Riot Recommendation

Riot Recommendation: What Are Your Favorite Horror Novels?

S. Zainab Williams

Executive Director, Content

S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester, a New York Times bestseller. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

It’s the late 1990s and Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. A local schoolteacher comes in to return Targets and says: “There’s something on it.” Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape and says: “There’s another movie on this tape.”

Jeremy discovers that in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video.

“This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-turning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring.” — O: The Oprah Magazine


There’s nothing like a good fright to get the blood flowing, and you can always count on books for a dose of thrill and chill. May they be quietly creepy or boldly terrifying, tell us in the comments below: what are your favorite horror novels?

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