Recommended horror books
Please find below a list of horror books that we recommend.
Recommended Reading
The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. But the last remains of civil...
John Cleaver series
Dan Wells
I Am Not A Serial Killer is the story of John Cleaver, a 15-year-old sociopath who works in a mortuary, dreams about death, and thinks he might be turning into a serial kil...
Zoo City
Lauren Beukes
Zinzi December has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her l...
NOS4R2
Joe Hill
Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the...
Fellside
MR Carey
Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be ...
Apartment 16
Adam Nevill
Some doors are better left closed... In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been th...
Cinema of Shadows
Michael West
Welcome to the Woodfield Movie Palace. The night the Titanic sank, it opened for business... and its builder died in his chair. In the 1950s, there was a fire; a balcony fu...
The Pilo Family Circus
Will Elliott
You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got? Delivered by a trio of ps...
Floating Dragon
Peter Straub
The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Connecticut, were beyond imagination. Sparrows dropping dead from the trees like rotten fruit, disfiguring diseases spr...
The Ritual
Adam Nevill
Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions...
Poseidon's Children
Michael West
After the ruins of a vast, ancient civilization are discovered on the ocean floor, Coast Guard officers find a series of derelict ships drifting in the current-high-priced ...
Last Days
Adam Nevill
The Temple of the Last Days. The brutal cult with a history of murder, sex and occult dealings destroyed itself during one night of ritualistic violence decades ago. Or so ...
Inside Out
Will Elliott
Inside Out is the story of Denton, a down-and-out no-hoper who lives with his mother and hits rock bottom one day during a road-rage incident. What should be the lowest mom...
Devourer of Souls
Kevin Lucia
Welcome to Clifton Heights, an average Adirondack town. It's nice enough, really. Except after dark. Or on cold winter days when you're all alone... Sophan. An anci...
Broken Monsters
Lauren Beukes
Detective Gabi Versado has hunted down many monsters during her eight years in Homicide. She’s seen stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But she’s neve...
Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth
Stephen Jones
Respected horror anthologist Stephen Jones edits this collection of 17 stories inspired by the 20th century’s master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shad...
The Silence
Tim Lebbon
In the darkness of an underground cave system, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed... Swarming from their prison, the creatu...
Hex
Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves. Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by t...
Black Wings of Cthulhu 4
ST Joshi
Through his collaborations with today's most talented and acclaimed practitioners of Lovecraftian fiction, editor S. T. Joshi has made the Black Wings of Cthulhu series...
Under the Dome
Stephen King
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force fi...
The Wickford Doom
Chris Priestley
When Harry and his mother inherit a house from a mysterious relative of his father's following his death in the War, they travel across the country to discover the bequ...
Weaveworld
Clive Barker
Weaveworld is an epic adventure of the imagination. It begins with a carpet in which a world of rapture and enchantment is hiding; a world which comes to life, alerting the...
It
Stephen King
It is the children who see - and feel - what makes the town so horribly different. In the storm drains and sewers "It" lurks, taking the shape of every nightmare,...
House of Small Shadows
Adam Nevill
Catherine’s last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top television production company saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get he...
Residue
Steve Diamond
Residue follows 17-year-old Jack Bishop after his father is abducted and a monster is let loose in his small town. As he looks for his father, he begins to notice that he c...
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
One of literature's most gripping ghost stories depicts the sinister transformation of 2 innocent children into flagrant liars and hypocrites. Elegantly told tale of un...
Broken
AE Rought
A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry's boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell. She a...
The Quorum
Kim Newman
In 1961, Derek Leech emerges fully formed from the polluted Thames, destined to found a global media empire. In 1978, three ambitious young men strike a deal with Leech. Th...
The Mourning House
Ronald Malfi
Devastated by tragedy, Dr. Sam Hatch is a shadow of his former self. He travels the byroads of America, running away from a past he cannot escape. There is no salvation for...
The Night Mayor
Kim Newman
Truro Daine, a dangerous criminal who has been confined to imprisonment, escapes his incarceration by inventing a computer-generated dream world, which he rules as the Nigh...
Styx
Bavo Dhooge
A serial killer is on the loose in Ostend, Belgium. Nicknamed The Stuffer, the mysterious killer fills his victims full of sand and poses them as public art installations -...
Medusa's Web
Tim Powers
In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were rai...
The Feast of All Souls
Simon Bestwick
Alice has returned to her old home town to put her life back in order. 378 Collarmill Road looks like an ordinary house. But sometimes, the world outside the windows isn&rs...
Phantoms
Dean Koontz
Yesterday Snowfield, California, was a charming little town basking in the golden afternoon sun. Today it is a place of nightmare. An ancient, awesome force has spirited aw...
We Are All Completely Fine
Daryl Gregory
Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celeb...
Chimera
Rob Thurman
Ten years ago, Stefan Korsak's younger brother was kidnapped. Not a day has passed that Stefan hasn't thought about him. As a rising figure in the Russian mafia, he...
The Concrete Grove
Gary McMahon
Imagine a place where all your nightmares become real. Think of dark urban streets where crime, debt and violence are not the only things to fear. Picture a housing project...
The Hellbound Heart
Clive Barker
In a quiet house on a quiet street Frank and Julia are having an affair. Not your ordinary affair. For Frank it began with his own insatiable sexual appetite, a mysterious ...
