It’s Horror Season

The first Stephen King book I remember reading was The Shining, and I was hooked.

As a teenager I ripped through that book and many that followed from Stephen King. Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Stand, and The Dead Zone were all published when I was in high school, and they were followed by Cujo and Pet Sematary while I was in college.

At the time, King was the unquestioned master of horror writing. There were other authors who turned out top horror books - The Omen by David Seltzer, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and Jaws by Peter Benchley all come to mind. But no one produced the mass quantity and quality of Stephen King.

As he continued through his career, King kept pounding out best sellers, but I always felt like the horror aspect was downplayed and the books, while they had a horror edge to them, were more of a storyteller spinning a yarn that you just shook your head and couldn’t believe.

Books through the later 1980s and through the 1990s such as It, Misery, Needful Things, Insomnia, and the very underrated The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, were stories with suspense and needed your ability to suspend belief long enough to get through the story.

Over the last dozen years or so, King’s writing style has taken a different turn. There is still that classic horror feel to the stories where you have to pause from time to time before you turn the page, but he’s also evolved as a storyteller. While I will always list books like The Shining and Salem’s Lot among my favorites, his books of the last decade such as 11/22/63, The Mr. Mercedes trilogy, The Outsider, and Billy Summers are right there with the best.

As we near Halloween, it is the perfect time to not only pick up a Stephen King classic (or even a more recent book), but also try some other top horror books to get you into the spirit of the season. With that in mind, here are some books from Stephen King, as well as some other authors who have mastered the craft of horror writing and storytelling that you might want to pick up during this season of chills and thrills.

From Stephen King: 11/22/63. This is a book I have always felt was one of his most underrated. It transports Jake Epping through a portal into the past to 1958 and beyond with the ultimate goal of preventing the assassination of President Kennedy. It’s a page turner with plenty of twists and turns.

Also from Stephen King: The Outsider. A more recent book from King which came out in 2018 - it is classic King with all of the suspense you would expect. A local man who is a Little League coach and father is accused of a horrible crime that he couldn’t possibly have committed. But all the evidence points to his guilt.

Whispers by Dean Koontz. Around the same era that Stephen King was first making a name for himself as a horror writer, Dean Koontz was also establishing himself as one of the best. Whispers is often considered the book that brought his writing into the mainstream and follows the plight of Hilary Thomas as she is stalked by psychopath Bruno Frye.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix is a more contemporary thriller. The story surrounds several ‘Final Girls” - the lone survivors of mass murderers - and brings them together to fend off a new threat.

Pines by Blake Crouch is the first book in the Wayward Pines Trilogy. A secret service agent arrives in a town in Idaho and things don’t seem quite right. The longer Ethan Burke stays in town, he begins to realize there is no leaving and everything certainly is not right.

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James is a true ghost story that takes place at Idlewild Hall, a school for incorrigible girls. There is a murder at the school in the 1950s, and another 30 years later. In 2014, a woman with ties to the school wants to find out what happened to her sister.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman is one of those books you just can’t put down. You are drawn to the characters, the heroine, and her blinded children as they attempt to escape an unseen danger.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes offers a diverse cast of characters in this serial killer novel. The story revolves around time travel and the one girl who wouldn’t die.

A few books that are certainly worthy of being on any must-read list include: The Fisherman by John Langan, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Return by Rachel Harrison, and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

- by Bob N., Hopewell Branch