The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time
This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
Paste Magazine, 50 Books
This is the description from the website:
Horror is a peculiar genre. If it’s meant purely to scare, then some of the heftier books on this list would have wracked up a body count, terrifying readers to death over 700 pages or more. And what is scary? What might shock one reader is laughable to another. Ghosts, serial killers, great heaving monsters, the loss of self-control, plagues, impossible physics and a creepy clown all figure into our countdown, with entries spanning from the 1800s to the last few years. One (obvious) author makes five(!) appearances, and easily could have qualified for a few more; another has written just one novel during his decades-long career. We narrowed our focus to prose novels, so please don’t ask after The Books of Blood or Uzumaki. And while we kept an eye on the diversity of our featured authors, the inclusion of women, authors of color and queer creators came naturally as we gathered the best of the best. We’re prepared for you to question our choices, we ask only that you leave the chainsaw at home before doing so. Without further ado, we present our choices for the best horror novels of all time.
This list was originally published in 2018 and was added to this site almost 2 years ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 215 | The Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson | 1959 | American | English | |
| 981 | It | Stephen King | 1986 | American | English | |
| 5113 | Let The Right One In | John Ajvide Lindqvist | 2004 | Swedish | Swedish | |
| 1398 | The Exorcist | William Peter Blatty | 1971 | American | English | |
| 39 | Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 1818 | British | English | |
| 607 | House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | 2000 | American | English | |
| 6609 | Nos4 A2 | Joe Hill | 2013 | American | English | |
| 400 | The Shining | Stephen King | 1977 | American | English | |
| 1293 | Salem's Lot | Stephen King | 1975 | American | English | |
| 189 | The Turn of the Screw | Henry James | 1898 | American | English | |
| 894 | Rosemary's Baby | Ira Levin | 1967 | American | English | |
| 53 | Dracula | Bram Stoker | 1897 | British | English | |
| 4199 | The Elementals | Michael McDowell | 1981 | American | English | |
| 12117 | Broken Monsters | Lauren Beukes | 2014 | South African | English | |
| 3148 | Carrion Comfort | Dan Simmons | 1989 | American | English | |
| 4655 | Coraline | Neil Gaiman | 2002 | British | English | |
| 2060 | Ghost Story | Peter Straub | 1979 | American | English | |
| 1813 | Swan Song | Robert R. McCammon | 1987 | American | English | |
| 274 | The Stand | Stephen King | 1978 | American | English | |
| 5514 | Hell House | Richard Matheson | 1971 | American | English | |
| 2695 | Pet Sematary | Stephen King | 1983 | American | English | |
| 578 | The Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris | 1988 | American | English | |
| 570 | American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | 1991 | American | English | |
| 4933 | The Terror | Dan Simmons | 2007 | American | English | |
| 1338 | Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | 1962 | American | English | |
| 9588 | A Choir Of Ill Children | Tom Piccirilli | 2004 | American | English | |
| 661 | Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice | 1976 | American | English | |
| 2689 | The Ceremonies | T. E. D. Klein | 1984 | American | English | |
| 710 | At the Mountains of Madness | H. P. Lovecraft | 1936 | American | English | |
| 3853 | The Girl Next Door | Jack Ketchum | 1989 | American | English | |
| 10917 | The Shining Girls | Lauren Beukes | 2013 | South African | English | |
| 11637 | Little Star | John Ajvide Lindqvist | 2010 | Swedish | Swedish | |
| 1826 | The Other | Thomas Tryon | 1971 | American | English | |
| 5594 | World War Z | Max Brooks | 2006 | American | English | |
| 11329 | Heart Shaped Box | Joe Hill | 2007 | American | English | |
| 1938 | Geek Love | Katherine Dunn | 1989 | American | English | |
| 59 | Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | 1938 | British | English | |
| 12433 | Savaging The Dark | Christopher Conlon | 2014 | Unknown | English | |
| 5811 | John Dies At The End | David Wong | 2007 | American | English | |
| 1562 | Burnt Offerings | Robert Marasco | 1973 | American | English | |
| 6801 | Bird Box | Josh Malerman | 2014 | American | English | |
| 5994 | The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf | Victor Pelevin | 2004 | Russian | Russian | |
| 8793 | Audition | Ryū Murakami | 1997 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 2823 | The Damnation Game | Clive Barker | 1985 | British | English | |
| 6859 | A Head Full Of Ghosts | Paul Tremblay | 2015 | American | English | |
| 9338 | Ring | Koji Suzuki | 2002 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 13231 | My Best Friend’s Exorcism | Grady Hendrix | 2016 | American | English | |
| 9596 | Night Things | Michael Talbot | 1988 | Unknown | English | |
| 2918 | The Woman In Black | Susan Hill | 1983 | British | English | |
| 12444 | The Summer Is Ended And We Are Not Yet Saved | Joey Comeau | 2014 | Canadian | English |