Cosy horror for dark nights

Same nightmares. Different stories.

The directory

Books: Psychological

Horror on the page: what each book is, who wrote it and how scary it gets.

Book · 2009

Another

A new pupil meets a mysterious classmate, then finds his class caught up in a string of terrible deaths.

Book · 1998

Bag of Bones

A grieving writer retreats to an isolated lake house, where writer’s block and delusions make solitude frightening.

Book · 1974

Carrie

A telekinetic teenager's revenge after a cruel prom night prank turns Chamberlain, Maine into a nightmare.

Book · 1980

Firestarter

Stephen King’s Firestarter follows a young girl who can start fires with her mind, and the agency that wants to use her power.

Book · 1995

Intensity

A college student fights to survive a serial killer in Dean Koontz’s tense horror novel.

Book · 1987

Misery

A writer's biggest fan decides she isn't ready to let him leave.

Book · 1991

Needful Things

A new shop in Castle Rock offers people the things they want, if they will do a strange favour for its owner.

Book · 1983

Pet Sematary

A family settles near an old pet cemetery in the Maine woods, and learns what else lives there.

Book · 1986

Strangers

A Dean Koontz horror novel from 1986 that mixes horror with science fiction, for nights when you want your unease with a strange edge.

Book · 1990

The Bad Place

A man loses every night to a blackout, and two private investigators uncover a frightening reason to fear what happens while he is gone.

Book · 1822

The Black Cat

A drunken man turns on the pet cat he once loved, with terrible consequences.

Book · 1979

The Dead Zone

A man wakes from a long coma with visions triggered by touch, while a killer and a rising politician enter his story.

Book · 2019

The Institute

A kidnapped boy wakes in a facility for children with strange gifts, and the ones who run it want something from him.

Book · 1915

The Metamorphosis

A salesman wakes with an insect's body, and his family must face the change with him.

Book · 2018

The Outsider

A Stephen King novel that blends crime fiction with horror until the two stop behaving.

Book · 1910

The Phantom of the Opera

A Gothic horror novel about a mysterious presence haunting the Paris Opera House.

Book · 1834

The Queen of Spades

A Russian novella about a man drawn in by the promise of a card game secret that could make him rich.

Book · 1977

The Shining

Stephen King's breakthrough horror novel, shaped by his own hotel stay and his fight with drink at the time.

Book · 2004

The Taking

The Taking is a 2004 horror novel by Dean Koontz, published by Bantam Books.

Book · 1843

The Tell-Tale Heart

A calm, precise confession from a narrator killing an old man over nothing but the look of his eye.

Book · 1992

The Thief of Always

A boy enters a magical house whose master draws children in to steal their youth and keep himself alive.

Book · 1996

Ticktock

Ticktock begins as horror, then turns towards comedy as Tommy Phan wrestles with family roots and his wish to be American.

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The After Dark Top 40

Forty horror films counted down like the charts, from silent classics to new favourites, picked by Erin and sent the moment you join.