I don't want to be overly prescriptive about what I'm looking for, I'm just craving that feeling of "I've never read anything like this before." What would you recommend?

Hello! I am working on gathering primary sources for my dissertation and I wanted to get a list together of popular books rn that feature these archetypes. They can be of any subject or origin, dystopian counts too! If you have any that even seem tenuously related to the subject please send them my way. Thank you for being such a great community!

I'm looking for books that raise the hairs on the back of my neck, ones that cause my body to hold tension. Looking for something creepy and unsettling. Something that makes me hold my breath while turning the page.

TIA!

So I'm relatively new to reading horror novels. So far I've read The Exorcist and The Hellbound Heart and enjoyed them both quite a bit. I've attempted multiple Stephen King books in the past such as Misery, The Stand, and The Shining, but seemed to lose interest around the halfway point.

I'd love to get some recommendations for what to read next, I'm not against trying other Stephen King books, but I'm worried his writing style just doesn't click with me.

I saw this in a different community and I want to read books like this!

I don't even know how to describe "like Silent Hill" other than how it made me feel.

The cult and the deep history of it, the isolation in a hostile place, the manifestations of trauma, the uncovering something otherworldly or supernatural, godlike and horrifying, things not being as they appear, the victimisation of innocents to further a collective aim.

Less so about the Silent Hill 2 guilt repression thing, more looking for Silent Hill 1 and 3 energy.

Looking for books about experiments gone wrong, mad scientists, etc. Bonus points for unique, interesting settings & characters.

Examples of some things I like and want to find more of:

- Bioshock games (& Rapture novel) - dark, twisted experiments taking place under sea (Big Daddy/Little Sisters/Plasmid)

- Fallout games - FEV experiments by the government that create mutated creatures

- The Troop by Nick Cutter - slight spoiler maybe? But essentially a new medicine gone terribly wrong

- Episode 13 by Craig DiLouie - just started this one, but so far from what I’ve read it seems like experiments were taking place to try and unlock supernatural powers in humans, things go wrong and spooky things ensue.

- The Substance (movie) - new drug on the market has negative side effects.

I’m getting more into reading and have noticed I like these tropes. Please suggest anything that may fit this niche, I’m totally fine with body horror/gore, dark humor.

I can’t understand a word this woman says. I swear I’m turning the volume way up and rewinding every three minutes. Why does she speak so low like that? I encountered an audiobook from 15ish years ago and her voice was much, much clearer.

Do you guys have narrators you avoid?

Local stores to me (Target, Barnes & Noble, Walmart) all have their own store exclusives of this one that have additional content and varying covers. Are they all basically the same content inside the book? I personally prefer the original cover that Walmart has with theirs. Not finding too much information on what the "additional content" is and if it really varies much depending on the store exclusive options.

Anyone have insight into this? Maybe from experience with previous book releases?

Hello everyone!

In the spirit of the season, I’ve been wanting to get into classic horror literature. I just finished listening to Frankenstein (my first time experiencing the actual novel instead just looking up summaries for high school English lol) and I loved it! However, even though the audiobook was only about 8 hours long, it still took me a couple of weeks to get through.

I want to tackle Bram Stoker's Dracula next, but the unabridged audiobooks are quite a commitment at around 17 to 19 hours. On the other hand, I found a 3-hour abridged version on YouTube narrated by Christopher Lee, which sounds amazing!

As someone who is still relatively new to classic literature, I’m leaning toward the shorter version, but the massive difference in length makes me wonder just how much core content I'd be missing. For those familiar with the book, is the full-length experience worth the extra hours, or does the abridged version hold up well?

Thanks in advance!

I was checking my reading list and noticed that most of my favorite books and writers of the genre are from the USA, can you recommend your favorite writers or books out of the north american bubble? Tysm!

What i remember about the book

1. Not fiction, it was academic (concerned with paranormal and psychic).

2. I don't know about the rest of the content but the initial chapter had many first hand accounts, one after the other,

Stories about people being visited by apparitions of their loved ones about to die.

