It’s a completely different experience read a scary scene. You must emerge yourself through the chilling moments. Unlike a TV show or movie that you simply you can hide from what you don’t want to see. The type of experience you’ll only get when reading horror books.
This list is for those who love to read and experience the thrill of being scared.
Here are some of the novels many readers state can give you nightmares:
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Table of Contents
Here are 15 Horror Books:
1 The Troop By Nick Cutter
£0.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £19.24 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip – a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there – which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier. But for some reason, he can’t shake the feeling that something strange is in the air this year. Something waiting in the darkness. Something wicked . . .
It comes to them in the night. An unexpected intruder, stumbling upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry – a man in unspeakable torment who exposes Tim and the boys to something far more frightening than any ghost story. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine.
And so it begins. An agonizing weekend in the wilderness. A harrowing struggle for survival. No possible escape from the elements, the infected . . . or one another.
2 The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
£4.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £4.50 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
PREPARE TO BE HOOKED
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‘A twisty and engrossing story of betrayal and redemption.’ IAN RANKIN
‘Rich, dark and intricately twisted, this enthralling whodunnit mixes family saga with domestic noir to brilliantly chilling effect.’ RUTH WARE
‘Really good, gripping. I couldn’t bear for it to finish… I don’t want to move onto the next book too soon as it feels like a betrayal.’ OLIVIA COLMAN
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FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF INVISIBLE GIRL
In a large house in London’s fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.
In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.
They’ve been dead for several days.
Who has been looking after the baby?
And where did they go?
Two entangled families.
A house with the darkest of secrets.
A compulsive thriller from Lisa Jewell.
3 House Of Leaves By Mark Danielewski
£21.67 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
‘Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent’ BRETT EASTON ELLIS
A young couple – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Navidson and his partner Karen Green – move into a small home on Ash Tree Lane.
But something is terribly wrong – their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Neither Will nor Karen are prepared to face the consequences of this impossibility.
What happens next is loosely recorded on videotapes and interviews, leading to a compilation of the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane, unveiling a thrilling and terrifying history.
Loose sheets, stained napkins and crammed notebooks prove to be far more than the ramblings of a crazy old man . . .
4 Into the Drowning Deep By Mira Grant
£3.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £7.99 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
New York Times best-selling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life.
The ocean is home to many myths,
But some are deadly….
Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a tragedy.
Now a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart, this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost.
Whatever the truth may be, it will be found only below the waves.
But the secrets of the deep come with a price.
5 The Haunting of Hill House By Shirley Jackson
£3.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £6.99 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
Past the rusted gates and untrimmed hedges, Hill House broods and waits….
Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable noises and self-closing doors, but Hill House is gathering its powers and will soon choose one of them to make its own.
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965), a celebrated writer of horror, wrote such classic novels as We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Bird’s Nest, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery”. She has influenced such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Richard Matheson.
6 Let the Right One In By John Ajvide Lindqvist
£4.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £8.44 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, a huge best seller in his native Sweden, is a unique and brilliant fusion of social novel and vampire legend. And a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship and loyalty.
The international best seller and the book behind the film and play Let Me In.
Oskar and Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends.
And how they came to depend on one another, for life itself.
Oskar is a 12-year-old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, and wets himself when he’s frightened.
Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200-year-old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood.
7 The Silence of the Lambs By Thomas Harris
£4.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £7.37 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
FBI trainee Clarice Starling has an elusive serial killer to hunt.
Only one man can help.
Psychopathic cannibal Hannibal Lecter…
The serial killer nicknamed ‘Buffalo Bill’ has been capturing and starving women, then murdering and skinning them. FBI rookie Clarice Starling is assigned to solicit help from imprisoned psychopath Dr Hannibal ‘the Cannibal’ Lecter, whose insight into the depraved minds of serial killers is second to none.
But in exchange for inviting her into the darkest chambers of his mind, Hannibal begins to probe at hers, demanding knowledge of her childhood demons as the price of understanding Buffalo Bill’s.
