From Screen to Scream: Horror Books Adapted into Movies

Mary Shelley’s classic of Gothic horror — a cautionary tale of the limits of creativity that introduced the world to one of the most iconic monsters in literary history — now a major motion picture by Oscar-winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro, starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth.

A great white shark terrorizes the beautiful summer getaway of Amity Island, and a motley group of men takes to the water to do battle with the beast. A heart-pounding novel of suspense and a brilliant meditation on the nature of humanity, Jaws is one of the most iconic thrillers ever written. The shark-versus-man classic that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg movie — now in a fiftieth anniversary edition with an exclusive foreword from the author’s wife, renowned ocean conservation advocate Wendy Benchley.

Dana’s 26th birthday celebration ends when she’s ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor — because without him, she’ll never be born … This isn’t historical fiction — it’s time travel that cuts straight to the bone of American racism. Kindred remains unmatched in its raw power to make slavery’s legacy feel immediate, personal, and inescapable.

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another … Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, attempts to solve the tape’s mystery before it’s too late — for everyone. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and a postmodern trip. The success of Koji Suzuki’s novel Ring has led to manga, television, and film adaptations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House — the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series — has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers — and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, he left his son a box of books and strange recurring dreams. Now Apollo is a father himself — and as he and his wife, Emma, settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. At first, Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression. But before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act and vanishes. Thus begins Apollo’s quest to find a wife and child who are nothing as he’d imagined. His odyssey takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever. Now an Apple TV+ series starring Lakeith Stanfield!

One postwar summer in his home in rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline. Its owners — mother, son, and daughter — are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his. Now a major motion picture starring Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson.

We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting, riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic…

The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author — the inspiration for the hit television series and major motion picture. Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this novel is mesmerizingly beautiful and astonishingly powerful — a story of danger and flight, love and loss, suspense and resolution, and the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them — for a price. Until something goes wrong …

Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods — until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

In this tour de force collection of brilliantly disturbing tales, Clive Barker combines the extraordinary with the ordinary, bringing to life our darkest nightmares with stories that both seduce and devour. As beautiful as they are terrible, the pages of this volume are stained with unsettling imagery, macabre humor, and visceral dread. Here then are the stories written in the Book of Blood. Read, if it pleases you, and learn …