It

This one settles into a small town and stays there, because that is where the fear lives. Seven children find themselves hunted by something old and patient, an entity that borrows a shape to get close to them, and it favours the one disguise most children are taught to trust rather than fear.

The dread here is the disguise itself. It is not a monster stalking from the shadows so much as one that walks up smiling, and that is a particular kind of unsettling if you have ever distrusted a grin that held on a beat too long. Stephen King takes his time with it, and the book is thick enough to live inside for a good while.

It suits anyone who likes their horror to sprawl, with a whole town's worth of ordinary life sitting alongside the terror rather than a quick jab and out. Save it for a long, dark stretch of nights rather than one sitting.

It is telling that the creature never gets a truer name than "It". Whatever it actually is stays just out of reach, which is its own kind of horror, the not quite knowing paired with a face you almost recognise.