The 10 Best Horror Novels Of All Time

In honor of the Halloween season, my ten all-time best horror novels. They represent only my personal opinion, and would vary in my own mind from day to day. But I don’t think you’d be disappointed in any of them, if your taste runs to such things. A few notes: Horror is a field that has thrived on the short story, and collections and anthologies are omitted here. Boy's Life and Last Call would probably rank higher if I considered them pure horror novels.

1. Ghost Story, by Peter Straub – Peter Straub is not the modern master of the horror story (that’s Stephen King), but he did write the best horror novel. Ghost Story is a masterful book, with ominous foreshadowing, and indelible, believable, characters. Still creepy, and my all-time favorite.
2. Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King – I read a lot of horror, so it’s difficult for anything to get under my skin, particularly if I’ve read it before. I’ve read Salem’s Lot many times, as well as listening to it on audiodisc, and it gets to me every time.
3. Dracula, by Bram Stoker – The Moby Dick of horror novels, everybody knows about it, few have ever read it. It is well worth the effort. It is still vivid, and an interesting use of the epistolary technique (the novel is written as a series of letters and diary entries). Far and away Stoker’s best work.
4. The Shining, by Stephen King – The second King novel I read, the first to grab me and make me a lifelong fan. The best haunted house story ever written.
5. Boy’s Life, by Robert R. McCammon – More of a magic realist novel with some horror elements, I love it in part because it is set in the part of the country in which I grew up and when I grew up. Read it.
6. Summer Of Night, by Dan Simmons – Before he became successful (and a little pretentious) Simmons was a novelist in the Stephen King style. This is his best horror novel.
7. Last Call, by Tim Powers – Like Boy’s Life, more of a fantasy novel with horror elements, but one of the best things I’ve ever read. Powers gift is so great, by the time you reach the end, you’re convinced what happened has to be real.
8. It, by Stephen King – King intended this to be the ultimate horror novel, with every fright of childhood present. He didn’t completely succeed, but still good enough for eighth on the list.
9. The Haunting Of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson – The second-best (by a narrow margin) haunted house novel.
10. Our Lady of Darkness, by Fritz Leiber – A very Jamesian horror novel, one of the few really good ones in a contemporary urban setting.


Update: I received an e-mail questioning the criteria from a very nice fellow ("Braindead" is a compliment, right?), and I want to see if I can clarify why there are no recent books on the list. Basically, in my tortured mind, for a book to be rated that highly, it must be something that lingers in my mind, something that I can go back and re-read and still love. I've read a lot of good stuff in the last year by Brian Keene, Edward Lee, Simon Clark, and others, but I've gor to let them marinate in my head before I'm ready to compare them to the classics.

NP: April March, “Laisse Tomber Les Filles”