October is the month for scary stories, horror novels, and crime capers. Whether you like your scares in fiction or true-story form, read something that gets those little hairs on the back of your neck standing up. Then finish it all off with your own Halloween haunting around town at the end of the month. If you’re not sure what book will keep your heart rate up, here are our favourite Horror novels.
This classic scare about the notorious count Dracula is vampire fiction the way it should be: dark, sexual and obscure. Leave the light on when you go to bed.
A warning against man’s hubris in technological advancement; Shelly cautions that we are not God, and heaven help us should we try to be.
This is the novel that launched the zombie craze; even though the creatures in this novel are closer to infected vampires. An infectious pandemic has wiped out the entire human race bar one; but how much humanity can one person retain if he is the only human left?
Hannibal Lecter is, and will always remain, one of the most intriguing, horrifying and unfathomable psychopaths in literary history.
Ellis’ deadpan first-person account of a wall street trader who likes to kill people for kicks during his free time, has caused a stir since it’s publication for its explicit sexual and violent content.
This incredibly gruesome novel is difficult to get through. Beware: accounts of people fainting in book stores after reading the first chapter are not uncommon.
This is the true story of a haunted house in Amityville, USA and the family that suffered at the wrath of its ghostly keepers. After various court battles no one is sure of the extent of the truth of the novel, but it’s still one of the scariest legends around.