tone (due to its original publication as a continuing weekly serial from 1845-1847), contributes to the espionage feel, especially as Varney takes on a cover as “Baron Stolmuyer Saltsburgh” in order to further his activities.

Also notable is, among the other vampiric Gothic traits displayed by Varney, he is also able to be revived by moonlight, a trope which is now more attributed to werewolves.

This is a volume that defies genre, in part a supernatural memoir, encyclopedia of horror films, and a treatise on the existence of other dimensions. I love a book that doesn’t conform to the rules and tropes of a single genre, where you basically know that what you are getting will adhere to what is or is not allowed, on the basis of the categories assigned to it by the publisher. Cronin testifies to her personal experience of ghosts, and what the nature of reality must be to support such entities. I follow her in looking to mix horror and the uncanny into supposedly banal and quotidian reality, the supernatural just another facet of life, and not a sensationalist realm that requires a world of its own. 

At a whopping 1,152 pages, Stephen King’s The Stand was just too much to capture in a single movie.

That’s why, in 1994, CBS adapted it across four, ninety-minute episodes of a limited run “mini-series” (a fancy way of saying “a really long movie”). In all fairness, it had a great cast and was better than it had any right to be, and was far more enjoyable than CBS’s 2020 attempt at a do-over.

But even with a total six-hour runtime, it couldn’t capture all the story, heart, and nuance that made the book so incredible. It’s a feat to read, one I did to pass the time when bored in school, and one I will surely do again in the future.

Yes, this book is based on the Great Blizzard of 1888, but trust me when I say this isn’t a historical document. Morgan introduces a wicked new twist with supernatural creatures known as the Wanageeska. This book had me gripped from the very first chapter, and in true Morgan fashion, drew me in deep until I was in over my head. This book is gruesome, intense, and fast-paced, serving as a testament to the dangers of mother nature. Morgan easily blends the fantastic with the historical into one incredible tale that I continue to think about years after reading it.

I’m going even further back with this one. Unusual pick certainly, a YA novel from 1989 that I stole off my sister’s shelf circa 1994.

I was ten and ready for something darker than The Baby-Sitters Club. This was one of those early reads that made me want to write in the first place. The first real suspense book that had me staying up late, wondering how does one create a story like this? I still have that book, tattered and sitting on my shelf as a reminder of that first spark.

Christopher Pike is able to write stories to young readers in a timeless way. The nostalgia and sheer thrill from this story about a young woman who finds herself dead after falling four stories will bring you back to nights with covers over your head. Did she jump or was something more sinister behind her death? Only her… show more.

One thing C.J. Leede is able to do to right off the bat is make you uncomfortable in a way that makes you want to know more about this strange young woman you’re reading about.

Leede pulls you into the warped worldview of Maeve, a certifiable sociopath who is a Disney Princess performer by day and a weirdly obsessed menace to society by night. This novel has been hailed as a female version of American Psycho, but Leede’s voice is all her own and not a feminized take on Brett Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman.

While Maeve is a morally deranged person and the plot contains disturbing situations, what intrigues me about this novel is its surprising feminist manifesto: why can’t women be seen as dangerous and as monstrous as men are in the same violent context? Overall, this novel is one hell of a rollercoaster ride that anyone with… show more.

I love a vengeful ghost. And Dead-Eyed Sadie, who haunts the little town of Burden Falls, is like an eyeless grudge’s Kayako Saeki. I almost expected to hear that horrible death rattle while flipping the pages. After a series of nightmares and a vision of Sadie, and the appearance of a dead body, teen sleuth, Ava Thorne is determined to solve the town’s murder problem before she becomes the main suspect. With a cursed waterfall and a vengeful ghost to contend with, it should be simple… right? Not when the murderer seems to have a vendetta against the Thornes and there’s a ghost on the loose.