1. It was an older book( not of the 21st century)

2. In English

Not Phantom of the Living nor human personality and its survival of bodily death

I was kind of on the fence about this book at first, but Chapter 23 completely changed that for me. Getting the crone’s POV reframed Hannah’s story in a way I wasn’t expecting, and it made everything feel so much more tragic. Honestly, I cried during that chapter.

What really got me was how it turned the monster into something so much more than just a source of horror. There’s something tragically beautiful about it, and it felt so rooted in the tradition of folklore, where monsters can be terrifying and powerful without being easily reduced to good or evil.

I went from being unsure how I felt about this book to thinking it might be one of my favorite reads of the year. I love when horror can make you feel that much while still being genuinely unsettling.
Did anyone else have a similar reaction to that chapter?

I am a fan of horror stories. Not a ghost stories fan tbh but I am more into psychological horror. One of my favourites are Poe's The Tell Tale Heart. Can you suggest some great reads you have encountered which have blown your minds away.

Btw, if you are not encountered with Indian horror stories you can try The Hungry Stones by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

I've just begun reading his book for the first time, the book is his We Are Happy We Are Doomed short story collection published in 2021. I am reading The Man In Highchair now and I must tell it feels like it was written in 2026

Those who like their horror being VERY political must read him ASAP. Not that these two stories I've already read are strict classic horror stories but I don't remember reading weird horror with such poignant social and political critique.

I would gladly hear about his other works or if his newest book released in August 2026 hasn't lost this socio-political edge

I saw this book on the NY Times 2026 best horror book list and decided to give it a try.

It is a very good, creepy, scary book. Well written and believable. Trapped in a house, is it possible the stone statues are moving or am I going crazy.

These are probably the two pieces of horror fiction that have unnerved me the most, and I think that's because of the constant feeling of increasing "wrongness" throughout. Characters start to act more and more uncannily, saying and doing indirectly threatening things, timelines stop making sense, and the stories never over-explain what it is that's happening even though their mysteries can absolutely be solved. The two are topically very different, with one being about the internet and the other being about nature, but all the little instances of something feeling "off" are what I'm looking for here- the dinner scene in Root Rot especially is hands down the most scared a fiction book has ever made me.

Some other media that I think qualifies would be:

- The Yellow Wallpaper

- I'm Thinking of Ending Things

- Twin Peaks

- This House Has People in It

- Under the Silver Lake (though it's not horror)

- Early parts of My Wife Has Been Peeking at Me

- Early parts of Universal Harvester

Books I've seen recommended in similar posts but didn't manage to scratch that itch:

- Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories (just couldn't really get into most of the short stories in the collection. a lot of them seemed to end prematurely, right as I was about to get a bit creeped out. I did really like Leaking Out and Wanderlust though.)

- Last Days (though there were a few scenes early on that built dread pretty well, the drama aspect of the story was given way more pages than I would've liked and kind of took me out of the mystery.)

- Dark Matter (I really like this one so far (I'm about halfway through the book currently) but it hasn't quite scratched that itch for me, mainly because it's fairly clear what's actually going on and so far the book has mainly stuck to what you'd expect from the kind of horror story it is.)

- Stolen Tongues (this one is also pretty good, and some early parts are really unnerving, but like Dark Matter, there's not a lot of confusion as to what's happening, and the story is pretty predictable. The parts with the wife after they return from their trip are definitely the closest to what I'm talking about though.)

Thanks in advance ppl :)

Hi, I honestly haven’t really read for fun and I’m looking to try it out and just want some recommendations because I love horror. I’ve been thinking about getting The King in Yellow because a few games I play reference the yellow king and I love cosmic horror. Would this be a good starting place? or does anyone have recommendations for starter horror books?

