Ah… Halloween! One of the best periods of year! I always loved having people telling me what to read around Halloween, as I’ve been in love with the Horror genre ever since I were too young to remember. Which is why I thought I should do the same with my readers. So, without further blabbering, let’s get on to business!
10) “Tales Of Terror And Madness” by Edgar Allan Poe
When it comes to E.A Poe, be sure the list of Horror books will be quite a loooong one! This dude has always had a dark side, and there are lots of dark humoured stories about him running around on the internet.
Quick ad: I will have an entire article just for this guy, I like him way too much! 🙂
The fact that he was a person with a twisted mind, is highly proven in his works, E.A.P being one of the darkest writers to have ever existed.
“Tales Of Terror And Madness” is one of the books that prove his skill and his power of imagination were too good for this world!
Description:
“There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the passage above to describe the interior décor of Prince Prospero’s castle in “The Masque of the Red Death,” but he might just as easily have written it to describe the contents of this book. Its nineteen stories abound with characters—among them gibbering madmen, ominous doppelgängers, walled-up victims, and living-dead corpses—whose experiences are colored by the emotional responses Poe hoped to evoke.
Consider, if you will, the following tales of terror and madness:
The Fall of the House of Usher. The melancholy House of Usher was a crumbling pile whose sad decline was but a mirror of its family’s psychic state.
The Masque of the Red Death. The pestilence came like a thief in the night, and Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
The Tell-Tale Heart. The murderer protested that he wasn’t mad. His gruesome crime proved otherwise.
The Black Cat. Murder will out, as a consequence of what’s been walled in.
The Premature Burial. There are certain themes of which the interest is all absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. Or are they?
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. A mesmeric trance forestalled the worst ravages of the patient’s death—but it could do so only for so long.
The Cask of Amontillado. The unthinkable fate that awaited Fortunato in the nitre-crusted catacombs beneath the river’s bed only proved that he was the most ill-named of victims.
Hop-Frog. The last jest of the man in motley was hideous—and truly no laughing matter.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. A stowaway’s lot is never an easy one, especially when shipwreck, cannibalism, and the imminent threat of death shape it.
9) “House Of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski
Oh, what a deceiving novel! I just couldn’t lay my finger on a theory about this books and say “Yes, that’s exactly what happened there!” because I knew I wouldn’t be right.
Put simply, House of Leaves is one of the most frightening books ever written. From a fairly standard horror premise (a house is revealed to be slightly larger on the inside than is strictly possible) Danielewski spins out a dizzying tale involving multiple unreliable narrators, typographic mysteries, and looping footnotes that manage to drag the reader into the story and then make them doubt their own perception of that story.
It’s a trick no one else has managed to such dramatic effect, making this novel more of a participatory experience than any other work of literature—which, considering the dark madness at its core, isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience.
Description:
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth — musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies — the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story — of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
8) “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
I’m pretty sure there’s not a soul in this world to have never heard about Dracula, the Romanian vampire celebrity.
But… have you actually read the book? If not, it’s time to read the vampire novel that started it all. Unlike some of the charming vampires we see in pop culture today, Dracula is much darker, taking you down an evil and twisted storyline. You’ll find no sparkles or soul here, and trust me when I say that the book is muuuuch better than the movie!
Description:
“There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey, the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst the swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.”
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker’s hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
7) “Pet Sematary” by Stephen King
Of course, Stephen King couldn’t be missing from this list, and I have a feeling that he will be reminded more than once here.
However, he frequently blunts the terror of his stories with the richness and humanity of his characterizations and the sprawl of his narratives. Pet Sematary manages to be his most terrifying novel by dint of its simple, devastating concept: a magical cemetery where buried things come back to a sort-of life—but aren’t quite what they once were. From that simple idea King ramps up to a climax that gets under your skin in a fundamental way most horror stories fail to.
Description:
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself sometimes , dead is better…
6) “The Haunting Of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson
When you think about clichés in horror fiction, the haunted house is at the top of the list, an idea done so often it’s frequently an unintentional parody.
Shirley Jackson, however, was no ordinary writer, and she takes the concept of the haunted house and perfects it. The Haunting of Hill House is simply the best haunted house story ever written.
The scares come not just from the malevolent actions of a house that seems sentient and angry, but from the claustrophobia we experience from the novel’s unreliable narrator, Eleanor, whose descent into madness is slow and excruciating and only begins after we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security by the seeming relatability of her early persona.
Description:
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
5) “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury’s epic rumination on childhood and adulthood tells the story of a magical circus come to a small town, offering the residents dark gifts they weren’t aware they wanted—most notably the carousel that can change your physical age, making boys who yearn to be adults grow older, and middle-aged men and women who yearn for their lost youth to grow younger.
