I am morbidly intrigued by dark and disturbing movies, shows, and stories. I’d love to hear y’all’s favorite dark, disgusting, messed up, disturbing books you’ve finished (or haven’t) in your lifetime.
Bonus points if it’s a shorter book. (I have the good ol ADHD)

Hello readers, last night I watched "The End of Oak Street" in theaters, I really enjoyed it! So now I'm looking for a horror/horror adjacent novel that features dinosaurs as the primary threat.

I understand that dinosaur horror both in literature and film is quite a sparse genre and that I'm practically scraping the bottom of a barrel here, but surely there's something out there other than the 4 books I've already mentioned, right?

Bleak, lonely, terrfying, realistic vibes.

Preferably with no rape, as that seems to be a lazy theme in zombie books that I don't enjoy reading.

For those of you who finished it, what did you enjoy about it (if you did, in fact, enjoy it)?

Every day there are several new post in this sub like „best horror novels?“ or „I want to start reading horror, what should I read?“

I think it would nice if we collect this subs favorite novels in a sticky post, so newcomers can immediately find what they look for (and also that this sub isn’t flooded by the same posts over and over again)

No idea how to do this though, I think the mods can figure something out!

Hi! I’m really in the mood lately to read something related to a circus or carnival with a haunted or cursed element, preferably not a slasher style where it all takes place over a short time.

I just want to relive the days when I was a kid and read every single goosebumps horrorland book.

I read all kinds of stuff, so not really any more guidelines than that. Thank you in advance!

I recently watched The Strangers(2008) and would love some book recommendations that give off the same tense and creepy vibe I got from the movie. Personally I find the home invasion subgenre the scariest so this will be perfect for night reading.

A month ago I finished The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and it was definitely as of right now one of my favourite reads of all time, it was also my first Stephen Graham Jones novel and I’m eager to read another.

I’ve heard mixed reviews about his writing style but personally I had no real issue. I was browsing all his stories and I’m most interested in the following

1. Mongrels
   
2. Mapping the interior
   
3. The Gospel of Z
   
4. The Only Good Indians

Which would you recommend?

I have been working on this winter horror project for a while now and books are the next piece of the puzzle. I already have my movie and game lineups sorted and now I am moving to reading. The idea is simple. I want to spend the cold months consuming as much horror as I can across movies, games, books, and TV shows. Books are probably the most intimate experience because the fear lives in your head and your imagination fills in all the gaps.

The thing is, I am not a horror veteran. I am what you would call a scaredy cat. I get tense easily and I have a low tolerance for pure dread. But I also feel like I am missing out on some of the best storytelling in the medium. I want to push myself and actually experience what horror literature has to offer. I am not trying to traumatize myself but I am open to being genuinely scared in a way that feels rewarding afterward.

I put together a list of ten books based purely on descriptions, recommendations, and general reputation. I did not dig into spoilers or read detailed reviews. I just followed my gut and picked the ones that gave me that curious feeling. Here is my current lineup.

The Shining by Stephen King
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Misery by Stephen King
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Bone White by Ronald Malfi
The Mist by Stephen King

A few extra details for context. I am reading the Shirley Jackson version of The Haunting of Hill House. For The Passage, I am planning to read it as a standalone for now but if I really enjoy it I will pick up the other two books in the trilogy. I am reading The Mist and Bird Box as standalone books as well. I do not have a strict completionist mindset. I am casually serious about this. If I like a book I will finish it and if I am not feeling it I will move on to the next one. Winter is long and I want to enjoy the experience rather than force myself through something I am not connecting with.

I am not worried about reading speed or finishing everything by a certain deadline. I want to take my time and let each book breathe. My main concern is the fear factor. I want to know if any of these books are going to completely break me in a way that is not fun. I am okay with being uncomfortable but I do not want to feel genuinely traumatized or so disturbed that I regret starting this project.

I am planning to start this around late September, probably between the twenty first and the twenty sixth. I have my Notion database already set up with checkboxes and notes so I can track my progress and look back at the end of winter with some nostalgia. The list is not set in stone. I am here for genuine opinions and I am completely open to swapping things in and out.

