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Horror: The 100 Best Books

Spanning more than five centuries worth of literature, this important list of the 100 best horror books is unique because the books chosen for this list were chosen by well-known horror and fantasy writers. Originally published in 1988, Horror: The 100 Best Books was edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, and it is still available in paperback from Carol & Graf (ISBN: 0-7867-0552-3). This list is reproduced on our website with permission of the editors.

c. 1592
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
1606
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare
1612
The White Devil by John Webster
1794
Caleb Williams by William Godwin
1796
The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
1814
The Best Tales of Hoffmann by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
1817
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
1818
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1820
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
1824
The Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
1837
Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1838
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
1842
The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
1844
The Wandering Jew by Eug
1857
The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
1864
Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
1886
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
1887
She by H. Rider Haggard
1895
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
1896
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
1897
Dracula by Bram Stoker
1898
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
1902
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
1903
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
1904
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James
1906
The House of Souls by Arthur Machen
1908
John Silence by Algernon Blackwood
1908
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
1908
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
1909
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
1911
Widdershins by Oliver Onions
1912
The Horror Horn by E. F. Benson
1920
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
1925
The Trial by Franz Kafka
1929
Something About Eve by James Branch Cabell
1929
Medusa by E. H. Visiak
1933
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
1933
The Last Bouquet by Marjorie Bowen
1934
The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck by Alexander Laing
1937
A Second Century of Creepy Stories by Hugh Walpole, ed.
c. 1938
The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis
1939
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
1939
The Outsider and Others by H. P. Lovecraft
1942
Out of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith
1943
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
1945
Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Cornell Woolrich
1945
The Lurker at the Threshold by H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth
1946
Deliver Me from Eva by Paul Bailey
1946
And the Darkness Falls by Boris Karloff, ed.
1947
The Sleeping and the Dead by August Derleth, ed.
1949
Track of the Cat by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
1952
The Sound of His Horn by Sarban
1954
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1954
I am Legend by Richard Matheson
1955
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
1958
Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan
1959
Psycho by Robert Bloch
1959
Quatermass and the Pit by Nigel Kneale
1959
Cry Horror! by H. P. Lovecraft
1959
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
1964
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
1965
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
1966
The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard
1968
Sub Rosa by Robert Aickman
1969
The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
1969
The Complete Werewolf by Anthony Boucher
1971
Grendel by John Gardner
1971
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
1972
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
1973
Worse Things Waiting by Manly Wade Wellman
1973
Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
1975
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
1975
Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
1977
Murgunstrumm and Others by Hugh B. Cave
1977
Sweetheart, Sweetheart by Bernard Taylor
1977
All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris
1977
The Shining by Stephen King
1978
Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg
1978
The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber
1979
The Totem by David Morrell
1979
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
1980
The Cellar by Richard Laymon
1980
The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll
1981
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
1981
The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
1982
The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison
1983
In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner
1983
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
1983
The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin
1984
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
1984
The Ceremonies by T. E. D. Klein
1984
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
1984
Who Made Stevie Crye? by Michael Bishop
1985
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
1985
The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
1985
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
1986
A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle
1986
The Pet by Charles L. Grant
1987
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
1987
Dark Feasts by Ramsey Campbell