Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Horror Novels of the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s
50
items Sections
5
Horror Novels, 1970s
Horror Novels, 1980s
Horror Novels, 1990s
Horror Novels, 2000s
Horror Novels, 2010s
Horror Novels, 1970s
Ramsey Campbell's debut novel. I am not all that familiar with his work before this, but from what I understand, he was a disciple of HP Lovecraft for a long, long time. This novel is when he really, truly, finally grew into his own voice.
The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell
I put the BOOK on the 1970s list for novels but NOT the 1970s list for movies because I wanted lists that recommended things that most other lists DON'T. That is especially true of THE EXORCIST. People fall all over themselves praising the movie, but...
The Exorcist
Yeah, yeah, yeah…yet another one of those “eccentric millionaire hires a bunch of paranormal experts to spend a weekend in a creepy house where horrible things happened” books, but this ain't your grandma's Victorian-style ghost story. As one reviewe...
Hell House (Richard Matheson)
Unlike the movie, this book opens with protagonist Karyn Beatty being assaulted in her home. She and her husband Roy go stay in a secluded mountain village (Drago) to get away from the scene of her trauma, so she can recover. Of course, they don't kn...
The Howling (Gary Brandner)
Love it or hate it (SIDE NOTE: I hate it), this is the book from which pretty much all modern vampire stories have descended. (Gee, Anne, thanks so much for THE VAMPIRE DIARIES. Now excuse me while I go castrate myself with a dull butter knife.)
Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
Having come out around the same time as another “creepy kid” story known as THE OMEN (which was a movie first and received the novelization treatment second), this book is viewed by some as a distant cousin/pale imitation of that. However, I assure y...
The Other by Thomas Tryon
As far as I can tell, this is one of the very first “nature run amok” stories. True, it came out three years after WILLARD, but it is nothing like that story at all, other than the rat element. It is brutal and gory. There is an early scene involving...
The Rats (James Herbert)
Oddly enough, although his books have had quite an impact on a lot of horror tropes, and people are familiar with concepts in them (STEPFORD WIVES), not a lot of people know Ira Levin's name! That's sad, and I want to do my part to fix that.
Rosemary's Baby (Ira Levin)
Yes, this one is often recommended on horror novel lists like this, but what can I say? Sometimes even a fan of left-of-the-dial, lesser-known works like me has to give credit where it is due and include some of the more familiar, mainstream names.
The Shining (Stephen King)
For the love of God, ignore COMMUNION and all Whitley Streiber's ranting about alien abduction and focus on his fiction, especially this intelligently-written work.
The Wolfen (Whitley Strieber)
Horror Novels, 1980s
Love it or hate it (the scale seems to tip in favor of the latter), this is one of the books that helped usher in the subgenre of splatterpunk, which you are ALSO free to love or hate. (Personally, I love it.)
The Cellar (Richard Laymon)
Michael Slade is a pseudonym for what was a trio of lawyers-turned-writers. This is their debut novel, which was also the first appearance of the “Special X” branch of the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RCMP). What was great about Slade from the star...
Headhunter (Michael Slade)
Sometimes the first novel in a series can be a chore to read because you need to go through the “growing pains” of the author setting up the book's rules. It is about a man named Harry Keogh, who has the ability to speak to the dead. Eventually he is...
Necroscope #1 - Brian Lumley
Another book (like Richard Laymon's, which is elsewhere on this list) that helped usher in the era of splatterpunk. You could also say that movies like WRONG TURN are direct descendants of this book.
Off Season (Jack Ketchum)
Many moons ago, it seemed like Dean Koontz could do no wrong. This was one of my favorites of his. Two sisters visit their old hometown, only to find no one alive. The few bodies they find are either mutilated, or reveal some strange form of death, s...
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
Although Bloch's first novel was definitely the basis for the Hitchcock movie, this book had NO influences on the film PSYCHO 2. (The next book, PSYCHO HOUSE, was also unrelated to PSYCHO 3.) In the book, Norman escapes a mental hospital and heads to...
Psycho 2 (Robert Bloch)
The first (and, in my opinion, BEST) Hannibal Lecter story. This one concerns former FBI Agent Will Graham being pulled out of retirement to help catch a serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy, who has killed two families and operates on a lunar cycl...
