Horror books, by definition, are meant to keep you up a bit longer at night, wondering if the shadow outside your window is really the tree that has stood there forever or some newfound apparition. That’s all fair and square. However, some horror books burrow deep into your brain, and yet you remain grateful for every troubling revelation. These are the horror novels that hit me in that perfect sweet spot where fear meets fascination.
From psychological spirals to supernatural nightmares, here are 15 books that shook me to my core in the best possible way.
1. The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp
The page-turner revolves around Jack Sparks, the protagonist who went viral for mocking an exorcism, and died while writing this book. Something happened to him—no one knew what—until his notes, drafts, and fragments of video were compiled together by his brother, Alistair. The structuring makes the book even more interesting to read, and then there’s the occult Jack was researching.
This book begins like a snarky celebrity memoir and concludes as something much darker and far more disturbing. Watching Jack’s ego unravel is like witnessing a car crash in slow-motion. The supernatural angle is delicious, and the climax lands with a harder gut punch than you expect. It’s chaotic, clever, and honestly one of the better descent into madness tales in recent times.
2. Perfume, The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind (English translation by John E. Woods)
Originally written in German, Perfume, The Story of a Murderer drops you in 18th-century France with all its elements of human suffering. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the slums of Paris, is orphaned almost immediately. Growing up in foster care, he remains a quiet, cocooned child, but with a supernatural power. He has an incredibly enhanced sense of smell and can identify aromas and odors with the slightest whiff. And yet, he has no scent himself.
But his world is painted with scent and devoid of any genuine human empathy. So once the smell of a particular environment turns monotonous, he seeks out the next in pursuit of the sensation. Then he commits a murder, and then some more. The sensory imagery of the book (and its translation) is written beautifully, to the point where you feel like you’re smelling every scene right alongside him. But don’t be fooled by the name. The book is a whole lot of ugliness and gore, but in the best way if you like the themes. There are also adult themes of a sexual nature and elements of cannibalism towards the end.
3. Gone to See The River Man by Kristopher Triana
I do not usually enjoy stories where the protagonists continually make poor decisions and approach obvious dangers. I find it hard to empathize with the characters enough to root for them to emerge unscathed from the horrors. However, things became so dire in this book that I first felt sorry for Lori and then became gobsmacked by her fate.
Lori is unhingedly obsessed with a serial killer named Edmund Cox, gets into a relationship with him, and agrees to do his bidding. Think Misa from Death Note, somewhat. Edmund tasks Lori with retrieving a key and delivering it to the River Man, an entity she discovers is not entirely human, even though they might have been at some point. The journey itself is purely splatterpunk mixed with cabin horror, with a sprinkle of psychological trauma. You want to tell Lori to run so badly, but what keeps unfolding continues to be too fascinating to ignore.
4. Devolution by Max Brooks
If you believe World War Z is top-tier fiction like I do, and the found-footage format is not a deal-breaker for you, Devolution is a must-read. On the surface, the book is about Bigfoot, the mythical, ape-like creature found in Pacific Northwest folklore. But unlike most creature horrors, this is not a simple hide-and-seek story.
Kate Holland’s journals are recovered from the wreckage of Mount Rainier’s volcanic eruption, and in them, there are harrowing details of the Greenloop massacre that went unnoticed at the time. The most chilling aspect of the novel is how it makes you feel hunted, like prey in the wild, which is not a feeling we are accustomed to reading about in the matter-of-fact way the book presents it.
5. Gerald's Game by Stephen King
No one writes helplessness like Stephen King. But what makes his stories of helplessness even better is how much his protagonists fight to survive, whatever it takes. In Gerald’s Game, Jessie Burlingame finds herself trapped in a secluded lake house with no way out. It begins with Gerald’s one-sided attempt to spice things up in the bedroom. One thing leads to another, and Jessie finds herself handcuffed to the bed while her husband lies dead.
Very few books have made me as physically tense as the next set of events. The psychological panic builds slowly. To know that your keys and a ride out of this hell are a few meters away, but you have no way to reach them and no captor to plead with either, creates a new level of terror. And yes, that scene (you will know the one) is one of the most viscerally upsetting things King has ever written. It’s horror rooted in survival, trauma, and the raw instinct to keep going.
