64 Of Your Favorite Horror Novels
This Riot Recommendation for favorite horror novels 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. From the quietly creepy to the boldly terrifying, we asked you to share your favorite horror novels, and you responded. Here are 64 of your favorites!
The Ritual by Adam Nevill
The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Annihiliation by Jeff VanderMeer
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
The Fisherman by John Langan
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
The Troop by Nick Cutter
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
Losing Christina by Caroline B Cooney
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
The Elementals by Michael McDowell
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
The Croning By Laird Barron
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
The Cipher by Kathe Koja
The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer
The Pine Deep Trilogy by Jonathan Maberry
The Stuff of Nightmares by Marlorie Blackman
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
It by Stephen King
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Monstrumology by Rick Yancy
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker
The Taking by Dean Koontz
The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn
Apparition by Michaelent Collings
At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
The Watchers by Dean Koontz
Let The Right One In by John A. Lindqvist
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Breed by Chase Novak
The Face by Dean Koontz
Long Lankin by Lindsay Barraclough
Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix
Misery by Stephen King
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
The Adversary Cycle by F. Paul Wilson
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Mr. B Gone by Clive Barker
Grimm Memorials by R. Patrick Gates
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert
Late Great Creature by Brock Brower
The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe
The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
