Desperation

Stephen King published this one in 1996, and he did something proper unsettling with it: it has a twin. A companion novel came out at exactly the same time, written under his Richard Bachman name, and the two are meant to sit as mirror versions of each other, same people living out different fates in different worlds.

That's the kind of premise that gets under my skin more than any jump scare. The idea that somewhere a version of the same story is playing out differently, and you only get to read one side of it. It's horror built on structure as much as scares.

It found its way to television too, a film version arriving a decade later in 2006. I'd save this one for a night when you want something that lingers rather than something that jumps out at you, ideally with the lights low and nobody else talking through it.

Good for anyone who likes their horror a little cerebral, the sort that has you turning the idea over long after you've put the book down.