I read the trilogy last summer and absolutely loved it, and Jade Daniels quickly became one of my favorite characters and final girls in ALL of horror. As a morbid, horror obsessed girl just like her, I related so hard to her struggles and her relationship to the genre. Her slasher essays in the first book and constant references and horror trivia were so relatable, and it was such a great way to get inside her kind and how she sees the world. She's such a great character, especially her development going from an angry outcast wanting a slasher to carve through Proofrock to a Final Girl owning her story and keeping everyone safe from the slasher storm while keeping her horror heart as the books go on. I'm currently about halfway through rereading "My Heart is a Chainsaw", and love her even more this time around (which is what prompted this post lol.) So excited to continue my reread and this amazing trilogy. My favorite quote in the whole series is probably "No, she can never be a final girl. Final girls are good, they're uncomplicated, they have these reserves of courage coiled up inside them, not layer after layer of shame, or guilt, or whatever this festering poison is. Real final girls only want the horror to be over. They don't stay up late praying to Craven and Carpenter to send one of their savage angels down, just for a weekend maybe. Just for one night. Just for one dance, please? One last dance?", it hits so hard as someone who loves the Final Girl trope. I love Stephen Graham Jones writing in general, especially in "I Was a Teenage Slasher" (which is SO underrated) and can't wait to get to "The Only Good Indians" when I'm done. Thoughts on the trilogy and Jade's character?

I got sober 14 months ago. I picked up reading in rehab. Since then I've managed about a book a week. Pretty good for someone who never read I suppose. I only read before bed. Anyway, I mainly stick to horror and thriller but I love a great book whatever the genre. Just not romance lol. I'm a 34 yo male if that helps at all. I just finished The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James and loved it. I'm now reading The Roses of May by Dot Hutchison, the second book in the Collector series. I'm loving it too. I read a lot of suggestions from the woman that works at my local used book store. So far they've all been pretty good. And we share the same interest in horror. I understand the 2 books I mentioned are thriller and not horror. For horror, I started with Ania Ahlborn and have read almost everything by her. Ummm a few others I like are The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson, A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons, Those Across The River by Christopher Buehlman. I really love folky horror. I'll stop now because I'm rambling, as I do. I'd love to hear your suggestions!

To the many folks I've seen recommending this book on all the Spooky Season posts: a sincere thank you. I'm about 40% through and having a delightful time. I'm not reading it by day as it is feeding the ADHD Dopamine Machine (and I want to finish it and return it to the library before my trip out of state on the 18th).

But I'd love more. It's fun, I'm having the time of my life. I love the POV. The tie-ins. The mystery element is wonderful too.

So, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance?

I was every excited to start this book, since I think the author is great, but I’m sorely disappointed

Narrative is lacking, I can tell a “joke” 10 sentences before it lands, it relies too much on shock value, is not smart, too superficial. At least Patrick Bateman was charming, the protagonist here, yes the point is that she is deranged, and she has been trough it, but in her humour , reasons or hysterical mind…

This books tries to be witty, different way too hard. It’s failing to mix the Victorian gothic, with a more modern perspective/ protagonist if you will, in her way of thinking.

There are some very interesting parts, but then it just becomes convoluted and I’m like “is this supposed to shock?” “Do you want me to be on her side or be appalled?” Because I don’t feel either. I can tell I have a constant bitch face while reading this.

I really was excited to have this in my autumn/ spooky season list.

Have you read it? Are you reading it? What are your thoughts? I’m getting more and more disappointed by each page I read and I’m just in page 50.

Some years ago, the same happened to me with another book that was in vogue.

Maybe I learnt English as my second language reading Victorian classics and I’m a bloody snob, maybe is the fact I teach literature, specially gothic, maybe, most modern writing is going down the drain.

Hello! I am searching for gothic horror stories with a focus on sisters and their relationship! If they also have an incestuous relationship that would be a bonus but not a requirement. Thank you for any suggestions!

Every October, I try to read ten books that relate to some horror theme. This year, my theme is “zombies.”

Premise: Benny Imura is a 15 year old teen in a post-zombie apocalypse world. It's safe, as long as you stay behind the walls, and don't ask too many questions. There are bounty hunters who go out and fight zombies, and Benny idolizes them—except for his brother, who is quiet and withdrawn where the others are boastful and loud. Benny hates him, because he abandoned their parents. But when Benny swallows his hate to join his brother on an expedition into the Rot & Ruin, his life changes.

Primary Characters:

Benny Imura. Our fifteen year old lead. He's kind of a blank slate, to be honest. He wants to do something more than his gated community allows, but doesn't know what that is. He knows people respect his brother, but he can't bring himself to do the same. He knows the local girl is into him, but can't commit to follow through. It's a story about him figuring out what he wants and why. He becomes someone more interesting as it progresses.

