October 1, 2024, 2:16pm
Ah, October: some might say it’s the best month of the year. (It is.) Certainly, it is the spookiest (although Charles Dickens might argue for December) and by the time you read this, I have no doubt that your neighborhood will already be inundated with skeletons, pumpkins, misc. spice blends, colorful leaves, and so forth. I myself spend the month of October reading spooky (or spooky-adjacent) books—a ritual that began after college that has come to be one of my favorite reading traditions, and one I’m always keen to pass along to others. There’s nothing like seasonally-appropriate reading at any time of the year, but a good chiller can be just the thing for this most autumnal of months.
But what about you, dear reader? I’m imagining that you’ve maybe never picked up a horror novel, or that you’ve been curious but always a little unsure of where to begin. Maybe you’ll even continue: “But, Drew, your enthusiasm for the season is infectious. Perhaps this year I’ll give it a shot!”
Well, friend: you’ve come to the right place. I’ve curated for you a short list of books with which to begin. Welcome to the October Country.
NB that for this list I have purposefully avoided anything written pre-1950. If you are so inclined, by all means check out Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft (or, actually, skip Lovecraft as his frights are reliably diminished by his racism and bad prose) or Frankenstein or Dracula or Matthew Lewis’s The Monk or Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey… my intention here is to introduce you to the modern field, as it were.
If you’re looking for a gentle introduction to horror…
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Bradbury is the patron saint of the October Country—indeed, one of his most beloved story collections gave me that name. Plenty of his best-known work exists in the science-fiction realm but Something Wicked This Way Comes is the closest Bradbury ever came to writing a straight-up horror novel, albeit one still tinged with his trademark nostalgia. Mr. Dark and his mysterious carnival are frightening enough to keep the pages turning but likely won’t give you nightmares, and the book’s warm heart is a perfect reminder that spooky season also means comfy sweaters and warm fires.
Fear-o-Meter: 3
Emily Hughes, Horror for Weenies
Not fiction and not really about books—but I know that reading the Wikipedia synopses of scary books/movies has provided an entrée into the genre for a great many readers out there and there’s nothing wrong with that! Hughes’s book, which looks at 25 classic horror movies from the 1960s to the present, is like a more-personable version of those synopses: she walks you through films like Psycho and The Blair Witch Project while explaining why they’re important, why their take on horror is meaningful, and how any particular vein of horror (psychological, slasher, folk, zombie, cosmic, etc) has manifested over the years. If you’re horror-curious, this could be a place to safely check out what you like and what you’d rather avoid—and it’ll give you some Halloween-party-ready thoughts on classic films to boot.
Fear-o-Meter: 2
If you want to start with the best of the best…
Stephen King, The Shining
You could put just about any of Stephen King’s first ten books on this list and the list wouldn’t be complete without him—but for my money, The Shining is the place to start. It was my first of King’s horror novels, and while I think a few others are ultimately scarier, it is still the one that lingers in the shadowy corners of my mind. It has, along with a lot of King’s work, begun to show its age (fair warning: horror has been an unfortunate repository for a lot of misogyny and racism over the years) but there’s a reason that this book and its spiritually-faithful-but-literally-unfaithful film adaptation have landed so firmly in popular consciousness. Also, King’s book is far better than the Kubrick film. It’s more human, more humane, and a lot more interesting—not to mention scarier: this one will definitely going to keep you up at night.
Fear-o-Meter: 8
Anne Rice, Interview With The Vampire
Maybe you’re watching the surprisingly-great series on AMC, maybe you remember the pretty-good film, maybe you’re just a goth kid at heart who also wants love—maybe you’re even just a romance reader who wonders if you might be able to jump from The Ex Hex to something a little more pulse-pounding (in every way). Let me assure you: Anne Rice’s vampires will both frighten and seduce you. Interview is not the best book in the series (for my money, that’s Queen of the Damned) and the series loses its way several times over the decades (CW: religion and lots of it) but when Rice really gets cooking, nobody can top her. There’s plenty of bloodsucking violence but also a ton of homoerotic passion: Rice doesn’t get as spicy in these books as she did in her erotica, but not by much. This book and its first few sequels helped humanize horror for me, showing that fear and arousal (and laughter!) all live quite close to one another in the body.
