It’s the most wonderful time of the year…. Boo!

I love Halloween. I love horror. I love the macabre. And I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you which horror books I think are absolute musts.

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

This book, the recent TV adaptation and the 1963 Robert Wise film are all equally chilling. But the book does something the screen versions do not. The book delves into Nell’s psyche. Her growing trepidation and madness is slow and unnerving and rarely equalled by other writers. If you have it on your ‘to read’ pile, move it to the top.

The Woman in Black – Susan Hill

The theatre version of this has been scaring the pants of audiences for years and the book is nothing short of chilling. For a good ghost story with no happy endings, give this a look.

Ghost Story – Peter Straub

If you have seen the film version of this I would be surprised, it starred an aging Fred Astaire and scared me witless as a teenager. The book is perfect for anyone looking for a good old-fashioned ghost story. Stephen King called it one of the greatest horror novels of the 20th Century if you need convincing.

Dracula – Bram Stoker

The classic vampire story everyone thinks they know but probably have never read. It took me 3 attempts to get to the end but what I found when I had finished it was a much more human story than Hollywood usually tells.

The Rats – James Herbert

The reason I feel uncomfortable on the London Underground. The story centres on an invasion of giant rats who infect those they bite with a deadly disease. This book is an essential for any horror fans but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart.

IT – Stephen King

Narrowing my choices down to just one Stephen King book was hard but I opted for IT because it really is a great read. At more than 1,100 pages reading this is a commitment and there are chapters in there which make you question your decision but stick with it, the ending is out of this world.

Carmilla – Sheridan Le Fanu

This book is the ‘who wrote it better’ of gothic vampire fiction. It predates Dracula but not by much and many cite it as Stoker’s inspiration. Mainly it falls into the cult fiction genre as it depicts lesbianism albeit subtle and in 1872 that was not a major selling point.
The novel itself is a beautiful love story told with gothic horror. The perfect read for a stormy night.

Charlotte Wood is a feminist and writer of the macabre and sinister. She reads horror, fantasy, classic literature and historical fiction (with a preference for history from a woman’s perspective).