This is the time to cozy up on the couch with some exciting horror story books in hand. Whether you seek a mild shiver or full-fledged terror, keep reading to discover some of the best horror books in English that will quench your thirst!
In This Blog
Horror Story Books Essentials: Spine-Tingling Tales
There are three crucial elements best horror books in English or novel must perfect to qualify as a truly chilling gothic tale.
- The characters, although flawed and troubled (and they’ll certainly be troubled at some point), must captivate the reader’s interest.
- The landscapes—from foggy Victorian streets to abandoned country houses and whistling Arctic wastelands—should be vivid and unsettling.
- The story of the best horror books to read must be infused with a sense of mystery, whether that involves twists and turns on every other page or a gradual buildup of secrecy and dread.
As long as these demands are met, the gothic genre is generous, allowing for endless depth and variety in horror story books. Even the type of fear a gothic novel evokes can vary greatly from book to book—from creepy to deeply disturbing and thought-provoking.
10 Best Horror Books To Read
- Mary Shelley’s Electrifying Frankenstein
We’ve come to recognize Frankenstein’s monster as the tall, green figure with greasy hair and bolts in his neck. But this 20th-century, comic-horror depiction does not do justice to the serious intent of Shelley’s original story. One bleak, November night, scientist Victor Frankenstein successfully animates the creature he has meticulously constructed from deceased body parts.
No sooner has he realized his ambition than “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Following its creator’s harsh rejection, horror is compounded as the unloved “monster” exacts its revenge upon humanity. Frankenstein is a truly unsettling horror storybook that raises profound questions about creativity, responsibility, and the perils of knowledge.
- Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic Romance: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is celebrated for various reasons: its perceptive depiction of childhood. Its fervent proto-feminism, and the captivating romance of its central relationship, to name just a few. I cherish it for all these aspects, but I also appreciate it because it is Truly Creepy. I still get chills when I envision Jane awakening at night to the sound of sinister laughter outside her bedroom.
As with many respectable horror story books to read, the reality of Jane’s situation is ambiguous. Is Thornfield Hall haunted by a specter, or a potential killer, or is the enigma a trick of Jane’s mind, a manifestation of her dark inclinations?
- Émile Zola’s Dark Tale: Thérèse Raquin
Gothic stories rarely get darker than Thérèse Raquin, where Thérèse and her lover, Laurent, are consumed by guilt after drowning her husband, Camille. The novel is imbued with a stifling, oppressive atmosphere: I envision the scar on Laurent’s neck where his desperate victim bit him; the swollen corpse in the morgue; the cramped haberdasher’s shop where Thérèse scrapes by alongside her grieving mother-in-law, Madame Raquin.
After her son’s death, Madame Raquin suffers a stroke, effectively trapping her inside her own body. She discovers that Camille’s drowning was intentional when the killers discuss their crime within her hearing, but the stroke leaves her unable to express her agony or convey her knowledge to anyone.
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Fear of the unknown lies at the heart of all gothic novels. The new Mrs. de Winter remains profoundly ignorant of the world and her circumstances. From the moment she departs Mrs. Van Hopper’s straightforward unpleasantness for the intricate darkness of marriage with Maxim, questions plague her. Who is her husband? Who was Rebecca?
Why does she feel so resented and overshadowed as Manderley’s mistress? I can’t think of a creepier character in literature than Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, a “tall and gaunt” woman with a “dead skull’s face,” haunting the house like a living ghost, consumed by bitterness and obsession.
- Susan Hill’s Haunting Mystery: The Woman in Black
Horror story books rely on setting; characters and stories are only as compelling as their environment. When I think of The Woman in Black, I picture its landscape: a dark, lonely house on a foggy English coast, surrounded by dangerous marshes, and cut off from the mainland at high tide. In Susan Hill’s novel, the landscape is not a passive backdrop but an active player in the drama, as cruel and unsettling as the ghost. When shifting sands and tides swallow a pony and trap, drowning Jennet Humfrye’s child, the first link is forged in a long chain of horrors.
- Toni Morrison’s Unforgettable Beloved
Beloved by Toni Morrison is the most profoundly the best horror book to read on my list. After the Civil War, former slave Sethe settles in Cincinnati with her family. Threatened by slave-catchers to return them to the Kentucky plantation, Sethe attempts to kill her children in desperation. Anything, even death, is better than slavery.
Sethe only manages to kill her two-year-old daughter, and it’s the ghost of this child—Beloved—that haunts their home. In a broader sense, the specter represents the trauma of slavery and the disruption of norms it caused. The book is terrifying because it’s not just about specific characters but about everyone.
- Michael Cox’s Intriguing Thriller: The Meaning of Night
Despite being a hefty 600-page novel, The Meaning of Night kept me hooked with its gothic twists and turns, dreading the end. (Fortunately, Michael Cox penned an equally gripping sequel titled The Glass of Time.) It begins on a foggy October evening with our narrator, Edward Glyver, selecting an innocent man from the crowd, tracking him through the seedy alleys of Victorian London, and fatally stabbing him.
The act is gruesome, yet the narrator’s voice is empathetic—so what’s the significance? Why did he commit the crime? I can’t think of anything more chilling or compelling than an unreliable narrator extending their hand to the reader and saying, “Join me, and I’ll reveal all…”
- Michelle Paver’s Chilling Dark Matter
All the phenomenal elements of horror books are present and accurate in this gothic horror story book. But they’ve been given a sharp twist. Instead of the typical haunted house, we find ourselves at a research station in icy Svalbard. The cold, desolate landscape adds to the eerie vibe. The ghostly presence haunting Jack ties in with his isolation as his companions leave him one by one.
- Claire Fuller’s Bittersweet Bitter Orange
The haunted house theme appears endless. Authors return to it repeatedly, and the finest among them always discover a new angle. Fuller’s third novel unravels at Lyntons, a decrepit mansion in England, during an oppressively hot summer in 1969. The middle-aged narrator—socially awkward, solitary Frances Jellico—has been hired to reside at Lyntons to document the gardens for its absent American owner. Peter and Cara accompany her.
They are a charming and self-assured young couple. She feels an increasing, and uneasy, attraction toward him. As in all best horror books in English, the supernatural aspects are ambiguous—reflecting Frances’s disturbed mental state as much as the house itself.
- Paraic O’Donnell’s Atmospheric Gem: The House on Vesper Sands
Read this novel during the Christmas break, and recall lifting my eyes at the end of chapter one to savor the perfection of the moment: a storm raging outside. A fire crackling in the hearth, and a deliciously eerie mystery in my hands. Sometimes, paradoxically, a horror storybook thriller can be both terrifying and comforting at once.