Fear-o-Meter: 6
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Don’t let the Netflix series confuse you: Jackson’s best-known novel is neither an unabashed fright-fest nor a saccharine and overly-monologue-y family drama. It is, however, one of the scariest books ever written because of how well it depicts an unreliable narrator’s experience of the uncanny. It’s possible to read this book as a haunting/possession novel and it is also possible to read it as a portrait of a troubled mind—and the truth lies, likely, somewhere in the middle. There are no bent-backed wraiths here to provoke a jump scare—but true terror, as you’ll learn, comes from the wondering, from the possibility of something just around the corner, from the sudden shocking realization that you might not be able to trust your own senses…
Fear-o-Meter: 5
If you’re short on time (or attention span)…
John Langan, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters
Any of John Langan’s collections could work for the eager but commitment-wary reader, but I’ll offer up his first as a great place to start. Langan is one of the best writers working in the horror field today, committed to delivering great scares but also thoughtful meditations on the human condition—which, I should warn you, is one of the most potent undercurrents in the genre across time. This collection has a bunch of classic setups—an expedition to a remote island, a mysterious bequest, a journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an impossible statue, skeletons—but it blends those classic ideas (and the energy of classic horror or horror-adjacent writers like Henry James and Washington Irving) with a deeply readable modern verve. One or two Langan stories is enough to hook you for life.
Fear-o-Meter: 6
Sara Gran, Come Closer
I’ve written about this book before, but I’ll never pass up an opportunity to say that it is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. It’s also a short, sharp shock of a read: you can polish it off in a day or two, tops. Indeed, you’ll likely want to finish it in the hopes of getting it out of your head. It is, at its heart, a possession story and a pretty obvious one: Gran doesn’t pull any punches or obfuscate much of what is happening to her main character as she embraces and descends into a dark partnership. But where the horror really kicks in is the “am I possessed” quiz that pops up early in the book—I won’t spoil it except to say that Gran ensures the terror slips off the page and into your real world so smoothly you almost won’t notice. Until, of course, you do.
Fear-o-Meter: 9
Laird Barron, The Imago Sequence
Another contemporary writer, Laird Barron works largely in the ‘cosmic’ horror realm—a kind of horror inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen and Robert Chambers, which looks at unknowable entities from other dimensions or from across the cosmos whose sheer existence so warps the state of reality that it will leave any human who encounters them permanently scarred. Barron’s stories often have a bit of noir to them as well (he’s since added crime novelist to his resume) and the blend of tough guys facing down mind-bending horrors provides a refreshing spin on both. His stories can often be mind-bending in their scope, but that’s part of the fun.
Fear-o-Meter: 7
Mariana Enriquez (tr. Megan McDowell), A Sunny Place for Shady People
Enriquez is another author who can be read from any point in her oeuvre—her novel Our Shade of Night was my hands-down favorite of 2023—but her latest short story collection is a perfect encapsulation of not only her particular brand of the uncanny but a terrific introduction to the vibrant Latin American horror scene. Even the title is fitting: shady people but in sunny places? Hmm, seems… unsettling, doesn’t it? Many of her stories deal with violence towards women, the hauntings that linger inside of relationships (familial, romantic, or even friendly), and the strange corners of the world that resist illumination. Of this whole list, she’s probably the most ‘literary’ pick—but make no mistake, she’ll also make you wonder about the things going bump in the night beyond your door.
Fear-o-Meter: 3
If you want something of-the-moment…
Michael Bettendorf, TRVE CVLT
Some of the best horror writing happening today is coming out of small and/or genre-specific presses like Tenebrous Press, Bad Hand Books, Word Horde, and of course Tor Nightfire. This choose-your-own-adventure styled “gamebook” is full of everything great in horror today: playful experimentation with form, genuinely frightening scares, a re-examination of recent societal fears like the Satanic Panic and backmasking and toxic masculinity, and a beating human heart at the core of it all. Plus, did I mention it has a choose-your-own-adventure structure? Come play with us!
Fear-o-Meter: 7
P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout
Remember earlier when I said that you can skip Lovecraft because of the racism? Several Black authors have sought to address the inherent racism in Lovecraft’s work and the work he inspired—Clark’s barn-burner of a novella goes even further, directly linking the KKK and Birth of a Nation with unknowable cosmic entities bent on destruction. It remains unfortunately timely, as Republicans ramp up overtly racist attacks on people of color in this country. Read it before the election and it’ll help light a fire under you, to remember that that evil must be fought at every turn in order to protect not only ourselves but our fellow human beings.
Fear-o-Meter: 7
Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays
I’ve already mentioned this book in several of our most-anticipated/books-you-should-read roundups and those shout-outs should serve as a primer for the read, but I’ll add this: Chuck is one of the recent wave of writers whose work is consciously moving horror in a more inclusive direction. He’s also a wonderfully accessible writer—you don’t need to know or like horror to necessarily enjoy this book, which does traffic in some classic Hollywood-horror-related tropes but you’ll know those if you’ve watched a TV procedural or a Marvel movie in the last twenty years. What’s more, this’ll remind you (or teach you!) that horror might be scary but it can also be empowering.
Fear-o-Meter: 4