The 10 Best Horror Books of All Time According to Goodreads, Ranked
Pick up one of these tales of demons, vampires, or monsters for spooky season
Horror is an extremely broad genre, spanning supernatural tales and stories of mundane but twisted killers. It can be tinged with romance, fused with sci-fi, or focused on mystery. Everyone has their own fears, so choosing the most effective horror novels is a daunting task. We’ve turned to the wisdom of the crowd by consulting Goodreads, whose millions of members have rated the books that keep them up at night, and it turns out they really like Stephen King. Here’s a ranked list of the top 10 books they chose and why you should read them this spooky season.
10 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
Mary Shelley was just 18 when she started writing her Gothic horror masterpiece about Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who creates new life by assembling stolen body parts and is then horrified by what he created. Shelley’s first child had been born prematurely and died soon after, and the book really drives home the anxiety of birth and failing one's offspring in a way many adaptations of Frankenstein miss.
9 Carrie (1974) by Stephen King
Stephen King’s first novel follows Carrie White, a bullied 16-year-old who develops telekinetic powers and uses them to get vengeance against the mean girls at school. The book’s popularity launched King’s career and made supernatural horror more mainstream. It’s a tight story, explaining little of Carrie’s powers or her mother’s religious fanaticism, even though it sets up many of the themes that King would continue to explore in more depth in future books. Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation began King’s run as the most adapted living author, and Mike Flanagan recently released a miniseries version for Prime Video.
8 The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson
A classic Gothic ghost story, The Haunting of Hill House follows a paranormal investigator who gathers people in an isolated mansion to try to prove that the supernatural is real. As the visitors bond, they begin to experience strange phenomena as they learn about the home’s dark history. Jackson keeps many of the descriptions vague to make it unclear what characters are really experiencing and who is to blame, adding to the story’s eerie quality. Flanagan directed an excellent adaptation for Netflix that focuses on a family’s experience with the home over the decades.
7 The Exorcist (1971) by William Peter Blatty
Inspired by a real case of supposed demonic possession, The Exorcist follows the case of Regan MacNeil, a young girl who becomes increasingly disturbed and violent. When doctors can’t help Regan, her mother turns to a Jesuit priest for help. Saving Regan’s soul requires a priest having his own crisis of faith to wrestle with his doubts and the devil. Blatty also wrote the screenplay for William Friedkin’s iconic 1973 film adaptation and continued the franchise with The Ninth Configuration and The Exorcist 3.
6 Misery (1987) by Stephen King
Stephen King left behind the supernatural for his deeply disturbing tale about an obsessed fan who holds a bestselling romance author captive in her home. Paul Sheldon ended his popular Misery series and is looking to change his career by pivoting to crime writing, but when he gets into a car accident, he’s nursed back to health by Annie Wilkes, who won’t let him leave before he writes another Misery book. Rob Reiner’s 1990 film adaptation perfectly captures the horror, with an Oscar-winning performance from Kathy Bates.
5 Pet Sematary (1983) by Stephen King
Losing a family pet is always hard, but it’s absolutely nightmarish in this Stephen King novel. When his daughter’s cat Church is hit by a car, Louis Creed buries the animal’s body in an ancient Native American burial ground. The animal returns home changed, unleashing an evil that haunts the family and reveals the dark history of the town and its pet cemetery. The book has been adapted into a 1989 film from Mary Lambert and 2019 version from
Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer.
4 Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker popularized the vampire story with Dracula, which is one of the most famous works of English literature. The tale of a Transylvanian count preying on the English town of Whitby drew on folklore and earlier horror books to establish many tropes of vampiric powers and weaknesses. There have been countless adaptations of the story, drawing on every aspect from Dracula’s journey on the Demeter to his seductive brides, to the vampire hunter Professor Abraham Van Helsing. If you love Anne Rice or Let the Right One In, you owe it to yourself to read this classic.
3 'Salem’s Lot (1975) by Stephen King
A year after publishing his first novel, Carrie, Stephen King penned his Dracula-inspired book 'Salem’s Lot. Continuing King’s focus on the horrors of Maine, the story follows Ben Mears, an author who returns to his hometown seeking inspiration for his next book. As Ben investigates an abandoned old mansion and the death of a young boy, he discovers that the residents of Jerusalem’s Lot are being transformed into vampires. Read the book and skip Gary Dauberman’s mediocre 2024 film adaptation.
2 It (1986) by Stephen King
Alternating between the 1950s and the 1980s, It follows the story of a group of misfit kids in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, who are tormented by a shapeshifting force of evil. Pennywise the Dancing Clown awakens every 27 years to claim new victims, and the members of the Losers Club need to confront their traumatic childhoods to protect a new generation. Pennywise is one of fiction’s most iconic monsters, brought to life in adaptations like Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film and the 2025 HBO series It – Welcome to Derry.
1 The Shining (1977) by Stephen King
Stephen King used his own struggles with alcoholism as inspiration for his third novel, The Shining, which follows Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic losing his sanity while working in a remote Colorado hotel. Jack’s son, Danny, has latent psychic abilities that become more pronounced at the haunted hotel, where a previous caretaker murdered his family. The book served as the basis of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece and King continued Danny’s story with the 2013 novel Doctor Sleep, which Mike Flanagan turned into a 2019 movie.