Best Horror Reads

"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is a haunting and suspenseful novel by Shirley Jackson. Set in a decaying mansion, it follows the lives of the Blackwood sisters, Merricat and Constance, who live in isolation after a family tragedy. The story unfolds through the lens of Merricat's peculiar perspective, revealing a tale of dark secrets, societal ostracism, and the eerie atmosphere of a town marked by suspicion. Jackson weaves a narrative that explores...

After strange things start happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, three employees volunteer to work an overnight shift to investigate, but what they discover is more horrifying than they could have imagined.

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road. One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk...

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photography, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it's across Massachusetts or across the country. Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2...

"Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie-scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to--a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Now, Quincy is doing well--maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists...

The now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) must save a very special twelve-year-old girl from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author—the inspiration for the hit television series

“A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth—the education of the vampire.”—Chicago Tribune

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A monster created by scientist Victor Frankenstein from parts of corpses and brought to life develops loathing for himself and hatred for his creator as he learns to think for himself.

From the phantom pig at the Minnesota State Fair to the ghostly gangsters of the Wabasha Street Caves, St. Paul bristles with haunted history. Let the spectral usher of the Mounds Theatre show you to your seat as Chad Lewis reveals why the bits of St. Paul's past that insist on intruding on the present deserve to have their stories told. By the time the lights come back on, you will be convinced that sometimes the strangest things have happened in...