Underrated Horror Novels to Read With the Lights Down Low

This underrated thriller from Scott Smith sees a group of friends on a spring break trip stumble upon a shocking horror in the Mexican jungle. What began as an entertaining day trip soon spirals out of control as the group finds themselves stranded amongst ancient ruins, as a terrifying and creeping presence begins to slowly — and grotesquely — chip away at their sanity.

Bill Schweigart’s Fatal Folklore Trilogy is a terrifying and thrilling riff on B-movie horror monsters. The books follow Ben McKelvie, a once-happy suburbanite who, after a horrific encounter with a monstrous beast in his neighborhood, finds himself crossing the country chasing down all manner of supernatural creatures.

Despite near-universal acclaim for The Haunting of Hill House and her short story The Lottery, Shirley Jackson’s other forays into horror are often oddly overlooked. This collection pulls together a number of Jackson’s most unsettling and dread-inducing stories and showcases the author’s near-unrivaled skill with the gothic and macabre.

William Goldman is best known as the mind behind The Princess Bride (both on the page and screen) and as a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter for “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.” What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle is that Goldman is also a deft hand at horror. Magic is the tale of Corky Withers, an odd but talented magician and ventriloquist who may be losing grip on his sanity.

This collection of supernatural frights from Elizabeth Gaskell is a pitch-perfect example of Gothic Horror. Drawing inspiration from local legends, fairy tales, and the society around her, Glaskell’s tales are unnerving, slow-burn exercises in sustained dread.

Swinging from the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest to the bayous of Louisiana, Deadlight Jack is a nightmarish and wonderfully strange tale of family feuds, buried secrets, supernatural power, and long-held grudges. The novel follows two (seemingly) elderly men with links to the supernatural as they find themselves thrown up against an otherworldly terror known as Deadlight Jack, masquerading as a stage magician.

The first in the Niceville Trilogy, this novel follows detective Nick Kavanaugh and his wife, Kate. The pair are drawn into a shadowy world hanging somewhere between life and death by the mysterious disappearance, and equally unsettling reappearance, of a young boy named Rainey Teague. What follows is a cascading and ever-widening nightmare underpinned by an ancient force lurking just beneath the façade of Niceville.