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- Dream Cycle
series26 books1919
similar byhorroreerie+1 more
The Dream Cycle is a series of short stories and novellas by author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). Written between 1918 and 1932, they are about the "Dreamlands", a vast alternate dimension that can only be entered via dreams. The Dreamlands are described as lying deeper than space, matter and time, and are a "limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity".
- Dracula
universe144 books1897
Start hereDracula · Start here
similar byhorror+1 more
"Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring" — so the Count greets his guest at the threshold of the Carpathians, and the great door shuts behind. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) is the wellspring of the modern vampire: the account of a centuries-old Transylvanian nobleman who quits his crumbling castle for the crowded lodging-houses of London, and the handful of ordinary people — a young solicitor, a doctor of the mad, a professor of stranger learning — who must piece together what he is before he makes the whole city his fold. It is told wholly in fragments: journal entries, letters, telegrams, ships' logs, phonograph cylinders, each hand recording only its own sliver of the dark. Around that single novel a whole crypt of continuations has grown, raised by many writers across a century. Fred Saberhagen's Dracula Sequence hands the Count the microphone, retelling the old events from his own wry, aggrieved lips and following him into later intrigues. Robert Lory's brisk 1970s Dracula Horror Series revives him as a reluctant weapon turned against fouler things; Peter Tremayne's trilogy reaches back along his bloodline; and further sequels, a Quincey Morris spin-off, and Dracula's Children carry the shadow onward. This is a loose shared world built upon a public-domain figure, not one governed continuity — each author remakes him as villain, antihero, or sympathetic narrator. Begin, always, with Stoker's original; the letters and the mounting dread stand entirely on their own. From there follow whichever door tempts you — Saberhagen's The Dracula Tape for the monster's own confession, Lory or Tremayne for tales that never glance back at the Borgo Pass again.
- Jerusalem's Lot
series3 books1975
similar byhorrorour worlddarkeerie+1 more
Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.
- The Edge of Running Water
William Sloanestandalone novel1939
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
After the death of his beloved wife, a physicist tries to build a machine that will enable him to communicate with the dead, with horrible consequences.
- To Walk the Night
William Sloanestandalone novel1937
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
To Walk the Night is a 1937 novel by William Sloane.
- Frankenstein
universe128 books1818
Start hereFrankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus · Start here
similar byhorror
Light a candle against the November dark and consider what a single spark, rightly applied to dead matter, might wake. In a laboratory at Ingolstadt a student named Victor Frankenstein learns the secret of animating lifeless flesh, assembles a being from the harvest of charnel houses and graves, and, at the moment it draws breath, flees the thing he has made. What he abandons does not stay abandoned. This is the world Mary Shelley opened in 1818 with Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: the story of a maker and his unmothered creation, and the long ruin each works upon the other. Shelley's novel arrives as a nest of confessions, an explorer's letters from the frozen north enclosing Victor's account, which in turn encloses the Creature's own, an articulate and wounded voice that has read Milton and wants only not to be alone. From that single volume two centuries of other hands have built outward, not as one continuity but as a gathering of independent returns to the same fire. Dean Koontz transplants the myth to modern New Orleans across a five-book cycle, Prodigal Son through The Dead Town, where the original Creature, now called Deucalion, hunts a Victor who never died. Donald F. Glut's New Adventures and Frank Schildiner's Quest of Frankenstein run the monster through pulp adventure; the mid-century French novels published as Benoit Becker chase him across a ruined Europe; Scott Sonneborn's Frankenstein Journals and the comic Frankenstein's Aunt turn the legend toward younger and lighter readers. What binds them is the question the book asks and never settles: which is the monster, the forsaken creature who kills, or the man whose ambition and cowardice made and abandoned him? Expect little comfort and few clean villains; the abiding note is grief, sublime and articulate, set against Alpine ice and candlelit hubris. Begin where it began, with Shelley's own novel; the later cycles reward you only once you have heard the Creature speak for himself.