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
If you enjoy being messed up not by the shock value, but by the gradual unraveling of the information, pick this one up. The plot revolves around a professor and his daughter’s quest for the tomb of Vlad Țepeș, better known as Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century prince of Wallachia (part of modern-day Romania) who famously inspired the character of Count Dracula.
This is a slow-burning, atmospheric kind of historical gothic horror told in an epistolary style that you do not need to rush through for the high of the climax. The Historian creeps up gently, fascinating you with the historical, geopolitical, and cultural nuances that go into stories like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It mixes folklore, academia, and ancient evil in a way that feels timeless. The travelogue-style storytelling makes the world feel enormous, yet hauntingly connected by the same lingering threat. The dread grows quietly but steadily, and the historical mystery is so gripping that the supernatural moments hit twice as hard.
7. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves is a story within a story within another story, and thus, not everyone’s cup of tea. If you have heard that this is one of the hardest books to read and follow, that is also true. However, it is worth every bit. The fonts are irregular, some pages are sideways, the narrative is erratic, and you will literally have to turn the book around at times to read the “comments” and “footnotes.” Yes, this is also a found-footage, epistolary-ish book, and if you haven’t caught on with my love for the genre, now is the time.
Beneath that experimental format is an emotional core that is surprisingly simple and devastating. The book is presented as the discovered manuscript of a man named Zampano, who delves in-depth into “The Navidson Record,” which again is a documentary film by Will Navidson about the haunted house his family of four moves into. It comes with additional citations and commentary by Johnny Truant, who finds the manuscript. All in all, a complete mindbender.
8. Misery by Stephen King
Misery is devoid of Stephen King’s usual knack for the supernatural, and yet, it remains one of his most messed-up reads. After all, what is scarier than an evil of flesh and blood, whose every action leaves behind a lifetime of trauma for the protagonist? There’s nothing supernatural in this book, just pure, deranged psychological horror, and somewhere tucked in between all that, a love letter to the art and craft of writing.
Paul Sheldon, a successful author, meets with an accident and is “saved” by Annie Wilkes. But instead of calling the authorities, Annie decides to keep Paul for herself, because she believes she is his “No. 1 fan” and deserves to have him around as a reward. King makes the reader spend long, painful, and terrifying months with Paul as he is bent and broken by Annie, both physically and mentally. The tension of what Annie would do next never lets up. Few antagonists linger in your mind the way she does.
9. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Don’t be fooled by the saturated popularity of the movie. The book is on another level and one of the scariest classic horror stories ever written. The slow progression from doubt to undeniable terror is masterfully done. William Peter Blatty blends spirituality, psychology, and pure demonic horror with a precision that feels almost surgical. Moreover, the book delves deeper into the religious angle, including some disturbing stories about the Black Masses, an ancient Satanic ceremony.
An actress’s 12-year-old daughter, Regan MacNeil, falls ill after handling an old Ouija board in their new rental house. Soon, poltergeist-like disturbances wreak havoc, and Regan begins to show signs of possession. When modern medicine fails, Regan’s mother calls upon the help of the Church for an exorcism. What ensues next is pure, pure chaos. Interestingly, Blatty was inspired to write The Exorcist after watching Rosemary’s Baby and wanting to improve on the ending by making the spiritual elements more central to the story.
10. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
A psychologist, a biologist, an anthropologist, and a military-trained surveyor walk into a restricted area known as Area X. They come across an unmanned, unmapped bunker, and true to the tropes, start finding weird things inside, including an eerie slogan written in a sort of fungal spores. The mystery deepens as they push forward, as horrors of Lovecraftian nature unveil themselves, endangering their lives.
The terror in Annihilation blooms beautifully, with biopunk elements blending perfectly with cosmic horror. The details about the environment are vivid and dreamlike until it starts to feel sentient, at which point it becomes insanely creepy. Watch out for the descent into the tower (or is it a tunnel?), which is easily one of the most chilling sequences I’ve ever read. This would be one of the books where you would want to continue reading the series almost immediately. There are two more that came out in quick succession, and a fourth published in 2024.