Blood Water
Dean Vincent Carter
They're all dead now. I am the last one. Dr Morrow can't identify the 'thing' he found living in the lake but he knows it's dangerous ...then it goes mi...
Swallowed By The Cracks
Thomas McMahon Browne and Smith
Swallowed By The Cracks is the latest (7th) compilation of four Dark Fantasy / Horror writers by John Everson and Bill Breedlove. They are the producers of the yearly &lsqu...
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart
Jesse Bullington
In the plague-wracked and devil-haunted darkness of Medieval Europe, an elite few enjoy opulent lives while the majority eke out a miserable existence in abject poverty. Hu...
Ash
James Herbert
David Ash - detective of the paranormal is sent to the mysterious Comraich Castle, secluded deep in the Scottish countryside, to investigate a strange, high-profile case: a...
The Silent End
Samuel Sattin
In a mist-covered town in the Pacific Northwest three teenagers find themselves pitted against an unearthly menace that dwells beneath the foundations of their high school....
Jago
Kim Newman
In the tiny village of Alder, dreams and nightmares are beginning to come true. Creatures from local legend, science fiction and the dark side of the human mind prowl the t...
Melmoth the Wanderer
Charles Maturin
This violent, profound, baroque and blackly humorous novel is the story of Melmoth, who has sold his soul in exchange for immortality in a satanic bargain, and now preys on...
Sweet Sixteen
Francesca Jeffries
Sweet Sixteen and never been... killed. Leslie Burrows was born the same day as her grandmother, and each year they have two celebration parties with her grandmother's ...
Dream Stalkers
Tim Waggoner
Shadow Watch agents Audra and Mr. Jinx must investigate a new drug called Shut-eye and stop a wave of Incubi that are possessing people through their dreams....
The Mutant Files: Deadeye
William C Dietz
In the year 2038, an act of bioengineered terrorism decimated humanity. Some survivors developed horrible mutations and nations are now divided between areas populated by n...
Latest reviews
Floating Dragon
Peter Straub
The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Connecticut, were beyond imagination. Sparrows dropping dead from the trees like rotten fruit, disfiguring diseases spr...
We Are All Completely Fine
Daryl Gregory
Harrison is the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time not sleeping. Stan became a minor celeb...
Needful Things
Stephen King
There is a new shop in town. Run by a stranger. Needful Things, the sign says. The oddest name. A name that causes some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castl...
All That Remains
Al Barrera
The old world is dead, and humanity struggles to survive in the shadows of the new one. Kyle, Sara, and Tim are scavengers, hiding in the remains of human civilization from...
The Feast of All Souls
Simon Bestwick
Alice has returned to her old home town to put her life back in order. 378 Collarmill Road looks like an ordinary house. But sometimes, the world outside the windows isn&rs...
Midnight
Dean Koontz
A string of inexplicable deaths has occurred in the picturesque coastal town of Midnight Cove; sinister, shadowy figures stalk the streets in the dead of night and four peo...
Black Wings of Cthulhu 4
ST Joshi
Through his collaborations with today's most talented and acclaimed practitioners of Lovecraftian fiction, editor S. T. Joshi has made the Black Wings of Cthulhu series...
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill
'Buy my stepfather's ghost' read the e-mail. So Jude did. He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wan...
Fellside
MR Carey
Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be ...
Recommended reads by sub-genre
Select a sub-genre below to see which books we highly recommend.
High fantasy
Fantasy set in an alternative, fictional world
Epic fantasy
Fantasy with epic characters, themes, and plot
Heroic / Sword and Sorcery
Fantasy with heroic adventures
Urban fantasy
Fantasy narrative with an urban setting
Historical fantasy / fiction
Historical fiction with fantasy elements
Parallel universe
Fantasy set in parallel worlds
Science / Speculative
Draws elements from both science fiction and fantasy
Children's Fantasy
Fantasy for ages up to 12
Young Adult
Fantasy for ages 12+
Adult Fantasy
Fantasy for ages 18+
Dystopian / Post-Apocalyptic
Fiction set in dark, nightmarish worlds
Monarchy / Empire
Fantasy books with empires at their core
Gothic Fiction
Fiction with elements of fear, horror, death, gloom and romance
Vampire Fiction
Fiction with vampiric characters
Werewolf Fiction
Fiction with werewolf characters
Steampunk
Fiction with steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology
Dragon Fiction
Fiction with the legendary, scaled, fire-breathing creatures
Wizards / Magicians
Fantasy with wizards, witches, magicians, sorceresses...
Lore, Legend and Mythology
Inspired by ancient folklore and mythology
Military Fantasy
Fantasy books focusing on mailtary life
Roman historical fiction
Explore the ancient Roman Empire
Star Wars
Books exploring the galaxy of the ever-popular franchise
Animal fantasy books
Fantasy with sentient animals
The Thief / Assassin
Fantasy books starring the thief or the assassin
Supernatural
Fiction exploring beyond the laws of nature
Manga
Japanese comic books and graphic novels
Horror
Liked to be scared? These books will do that...
Comic Fantasy
For the reader who loves to laugh
Inspired by Tolkien
Love Lord of the Rings? Now try these...
Anthologies
The best science fiction and fantasy anthlogies