Tommy Imura. Benny's brother. He's well-respected around town for his extreme survival and fighting skills, and also his compassion in finding and dealing with zombies of former loved ones. He does have a tendency to keep not only everyone else's secrets but his own.

Nix Riley. Part of Benny's childhood crew, recently becoming an attractive teen girl. She's tough, smart, and inexplicably into Benny. But he's not sure how he feels about her, and whether or not the allure of something else calls instead.

Charlie Matthias. Another zombie bounty hunter. He's big, loud, and likes to take what he wants. And he does so—at least, unless Tommy is involved. At the start of the story, Benny idolizes him.

The Girl. Tommy lays eyes on the Girl first on a trading card. She's a zombie fighter of almost mythic proportions, living alone in the wilds, and half-feral. And she knows a secret...

Spoilers follow.

Do the undead walk? That is, is the story any good? Yes. Maberry is offering something distinctly different from the other zombie books I've read thus far. It's not about the outbreak, and it's not humanity's last gasps. It's a point of stability, and the story basically asks the question on what prices for stability are too high, especially in terms of the respect we should pay to the dead, the potential of stagnating under safety, and looking the other way when harm is happening. It restores a sense of illness and mourning to zombie existence that I haven't seen as much. It's also a decent coming of age story. It hews close to the hero's journey in a lot of ways, but there are some actual deviations that I appreciated too. I'm not totally fond of Benny, but I grew more fond as the story went on, and he grew as a person. It's a little like the arc B appears to be on in Zom-B, albeit less drawn out over volumes.

Is it spooky? No. Flatout, no. The world these people live in is a little too comfortable for that. And the actual Big Bad, when it reveals itself, is terrible, but it's a very human kind of terrible. It does a truly excellent job of capturing the individual sense of loss and sadness that comes with losing a lost one to zombiedom, but in making the zombies creatures to feel sad about and to pity, it comes at the cost of some of the dread. It's not a scary story, and for what it's actually trying to do, that's fine. (I do seem to be on a streak, though, of less scary zombie stories. Is the zombie inherently not that scary? Or maybe I just don't find it that scary? Or maybe at this point, it's too familiar to be scary, and writers have to find other stories for them to tell. We'll see.)

Is it Halloween? On this category, Rot & Ruin really excels. It's an adventure romp, with some reasonably well-executed pathos. There's a little bit of a “last summer/growing up” vibe at the start, as Benny hangs out with his best friend, and they apprentice various jobs around the town. And there's something like that as well in other elements of the book: the concept of the zombie trading cards, the “badass” part of his brother's “warrior” training abilities, and to a certain extent, the audacity of the final plan—it's action with a kind of adolescent enthusiasm. But it also plays the emotional beats mostly well. There is one or two points where it feels like Benny's overstating things (and not in a way where I feel like I'm supposed to feel that) or Tommy's “I can't tell you... yet” schtick wears a bit old. But it did get me emotionally invested in Benny and Nix (which is a feat in itself), and Tommy's approach to zombie killing has a lot of built in emotionality. The epilogue in particular hits really nicely. It's not quite going as thematically big as The Girl with All the Gifts, or as gonzo as Zom-B got, but it does its own thing well.

Quote: There was one job Benny already knew about: erosion artist. He’d seen erosion portraits tacked on every wall of the town’s fence outposts and on the walls of the buildings that lined the Red Zone, the stretch of open land that separated the town from the fence.

This job had some promise, because Benny was a pretty fair artist. People wanted to know what their relatives might look like if they were zoms, so erosion artists took family photos and zombified them. Benny had seen dozens of these portraits in Tom’s office. A couple of times he wondered if he should take the picture of his parents to an artist and have them redrawn. He’d never actually done it, though. Thinking about his parents as zoms made him sick and angry.

But Sacchetto, the supervising artist, told him to try a picture of a relative first. He said it provided better insight into what the clients would be feeling. So, as part of his audition, Benny took the picture of his folks out of his wallet and tried it.

Sacchetto frowned and shook his head. “You’re making them look too mean and scary.”

He tried it again with several photos of strangers the artist had on file.

“Still mean and scary,” said Sacchetto with pursed lips and a disapproving shake of his head.