- The Shining
series5 books1977
similar byhorrordark+1 more
Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining follows the Torrance family as winter caretakers of the isolated, malevolent Overlook Hotel, where father Jack is gradually consumed by the hotel's influence while his young son Danny's psychic "shining" draws its attention. Doctor Sleep (2013) picks up the story decades later, following Danny as an adult still marked by that childhood ordeal. Together the two form a horror duology spanning nearly forty years of real-world publication.
- The Lair of the White Worm
Bram Stokerstandalone novel1911
similar byhorrorearly 20th centuryeerie+1 more
A huge snake or dragon from prehistoric times survives in England, with intelligence and the ability to transform into a lady.
- The Magician
W. Somerset Maughamstandalone novel1908
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
A magician tries to create life.
- All the White Spaces
Ally Wilkesstandalone novel2022
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
All the White Spaces is an alternate history, horror and supernatural novel by English writer Ally Wilkes. It is her debut novel and was first published in the United Kingdom in January 2022 by Titan Books. It is about a trans man who joins an expedition to Antarctica in 1920, where he is tormented by supernatural apparitions.
- Claimed
Francis Stevensstandalone novel1966
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeeriegothic
From the flaps of the Avalon edition: "It was in the first decade of the twentieth century that the British merchant sailing ship, Portsmouth Belle, was thrown off her course by undersea volcanic convulsions, and entered an area of floating scoria and ashes. For three days the vessel plowed through this area, her best speed being three knots despite a fair breeze, with all canvas set; and on the second day, an island was sighted. The Portsmouth Belle's instruments had been affected in some way by the seismic disturbances; it was not possible to estimate her location by other than dead reckoning. If this was correct, there should be no island here. And all the appearances, as the ship approached, were of an area of land thrown up recently by volcanic action. It was, in fact, a mass of dark, chocolate-colored rock, striated with metallic red, all coated with ashes. Some of the ash had been washed away by rain since the upheaval, and the rock, in the distance, gave the appearance of ruins. Indeed, the captain of the Portsmouth Belle thought, these might be the remains of some ancient city. They were too far away to investigate under the circumstances. A landing indicated many hot, ill-smelling fissures, from which poisonous vapors might be coming. Captain Charles Jessamy and Seaman James Blair were the only ones to set foot, briefly, on the island; and Blair asked the skipper's permission to carry away a keepsake. Scattered about the surface were many irregular blocks and ball-shaped masses of greenish-black lava. One of the smaller blocks had a very regular rectangular shape; the lava was deep-green in color, flecked with brilliant scales of matallic scarlet. Jessamy gave Seaman Blair permission to take it away and keep it. The Portsmouth Belle was lost before returning to port, but Blair and the others aboard were saved. By that time, in attempting to saw the block open, Blair discovered a great casket inside. He concealed it from the others. And the events which followed were such that, in terror, he sold the casket to a curio-shop dealer. Thus it passed into the hands of the fabulously wealthy Jesse Robinson, whose creed was, "What I want, I get - and what I get, I keep." And with Robinson's keeping of the box, despite Blair's attempt to warn him and urge him to sell it back, the terror passed to the Robinson household, to his niece, Leilah, and to young John Vanaman, M.D., whom Leilah summoned to look after her uncle. For some being, some thing, claimed this box; and whatever the being was, it had tremendous powers of illusion. Night after night, sitting beside old Robinson, Dr. Vanaman heard the surge of the sea, saw the waves emerge under closed doors and flood the room, and soon found that this was only the beginning of the manifestation. What was the secret of the box, of a substance which no one could identify? What was the writing on the box, the symbols which seemed to be on whatever side one turned it, then to sink down into the middle of the box? Why did the owner of the curio ship, who had had the box for a short time, suddenly disappear with a large sum of money, then reappear, obviously insane, leading a blooded white horse, which he had purchased for several thousand dollars? What did he mean by his ravings about the "archangel"?"
