The best horror books

A small Japanese town is cursed by a spiral -- a shape that begins appearing in the clouds, in a man's eyes, in the hair of the living and the bodies of the dead.

A family takes up winter residence in a remote hotel -- and the building has its own plans for the father.

A government-engineered superflu kills 99% of humanity. The survivors must choose sides in a battle between good and evil taking shape across the ruins of America.

Romance novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued from a car crash by his number one fan -- and realizes he is not being nursed back to health. He is being kept.

Seven children face a shapeshifting evil in small-town Maine -- and must return to face it again as adults.

A shy young woman marries a wealthy widower and moves to his grand estate -- but the shadow of his first wife never left.

An FBI trainee must bargain with one serial killer to catch another -- and Hannibal Lecter's help always comes at a price.

A dark carnival arrives in a small Illinois town on the eve of Halloween, offering the townspeople their deepest desires -- at a price they cannot imagine.

Danny Torrance, the traumatized boy from The Shining, is now a middle-aged alcoholic who uses his gift to help the dying -- until a girl with even stronger powers needs him.

A labyrinthine novel about a house that's larger on the inside than the outside -- and the madness of trying to map it.

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth. Every night the vampires who used to be his neighbors come to the door and call his name.

A vampire named Louis tells a journalist the two-century story of his undead life -- including the mentor who made him and the child he should never have let exist.

The Blackwood sisters live in isolation, shunned by their village for reasons involving arsenic and a family dinner six years ago.

Nineteen stories set in a country of autumn and dread, where the dead keep to their own calendar and the strange is simply a fact of local life.

Four people spend a summer in a deeply unnerving house -- a masterwork of psychological dread and ambiguity.

A family moves to rural Maine, where a burial ground behind the pet cemetery has the power to bring the dead back -- but not as they were.

The novel that invented the modern vampire -- still more unsettling, sensual, and strange than any adaptation has managed to capture.

Two Royal Navy ships trapped in Arctic ice face starvation, madness, and something on the ice that is hunting them.

An actress's twelve-year-old daughter begins speaking in tongues and displaying impossible strength. The only explanation is the one no rational person will accept.

Rosemary Woodhouse moves into a new Manhattan apartment, falls pregnant, and begins to suspect her neighbors have a special interest in her unborn child.

Victoria McQueen has a supernatural gift for finding things. Charles Manx has one for stealing children. One day their paths will cross -- and it will not be the last time.

Four Blackfeet men hunted by a creature born from a wrong they committed a decade earlier -- Jones writes grief, guilt, and cultural identity into a horror novel that earns all three.

A man solves a puzzle box that opens a door to the Cenobites -- beings who exist beyond the limits of pleasure and pain -- and cannot be returned.

A young scientist creates a living being from dead flesh -- and cannot face the consequences of what he's made.

Five boy scouts and their scoutmaster are stranded on an island with a stranger carrying something horrifying inside him.

A young secretary steals $40,000 and checks into a remote motel run by a shy young man with a very controlling mother.

Three women are the only survivors of three separate mass killings -- and when one of the others turns up dead, the survivor who thought she had moved on discovers the past is not finished with her.

A solicitor travels to a remote English marsh to settle an estate, and the apparition he encounters there will cost him everything he has not yet lost.

A glamorous socialite in 1950s Mexico travels to a decaying English mansion to rescue her cousin -- and finds something growing in the walls.

Something outside will kill you if you look at it. A mother and two children must navigate a river blindfolded -- or die.

A cursed New England boarding school, a century of dead girls, and a horror movie that might be awakening something that should have stayed buried.

A family allows a reality television crew to film their daughter's exorcism -- and the novel slowly, carefully destroys your certainty about what you are watching.

A small American town is haunted by a seventeenth-century witch who wanders the streets with her eyes and mouth sewn shut -- and the residents have learned to live with her, until someone decides they should not have to.