The Scariest Books Ever, According To Stephen King

If you say the words “horror novelist” to the average person, one name will inevitably come to mind: Stephen King. The man is synonymous with horror and has been ever since Carrie was published in 1973. On top of being a prolific writer, though, King is also an equally prolific reader who devours at least 80 books every year. Here are 40 that managed to scare even the Master of Horror himself!

1. Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Of this 2016 novel, Irish writer John Connolly said, “Hex is reminiscent of vintage Stephen King, and I can think of no higher praise.” Well, try this on for size — the man himself loved it too! King said, “A wicked witch holds an upstate New York town prisoner. This is totally, brilliantly original.” This would be impressive enough if Heuvelt was a seasoned veteran, but he’d actually knocked it out of the park on his very first English-language novel! 

2. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

This 1978 supernatural neo-noir was made into the 1987 film Angel Heart, starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro as the preposterously — yet awesomely — named Louis Cyphre. When the book came out, King was flabbergasted by it, saying it was “a terrific book.” He then gushed, “I’ve never read anything remotely like it. Trying to imagine what might have happened if Raymond Chandler had written The Exorcist is as close as I can come.”

3. Slade House by David Mitchell

In August 2016 King tweeted about David Mitchell’s nerve-shredding — and unique — haunted-house tale Slade House. He posted, “Hard to imagine a more finely wrought and chilling tale of the supernatural. One of the rare great ones.” It made sense that King would dig Mitchell’s book, as nearly every review compared it to one of his tales of terror! In fact, British newspaper The Guardian claimed it was “like Stephen King in a fever.”

4. Bad Country by C.B. McKenzie

For a book to be scary, it has to exhibit some level of suspense. Luckily, C.B. McKenzie’s Bad Country, which tells the tale of a retired bounty hunter investigating a murder very close to home, has that in spades! King tweeted, “Terrific crime-suspense-mystery novel, but the real revelation is his fresh and original voice.” See? You don’t need to write horror to grip someone with perfectly calibrated tension!

5. The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

How many of today’s authors count Stephen King as an influence? We’re willing to bet the answer is: a lot. But who most inspired the young King? Well, according to the man himself, “The author who influenced me the most as a writer was Richard Matheson.” This quote is generally attached to Matheson’s seminal novel The Shrinking Man — a weirdly terrifying, yet poignant, story of a man getting smaller and smaller every single day. It’s easy to see why it spoke to King!

6. Doing Harm by Kelly Parsons

Hospitals are scary places at the best of times — so imagine how much more terrifying they’d be if there was a killer on the loose Hell-bent on playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the chief doctor! That’s the tantalizing setup for Kelly Parsons’ thriller Doing Harm, which King dubbed, “Best damn medical thriller I’ve read in 25 years.” He added, “Terrifying OR scenes, characters with real texture.”

7. Dead Lines by Greg Bear

King called this technological horror story “a really excellent novel.” Within its pages, author Greg Bear expertly pokes at our modern obsession with new tech, which can very easily tip into fear if something goes wrong. His main character Peter Russell is haunted by his dead daughter through the medium of Trans, a new mobile communication application. A phone that contacts the dead? That wasn’t in the manual!

8. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Released in 2015 A Head Full of Ghosts cleverly mixes a demonic possession story with the modern world of reality television. It follows the Barrett family, who accept the offer of an exorcism from a Catholic priest for daughter Marjorie, but also take money from a production company to let it be filmed. Of the book, King tweeted, “Scared the living Hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare.” 

9. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Long before Sharp Objects was turned into a prestige HBO series starring Amy Adams, Stephen King read Gillian Flynn’s novel and gave it a truly glowing review. He said, “To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild… I found myself dreading the last 30 pages or so but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights were out, the story just stayed there in my head, coiled and hissing, like a snake in a cave.” 

