Best Modern Horror Books

American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan investment banker. Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while...

The Dead

by Mark E. Rogers

The Silence of the Lambs

by Thomas Harris

The Silence of the Lambs is a psychological horror novel by Thomas Harris. First published in 1988, it is the sequel to Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon. Both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lec...

We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry. "Eva never really wanted to be a mother -- and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafe...

Misery

by King, Stephen

Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the auth...

The Ruins

by Scott Smith

Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation—sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look...

The Woman in Black

by Susan Hill

In the process of settling an estate, Arthur Kipps finds himself confronted with some very unsettling matters.

John Dies at the End

by David Wong

This may be the story of John and David, a drug called soy sauce, and other-worldly beings invading the planet. Or, it may be the story of two beer-drinking friends who live in an unnamed Midwestern town and only think s...

The Walking

by Bentley Little

From a small Southwestern town, a strange epidemic spreads across the country, characterized by a series of strange deaths and by a reanimation of the dead who appears to be drawn by a bizarre compulsion toward an unknow...

The Horus Heresy

by Many Authors

A Choir Of Ill Children

by Tom Piccirilli

This lyrical tale of evil, loss, and redemption is a stunning addition to the Southern gothic tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews.A Choir of Ill Children is the startling story of Kingdom Come, a decaying, swa...

Piercing

by Ryu Murakami

Geek Love

by Katherine Dunn

Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspri...

The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

The governess of two enigmatic children fears their souls are in danger from the ghosts of the previous governess and her sinister lover.

1987: Perfume

by Suskind, Patrick

Grenouille, is a simple man who is born with an acute sense of smell. This knowledge is much more advanced than all his other senses combined. Grenouille's life is a constant struggle and he grows up without any sense of...

Under the Dome

by King, Stephen

Under the Dome is a 2009 science fiction novel by the American author, Stephen King. Under the Dome is the 58th book published by Stephen King, and it is his 48th novel. The novel focuses on a small Maine town, and tells...

House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski

A young family 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 photojourn...

The Damnation Game

by Barker, Clive

'It was an odd disease. Its symptoms were like infatuation–palpitations, sleeplessness. Its only certain cure, death...' Chance had ruled Marty Strauss' life for as long as he could remember. Now at last luck was turning...

The Throne of Bones

by Brian McNaughton

The Missing

by Sarah Langan

2007 Bram Stoker Award winner. A remote and affluent Maine community, Corpus Christi was untouched by the environmental catastrophe that destroyed the neighboring blue-collar town of Bedford. But all that will change in...

Heart-Shaped Box

by Hill, Joe

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as...