10 Best Horror Books: Recommendations from an Intrepid Reader

There is nothing better than to make tea, wrap yourself in a plaid and plunge into a creepy book.And before going to bed to check that there is definitely no one under the bed, and sweetly fall asleep with the light on.The main thing is to approach the choice of literature competently. In this article we have collected works that

“Spiral” Junji Ito – surprise and horror

Recently at a manga exhibition came across a booth dedicated to genres. It had the horror genre on it, and I wondered how static images could be scary at all. In my mind, films in this genre have a lot more tools to scare the viewer. And it’s not just about scrimmers and other cheap tricks.

The first film on the stand was “Spiral” by Junji Ito. I came home and immediately sat down to read it – how wrong I was. It was creepy, disgusting and as uncomfortable as possible. I couldn’t stop reading, just like that meme with Gosling looking through binoculars.

This manga is about a city with a spiral curse hanging over it. All life processes are reduced to spirals, architecture, biology, weather phenomena. And here are young guys trying to make sense of it all. It’s hard to explain the plot, you have to see it 🙂

Scary with a mixture of body horror, creepy psychological thriller and hopelessness worse than Yuri Bykov. It’s not clear what the main characters should do. You don’t want to put yourself in their shoes.

So yes, this was my first horror film I read, highly recommended. Even though it’s not really a romance in the literal sense of the word. There should be an anime coming out soon based on “Spiral” – from Netflix, by the way.

Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” – I regret reading it

These are collections of short stories with a variety of plots – there are mystical, and about ordinary psychopaths. Somehow I really remember some of them, unfortunately. And it seems to be nothing like many writers, but the description, the meaning… Br-r-r.

One of the scariest stories is “The Forbidden” about Candyman, creepy. About how evil can never be destroyed. That always scares me – the hopelessness, the longing.

And then there’s In the Mountains, In the Cities. It’s about two villages whose inhabitants compete with each other in a very extravagant way. There more frightened the atmosphere of abandonment, when in the middle of nowhere people do all sorts of wild things. You know, like in the film “The Wicker Man” or “Solstice”.

“The Tenant” by Roland Topor – staying in the same flat with the tenant

I was very affected by Rolan Topor’s novel “The Tenant”. It’s the one Polanski made a film based on. I read the book about 20 years ago. It’s chamberlike and disgusting in places. A man is confined in space. A man sees all sorts of things – and in his home, which is supposed to be a fortress and protection. It’s like a ghost, and it’s like our hero is going crazy. And the flat was so difficult to find and rent. The neighbours are trespassing. And try to prove you’re right. A man alone against a whole house full of neighbours. Conflicts are expressed in revenge against other neighbours.

“The Post” by Dmitry Glukhovsky – listened to it during the day time

When I started listening, I didn’t realise it was a thriller of sorts. The first couple of chapters all was normal, I thought I would fall asleep under the book. And then the worst started. I had to switch it on only during the day.

I don’t want to spoiler, but the gist of it is this. After the Civil War, Russia fell apart into many separate states, including the separate state of Muscovy. On the border there are posts that do not allow strangers inside Moscovia. At one of these posts, ordinary life takes place. The main character, a teenager, falls in love with a local girl. He wants to do something cool so that she will appreciate it and fall in love too. So he decides to step outside the post – into someone else’s territory. After that, the full thrash begins, which reaches the scale of a scary horror by the end of the book. By the way, Glukhovsky is a cool storyteller.

“Hell House” by Richard Matheson – was scary to keep reading

“Hell House” – about the classic “house with something bad in it” and the group of people investigating it, where both scientists and psychics have popped in.

The novel is well plotted. It’s dusty, dark and menacing. It still reeks of violence and depravity. The author even took the time to address each character’s little personal tragedy.

In Hell House, they created a character who took typical human qualities to an absolute and managed to continue the hell being created on earth after his own death. Well, that’s not a spoiler, that information is learnt in the first 50 pages.

And the book had a memorable ending with the unravelling of the main villain’s identity that struck me to the core.

“Christmasland” by Joe Hill – horrifying and celebratory

Also memorable for me was the novel “Christmasland” by Joe Hill – King’s son. It is horrifying how such a jolly, warm holiday is turned into hell. Well and the abundance of disgusting and bloody scenes is also impressive.

The heroine – a girl named Vic – as a child owned a bicycle, on which she could move to different places. As a child, she encounters a vampire ghost who has been kidnapping children for hundreds of years. He races a black Rolls-Royce with the licence plate “Nosferatu”. In this fight, she loses the bike and, growing up, thinks it was a figment of her imagination. The nightmare returns when a vampire ghost kidnaps her son. She will have to go after him in the psychopath’s imaginary world, Christmasland, and fight him once again.

In addition to the main characters, there are many secondary characters that are somehow connected to the main plot.

“Gerald’s Game” by Stephen King is a read about the voices in your head

The story is banal, and that’s the horror of it. A couple rented a cabin in the woods to have fun playing games. He handcuffed her to the headboard of the bed, put the key in the pocket of his dressing gown, which he tossed aside. And was about to start, but then a blood clot – that’s it, instant death. And the heroine finds herself alone, handcuffed to the bed, in a forest cottage, where there is no one around.

And then the whole plot revolves around what’s going on in the heroine’s mind. The voices in her head.

The helplessness and the absolute reality of what was happening drove me crazy. The unrelenting panic, the numbness and the anticipation of the denouement.

Most likely, now there will not be such an effect – Stephen King and his books have turned into films, actors, bright pictures. But once it was the most real psychological thriller in the imagination!

Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” – really caught the moment

I still remember the creepy moment. Two o’clock in the morning, I’m sitting reading “The Graveyard”, with my three-year-old son asleep in the next room. And at exactly the moment when Gage comes home from the grave, the door swings open and my son runs crying to me. Bricks came down in a big way.

“Misery” by Stephen King is a dive into creepy descriptions

Very it keeps you in suspense, and it gets really creepy when reading it.

If without much spoilers, it’s a book about a writer who finds himself captured by his psychotic fan. She forces him to write a new novel the way she wants and bullies him in every way possible. It was creepy from the descriptions of her abuse, very subtle. Well and worried for the main character, especially in the moments when he was on a thread or almost could save himself, but something did not work out.

“Night Shift” by Stephen King – I was scared twice

The short story Graveyard Shift holds a special place with me. Firstly, I really dislike rats, it’s one of my main phobias. Secondly, the theme of descending into madness is always very frightening to me. Losing control of my thoughts and mind is another phobia of mine. So that’s a real combo Mr King’s got for me here.