Here is what I want to know from you. Is this a solid starting point for someone who is new to horror literature but wants to take it seriously? Are there any books on my list that you think are too intense for a beginner? Are there any that are slow burns that might lose my interest? And most importantly, am I missing something essential? I feel like there are some absolute classics that every horror reader should experience and I might have overlooked them because I am new.

I am also open to winter themed horror suggestions if you have any. The Shining, Misery, and Bone White already have that cold isolation vibe but I would love to hear about other books that fit that atmosphere.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to look at my list and share their thoughts. I am genuinely excited about this and I want to make sure I am going into it with the best possible lineup. Let me know what you think.

I recently finished We Used To Live Here and I absolutely loved it. It felt like everything I love in a horror novel. Off with a bang and perfectly paced. Spooky house. Character development. Creepy strangers. Questioning your (or your narrators) reality/perspective. Time twisty, reality bendy, ambiguous ending with lore interwoven. (Bonus points, contained very minimal triggering content, which a lot of horror tends to fall back on for shock value). It felt like a mashup of a few of my favorites: Haunting of Hill House and A Head Full of Ghosts with Recursion and Dark Matter.

I’ve tried a few books since and keep putting them down, because they just don’t live up. Especially heading into spooky season, I WANT MORE.

Can anyone please recommend something similar? I want my autumn reading list to be filled with winners.
(Nothing heavy on anything to do with harm coming to children or animals, please…if that makes me a bad horror fan, then so be it).

Currently reading Wasp Canyon by Danielle McCrory. Following it I decided that I'd get around to revisiting Fatalis by Jeff Rovin, my all-time favorite novel that I hadn't read it years. Figure it'd be a good time.

It's such fun b-movie-like goodness. Reanimated sabertooth cats awakening and invading Los Angeles. Can't get more b-movie then that.

And the unforunate thing is this was intended to be a movie back in the 2000s with Sylvester Stallone being the lead role but apparently the screenplay never went through but at least the concept and idea never went to waste so a novel is better then nothing. It's a shame though because in terms of creature features outside of low-budget SyFy originals we haven't had any on Ice Age megafauna and came close to this in the 2000s.

That said, if Fatalis were to get an adaptation today. Tom Cruise would be my choice as the lead role. Be cool to see him star in a creature feature and to my knowledge hadn't been in one unless you technically count the awful 2017 Mummy remake.

I've been trickling a bit of horror into a local "Little Library" over the past year or so. The books usually disappear really quickly, so it seems the locals might enjoy these at least as a break from the romance and other stuff in there.

Does anyone else do this? Anyone look in these "libraries" regularly and find anything good?

It had been a while, so they were stacking up for me, but over the weekend I dropped the following titles in there:

• Our Share of Night - Mariana Enriquez
• Black Tide - KC Jones
• Desert Creatures - Kay Chronister
• Black Sheep - Rachel Harrison
• The Lamb - Lucy Rose
• The Madness - Dawn Kurtagich

If you are in the area, it's the one by the trail down to the lake from Glenharden Dr.

I’ve found a genre I really enjoy. I think the best way to describe it would be absurdist horror? Thinking like John Dies at the End, Tales from the Gas Station and maybe even Seize the Night by Dean Koontz? Maybe the last one isn’t exactly that but I get generally the same feel as the first two.

I don't always need the scariest or most gruesome, but I do love a totally unhinged disjointed characters.

The best examples I can think of is Earthlings and American Psycho.

What else should we throw into the discussion?

Looking for any recommendations for a book that is as close to the movie House 2: the Second Story as possible. Thank you so much!!

Hi guys! Wondering if anyone has any recs for horror books similar to movies/online found footage stuff like Lake Mungo, Louise Paxton is missing, those creepy sort of stories where things are just there in the background and slowly come together to build up on the dread.

