Best Gothic Horror Books

Rank 1

Dracula

by Stoker, Bram

Dracula will always reign as the true master vampire, the one creature in horror and fantasy who can simultaneously seduce and terrify. And don't let yourself think this is an archaic story just because the novel was pub...

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Rank 2

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House:...

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Rank 3

Frankenstein

by Shelley, Mary

While not “strictly” a steampunk, this is one of the first science fiction novels, the ultimate science-gone-wrong story, and Victor Frankenstein is the quintessential mad-scientist, harnessing the power of a storm to cr...

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Rank 4

The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

The governess of two enigmatic children fears their souls are in danger from the ghosts of the previous governess and her sinister lover.

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Rank 5

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840...

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Rank 6

The Shining

by King, Stephen

Disclaimer: Avoid King books if you're sensitive to the overuse of adverbs. Second disclaimer: The movie and the book are quite different, but neither will ruin you for the other since they're both excellent.King has spo...

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Rank 7

White Crow

by Marcus Sedgwick

Two stories, centuries apart, that meet in the Sussex village of Winterfold: a modern girl and a mysterious one who both feel the pull of a secret, and a reverend in the 1700s who made a terrible discovery. A chilling gh...

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Rank 8

The Woman in Black

by Susan Hill

In the process of settling an estate, Arthur Kipps finds himself confronted with some very unsettling matters.

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Rank 9

The Witching Hour

by Rice, Anne

The first in the Mayfair Witches series, The Witching Hour introduces the fictional Mayfair family of New Orleans, generations of male and female witches. This tight-knit and deeply connected family, where a death of one...

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Rank 10

Interview With The Vampire

by Rice, Anne

There was Dracula. And then there was Brad Pitt… err… Louis – the main character in what is one of the founding books of the genre. Before you read this book, you need to keep in mind that it was published in 1976. At th...

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Rank 11

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Mr. Gabriel Utterson is a serious, austere lawyer living a humdrum life in Victorian London. Yet there is a strange clause in his friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll's will: should he disappear for more than 3 months, everything wi...

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Rank 12

House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski

A young family moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojourn...

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Rank 13

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red

by Ridley Pearson

The fictional diary of Ellen Rimbauer, who in the early 1900s moved into the vast Seattle mansion built by her husband, and recorded the strange events that gave Rose Red its reputation. A companion to Stephen King's Ros...

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Rank 14

In a Glass Darkly

by Sheridan Le Fanu

In a Glass Darkly collects together five short stories from gothic horror and mystery writer Sheridan Le Fanu. The book, published in 1872 a year before Le Fanu's death, is named from a passage in Corinthians which speak...

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Rank 15

The Mysteries of Udolpho

by Ann Radcliffe

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) is the archetypal Gothic novel. A young woman, Emily St. Aubert, suffers the death of her father, followed by worsening physical and psychological death, mirrored in a landscape of crumbli...

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Rank 16

The Graveyard Book

by Gaiman, Neil

Gaiman is one of the biggest names in modern fantasy, and for good reason. His ability to craft fairytale-like, lyrical stories is almost unparalleled. With The Graveyard Book, he goes a little outside of that norm, p...

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Rank 17

The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

by Wooding, Chris

As Thaniel, a wych-hunter, and Cathaline, his friend and mentor, try to rid the alleys of London's Old Quarter of the terrible creatures that infest them, their lives become entwined with that of a woman who may be eithe...

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Rank 18

The Darkest Part of the Woods

by Ramsey Campbell

For decades the lives of the Price family have been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. There, Dr. Lennox Price discovered an hallucinogenic moss which quickly became the focus of a cult. Though...

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Rank 19

Blindness

by José Saramago

An epidemic of sudden white blindness sweeps through a city. The first victims are locked up in an abandoned asylum, where order breaks down, and only one woman, who can still see, keeps the group alive. A harrowing para...

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Rank 20

The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of...

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Rank 21

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

The first part of Dante's epic poem. Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante travels down through the nine circles of Hell and meets sinners suffering punishments suited to their crimes.

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