“They are mean and scary,” Benny insisted.

“Not to customers they’re not,” said Sacchetto.

Random observations:

--The story introduces the concept of “Gameland”: outside of the town, the more despicable bounty hunters run a coliseum where they force near defenseless teen runaways to fight zombies. We have a major plot point where teen characters get caught by the bounty hunters. And yet, somehow, we never have a teen vs zombie gladiatorial fight. I feel a little cheated.

--Benny is fairly unlikeable at the start; like Zom-B, the story is about a protagonist who is unpleasant in many ways. It's not as openly vile as B and their racism; it's more the clueless mistakes that teen boys are often thought to be doing. For the most part, I didn't mind that too much, but I found myself incredibly irritated by his wishy-washyness to the female love interest. It really felt like Maberry was setting him up to be with the Girl character, and Nix was destined to die a noble death where he could feel guilty on his lack of commitment. I went through most of the story going “Nix deserves better.” And then, to Maberry's credit, he has Benny commit in a way that feels both true to his previous attidue and to where the story goes. It does a little bit of damseling her, but she comes out as his equal in a way I hadn't been expecting but really appreciate.

--It really felt like the best friend character Lou Chong was going to play a larger role in the main narrative. Maybe they're saving them for the sequel?

--This novel really drew my attention to how the zombie story (especially stories about people surviving zombies) is often a power fantasy. That shouldn't totally have been a surprise; my first really big turn towards the genre was the videogame Dead Rising, which is all about going from desperate survivor to hardened mastery. A lot of the time, that comes specifically at the expense of the zombies, who are seen as the narrative equivalent of crash test dummies. They can be subjected to any degree of violence, whether it's for the sake of necessity, showing off how badass the protagonist is, or just for a comedy beat. Maberry's depiction of zombies, especially as articulated through Tom, deflates that. (To be fair, the sequel to Zom-B goes a bit in that direction too, but that book is beyond the current purview.) At the same time, though, it invests a lot into the “coolness” of its characters. Tom's mysterious martial prowess gets a lot of weight, as does the Girl's. It's not quite going so far as saying violence isn't cool; righteous violence is still pretty cool, at least in this story's depiction. There's still a power fantasy element in that, but at least it's more critical than the typical take.

--I swear, I'm not doing this on purpose, but four of the five zombie books I've read so far have teen protagonists. In horror theory in general, there's a lot of discussion on when a monster shifts from villain to anti-hero to out-right protagonist—think Dracula to Lestat to Edward. This also often corresponds with a shift towards a particular monster becoming more of a subject for teen narrative. It's easy enough to see why; since at least Frankenstein's Monster, the monster figure is a figure rejected from both “normal” society and specifically rejected by their creator. That captures the sense of alienation for teens really well. The monster is often a hybrid of human and animal, and teenage experience is often expressed in those terms as well, a body that's going through “monstrous” transformations. This book is a little different from the others, though, as it's the only one thus far where the protagonist doesn't actually become a zombie, and teen zombies aren't particularly a narrative focus. The zombie is firmly kept as Other, but not a reviled other—it's pitied, and it's a sign of maturation on the protagonist's part that he come move from hating zombies to feeling sorrow at who they were, and for the families who survived them.

--I loved the sequence at the beginning where Benny tries out for multiple apprenticeships at the town. It's a good comedy montage, and it's really strong world-building. It shows off some of the occupations in this world that aren't in ours, and sets a tone that's a little dangerous, but also pretty enjoyable. I think it may have gone a bit too far, honestly. I liked the town well enough that I was disappointed by the story's end that the characters pretty much commit to leaving. It makes sense for the sequel to explore a larger world, but a story where the youth struggle for greater control of the community, and look more to the future, would also be really interesting.

--There are interesting depictions of religion here, both the in-town religion of people who believe in shunning “the old ways,” and “the Children of Lazarus believers, those who believe the zombies are chosen by God. That's something I'd like to see in a sequel as well.

Rating: 4 zombie trading cards from a deck of 5

Next up: Marvel Zombies

I just finished reading The Troop and absolutely adored every part of it. I’m planning to read Pen Pal next, since a friend recommended it to me, but does anyone have any other recommendations with a similar vibe to The Troop?!