As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.
I love this book because it proves fear does not have to shout to own the room.
Shirley Jackson makes dread feel elegant, patient, and almost polite, which somehow makes it worse. I admire how much she trusts atmosphere, silence, suggestion, and character discomfort.
That is the kind of horror I respect most: not just “what is happening?” but “why does everything suddenly feel wrong?”
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and…
I love this book because it makes a home feel less like shelter and more like a pressure system.
Jac Jemc captures that awful feeling of trying to explain something strange before you fully understand it yourself. I kept turning pages because the unease felt intimate, domestic, and hard to prove.
That is my favorite kind of literary horror: the kind where the walls, the relationship, and the mind all seem to be changing at once.
Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon's Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017.
Jac Jemc's The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home
Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real…
From farm to urban, from World War II to the Digital Age, UFOs and God spotlights the underbelly of the human condition in all its glory and despair on life’s varied stages.
I love this book because it turns reading itself into a haunted space.
House of Leaves doesn’t just tell me something is wrong; it makes me physically experience disorientation on the page. I admire books that take big formal risks and still keep a human pulse underneath the invention.
This one made me feel trapped in a maze made of rooms, footnotes, fear, and obsession, and I mean that as high praise.
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…
I love this book because it feels like panic whispered directly into my ear.
Samanta Schweblin writes with such control that the smallest details start to feel radioactive. I admire how lean it is. There is no wasted space, no decorative wandering, just mounting dread.
It gave me the sensation of trying to solve a nightmare while still inside it, which is one of the hardest feelings for fiction to create well.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017
'The book I wish I had written' Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women and Animal
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a remote Argentinian hospital. A boy named David sits beside her.
She's not his mother. He's not her child.
At David's ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past, a conversation that opens a chest of horrors. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
I love this book because it understands how frightening it is to stop trusting your own impulses.
Sara Gran writes with a clean, fast, deceptively simple style that makes the horror feel even sharper. I admire how quickly the book gets under the skin without needing to overexplain itself.
It has that wonderful, terrible momentum of a bad thought you can’t shake, and I always respect horror that makes loss of control feel personal.
'A dark, seductive cocktail of a thriller, with a splash of black humour and a twist of horror.' Francine Toon, author of Pine
There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on. Strange noises in the apartment. Impulsive behaviour. Intense dreams. It wasn't like everything went wrong all at once. Shoplifting. Fighting. Blackouts. There must be a reasonable explanation for all this.
'It will scare the pants off you. It is a perfect horror novel.' Paul Tremblay 'A short, sharp shocker . . . Relentlessly creepy.' Sunday Times 'Deeply scary.' The Times 'Terrifying.' Daily Mail …
Anna So Knows ’Ya is a grounded horror novel about John Simons, a crime reporter covering a series of East Side deaths while his own life begins to feel watched, invaded, and impossibly connected to the story he’s chasing.
As strange encounters, late-night sounds, and blurred professional boundaries tighten around him, John tries to hold onto facts, friendship, and his own sense of reality. The novel follows one man’s spiral through fear, obsession, and the terrifying question of what happens when the truth doesn’t set you free. It follows you into the dark.
Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind—supposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nilda’s new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And Nilda…
Winter Journeys is a story of music, memory, and imagination.
At summer’s end, Ilona Miller loses her job. Instead of adjusting her attitude and sending out resumes, she retreats into grief and paranoid imaginings by day and wanders the streets at night. A long-dormant alter ego awakes and prompts a…