Red Dragon (Thomas Harris)
She wrote the book that was the basis for DEAD RINGERS, but this one is far more satisfying for my tastes. The book opens during the end of World War 2, where several men in the Belzec death camp survive unharmed. Decades later, the son of one of the...
The Tribe by Bari Wood
These days he is known more for his science fiction, but Iain Banks's first novel is quite a shocking departure from that. It is written from a first-person perspective, and our narrator is 17-year-old Francis Cauldhame ("Frank"), describing his chil...
The Wasp Factory
Some might cite SWAN SONG as Mcammon's masterpiece, but for my money, that title goes to this combination werewolf/WW II spy story.
The Wolf's Hour (Robert R. McCammon)
Horror Novels, 1990s
A horror fan's true trial by fire if there ever was one. Not only do we have the titular Big Head (which is supposedly some sort of inbred monster), but then we have a pair of normal-looking (but not normal-acting) backwoods hicks who go around rapin...
The Bighead - by Edward Lee
An obscure title and author that I was made aware of thanks to Fangoria's Nightmare Library section. Blake House is literally driving its occupants to suicide with some unholy power, and a police psychologist must rely on a paranormal hobby to pinpoi...
Blake House by Adrian Savage
Not only was this Koja's debut novel, but it was also the first book from Dell's “Abyss” line, which was meant to publish edgier content. It certainly did, as this book is like EVIL DEAD on a bad acid trip. That might make it sound like the book is n...
The Cipher by Kathe Koja
Even though it veers toward some unbelievable elements within the last 10-15% of the book, I think this may very well be my favorite Slade book. There is a serial killer loose in San Francisco. However, this is mixed in with the devious activities of...
Cutthroat (Special X, #3) by Michael Slade
I don't know why people were so shocked at the size of this book. Okay, Barker was initially known for his short story collections THE BOOKS OF BLOOD, but apparently they forgot his book prior to this was WEAVEWORLD, which was almost just as long. At...
Imajica (Clive Barker)
Another in Dell's “Abyss” line, which were a series of titles that pushed the boundaries of what horror was and/or could be. This one follows follows Clare Beckett, a 33-year-old accountant haunted by her brother's death, who experiences a nervous br...
Lost Futures by Lisa Tuttle
This debut novel follows Nothing, a teenage runaway who discovers he's a vampire and embarks on a journey to find his birth family, only to get swept up with a trio of hip, hedonistic vampires (Zillah, Molochai, Twig) heading to New Orleans' French Q...
Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite
A super rare find, this. It is about a Japanese woman, Motoko Leigh, who is transformed into a supernatural warrior after being haunted by spirits and her past traumas.
Makoto (Tor Horror) by Kelley Wilde
Melanie Tem's Prodigal is a dark coming-of-age horror novel narrated by 11-year-old Lucy Brill, focusing on her family's unraveling after her rebellious older brother, Ethan, disappears from a juvenile home, with his "ghost" haunting Lucy and her sis...
Prodigal by Melanie Tem
Another Dell/Abyss title. This one centers on a serial killer who believes his murders are directed by a "premium channel" of lurid images in his mind, and the attempts to stop him by a troubled policeman and a young prodigy.
Tunnelvision (R. Patrick Gates)
Horror Novels, 2000s
I believe this was one of, if not THE, first book King wrote after concluding the epic, heavy DARK TOWER series. It was him blowing off steam, and it is a hell of a fun read.
Cell: A Novel - Stephen King
The story follows the elite Special X unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as they investigate a series of brutal killings where victims are found with swastikas carved into their foreheads. The investigation leads the team into a dark we...
Swastika - Slade, Michael: Books
If James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon dropped acid and tried to write a horror novel, they might create a mammoth like this. The book is about a fictional documentary film called THE NAVIDSON RECORD, which is about a family that discovers their new house ...
House of Leaves: Mark Z. Danielewski
Slacker friends John and David stumble upon a hallucinogenic drug called "Soy Sauce" that lets them see into other dimensions, encountering interdimensional monsters and a looming alien invasion from a hellish realm, forcing these reluctant, foul-mou...