Clarice knows how dangerous this man is, and the terrible things he can do with this information. But women are still disappearing, and time is running out…
8 The Good House By Tananarive
£12.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £37.99 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
The Good House is the critically acclaimed story of supernatural suspense, as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from evil forces.
The home that belonged to Angela Toussaint’s late grandmother is so beloved that the townspeople in Sacajawea, Washington call it the Good House. But that all changes one summer when an unexpected tragedy takes place behind its closed doors, and the Toussaint’s family history—and future—is dramatically transformed.
Angela has not returned to the Good House since her son, Corey, died there two years ago. But now, Angela is finally ready to return to her hometown and go beyond the grave to unearth the truth about Corey’s death. Could it be related to a terrifying entity Angela’s grandmother battled seven decades ago? And what about the other senseless calamities that Sacajawea has seen in recent years? Has Angela’s grandmother, an African American woman reputed to have “powers,” put a curse on the entire community?
A thrilling exploration of secrets, lies, and divine inspiration, The Good House will haunt readers long after its chilling conclusion.
9 The Ruins By Scott Smith
£0 Audiobook, £8.25 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
Craving an adventure to wake them from their lethargic Mexican holiday before they return home, four friends set off in search of one of their own who has travelled to the interior to investigate an archaeological dig in the Mayan ruins.
After a long journey into the jungle, the group come across a partly camouflaged trail and a captivating hillside covered with red flowers. Lured by these, the group move closer until they happen across a gun-toting Mayan horseman who orders them away. In the midst of the confrontation, one of the group steps inadvertently backwards into the flowering vine. And at that moment their world changes forever..
10 Ring By Koji Suzuki
£3.99 Kindle Edition, £14.99 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
Stunning Japanese thriller with a chilling supernatural twist. The novel that inspired the cult Japanese movie and the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name.
Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspaper’s weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesn’t take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly – until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances.
Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin.
When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular vidoetape with a portentous message at the end:
Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now.
Asakawa finds himself in a race against time – he has only seven days to find the cause of the teenagers’ deaths before it finds him. The hunt puts him on the trail of an apocalytpic power that will force Asakawa to choose between saving his family and saving civilization.
11 Gerald’s Game By Stephen King
£5.49 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £8.44 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
A game. A husband and wife game. Gerald’s Game. But this time Jesse didn’t want to play.
Lying there, spread-eagled and handcuffed to the bedstead while he’d loomed and drooled over her, she’d felt angry and humiliated. So she’d kicked out hard. Aimed to hit him where it hurt. He wasn’t meant to die, leaving Jesse alone and helpless in a lakeside holiday cabin.
Miles from anywhere. No one to hear her screams. Alone. Except for the voices in her head that had begun to chatter and argue and sneer…
12 The Whisper Man By Alex North
£4.99 Kindle Edition, £0 Audiobook, £6.50 Paperback (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
In this dark, suspenseful thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of a father and son caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.
After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town: Featherbank.
But Featherbank has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed “The Whisper Man,” for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.
Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter’s crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man. And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window.
13 The Graveyard Apartment By Mariko Koike
£4.66 Kindle Edition, £17.17 Hardcover (click the image for an up-close look on amazon)
One of the most popular writers working in Japan today, Mariko Koike is a recognized master of detective fiction and horror writing. Known in particular for her hybrid works that blend these styles with elements of romance, The Graveyard Apartment is arguably Koike’s masterpiece. Originally published in Japan in 1986, Koike’s novel is the suspenseful tale of a young family that believes it has found the perfect home to grow into, only to realize that the apartment’s idyllic setting harbors the specter of evil and that longer they stay, the more trapped they become.
This tale of a young married couple who harbor a dark secret is packed with dread and terror, as they and their daughter move into a brand new apartment building built next to a graveyard. As strange and terrifying occurrences begin to pile up, people in the building start to move out one by one, until the young family is left alone with someone… or something… lurking in the basement. The psychological horror builds moment after moment, scene after scene, culminating with a conclusion that will make you think twice before ever going into a basement again.
What horror genre books have you read and think should be on the top 10 list? Let me know in the comments! Until then.