Because a handful of novelists dominate mainstream horror fiction, it can be easy to miss how rich and diverse literary horror is — including, of course, the work of the King himself. These four terrific novels combine sharp prose with well-crafted terror.
‘The Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson (1959)
An enormously influential work of dread, Shirley Jackson’s classic haunted house tale remains one of the rare horror novels to receive literary awards. It is “one of the 20th century’s finest horror novels — and maybe the definitive haunted house story,” said Lara Zarum at The New York Times.
‘The Stand’ by Stephen King (1978)
Among Stephen King’s dozens of novels, “The Stand” remains his epic masterwork. It is about a flu named Captain Trips that wipes out 99.4% of the world’s population and forces the survivors to choose between the forces of good and evil. King’s “most sweeping horror novel” is also a “kind of inventory of American culture,” said Kirkus Reviews.
‘Come Closer’ by Sara Gran (2003)
Short enough to read in a single sitting, Sara Gran’s chilling story of an architect succumbing to demonic possession will leave readers stunned and unsettled. A “book that could damage the unwary psyche,” its “genius is in making the strange details so commonplace and incidental that ambiguity survives,” said Neil McRobert at Esquire.
‘The Grip of It’ by Jac Jemc (2017)
A troubled young couple moves from the big city and buys a small, haunted house, in a familiar set-up made terrifyingly unsettling by the way the reader is plunged into nonlinearity and fear alongside the characters. In “prose that is poetic and bereft of consolation,” Jemc “unsettles our notions of the boundaries between ourselves, our partners and anything else that may hurt us,” said Ahsan Butt at The Rumpus.