The Best Horror Books of All Time

Originally published in 1954, The Bad Seed was an instant bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award. It’s an eerily plausible and wholly disturbing portrait of a seemingly innocent little girl named Rhoda, who always seems to be at the center of terrible accidents. Her mother’s slow realization that Rhoda may actually be the cause of the so-called accidents sits at the novel’s controversial and unsettling center. The Bad Seed builds toward its shocking climax in a way that few other similar novels have matched.

It’s difficult to express the crushing emotional weight and deep-seated sense of dread that comes with each page of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winner. At its core, Beloved is a classic ghost story centering around a former slave beset by otherworldly torments tied to a long-buried and horrifying secret. In a larger sense, it is an examination of guilt, the lengths that desperation can push an individual, and the psychological trauma of slavery. Beloved is a novel of singular and devastating power.

Apollo Kagwa’s excitement to become the father he never had to his own newborn son transforms into a parent’s worst nightmare when his wife and child are torn away and Apollo becomes determined to bring them back. LaValle brings a piece of classic Western European folklore to the modern day, resulting in a cautionary fairy tale and a stunningly creepy horror story all in one.

At some point in your life, you’ve likely done something and then forgotten about it later. So begins Sara Gran’s odd and eerie novel, Come Closer, as she’s called in to her boss’s office to explain a series of offensive insults written on a report she submitted to him. Later that night, a quiet but persistent tapping is heard throughout her and her husband’s home. Is it demonic possession or a psychic break? What follows is a series of events that will keep you up late at night, turning page after page as the dread sinks into your bones.

On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins. From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel.

It’s been well over a century since its publication, but this novel has lost none of its bite. Dracula is the definitive vampire tale, but it’s so much more than that, too. It’s a story of modern technology versus ancient superstition, Victorian mores versus barely sublimated sexuality, the list goes on and on. If you’ve never read Dracula, then it’s probably time you should.

While tragically unappreciated in his own time, Edgar Allan Poe‘s unsettling poetry and short stories have since become required reading in many schools and have secured him a place as one of America’s most famous and influential authors. This collection showcases Poe’s classic tales of mystery, terror, and suspense, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and more!

Octavia Butler’s Fledgling is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted — and still wants — to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of “otherness” and questions what it means to be truly human.

The power of a novel can be seen in its longevity. Frankenstein is powerful indeed. While it has long been considered one of the first science fiction works, it also features terrifying ideas of the macabre and horrific, posing questions about life and death and life again.

Part conspiracy-laden horror, part clever homage to “Night of the Living Dead”, Ghost Story is a slow burn and atmospheric story that subverts all expectations. The story follows a group of old men in a sleepy New York town who call themselves the Chowder Society. After the death of one of their members, the men are forced to reckon with a horrific accident that occurred years earlier and has haunted them ever since.

First published in 1991, The Gilda Stories is a groundbreaking speculative fiction vampire novel that begins in 1850s Louisiana, where a young Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life by two women there, Gilda spends the next 200 years searching for a place to call home, moving through the centuries up to the dystopian future of 2050. Gomez’s classic, with a Black lesbian heroine, has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of Blackness, radical ecology, redefinitions of family, and the erotic potential of the vampire story.

A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona in this “utterly terrifying and wholly immersive … story about generational trauma, colonization, systemic oppression, and the horror at the heart of motherhood” (Library Journal, starred review).

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House 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.

It’s likely you’ve never read a novel quite like House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski’s startlingly original debut. It is an epistolary novel. It is a story within a story (within a story). It’s a haunted house tale. But more than any of that, it is a literally labyrinthine reading experience all centering around the central conceit of a house that is vastly larger on the inside than it appears from the outside. House of Leaves is claustrophobic, unnerving, and entirely original.

Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos, unknowingly propelling them into one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. Effortlessly combining the supernatural and the historical, The Hunger is an eerie, thrilling look at the volatility of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

By day, Robert Neville drives through the deserted roads of Los Angeles, hunting dormant vampires and searching for answers to the plague that wiped out humanity and stranded him as the lone survivor. At night, when the vampires stalk the streets, Robert shelters in his home, using alcohol to drown his mind haunted by memories of the past. Vampires, plagues, the apocalypse: At one point in Robert’s life these were mere legends. But now they are his reality, the backdrop of a personal hell … and he may not be alone.

Here are the confessions of a vampire: A hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual story of Louis de Pointe du Lac’s first two hundred years as one of the living dead. We begin on the night when Louis, disaffected and reluctant heir to a Louisiana plantation, is turned into a vampire by Lestat. As Louis struggles to retain the last residue of human feeling within him, he discovers he must commit the ultimate act: To break away from his creator and discover the new world to which he belongs — whatever the cost.

One postwar summer, country physician 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.

An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets … From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.

Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: The favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood and the best way to move a body. Not that she gets any credit. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.

This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. This one act leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.

Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is a landmark of Gothic suspense and a well-hewn blend of romance, obsession, and subtle horror. From its evocative first line (“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again”) to the unnamed narrator’s growing obsession with the mysterious death of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca is a stunning puzzle-box of a narrative that will keep you guessing until the final chilling moments.

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 of heart failure. Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by these inexplicable deaths and his attempt to solve the tape’s mystery before it’s too late — for everyone — assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Koji Suzuki’s masterful story of terror and suspense has spawned adaptations in film, television, and print across the globe. Consider it a must-read of the horror genre.

A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive that “only adds to McCarthy’s stature as a living master. It’s gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful” (San Francisco Chronicle). Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: Ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine in “the best horror novel of the new century” (Stephen King).

A beautifully designed box set of Stephen King’s early #1 bestsellers — Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, and The Shining — that will make the perfect gift for any horror fan.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a morality tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives. Also in this volume are “The Body Snatcher,” which charts the murky underside of Victorian medical practices, and “Olalla,” a tale of vampirism and “the beast within,” with a beautiful woman at its center.

Mariana Enriquez’s surreal and macabre short story collection blends together the horror of the supernatural with that of the inequality and violence of contemporary Argentina. From haunted houses to black magic and satanic rituals, these tales are bound to stay with you long after you’ve closed the book.

In what Henry James called a ‘trap for the unwary’, The Turn of the Screw tells of a nameless young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence or something else entirely?

There is something strange about Miranda Silver’s home. It’s been in the family for four generations which should make it a place of solace and protection for its owners. But this ancestral dwelling possesses an energy of its own and emerges as a key player along with Miranda, her twin brother Eliot, her mother Lily, and her father Luc. When Lily dies suddenly, Miranda starts to suffer from bizarre physical, emotional, and mental disorders. Is it all in her head or are there more sinister factors at play? Immerse yourself, if you dare, in this beautiful, eerie tale of hauntings, family legacies, and race.

This classic ghost story thriller follows Arthur Kipps, a thriving London solicitor, who is sent to a small town to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of a client. After his arrival, Arthur begins to witness mysterious sounds and images including a rocking chair in a deserted nursery, a child’s scream in the fog, and, of course, a woman dressed all in black. Nothing could have prepared Arthur for the horrors hidden within the house’s walls, and as long-buried secrets unfold, he realizes he may never be able to escape.

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 and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: The uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces have successfully reclaimed Manhattan south of Canal Street — aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. And then things start to go terribly wrong … At once a chilling horror story and a literary novel by a contemporary master, Zone One is a dazzling portrait of modern civilization in all its wretched, shambling glory.