11. The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell
Psyche ward horror alert! The Devil Aspect is set in Europe during the 1930s and follows Viktor Kosárek, a student of the renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung. Viktor arrives at Prague’s mountaintop psychiatric facility, Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He works closely with six of the mental institution’s most notorious inmates to prove a common link between their psyches. Meanwhile, a Jack the Ripper copycat goes on a killing spree in the streets, or more accurately, dark alleyways, of Prague.
The storytelling is incredibly stylish, tightly wound, and visually rich. The Eastern European setting adds a moody, fog-drenched layer that amplifies the tension against the backdrop of the rising threat of Nazism across the continent. It feels vintage and fresh at the same time, with the horror elements of Gothic folklore and psychology striking the right balance
12. The White Bishop by Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Aron Beauregard
Good nautical horrors are hard to come by, but when they do, they blow your mind away. A motley crew of men set sail with the hanging carrot of a lucrative reward. They have to make a delivery by journeying through cold, choppy seawaters. But things go wrong, as they often do. Their food supply mysteriously goes bad, their drinking water becomes foul, they stray off course, and eventually, they start to suspect each other.
The White Bishop is the kind of book that gives you the exact feeling of having a worm crawling on your skin. The characters are fleshed out enough for you to care when bad things happen to them. The horror is slow-burning and strategically placed, but not predictable. The climax is appropriately violent. It ticks all the boxes and then some. If you read and liked Dan Simmons’ The Terror, but thought it was too detail-heavy and slow-paced, this one might do the trick for you.
13. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
While not a conventional horror, I had to throw this in because of how it grips your heart like a vice. Reminiscent of the 80s “missing girl” theme, The Lovely Bones delicately dances around the part of the narrative where most stories don’t go—the suffocating grief that follows after. The book is narrated by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is abducted and murdered in the winter of 1973.
As she adjusts to her new heavenly abode, she watches her family go through the indescribable ordeal of moving on from her death. They try, but Susie’s absence hangs like a dark cloud on the family, even though she does not do any traditional haunting. Susie also meets other victims whom her murderer killed, and even takes a glimpse at the man’s own traumatic childhood. Despite the tragedy's grip on the story, it concludes on a somewhat wholesome note, leaving you with a sense of melancholy that lasts for a while.
14. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (English translation by Sarah Moses)
Originally written in Spanish, this book will leave you feeling disgusted and without appetite. I am not a big fan of cannibalism in horror, but I like it when the evil acts are quadrupled in impact by being systematic and socially accepted. It is one thing to read about atrocities happening on the go, and a whole other thing to read it through the sanitized lens of the book’s world.
After an animal-carried virus is found to be deadly to humans, all of them are systematically slaughtered, both domesticated and wild, and people choose between going vegan or eating each other. Rules and regulations are put in place, and industries are set up to make cannibalism the norm. Humans are bred for consumption. People go on with their lives, desensitized to the changes that occur. Amid all that, Marcos, a vegan who works at a slaughterhouse to support his dementia-riddled father, hides a breeding female in her house for an ulterior motive. Brace for elements of rape and forced breeding.
15. The Deep by Nick Cutter
Labeled as The Abyss meets The Shining, Nick Cutter’s The Deep is terrifying with a capital T. After a seemingly incurable plague that triggers gradual amnesia in humans takes over the world, an unknown substance called “Ambrosia” is reported to be the only cure for eradicating the disease. The catch? It is only found in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean.
Luke Nelson, a veterinarian, is sent to a deep-sea research center tucked in underwater at the Mariana Trench after the facility loses communication. His brother, Clay, works at the station. Cutter excels at creating a nauseating sense of claustrophobia as Luke descends into the uncharted territory, which is, quite literally, the deepest place on earth, and faces evils that have stayed hidden from humankind for ages.
Heads up for anyone who gets uncomfortable with animal cruelty and deaths. You should tread carefully.