10. The Hunger by Alma Katsu

“Deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down, not recommended reading after dark.” It must be a thrill for an author to read this about their book — but for that review to come from someone who has been scaring the world for more than 50 years? That’s got to be manna from Heaven. Alma Katsu received this praise for her terrifying book The Hunger, a reimagining of the tragic story of the Donner party and their ill-fated wagon journey in 1846-47.

11. Find You First by Linwood Barclay

Linwood Barclay has been called the master of psychological suspense — so it’s not exactly a shocker that King is a fan! 2021 thriller Find You First, which dealt with a millionaire whose heirs are being murdered, was another white-knuckle thriller to add to the collection. King said it “starts with a bang and ends with an even bigger one…It’s the best book of his career.” 

12. The Accident by Chris Pavone

“If you like real nail-biters, this is the best one so far this year.” This effusive praise was tweeted by King on March 28, 2014, and it was aimed at The Accident by Chris Pavone. It’s a page-turning thriller about a mysterious manuscript — which reveals all the dirty secrets of those in power — winging its way to publication. This sets in motion a chain of events which puts a literary agent and an ex-CIA operative in very real danger.

13. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians follows four Native American men who are stalked by a vengeful spirit which takes on the faces of those they love. A highly atmospheric, gothic novel that digs deep into the men’s cultural heritage, it — somewhat unsurprisingly — tickled the fancy of one Stephen Edwin King! The Master tweeted, “Thrilling, literate, scary, immersive. Bonus — the most terrifying one-on-one basketball contest ever.” 

14. Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

In 1976 — three years after Tryon’s book became a bestseller — King wrote in The New York Times, “It isn’t a great book… Instead, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, it is a true book. It is an honest book in the sense that it says exactly what Tryon wanted to say… In 40 years, when most of us are underground, there will still be a routine rebinding once a year for the library copies of Harvest Home.” And you know what? He was right.

15. Day Four by Sarah Lotz

Joe Hartlaub of Book Reporter wrote that this tale provided “a sense of foreboding so thick you could cut it with a knife.” King agreed, tweeting, “The new Sarah Lotz novel Day Four is really good… It’s the cruise ship from Hell.” The book — about a stranded ship whose passengers are stricken with a virus and haunted by spooky figures in their lower-deck cabins — is certainly a terrifying read.

16. After Silence by Jonathan Carroll

This 1992 thriller told the story of a cartoonist who moves in with his new girlfriend and her son, before finding out the horrifying truth — she actually kidnapped the boy as a baby. King’s cover pull-quote read, “Compelling… The only thing harder than putting it down is forgetting it after the last page is turned.” Not bad for a novel Jonathan Carroll mostly wrote because he was aggravated that critics were becoming bored with his usual fantasy stories!

17. The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

Legendary crime author Val McDermid called The Killer Next Door, “Genuinely disturbing and emotionally unsettling.” King concurred, tweeting that the thriller was “scary as Hell” and featured “great characters.” In truth, it is one of many razor-sharp novels written by Alex Marwood, but this one has a superb pitch — six neighbors are forced into an uneasy alliance after an accident, but one of them is a murderer hiding their true intentions!

18. Red Moon by Benjamin Percy

When he’s not writing comic books about superheroes such as Green Arrow, Wolverine and Teen Titans, Benjamin Percy is a very accomplished novelist. So accomplished, in fact, that crime writer James Lee Burke said, “His writing is like a meeting of Shakespeare and rock ’n’ roll.” The Master of Horror also took the time to praise his 2013 genre-bending opus Red Moon by tweeting, “A werewolf epic. Can’t stop thinking about it.”

19. Hell House by Richard Matheson

When Richard Matheson passed away in 2013 King wrote a tribute to the legendary author on his website. While praising his work and influence on contemporary horror and sci-fi, King praised one novel in particular, which was published in 1971. The King of Horror said Matheson “created one of the most brain-freezingly frightening haunted-house novels of the 20th century in Hell House.” 

20. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Before Big Little Lies was turned into an HBO TV series starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, and Laura Dern, it was a bestselling 2014 novel by Liane Moriarty. At the time of its release, King gushed, “It’s a Hell of a good book. Funny and scary. She nails the feuding moms.” Unfortunately, he also called Moriarty “Linda,” but swiftly apologized when he was corrected by a fellow Twitter user!

21. Against the Wind by J.F. Freedman

Against the Wind isn’t a horror novel — in fact, it’s a legal thriller! Still, King’s pull-quote read, “A rip-snorting, full-throttle novel…It kept me up late into the night,” which tells us that J.F. Freedman’s prose must have generated no little suspense! The story follows troubled lawyer Will Alexander, who is seeking redemption by defending an outlaw biker gang accused of a vicious murder.

22. The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber

This non-fiction book was turned into a Netflix movie in 2022 starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain. King was a huge fan of the book and even compared Cullen to one of his most iconic characters. Referencing Misery’s terrifying superfan, he wrote, “ You think Annie Wilkes was bad?” He added, “Check out this chilling non-fiction account of Charlie Cullen, a friendly nurse who may have killed several hundred patients before he was caught.” 

23. Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

If you’re a horror fanatic and you don’t have a scary book to occupy your evenings, have no fear — King has got your back. In April 2021 he tweeted, “Looking for a suspense novel that will keep you up until way past midnight? Look no further than Lock Every Door by Riley Sager.” We imagine interest in Sager’s novel — about a woman searching for her missing friend in a potentially evil apartment building — shot through the roof!

24. You by Caroline Kepnes

Once again, The Master of Horror got in on the ground floor of a novel that was later turned into a hit TV series. When You — the story of murderously romantic bookstore owner Joe Goldberg and the object of his obsession Guinevere Beck — came out in 2014 King tweeted, “Hypnotic and scary.” Then, when Kepnes excitedly replied to him, he wrote, “Totally original. Never read anything quite like it.”

25. Fever by Deon Meyer

King is no stranger to post-apocalyptic narratives — after all, one of his most famous books is The Stand, an epic dark fantasy set after a pandemic wipes out most of humanity. Fittingly, when praising Deon Meyer’s Fever in 2017 King compared it to his masterwork. He said, “Reminiscent of The Stand and The Passage. Great stuff,” and we bet Meyer’s head almost exploded!

26. Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar

Richard Chizmar cleverly used the trappings of true crime and blended them with fiction in this unsettling novel. It imagined that in 1988 Chizmar was a college graduate coming back to his hometown — right in the midst of a serial killer’s reign of terror. King loved it so much that he supplied a pull quote which read, “Chasing the Boogeyman does what true crime so often cannot — it offers both chills and a satisfying conclusion.”

27. Frankenstorm by Ray Garton

The tagline of 2014’s Frankenstorm is “Where do you hide when the forecast calls for Hell?” and that should tell you all you need to know about this rip-roaring, ghoulish novel! Needless to say, fans of silly-but-still-scary B-movies will get a huge kick out of it. King tweeted, “Remember when paperback originals were cool? Sex, action, suspense? It’s old-school.” 

28. The Ruins by Scott Smith

King’s “Summer Book Awards” were given out in the pages of magazine Entertainment Weekly in 2016- and his number-one book was written by A Simple Plan author Scott Smith. King wrote, “No quietly building, Ruth Rendell-style suspense here; Smith intends to scare the bejabbers out of you — and succeeds. There are no chapters and no cutaways — The Ruins is your basic long scream of horror. It does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches in 1975.”

29. My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

This 1997 novel was so good that King gave it a cover quote which read, “An eerie epic… Bears favorable comparison to Interview with the Vampire. I loved this novel.” An allusion to Anne Rice’s iconic vampire saga from the Master of Horror? You can bet that increased interest in Due’s emotional tale about a woman and the immortal man she loves — a desperate man who will perform a dangerous ritual to keep his family with him until the end of time.