Bradbury knows the worst horror in the world is losing the natural order of your life, and perfectly captures the combination of dread and excitement everyone experiences as they crack the mysteries separating them from adulthood.
Description:
When the carnival comes to town, two boys unearth the terrifying and horrible secrets that lurk within Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show and learn the consequences of wishes, as a sinister and evil force is at work in Green Town, Illinois.
4) “Psycho” by Robert Bloch
If you’re into horror, you’re no stranger to Psycho. But let’s recap one of the best horror plots of all time anyway: inspired by the real-life story of psychotic murderer Ed Gein, Norman Bates and his Mother own the Bates motel, with the unlit neon sign out front.
When a woman checks into the motel one night, Norman can’t help but spy on her. Displeased, Mother plans to rectify her son’s behaviour by eliminating the woman, and anything that might purge Norman of his dark thoughts.
Description:
The story was all too real-indeed this classic was inspired by the real-life story of Ed Gein, a psychotic murderer who led a dual life. Alfred Hitchcock too was captivated, and turned the book into one of the most-loved classic films of all time the year after it was released. Norman Bates loves his Mother. She has been dead for the past twenty years, or so people think. Norman knows better though.
He has lived with Mother ever since leaving the hospital in the old house up on the hill above the Bates motel. One night Norman spies on a beautiful woman that checks into the hotel as she undresses. Norman can’t help but spy on her. Mother is there though. She is there to protect Norman from his filthy thoughts. She is there to protect him with her butcher knife.
3) “Burnt Offerings” by Robert Marasco
At first, haunted house books were about intrepid investigators unraveling the secrets of a cursed fixer-upper (see: The Haunting of Hill House). But Robert Marasco knows what really scares us: Money.
Burnt Offerings created the formula of a family getting a fabulous deal on a piece of property they can’t possibly afford, then being brutally punished for their sins. In this 1973 novel, Dad tries to drown Junior, Mom becomes an obsessive neat freak and Grandma’s health fails, until the only thing they can do is run screaming into the night, losing their entire deposit.
Every modern haunted house book about a deal that is too good to be true — from The Amityville Horror to The Shining — has its roots here.
Description:
Ben and Marian Rolfe are desperate to escape a stifling summer in their tiny Brooklyn apartment, so when they get the chance to rent a mansion in upstate New York for the entire season for only $900, it’s an offer that’s too good to refuse. There’s only one catch: behind a strange and intricately carved door in a distant wing of the house lives elderly Mrs. Allardyce, and the Rolfes will be responsible for preparing her meals.
But Mrs. Allardyce never seems to emerge from her room, and it soon becomes clear that something weird and terrifying is happening in the house. As the suspense builds towards a revelation of what really lies behind that locked door, the Rolfes will discover that their cheap vacation rental comes at a terrible cost . . .
The basis for a classic 1976 film adaptation and an acknowledged influence on Stephen King’s The Shining, Burnt Offerings is one of the most original and scariest haunted house novels ever written. This edition, the first in decades, features a new introduction by award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones.
2) “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter
A gallery of darkly glittering fairy tales, Angela Carter’s 1979 book takes “Sleeping Beauty,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Bluebeard” — among others — and mutates them until they’re poisonous draughts of sex and death, garnished with baroque curlicues of sadomasochism and cruelty.
A decadent, throbbing book in which the Beast licks off Beauty’s flesh, the Erl-King is garroted with his own hair, and Little Red Riding Hood is warned about men who are “hairy on the inside” before throwing her clothes in the fire and seducing the wolf, it resulted in Neil Jordan’s feverish and ravishing movie, The Company of Wolves.
Description:
In The Bloody Chamber – which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves – Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.
1) “IT” by Stephen King
Maybe it is a classic choice, and I’m sure you have expected that, but IT is, by far, one of the most elaborate horror books I’ve ever laid hands on.
After reading the book, I started hearing tons of people blabbering about how scary the movie was, and I would be like: “Are you sure…? I mean, have you read the book???”
And if you didn’t read it, I recommend you to. You (probably) won’t regret it. 🙂
These being said, I have to give a shout-out to blogger Brain Wars, as promised in the previous post. :))
You can go check out his blog, this dude has quite some quality content there (though I won’t tell you what he writes about, go find out yourselves)
Please let me know if you’ve read any of these books, or if there are any books you would’ve liked to see here, but didn’t.
Till the next time, Happy Halloween!!👻🎃
LOL (Lots Of Love), ♡Patry♡
Patry's writings 
Eeek! Great choices! I’ve only not read #2 House of Leaves and eeeek I grew up on Ash Street! EEK! 😂 Will have to read it. Thanks for the suggestion! 🎃
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Sounds cool! I’m glad you liked the books 😊
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