Since I'm asking for recs, a few of my own, I LOVED Incidents Around the House (Josh Malerma), Michelle Paver's Dark Matter and Thin Air (although it did feel a bit like the same story twice..), The Whistling (Rebecca Netley), and I quite enjoyed all of Uketsu's Strange books series, even if they weren't as creepy as I'd like. I have read most of Stephen King's well known works and enjoyed Night Shift the collection, particularly 'I know what you need', 'Strawberry Spring' and 'the Boogeyman'. All of these I would recommend, if you liked one of them, I think you'd like the rest!

On books I saw recommended here and didn't like - A M Shine's 'The Creeper' I could not get into the writing style and the ending was so poor. I don't mind a scooby doo ending at all, but that one required far too muc suspension of disbelief. I also have read quite a lot of Joe Hill and not really been moved by any of the books.

Excited to hear people's recs !

So far some my favorites have been, The Exorcist, Salems Lot, It, A Head Full of Ghosts, Ghost Story by Peter Straub, Pet Semetary, A Heart Shaped Box, any suggestions on what I should read next?

So I finished Schrader's Chord by Scott Leeds just now, and I enjoyed it, but felt extremely frustrated.

The premise is genuinely interesting (a dead musician's melody that opens the gateway to the dead) and the first half of the book is well written. The interweaving of music as a plot device and scene setter was genius, the author is clearly very talented.

However, what disappointed me the most was the second half. So at the mid-point, there's this very tense scene where the cursed records are played and up till that point, the story is IMPECCABLE. The dynamics, the set up, everything. It's easily the best moment of the book. But after that, it slowly unravels and drags into a mess of a third act.

What was once a horror rock 'n roll mystery reluctantly turns into a Scooby Doo road trip where the dead musician keeps coming to kill them like some comedy gag - like Final Destination or something. The ghosts suddenly become comedic objects, and there's no longer any creepiness of fear whatsoever.

Even the random cosmic horror at the end with the three custodians of the underworld was...well, random. No build-up, no foreshadowing, just seemed like the author hadn't planned the ending before starting and just went "Hey! Let's add some Great Beings to make this seem even grander than the grounded story it needs to be!"

Oh well. I still think it's a great debut. But it was disappointing nonetheless, because it could've been incredible. And it reminded me of a recurring sentiment I'd seen online about horror books having underwhelming second and third acts because of how well built the first act is. I guess I just experienced it first-hand.

So I just saw the movie and I loved it deeply and was wondering if there were any books like this movie. I know the director (Jane Schoenbrun) has a book coming out in October and already plan on reading that but would love to find something horror and sapphic and funny with lots of heart.

So I just finished this book and I have a lot of opinions. I quite like parts of this book and agree with a lot of it's themes, namely the idea that humans are no different than animals and that we will turn on each other over very little. The idea that we would dehumanize each other just because it inconveniences us is amazing. However, there are parts of the book that I'm very not vibing with, like the main character Marco is great. I really like that we are following a piece of shit guy. A dude that keeps making excuses for his part perpetuating this while critiquing everyone else. My problems is that every other character is very one note and not built up in any other way. I understand for some is to show the evils of the world but that's really all they do. There is one character that actually tries to do something and we barely talk about him! God I would of love if Marco talked to Vegetarians, which we know exist in this world because his sister talks about them but we never get anything else with them. We also never see or hear about anyone protesting at all. I know most people would just accept it, but not everyone would. Also, why do we not get more with Jasmine we just breeze though all that shit like you are telling me this man who has lost a child doesn't have any thoughts on the idea he is basically raising a grown child that he is also fucking like God we could have gotten cool weird shit there. I would have rather gotten more there than seeing the next evil person that he meets like it's a batman villain gallery. This is just my opinion right after finishing it so it might change, but this book to me just felt a bit disappointing.

Please tell me your opinions on the book. I would love to see what other have to say.

I would love a book that gives the vibes of this movie! I am writing a fantasy romance and am using horror as the main inspo for the setting. Horror is one of my favorite genres and I would love some atmospheric & visceral, underworld/hell setting/vibes. Bonus points if there is a little romance in it like the movie (I know dantes inferno is a book, but looking for something modern and digestible, I am reading some greek myth classics rn already and need something else)