14 Best Thriller Books Ever Written

Scary books have tremendous power over their readers. They build in that slow, exciting way where you sit on the edge of your seat and furiously turn pages to see what happens next. They produce physical sensations in the body, such as threatening fear in the pit of your stomach, or the hair on the back of your neck standing on end. They'll take your imagination for the ride as you can't help but imagine every gruesome detail as you read. They can permanently scare us at their subject - be it bloodthirsty dogs (Cujo, anyone?), Ebola (The Hot Zone), or even, yes, clowns. But as readers, we love the feeling of being scared - it's adrenaline-pumping and addictive. If you're in the mood for a fright, here are some of the scariest books ever written. And if they get too much, just do what I do: throw it in the freezer.

In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
Truman Capote wrote six years of In Cold Blood, one of the earliest "true crime" stories, after reading in the about the horrific murders of a Kansas farmer and his entire family New York Times. The fact that it's rooted in truth is what makes it so scary; as one RIFer puts it: "It's horrifying to know that something like this really happened."
See Also: 30 Psychological Thriller Books That Will Almost Certainly You'll Never Get a Good Night's Sleep
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
In this story within a story within a story, a family returns home from a journey to find a closet where there was none before. The house continues to grow on its own creating an endless series of corridors and rooms and a low, never explained growl plays the soundtrack to the whole thing. The phenomenon drives the family living inside crazy, just like the reader of the story. And it will probably do the same to you.
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
High Considered one of the best literary ghost stories of the 20th century, The Haunting of Hill House tells of four characters who reside in the ominous mansion to explore the paranormal phenomena that take place inside. The ghosts of the house eventually own one of the visitors, a quiet, reserved woman named Eleanor. Warning: This poignant Gothic novel will convince you that every crunch of your stairs is a poltergeist haunting you.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Imagine a post-apocalyptic world, a bleak and burnt landscape. Okay good. Now imagine being alone in this desolate landscape with just your dad, very little food, and a gun to protect you from cannibals. Now imagine losing everything you have. A RIFer says of the novel: 'The descriptions of the post-apocalypse world take the imagination to a very dark place. And the sense of loss that permeates at the end of the book makes the reader feel utterly afraid of the end times. "
The House of the Seven Facades
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In a sleepy little New England village stands a gloomy mansion, haunted by an ancient curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Hawthorne based the house on a true colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, as well as his ancestors who were involved in the Salem Witch Trials, both of which haunted him all his life.
Interview with the vampire
Anne RiceAnne Rice
In's classic debut novel, 200-year-old vampire Louis confesses the Pointe du Lac tells his life story to a reporter. Hypnotic, shocking and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing power - a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of tension and determination, and of extraordinary strength of the senses. Rice wrote the novel after the death of her young daughter, who was an inspiration to the child vampire character Claudia.
The October Country
Ray Bradbury
A collection of short stories from the master of science fiction and fantasy. The October Country is Ray Bradbury's own soul underworld, inhabited by the horrors and demons that lurk within all of us. Stories include a murderous newborn who sets out to kill his mother, a creepy cemetery where bodies are on display when they can't afford to be buried there, and a man convinced his skeleton is out to kill him. to destroy.
Suffer the Children
John Saul
An instant bestseller, Suffer the Children begins with the tragic murder of a young child, after which the culprit plunges himself into the sea. But a hundred years later, the murders return to Port Arbello. The children begin to disappear, one by one, and as the culprit is hunted down, the townspeople begin to realize that a bad history is repeating itself.
Perfume
Patrick Suskind
In the slums of eighteenth-century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with one sublime gift: an absolute sense of smell. As an adult, he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of everyday objects, until one day he notices a whiff of a scent that will drive him on an increasingly terrifying quest to create the 'ultimate perfume': the scent of a beautiful scent. . young virgin told with dazzling narrative genius and Perfume is a terrifyingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.
World War Z
Max Brooks
The novel begins ten years after mankind won the twenty-year Zombie War. The novel follows Max Brooks as the unnamed UN agent who travels the world to gain first-hand experiences through interviews with survivors. Aside from the poignant stories of carnivorous zombies, it's also a chilling take on the social, political and environmental collapse that occurs during this fictional zombie war - and while fictional, it strikes very close to home.
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill
In the small town of Crythin Gifford, there is a gloomy, isolated house called the Eel Marsh House. When junior lawyer Arthur Kipps is called to Crythin Grifford to manage the affairs of an elderly widow who lived in the house, he is haunted by a series of mysterious sounds and images - a rocking chair in an abandoned nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and fall, a child's scream in the mist, and, most terrifying of all, the ghostly woman dressed all in black.
Slade House
David Mitchell
This haunted house story, which initially started as a Twitter story and then developed into a full-blown novel, explores the mysterious and oppressive Slade House - and the stories it claims. Five 'guests' enter Slade House for a short visit, but disappear without a trace from the outside world. Starting in 1979 and ending in 2015, these five intertwined stories will mesmerize Mitchell's readers old and new with a signature blend of mystery, realism and the supernatural.
Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel Station
Fifteen years after a flu pandemic wiped out most of the world's population, Kirsten, an actress from the Traveling Symphony, moves across the hollowed-out landscape with Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors with her small troupe. But when they arrive at the outpost of St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who is digging graves for anyone who dares to leave.
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
H.P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, often imitated and widely influential, reinvented the twentieth century horror genre, discarding ghosts and witches, and instead saw humanity as a small outpost of declining sanity in a chaotic and evil universe. This definitive collection reveals the development of Lovecraft's enchanting storytelling style and makes him a canonical - and visionary - American writer.