John Dies at the End by Wong & Pargin
The narrative follows lonely, bullied 12-year-old Oskar in 1980s Sweden, who befriends his mysterious, pale new neighbor, Eli, a girl who never goes out in daylight and seems to be eternally young, though she's an ancient vampire needing blood to sur...
Let the Right One In: John Ajvide Lindqvist
This extreme horror isn't really my thing anymore (being a dad has softened me considerably), but it seems like this guy has published quite a few novels that have met with moderate success, so I am putting him on the list. In this book, we meet a ma...
The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White
Brian Keene's The Rising is a gritty zombie apocalypse novel where a particle accelerator experiment rips open a demonic portal, reanimating the dead as possessed, intelligent zombies. The story follows construction worker Jim Thurmond, who, after lo...
The Rising: Keene, Brian
A book that I really wish I hadn't read. It is about a young woman named Lisa who is kidnapped by men who want to give her a starring role in a snuff film. She makes an unthinkable deal to save her own life at the expense of someone else: a woman and...
Survivor (Gonzalez, J. F.)
Lionel Shriver's book is a haunting epistolary novel that explores a mother's guilt after her sociopathic son commits a horrific school massacre, delving into her ambivalence toward motherhood and the unsettling origins of his evil. Told through Eva ...
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Shriver, Lionel)
Just what it sounds like: a survival guide to the zombie apocalypse, written as if it were a serious, real guide, which (like SCREAM) takes lessons from all the zombie fiction, so that people hopefully won't make the same mistakes. I would expect not...
The Zombie Survival Guide: Protection from Dead
Horror Novels, 2010s
Bird Box by Josh Malerman is a post-apocalyptic horror novel about Malorie, a woman protecting two young children in a world overrun by mysterious entities that drive anyone who sees them to violent madness. To survive, they must navigate a river bli...
Bird Box: A Novel - Malerman, Josh: Books
Grady Hendrix's The Final Girl Support Group follows Lynnette Tarkington, a "final girl" survivor of a massacre, who attends a monthly therapy group with five other women who survived similar horrors, but their fragile peace shatters when one member ...
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
The Fisherman by John Langan is a literary horror novel about two widowers, Abe and Dan, who bond over fishing as a way to cope with profound grief after losing their wives, but their quest for solace leads them to a mysterious, cursed creek with anc...
The Fisherman
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay is a psychological horror novel about the Barrett family, whose lives unravel when 14-year-old Marjorie shows signs of schizophrenia, leading them to believe she's demonically possessed and to star in a reality ...
A Head Full of Ghosts (Tremblay, Paul)
My Heart Is a Chainsaw follows Jade Daniels, a half-Indigenous, horror-obsessed outcast in a gentrifying Idaho town, who uses slasher film logic to interpret real-life murders unfolding around her, especially after a new family's arrival triggers a c...
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen King's The Outsider starts as a gripping police procedural in Flint City, Oklahoma, where beloved Little League coach Terry Maitland is the prime suspect in the brutal murder of a young boy, with overwhelming physical evidence like fingerprin...
The Outsider: A Novel by Stephen King
Four estranged university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness, taking a shortcut that leads them deep into ancient, unsettling woods. Lost and tense, they discover a ritualistic, pagan site with bones and artifacts, reali...
The Ritual: A Novel: Nevill, Adam: 9780312641849
The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker pits supernatural detective Harry D'Amour against his nemesis, the Hell Priest (Pinhead), in a brutal quest for power where the demon seeks to conquer Hell by absorbing the souls of Earth's last magicians, forcing ...
The Scarlet Gospels
Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls is a time-traveling horror/thriller about Harper Curtis, a time-hopping serial killer in Chicago who stalks and murders promising young women (the "Shining Girls") across decades, guided by a supernatural house that g...
The Shining Girls: A Novel by Lauren Beukes
The Troop by Nick Cutter is a brutal body-horror survival novel about a boy scout troop on a remote Canadian island that encounters a starving, infected man carrying a horrifying, bioengineered parasite that transforms its hosts, turning their bondin...
The Troop (Nick Cutter)