- The Deep
Alma Katsustandalone novel2020
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
The Deep is a 2020 historical fiction horror novel written by Alma Katsu. It was published in the United Kingdom through Bantam Press and in the United States through G. P. Putnam's Sons.
- Dark Matter
Michelle Paverstandalone novel2010
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
Dark Matter is a speculative fiction novel by Michelle Paver. Part horror, part ghost story, it was published in the United Kingdom by the Orion Publishing Group on 21 October 2010.
- Rosemary Reilly
series2 books1967
completed
similar byhorror+3 more
Rosemary's Baby follows a young wife in a Gothic Manhattan apartment building who grows increasingly convinced that her elderly neighbors, and even her own husband, are part of a conspiracy surrounding her pregnancy. Ira Levin returned to the character thirty years later in the 1997 sequel Son of Rosemary. Together the two novels form a short, self-contained horror series about faith, control, and motherhood.
- Penguin Classics Lovecraft
series3 books1999
completed
similar byhorrorour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie
- The Purple Cloud
M. P. Shielstandalone novel1901
similar byour worldearly 20th centurydarkeerie+1 more
Around 1900, the author receives a packet of writings of a psychic, who recounts her vision of the multi-decade diary of an arctic explorer of the future, the first to reach the north pole; but during his multiyear trek, an unknown eruption temporarily poisons the atmosphere with cyanide, killing all human and animal life, sparing only the arctic latitudes and leaving him the last man on earth.
- Carnacki
universe102 books1909
Start hereCarnacki, the Ghost-Finder · Start here
similar byhorrorearly 20th centuryeerie
The card arrives without preamble: dinner at 472 Cheyne Walk, and afterward the tale. Thomas Carnacki explains nothing until his four friends are fed and settled by the fire — then, pipe lit, he recounts the thing he has just come back from, and at the last word turns them out into the Embankment dark with a curt "Out you go!" This is the world of the Ghost-Finder: an Edwardian London where a haunting is a case to be worked, and the man who works it trusts neither the credulous nor the smug. William Hope Hodgson raised Carnacki in a slim sheaf of stories — "The Gateway of the Monster," "The Whistling Room," "The Horse of the Invisible" and their fellows, gathered in 1913 and rounded out to nine. Each is a siege: Carnacki barricades himself inside a defended circle, half medieval and half modern — chalk, garlic, water-drawn pentacles and the glass tubes of his own Electric Pentacle humming against the dark — and consults the crumbling Sigsand Manuscript for a rite that may or may not hold. A century on, other hands keep the Chelsea rooms lit: William Meikle, the team of Chico Kidd and Rick Kennett, and editors such as John Linwood Grant, Robert M. Price and Sam Gafford send him after horrors Hodgson never named. What sets the cases apart is Carnacki's refusal to decide in advance. A whistling room may prove a swindle with a trick of plumbing behind it, or a genuine intrusion of the "ab-natural" pressing at the pentacle till the light fails — and until the last page neither he nor you can say which. Begin at the source: read Hodgson's 1913 collection in its own order, "The Gateway of the Monster" first. The later homages are a loose fraternity with no fixed sequence; take them up afterward, as the dark permits.
- The Other
Thomas Tryonstandalone novel1971
similar byhorrorearly 20th centurydarkeeriegothic
On a rural New England farm in 1935, thirteen-year-old identical twins Niles and Holland Perry share an unnervingly close bond, finishing each other's thoughts the way twins in family lore are supposed to. But the boys are not alike underneath: one is gentle and well-liked, the other carries something cold and cruel that the adults around them keep failing to notice. As a string of unsettling accidents and small cruelties start happening around the family's property, the people who love the twins begin, too slowly, to wonder whether both of them are really still there to blame. Thomas Tryon's debut novel, a work of quiet, Gothic-inflected horror.