30. The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

The Great God Pan was published 128 years ago — 1894, to be exact — and dealt with a mysterious woman who may have caused a number of people to commit suicide. Rejected by critics at the time, who were horrified by its supernatural and sexual themes, it’s now considered a classic of the genre. In fact, King dubbed it “one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language.”

31. Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Lauren Beukes — author of The Shining Girls, which recently became an AppleTV+ series starring Elisabeth Moss — wrote a novel in 2013 that impressed King no end. Of Broken Monsters — which follows Detective Gabriella Versado as she descends into a horrifying mystery involving a half-human/half-deer corpse — King tweeted, “Scary as Hell and hypnotic. I couldn’t put it down.”

32. Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone

One of the most recent novels on this list, Carole Johnstone’s debut hit shelves in April 2021. The story of a woman forced to go up against the horrors lurking within her childhood home while searching for her missing twin, it wowed King. He said, “I loved Mirrorland. It’s dark and devious, a neo-gothic featuring twin sisters and a deeply frightening old, dark house. Beautifully written and plotted with a watchmaker’s precision.” 

33. The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Terror was turned into a harrowing ten-part AMC series produced by Ridley Scott and starring Jared Harris and Ciarán Hinds. When Dan Simmons’ book was first released, though, it captured the morbid imagination of King, who called it “a brilliant, massive combination of history and supernatural horror.” Indeed, readers — and later, viewers — were chilled to the bone by the story of men trapped in the Arctic while being stalked by something unknowable.

34. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

In his Entertainment Weekly column, King ranked this Sarah Waters novel as his favorite book of 2009. He wrote, “This is a terrifying, engrossing ghost story set in the English countryside not long after World War II, but it’s so much more.” He added, “Although told in straightforward prose, this is a deeply textured and thoughtful piece of work. Several sleepless nights are guaranteed.” 

35. Niceville by Carsten Stroud

Niceville is a sprawling, sinister novel that follows a troubled cop and his lawyer wife investigating the inexplicable disappearance of a young boy and a bank robbery that turned deadly. They find themselves entangled in the ancient darkness of their hometown, a place “where evil lives far longer than men do.” King loved the book, tweeting, “Crazy-good supernatural-crime-horror epic. Blew me away.”

36. The Troop by Nick Cutter

The Troop scared the Hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down,” wrote King on the cover of Nick Cutter’s book. “This is old-school horror at its best. Not for the faint-hearted, but for the rest of us sick puppies, it’s a perfect gift for a winter night.” Cutter’s tale of a scout troop facing unimaginable horrors clearly hit the spot for King. 

37. Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

Tremblay’s second entry on this list is a collection of his best short stories. King called Growing Things and Other Stories, “One of the best collections of the 21st century,” and it’s easy to see why. From a disturbing video that haunts a student and her classmates, to a tale of pawn-shop thieves who suddenly vanish as they make their getaway, Tremblay keeps finding unique ways to make the skin crawl.

38. Rovers by Richard Lange

On August 25, 2021, King tweeted, “Want a book that will scare the daylights out of you this weekend? Rovers by Richard Lange. The best vampire novel I’ve read since Let The Right One In.” Lange’s gritty, soulful novel follows two vampire brothers — who have been killing their way across the American Southwest for seven decades — forced to reckon with their sins.

39. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train was released in January 2015 and it immediately became a phenomenon, selling over 1 million copies in its first two months. Less than two years later, the film version — starring Emily Blunt — hit the big screen. Guess what, though? The Master of Horror didn’t wait for the movie! No, sir! Not long after the book’s release, he tweeted, “Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night.”

40. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

We’re cheating a little bit with this last entry, but with good reason. You see, King himself grouped these two classic novels together when he wrote about them in Danse Macabre, his non-fiction exploration of horror. He believes The Haunting of Hill House — which was, of course, adapted by Mike Flanagan into a hit Netflix series — and The Turn of the Screw are “the only two great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.”